Dr Isaac Prilleltensky, author of How People Matter spoke with me today about the practice of meaning-making and how we matter to each other. His book is a great practical guide on co-generating meaning in relationships and how it intersects with the OneSchool Project. He has experience living in a boarding school and the benefits of that kind of community. I really appreciate the dynamic image in his wheel of mattering (see image below). He is especially quotable when referencing one’s right to feel valued, “that is 100% correct, about 50% of the problem.” How much of your life does that apply to?
Links:
Erik Erickson’s concept of the Moratorium
Transcript:
keevin bybee 0:00
Welcome to the one school podcast. My name is keevin Bybee. I’m a family physician, exploring how we might turn schools into 24/7 365 safe havens for our children. Today, I’ve got the honor of speaking with Professor Isaac Pirlo 10 ski, I was inspired to reach out to him after reading his book on how people matter, the concept of meaning and mattering is near and dear to my heart. As social primates, one of our major affordances is meaning making, which influences how we interact with the world, as well as how we interpret our emotions. Thus, I felt compelled to see how an expert in the art and science of meaning making might illuminate the one school project of Integrated Wellness. Thank you for joining me today, Isaac, and we’d love to hear a little bit of how you came to be talking with me today.
isaac prilleltensky 0:49
In Well, I guess you alluded to the book, A how people matter. And a few people have resonated with the idea of mattering, which in my view really consists of feeling valued, and adding value, making a contribution to the community, to ourselves, to our family, to our work. So for me, my training is about feeling valued, like you are recognized, you are appreciated, you are seen and heard as a human being, and having the opportunity to make meaning through contributions to yourself and others. And that’s what I guess, to pique your interest, and I think there is an intersection, we both share an interest in how we can improve outcomes for children and youth. And how can we help them feel like they matter? And how can we help families and community? So that’s why we’re here today, I guess.
keevin bybee 2:06
Indeed, indeed. You know, I remember reading one passage in your book about how, you know, teens who are better engaged with their community are better engaged with with their academics. There’s another thinker that I’ve really like listening to, he goes by, his name is Zachary Stein, and he talks about an educational hub and spoke model where instead of, you know, people being confined to a physical building from eight until three, thinking about how their educational activities can kind of be dispersed within a community. I’m just curious what kind of thoughts you have about something like that?
isaac prilleltensky 2:53
Well, needless to say, schools are a foundational source of mattering, and health and well being for children. Kids spend so much time at school, that we need to do whatever we can to make sure that children feel valued for who they are, regardless of challenges that they may experience. A will have to make sure that they are given opportunities to contribute in many different ways. Children, a don’t learn the same way. They don’t come in cookie cutter, you know, shapes is so as we all know, children have very many different talents and assets and strengths. And it’s our job as adults to mine their assets and to discover what is it that you are unique? And what is it that you enjoy doing and what gives you meaning? Coming to be sports, or playing a musical instrument or geography or math or languages or, or swimming, whatever that is, that really ignites your passion that builds on your strengths. So I think that the schools are a perfect place for all of us adults, teachers, parents, volunteers, principals, to be creating cultures of mattering and wellbeing for kids now, many kids already have that thing great. Many forms from home for many kids come from terrific families who are parents and nurture and nourish their teats and they make them feel loved and appreciated, and they have fun with them and they nourish their intellectual curiosity, their social interest, their their physical outlets, by but no, no, the kids come from families like that. And then that’s when compensatory systems can mean, especially the school, community centers, volunteers, Big Brothers, Big Sisters, a religious organization, sporting clubs, where we, the adults have an opportunity to, to help families who are having a hard time providing the kids a with that essential feelings of being valued and loved, and having an opportunity to add value in different ways.
keevin bybee 6:07
Yeah, I love I love everything that you’re saying there, and the specifically the community center aspect of it, thinking about how we can blur the line between schools and community centers might be an interesting way to move forward, and how everybody is coming to, to life with their own, you know, innate biology, as well as the the history of their family, and the different attributes, or, you know, lack thereof that we sometimes come with. There’s a, there’s a podcast called Hardcore History, have you ever heard of that one with? It’s really good stuff, but he had an episode on children. And he, the framework that I really liked is if you think of what was considered good parenting up until call it 1980, would basically be called child abuse by today’s standards. And on some sense, you could think of all of humanity as being raised under some conditions of child abuse, and therefore, how can we interrupt that cycle with better better resources? You know, I considered conceptually hugged at, at like a school. And I know that you’ve had a pretty interesting history, and how would you say that your experiences living in various parts of the world would influence how learning in different environments can contribute to kids having a sense of meaning and mattering?
isaac prilleltensky 7:45
What I can share with you and the audience is that there are really multiple ways it to have meaning a in childhood, and later on in life. So I had the misfortune of losing my parents when I was eight years old, in a car accident, both my parents died. And I had the good fortune of having a great and who adopted me and my two siblings. She was a widow. But she had three kids, we were the two families were very close. So she went from being a single mom, a widow with three kids to being a single mom with six kids. And she was very, very loving, and nurturing. And she protected me, and she loved me, and she made me feel like I mattered to her as a second mother, so to speak. And so growing up, I had this tragedy, this traumatic event, but that doesn’t mean that my fate will see, you know, in a negative way forever because other people came in, you know, other people stepped in, and they provided me what my parents couldn’t because they were gone. A and I also have the good fortune of having very good friends. As a little kid as an eight year old. I was loved by my friends. You know, we used to play soccer together and do homework and engaging Mischeif together. A and I was a good soccer player. So I had that data out relates it a I wasn’t mark, you know, by my tragedy, of course, it was a very difficult event that accompany me for many, many years and still does but in a way, I had the good fortune of being surrounded by opportunities, a to express myself. And I attended the youth movement. So in the youth movement, I was able to assume positions of leadership. So I felt good about myself, you know, I was contributing, I was a young leader of younger kids, eventually, a group of us coalesce together that was in Argentina. And we move to Israel together, and we move to a boarding school. So it talks about the 24/7 school, right, that’s what boarding schools are. And my last two years of high school were in boarding school. And for me, they were having a, I have to say, in Argentina, there was a lot of anti semitism, Jews were being persecuted. A, and it was just playing dangerous for young Jewish people like me, who will post the dictatorship in to be you know, socially conscious and politically active. You know, think about to Ukraine today. Okay, so I grew up in Argentina, where there was a fascist dictatorship. So we had to flee. We witnessed today, many people fleeing millions of people fleeing the Ukraine, there were, over the years, many, many Jewish people who had to flee their countries because of anti semitism. So I was one of it. But I landed in a good place, I landed in a boarding school in the state of Israel provide with all the refugees, I was one a with a free education. A courtesy of the State of Israel, my last two years really were great because I escaped the dangerous situation. And I landed in a safe situation. And there were very many young leaders and teachers in my boarding school, this amazing 24/7 school, that they enabled me to study and flourish and get ready for university and do sports.
So just a little bit about me, saying that a tragedy and trauma doesn’t have to mark kids for life, for as long as there are good substitutes and other systems and loving people who can stay focus on your strengths. And in my case, you know, I was a good young leader, you know, so and I guess I was empathetic. And I had the good social skills. So some people saw that in me, and they gave me opportunities to work with younger kids say, and I always loved soccer. So I was a good soccer player. And I just found that their outlets, and all kids need an opportunity to express their talents, it’s our job to find what they love, what they are good at, right? It’s our job as an adult, to mine that
keevin bybee 13:34
very much. So, you know, the the term IEP or individual Individualized Education Plan certainly has a specific connotation in the United States education system. But I would really love to get to a place where we give each kid the education that they need based on where they’re at and where they’re coming from. In your book, you talk a lot, at least in one section about emotional vocabulary. And, you know, I’d like to, at least when I grew up, I certainly didn’t get much education on naming what’s going on with my internal process. And so, you know, I’d love to think about how you would like to see emotional education integrated into formal education.
isaac prilleltensky 14:20
This is absolutely essential. Nowadays, it goes by the name of social emotional learning, you know, SEL, it is extremely important to help kids label their emotions, understand what’s going on inside and labeling their emotions. Being aware of what’s going on inside is really the first step in coping effectively. Because if you don’t know what’s happening with you and you it’s all just a big turmoil, psychological turmoil, and you don’t even know what to do All late, it’s all very confusing. So the more we incorporate social emotional learning into kids education, A, the higher their mental health and well being will be in, as we all know, kids interact a lot is social dynamics are a huge part of growing up. And we have to help kids say, resolve conflict in an express empathy, and be there when a friend be suffering, and celebrate the friend when they are achieving something good. It’s not good enough just to learn the shoulder when your friend is going through a rough time, we also have to cheer them on, we’re having a good time, right, we have to celebrate their great accomplishments. And there is a lot of research showing that social emotional learning has a very powerful impact on academic learning. So the more we learn how to cope with our emotions, the more we can self regulate, the more we can focus and settle on cognitive learning, academic, enterprise, aim. So there are multiple, multiple benefits of social emotional learning. And you’re right that in years past, a parents didn’t have the vocabulary, the knowledge, the psychological insight to help their kids deal with difficult emotions, right? Many of us grew up thinking that you shouldn’t be crying, you shouldn’t be expressing your emotions, especially if you’re a boy, boys don’t cry, and boy did I hear that a lot after my parents died, you know, like, you shouldn’t be crying, you should be tough, you know, all the the anti psychological approaches of the past, but we know so much more today. In we just need to deploy what we know.
keevin bybee 17:21
Yeah, there’s, there’s absolutely cause for optimism, I, I enjoy the the exposure my children are getting my wife happens to the therapist as well. And they are so good at naming their emotions and setting boundaries for themselves. And, you know, I just wish that for for more and more kids, you know, and speaking of, you know, our emotional vocabulary, you know, we’re a storytelling species. And, you know, how do you think about like, the stories we tell both about ourselves and about our relationships and how that affects how we matter? Or how does that affect how we generate meeting with people?
isaac prilleltensky 18:01
way stories are meaning making, right? We seek coherence as human beings, and we create coherence, through the stories we tell. So it’s really important to cultivate storytelling in kids. And, you know, there are two fundamental stories kids can tell about themselves, you know, a positive story or a negative story, right? In a negative story is, I’m no good. A I can succeed that the kids don’t like me, I fail a test. And basically, a negative narrative eventually becomes internalized. It’s not the story, but it’s who I am. A I’m not a good person. And kids don’t just invent the stories, they they absorb messages from Ben Vironment that teachers, parents, siblings, cousins, priests, rabbis, imams, that we all contribute to the stories. So it’s extremely important that we mind the stories we tell our kids because kids are huge internalizes. And in the absence of a counter vocabulary, you know, if adults tell you often that you are no good, you begin to believe it as a p. So that’s a negative narrative. What would say? What’s a positive narrative in narrative that says I am good at things, I am lovable. I’m a good friend, I have good qualities, and I can help others. It’s always important to remember that a positive narrative about yourself is not just about ungrate. Because that can lead to narcissism, you know, a, we want kids to feel positive about themselves themselves. But we also want them to contribute to others. A way we really want them to have self compassion. So that they are not harsh on themselves, you know, if they fail a test, or if something is not going great, or if they are not peak for the baseball team, or wherever a bad event can happen, we want them to have self compassion. But we also want them to have compassion for other people. And very severe, important balancing act. And nowadays, I think we live in a culture with multiple risks. One risk is that we call the very self centered kids. A, that’s one important risk. The other risk is that if you’re not doing well, a we tend to blame kids for not doing well. So these messages either promote narcissism or the pressure, right, you either internalize messages that you’re not good, or you internalize messages that you are the king of the class, the king or the queen, is, well, neither extreme is good. So we really have to cultivating kids, the ability to nurture themselves and nurture others. At the same time, that’s a very important balance is so in the language of mattering. This is reflected in the fact that a lot of people grow up thinking, I have the right to feel valued, and to be loved.
That is 100% correct about 50% of the problem. You know, the other 50% is that we all have the right to feel valued. And beloved, and I have something to do about your feeling value, I have to help others feel value. So I have to come up with a balancing act between feeling valued and adding value. So the stories we tell we the stories we want our kids to tell about themselves says I am valued and I am helpful. I am lovable and I love I get a nice give, I receive a nice provide.
keevin bybee 23:26
Yeah, and you provide a beautiful visual your your circle of mattering, like you mentioned, we at the same time, we need to like feel value and add value and being able to kind of go around the circle instead of gets stuck on one side, you know, most most commonly in Western culture the the the ego side rather than the community side. So when I saw your wheel of mattering, it really struck a chord with me because you need to keep going around the circle and not be stuck or calcified into any one position. I’m just curious where what your inspiration was for the wheel or how you decided to put it together?
isaac prilleltensky 24:16
Way I think that I’m a visual learner, you know, we were talking about how people learn in different ways and I am very visual and and I pride myself in simplifying complex ideas. So I thought this visual of feeling value when adding value is a good metaphor. This way, you know, if you feel valued, you are going to take more risks and you’re going to be willing to add value at war you know or in your in the classroom. You’re going to raise your hand because if we can’t Then if you feel confident you want to be the leader of the group or you want to answer the math question, or do you want to take a lead in the science project where it’s up, and the more you take risks, the more you add value to the team, the more you feel valued. So for me, this idea of a dynamic interaction between feeling valued and adding value, adds value. And I, so I have seen part of my job been translating psychology for the general public, really, as a job of making psychology accessible. And this book that you’re referring to help people matter has been an effort to speak in plain language that everyone everyone can understand about deep things. Because nothing could be deeper than meaning and mattering. Really. A but we have to, we have to talk about these things, in ways that everybody can understand.
keevin bybee 26:17
Agreed, agreed, the what I what I particularly appreciated about your book was it, you know, offered practical examples, or you know, a practice of, of meaning making, which actually kind of ties into another thing, rather than slowly coming around to the the idea that, you know, meaning isn’t something that’s out there, it’s something that is generated, or even better co generated? And then so, what do you think about the process? What how do you think about the practice of meaning making rather than finding a specific meaning?
isaac prilleltensky 27:00
That’s a great point. And I say that meaning is in the making. So the making is the process. And I doubt that people find meaning without effort. And by effort, I mean, a big process of discovering, what is it that gives you meaning? So for example, for some people, it may be writing, or playing an instrument, or being a good friend, or being a good pairing, a volunteering in the community, or religious faith? There are 1000 ways to find meaning. But I really, I really doubt that meaning is just found, without going through an effort to engage in something that may be costly, maybe effortful, but you derive pleasure in doing so. Right? It’s, I guess it’s the opposite of taking a drug. Right? Some people may take drugs for instant gratification. Right? A that doesn’t give you meaning. That that’s hedonism, right? You may get an immediate pleasure kick. But pleasure is not the same as purpose. Right? We were to say that happiness is part pleasure and part of purpose. So, you know, if you were injected to a drag, you know, like, if you had an intravenous and you had a drip all day long, you know, you may be really experiencing a lot of pleasure, but I’m not sure you want to lead that life. Right? I’m not sure that you just want to be a pleasure machine without a purpose machine. Okay. So I can just give you a simple example. A our son is a chess player and a chess coach. And in school, a school was in, you know, it’d be compassion for him. But chess was a, um, he started playing chess, I think when he was seven years old. He’s 35 today. And he’s always played chess, and he made a career out of it. And he coaches kids and his his students win national and international tournaments. And he has a great a very successful Chess Academy. He himself is a very strong chess player. And he derives meaning from the learning. And the process. I need say for for, you know, if you if you don’t play chess, you know how difficult it is right? And you know, how difficult it is to achieve high levels of accomplishment. But you enjoy the process, because you are learning and, and it’s effortful. It The same happens with flow, you know, my chicks sent me high develop this idea of low engagement, when you’re engaged with an activity that you like, well, it has to be challenging, because if it’s not challenged, if it’s really easy, when you know, you don’t really enjoy the activity, that magic becomes boring. So there is now a, an interesting, a new book, it’s called the sweet spot about the benefits of suffering in men. And it’s not just suffering for suffering sake, but it’s the process of finding what you’re good at. And you have to try different things. You know, it’s like when kids go to college, we go through this moratorium period that Erik Erikson coined this term moratorium, which means you are in suspended time, a meaning you cannot really make up your mind whether you want to be a biologist, or whether you want to be a psychologist, or whether you want to be a political scientist or an economist. So moratorium is this period of time, where you suspend big decisions. And you search, you search for what is it that I’m, what is it that speaks to me? What is it that I really love doing? What? How am I going to Mel Blaine, my passion with my purpose in life. And all of that is part of meaning making. And it comes in very many different ways. As I said, you can volunteer in the community, you can be a humanitarian aid worker, you can be a politician or a violinist, or a great mathematician, or the greatest soccer player. I think we have to allow kids to explore what is it that calls their attention, their passion, that engagement?
keevin bybee 32:45
Exactly, like I was just kind of wrapped listening to you and thinking about what would it take for, you know, your average local school to be that that platform that meets your, you know, first layer of Maslow’s hierarchy, so that you are able to be in the exploration while feeling safe enough to to try because you know, that you’ve got that safety net to fall back on, without the failure being catastrophic, which, even when you’re eight, you all failures seem catastrophic. And, and so being able to cultivate that the that environment for children to junk and be caught. And so yeah, I just really liked that in your the story of your son, right? You know, you somebody at seven, you say they’re going to be a professional chess player, you’re like, sure. But then if you let him explore, you know, it’s not that he’s, I maybe he’s winning money at tournaments. But more than that is he is teaching other people and he’s in a professional chess player, because he had the opportunity to explore how to do that in a creative way. Right.
isaac prilleltensky 34:03
Exactly. Um, I think it’s our responsibility as adults in to let kids try different things. And as you say, if they fall, we’ll catch them, you know, and this is this is what Carol Dweck calls a growth mindset. So as opposed to a fixed mindset, right, a fixed mindset says, are neither good or bad things. A and if I fail, that say it, I’m not gonna try it again. Because I’m bad days. Forget. That’s a fixed mindset. A growth mindset says, I enjoy the process of learning. And, and if I fail at something, I’m going to look at what have I learned from this? And what can I do to improve What can I do to overcome challenges? And I think, I think that I have a growth mindset. You know, I think my son past one, two, A, A, and not everything I’ve tried in life has succeeded it but I try not to be too harsh on myself, I guess people gave me enough positive messages when I was growing up to feel like I can be kind to myself. So that’s the message I try to share with my students at the university with the people I work with in the community that we need to be, we need to be kind to ourselves, and, and we need to challenge the narratives that want us to internalize failure. And we have to be very mindful, you know, in our society. A, we live in such an individualistic culture, when when many people unfortunately don’t do well. The default is they blind themselves, by it, because the narrative is, if you succeed, you succeed because you are great. And if you fail, you fail because you’re incompetent. You’re either incompetent or lies, right? You know, pick your poison, right? You’re either incompetent or lazy, neither of which is a very appealing a story to tell yourself a and what we don’t the welding society is pay attention to all the environmental influences that bolster those of us who are lucky to be doing well to have a steady job and good relationships and and you know, enough of the Maslow basic needs covered a society things to really celebrate self made people, as if there are safe made people, nobody said me, nobody’s self made. Right, all of us have had support from caring others, and caring systems. So it’s our responsibility to, to share narratives with kids that say, your well being has a lot to do with your environment. So it’s our responsibility to share with them in understanding that they shouldn’t blame themselves. If things don’t go well. Just like we tell kids, don’t blame yourself, because your parents are getting a divorce. Right? A lot of kids tend to internalize, oh, I wasn’t good enough. You know, my parents are getting a divorce because of me. A, you know, this world, kids tend to internalize a lot of problems. A when it’s an adult problem. It’s not a kid’s problem, that they’re getting a divorce. Right.
And so we need to challenge this individualistic culture that, first of all, you know, hey, if I’m at the receiving end of praise, I’ll take it right. Like all of us in the hall. Yeah, they’re saying Isaac keevin. You’re great. You’re right. And you you love. Right, right. They say, Oh, yeah, fantastic. But we have to remember that none of us are self May. And that’s the nice course we have to share with kids. A, you know, we have a responsibility to ourselves and others to do our best to become resilient, to make meaning to be good students, he writes a responsibility to try to do well. But when we fail, we shouldn’t just blame kids for their misfortune. We need to have this language that says, you can grow out of it. You know, you we should all embrace the growth mindset. And we should still these courses of fixed mindset.
keevin bybee 39:26
100% Yeah, thanks. Speaking of growth and thinking about human development, like on a neurophysiologic level. We all hate insurance companies. But if we look at driver’s license or car insurance actuarial you know, there’s a reason like most men’s car insurance drops off at the age of 25. Right there’s a period of myelination and frontal lobe engagement that comes online and thinking about how largely historic We were expected to be self sufficient at 18 for some arbitrary reason, but recognizing that there’s still a lot of myelination that happens after that, and you know, not that we’re fixed at 18, even or 28, or whatever the number is, yeah, I just really, I think that kind of tied in with what you were saying, staying in the growth mindset, you know, beyond any arbitrary number, you know, and we can have periods that reflect what we are neurologically, individually and on. And on, on average, you were touching on so many things that I want to pull threads on, I don’t even know which one to go with. Next, but yeah, the dummy culture versus the weak culture. Thinking about how ego in one sense is a great survival tool. You know, if we don’t think about how we could take responsibility for how we influence the world, then we won’t act but at the same time, if it’s overemphasize, then we’re going to end up trying to take responsibility for things that are environmental. And that can lead to, like you said, an inappropriate sense of depression or ownership over things that you didn’t have control over. You know, like, it’s the soup we live in, or that joke about the two fish swim and along and the old fish says, How’s the water? You know, what’s water? You’re talking about? How the, the narrative of me is the water in which we live, and we don’t even recognize it at times?
isaac prilleltensky 41:31
I agree completely. And I think what, what a lot of families and teachers do, they create a counterculture a not in any subversive sort of way, you know, very counter culture that is healthy. A, because it’s a counter culture that says, some of the values you absorb from the environment are not very healthy. So here, at home, at school, maybe in church during the youth movement, we’re going to offer you good values, right? And let’s face it, kids are exposed to very many negative values, you know, advertisers know exactly how to manipulate kids into a consumer machine, you know, how to make it consumer machines how to nag their parents, a how to become a just an object of marketing. Right? So in our house, for example, raising our K, we didn’t allow any, any toy guns. It was hard, you know, because all kids want to have this plastic toy, or wherever it is the latest gadget and a within even allow him to watch Ninja Turtles, because it was a very violent, I don’t know if you remember ninja turtles from growing? I
keevin bybee 43:15
certainly do it.
isaac prilleltensky 43:16
Ninja Turtles, you know, it’s a very violent, it was a very violent a TV show. And I think it was hard to create a meanie counter culture, right saying no, we don’t allow these things because they promote negative behavior. And we don’t allow aggressive behavior, and you have to be kind. And I just think that all of us need to be doing some of that counter culture, we need to be aware of what are the values my kids is exposed to, and what values I really want to inculcate. And all the parents have a hard time, counteracting that all encompassing consumerist, market driven culture that gets that the kids absorbed through TV and social media, etc, etc. So I don’t want to make light of the job that parents and teachers have. Because we have a formidable enemy. Social media, consumerism, advertisers, very sophisticated marketing ploys. So in essence, we’re engaged in a in a culture. You know, I don’t want to use the word culture war, because pretty much these days, yeah, it’s very low bid, but yeah, but in essence, we’re fighting different values.
keevin bybee 44:52
The sci fi optimist in me is frustrated because we could conceivably use that same technology to go this way. What kind of learner you are, and here is the educational material that would help you thrive. But instead, we’re taking that technology to tell you how you are insufficient without this thing that you’ve got to spend $100 on.
isaac prilleltensky 45:16
Not only that, but if you think about social media, the message is plain and simple, you are insufficient period, you are the winner. Because comparing yourself to all these celebrities, I call these celebrities. You know, all these people that young folks compare themselves to in social media, you’re you always end up short, right? Because you can never be beautiful enough, popular enough, smart enough, wealthy enough, like all those people in social media. That’s another big battle for us, parents, vaults, teachers, how do we contain the very undermining messages from the media that you’re basically worthless? Because if you’re not famous, you are nobody? That’s a very, that’s a very big fight that a lot of parents and teachers have in the hands.
keevin bybee 46:21
Well, but in some sense, it comes back to mattering. And if we offer our offer each other and especially our young ones an opportunity to add value back to their community in a real visceral face to face way that in is the immune system to combat the the super stimuli of social media. Right?
isaac prilleltensky 46:46
Exactly. So we really need to be aware of whatever opportunities are out there. For kids to be engaged in health healthful behaviors.
keevin bybee 47:01
I could keep pulling threads on stuff that you’ve said, and in your book, I will encourage people to pick it up. It’s a it’s a relatively quick read and easy to consumed. How people matter. I want to be respectful of your time. And just ask, is there any other resources or thoughts that you’d like to plug or anything you’d like to share with us before I let you get on with your evening?
isaac prilleltensky 47:28
No, thank you for the opportunity. I guess the book has many resources. And as you said, We route it in a very practical way. So there are many tips and tools for teachers, parents, business leaders, organizations, community developers, just want to say that we organized the book according to different levels, the personnel, the relational, the organizational, the community, because we all live in contexts, right? Within just want to write a book about personal experiences of a mattering. But we talked about relational mattering organizational mattering and community mattering. So it’s all a one big feat of influence.
keevin bybee 48:21
And I love how you said we because it was it was co authored, correct?
isaac prilleltensky 48:25
Yes, absolutely. It was co authored with my lovely wife of almost 40 years Dr or a parallel fancy.
keevin bybee 48:34
Wonderful. Well, thank you so much. And we’ll hopefully maybe we’ll find an opportunity to say hi again sometime in the future.
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