Yes, your life matters. But maybe it’s time for a reassessment to assure yourself of your own importance in the cosmos.
Mattering for Lawyers
You’re hitting 40 or maybe 50 years of age and wondering, “Is That All There Is?”
Sometimes your days can feel like endless rounds of work (mostly), eat (as necessary) and sleep (but never enough). Work can seem repetitive and like making absolutely no difference to humanity. This isn’t the status we imagined back in law school.
Yes, you matter. But when you hit life’s milestones, it is helpful to reassess and assure yourself of your own importance in the cosmos.
Two books published in 2026 explored the human need to feel that our lives matter:
- “Mattering: The Secret to a Life of Deep Connection and Purpose” by Jennifer Breheny Wallace
- “The Mattering Instinct: How Our Deepest Longing Drives Us and Divides Us” by Rebecca Newberger Goldstein
Perhaps they can help us figure it out.
Making Others Feel Important Shows You Matter
Wait, isn’t that backward? In “Mattering,” Wallace defines five ways to gauge how our lives have meaning.
1. Recognition
We want to feel that what we do has value and that others notice those actions and would be diminished by their absence. Lawyers are in a unique position to guide others. Even if your work seems routine, you should remind yourself that you are benefiting others. Most clients express their gratitude. Don’t overlook your friends and family and how they appreciate your interactions with them.
2. Reliance
Many people rely on you. Besides clients, that includes your co-workers and others you professionally encounter from court personnel to vendors. And, again, there’s your friends and family. As a lawyer, perhaps more than others, you are an important element in the big machine of society.
People want lawyers as leaders. They listen when you speak up. That could be at a meeting of your homeowners association, your religious institution or Little League parents.
3. Importance
What you do is important, and that entitles you to feel that you matter. In general, people respect and admire lawyers for good reason. Lawyers are seen as intelligent people who strived to reach a position that allows them to effect change in big and small ways. Even the smallest case is important to the person who brought it to you.
Friendships affirm your importance. When others make time to be with you, they are prioritizing your position in their lives as you do when you make time to be with them.
4. Attunement
When people understand and respond to each other, they experience attunement. Just as lawyers are encouraged to feel empathy with those they encounter professionally, we also want to experience that others understand and are responsive to us.
When you take steps to foster a relationship with others, there is a corresponding return benefit. Have you noticed there is a person in your organization whom everyone likes? That person is generous with their time and knowledge. Informal relationships in law firms are often more effective than top-down structured programs. What steps have you taken to mentor others? Do you intentionally seek out friendships? By showing others that they matter, you are showing that you do, too.
Our technology interferes with attunement. Zoom, Facetime and the like encourage us to stay in our own environments instead of making human connections. It’s easy to miss facial expressions, body language and tone of voice. Working from home can leave you feeling isolated. Be aware of how these technologies can increase your feeling of not mattering.
Consider investing in real-time human interaction. That could be an early coffee date, an after-work drink or a face-to-face meeting. “I don’t have time,” you might say. Connectedness can improve your outlook and, consequently, your performance. Acts of self-mattering help you keep the bigger picture of your life in view.
5. Ego Extension
Now that you’ve figured out that your life is meaningful, it’s time to let others know. Wallace calls this Ego Extension, and it’s a particularly important part of mattering for lawyers.
Marketing is part of lawyering. That is true for the newest associate who must show their competence to garner new and more challenging assignments. It is true for the corporate lawyer who needs to earn the trust of their in-house client. And it is certainly true for the lawyers in firms of every size who work to get and keep clients.
For others to believe in you, you have to believe in yourself.
But maybe that is where you are having some doubts. We have all read about the prevalence of imposter syndrome. Maybe you are not feeling so confident that others do notice you, rely on you and think you are important. Besides these other suggestions, another possible solution is easily accessible. Career coaches are plentiful and not hard to find.
Another View on Mattering for Lawyers
Like Wallace, Goldstein writes that we need connectedness, the feeling that others are ready to pay us special attention — whether we deserve it or not. Goldstein says life’s goal is resistance to entropy. We want to create systems to flourish and avoid chaos. She defines four “mattering strategies” to accomplish this:
- Socializers concentrate on their connection with other people.
- Heroic Strivers aim to live in accordance with the best qualities within us.
- Transcenders say that what is of prime importance to them, such as devotion to religion, should be regarded the same way by others.
- Competitors measure their self-worth by scoring zero-sum victories over others.
People choose which strategy to pursue according to their temperament, talents and interests.
Goldstein writes that when we resist entropy, we “ally with life, not death; happiness, not sorrow; creativity, not destruction; knowledge not ignorance; care not cruelty, clarity not confusion; peace not turmoil; beauty not ugliness.”
She says all of these values comprise ethics.
You may have encountered lawyers who fit Goldstein’s categories. The stereotype of a lawyer screaming “This is an outrage!” and “I’ll see you in court” could be cast as a Competitor. Yet, you may have also worked with Heroic Strivers, people who assiduously devote themselves to helping others, and Socializers who cultivate mutually nourishing relationships. Some of these people, the Transcenders, may base their actions on loyalty to a higher value.
While each mattering strategy can increase self-esteem, Goldstein repeatedly stresses the importance of flourishing, defined as emotional satisfaction, rather than just surviving.
Living Your Best Life
You don’t need to be arguing in front of the United States Supreme Court to feel that you matter. Nor do you need to collect awards to prove your worth.
As a lawyer, your work largely consists of preventing and calming chaos. Recognize that you are already helping others on a daily basis.
Cultivating relationships that make your colleagues, clients, vendors, friends and family feel valued is the direct route to achieving the kind of connectedness to make you feel you matter yourself.
Photo by Donna Elliot on Unsplash
