My guest is Angela Maiers. Angela founded Choose2Matter, which is a non-profit that helps individuals to embrace their value and their potential contribution. Choose2Matter has evolved into a movement that now supports students, parents, educators, and employees, literally around the world. Her work at over 60 thousand classrooms across 100 countries has rallied more than a million children to be together to launch over 170 social enterprises. Listen To The Podcast: Resources: www.AngelaMaiers.com www.Choose2Matter.org Transcription: Mitch Matthews: Angela, welcome to the podcast! Angela Maiers: Well, I'm so honored to be here my friends. It's wonderful to watch you in action and be a part of this, you were just a huge supporter of my mission and my work and I feel like we've connected at a soul level, so it's great to reconnect. Mitch Matthews: It's crazy because we go way back to when the Big Dream Gathering was just getting started. Angela Maiers: I know, yeah. Mitch Matthews: Your things were just starting to explode. So it feels like a class reunion. Angela Maiers: It does. Mitch Matthews: I love it. Well, DREAM THINK DOers are going to love you and love your story. Let's tell them a little bit more about Choose to Matter. Let's give them a snapshot of what it is that you do. As well as you can in a condensed way, tell us a little bit more about Choose to Matter. Angela Maiers: I think I have created a framework for people to make a commitment to contribute their best self to the world. And by best self or best selves, that could be individual, that could be organizational, it could be our entire community and humanity. And when you look at the reasons why human beings don't contribute their best self to the world, with not just confidence but with also a sense of calmness, is because there is a terror in the world, and I use that world not lightly, of insignificance. Angela Maiers: It is the single most common ailment of the modern world. And it doesn't discriminate. Even though Choose to Matter started with my mission in education, the feeling that we don't matter doesn't discriminate by age, by title, by position, by role. We're all fighting for our enough-ness in the world. Mitch Matthews: And you've been studying this, you've been teaching this. And I know it's a generational thing, you've been going back deep into the science of it and all that, but would you say, and this is probably just a softball question, but would you say, how has social media and all of that contributed to kind of that "see me" feel? That longing to be seen. Angela Maiers: I think that you see both the best of humanity, social media or media in general or technology is neutral. It is an amplifier of human behavior and emotion. Mitch Matthews: Yeah. Angela Maiers: So part of the addiction in social media is our DNA level need, not just desire, but DNA level needs to be seen, to be heard and to understand that we have value. And so just the simple act of saying another human being's name is such a rarity, believe it or not. It's a rarity even in schools. Kids can go period after period, week after week, semester after semester and never hear their name. It's the most important word in the human language. It defines our existence. Angela Maiers: And so when you hear your name over, or where we have not given people real pathways and real practices to acting and behaving as if they mattered, so they pick shortcuts, like the naughty kid. We just want to be noticed and so we'll do it in any way that we can. And we have a whole world of naughty kids. Mitch Matthews: I was just going to say, that's not limited to the classroom, right? Angela Maiers: No it's not. Mitch Matthews: It's so true. And I know that so much of what you do could be defined, the simple arts, but the simple arts are so important of literally looking someone in the eye and saying, "You matter" right?