In the early 2000s, Matthew Emerzian was deep into a career in the music industry in Los Angeles. One Monday morning, he woke up consumed by panic. “I never had experienced something like this before,” he recalls. “It literally felt like something had just taken over my whole essence and my whole being.”
His years-long journey out of the anxiety and depression that followed his panic attack became several books, a philosophy, a mindset, a movement, and a nonprofit organization called Every Monday Matters. The premise on which all is based is simple: Every individual matters, deserves to recognize their value, and has something to contribute to humanity and the world. Emerzian shared his views and experiences with Professional Photographer ahead of Imaging USA 2026 in Nashville, Tennessee, where he is scheduled to be the keynote speaker. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Matthew Emerzian
Melanie Lasoff Levs: What were you experiencing during your mental health crisis?
Matthew Emerzian: I think as overachievers and driven people, we like to feel like we’re so in control of so much of our life, we even try to control the things we can’t control. And in this case, I had no control. I just had to surrender, because I was in a new part of life I had never been in before. In hindsight, now that I’m healthier, [I see that] there were moments along the journey that were hints of things that weren’t right. I just kind of kept moving forward until finally, [my body and mind were] like, OK, this time we’re going to get your attention. The truth is, I was scared. I felt helpless.
MLL: Can you talk a bit about your treatment and recovery?
ME: I call my therapist my expensive friend. She knew her stuff and she was not going to let me get away with anything. It was a long process. It certainly took me years to get to where I was, and it wasn’t going to be solved overnight. My therapy process started with the internal stuff. We had to get me out of crisis mode. The next phase was to look at my relationships, either professional or personal, and really start to understand which of those were life-giving and which of those were the opposite. And then the final step was my therapist said, “I want to give [you] a motto, and it’s ‘to live a life that’s not about you.’” It started with this weekly dose of going out and doing something just to try to make the world be a little bit better. One of the things I fell in love with was picking up litter. I’d go out there at 9 a.m. on Saturday morning and I’d pick up litter for two hours by myself. I found it to be very zen, and I felt like I was making a difference. I started having these thoughts of, I’m just one person. What if we could get schools and churches and companies to all go out there and pick up one piece of litter on any given day?
MLL: How did that become the basis of your “mattering” philosophy?
ME: As a semi-professional trash-picker-upper, I learned that cigarette butts are often extreme, you know, littered quite a bit. And at the time, I did some research, and at the time, we smoked 300 billion cigarettes a year in America. And of those 300 billion, we littered 100 billion of them. So I measured it, and I realized that 100 billion cigarette butts that were littered, if you connected them, they’d go from L.A. to New York 337 round trips a year. Each one of those cigarette butts was somebody who threw it on the ground thinking it didn’t matter, and it was 100 billion acts by a human being showing us that they don’t think it matters. If you get enough of them, you create a problem that certainly does matter. And so that first book, “Every Monday Matters,” was basically my therapy put into a $16.99 book. It gives 52 ideas on what things people can go do to make their world a better place, and in doing so, maybe find some purpose as well.
MLL: How can the “mattering mindset” apply to both photographers/small business owners and to their clients?
ME: Well, there are two main ingredients to everything that we do at Every Monday Matters, and one of those is this idea of understanding the perspectives of “I matter, you matter, and we matter.” The “I” certainly is yourself. The “you” is how they impact those around them, in life or at work. And then the “we matter” is their larger universe, which might include their clients. How can they look to bring value to all three of those lenses, the I, the you, and the we? I do believe that we as humans are at our best when we’re always aware of these three perspectives. The other part of what we do is values-driven. So, we ask this question all the time: “If there’s one word you think the world needs more of today, what is that one word?” You end up seeing these values that show up: love, compassion, empathy, kindness, hope. And from that we collect these values. We ask people to then go drive these values into their ecosystems, into their lives, through this lens of, “I matter, you matter, we matter.”
MLL: Speaking of photographers, can you share a positive photography experience you’ve had and what made it so?
ME: It’s photographers who helped me get out of my head and just pretend like they’re not even holding a camera. We’re just having a conversation, and we’re there enjoying time together, and along the way, there might be some photographs that are taken that capture things. The photographer is the one who can see that humanity and bring that out in you. A lot of people don’t feel comfortable having pictures taken, and it’s kind of on [the photographer] to bring that out in someone and help them feel less vulnerable.
MLL: What are your future goals?
ME: I’m writing my fifth book, called “Make it Matter.” I want to show how this seed of mattering actually really builds out and truly does change individuals or organizations or communities, or frankly, even the world. That this is truly a model for self- and social transformation, so I want to walk people through those outer rings of the [mattering mindset] framework. I see myself as a communicator, and more and more where I want to go is to be out there in the world with the people, face to face, so doing more keynotes. I’m maybe looking to build out some sort of retreat. I just love being with people and helping them curate this transformation that happens when they really start to own how much and why they matter—to themselves, to their relationships, to their communities, and the world.
My brother told me, right when I was in the thick of it, in the deepest of the waters, “Hey, listen, I promise you that one day you’re going to be grateful for this.” I just could not see it for the life of me. But he’s right. Because of this thing that happened in my life, it completely changed the direction of my life. I’ve gotten to create a movement around mattering that has impacted millions of lives. And the stories are just so precious. And in some ways, it’s been the greatest gift I could ever hope for.
Melanie Lasoff Levs is director of publications.
Tags: inspiration