The Danger of Chasing Status

QUOTE OF THE DAY

THE DANGER OF CHASING STATUS

361 Words | 1 Min 20 Sec Read

“Prestige is like a powerful magnet that warps even your beliefs about what you enjoy.

It causes you to work not on what you like but on what you’d like to like.”

Chasing status is a slippery slope to stand on, and we all do it to some extent.

Desiring status is a natural human trait because, fundamentally, social status offered greater group protection and longevity, which means that they were more likely to reproduce.

Similarly, as modern individuals, we seek out and follow paths that will maximise our social status and capital, even if we do not realise we are doing it.

In modern times, however, there is less of a desire for status due to the need to re-produce but more commonly to control the perceptions of others.

We chase status so that we can be seen how we want to be seen, which is favourable in the eyes of our ego.

The problem with this, however, is that status warps your beliefs about what you actually enjoy doing, and it makes you do things that you want to do as opposed to doing things that you actually want to do.

This then obviously leads to a miserable life of a false sense of self and explains why a high percentage of celebrities fall depressed towards the end of their careers.

They come to realise that everything they’re doing, they’re not doing it because they enjoy it but because they want to keep a firm grasp on their social status.

You could be doing this to a much smaller standard; you may be making yourself look a certain way around your circle of friends that you know isn’t true to yourself in order to keep your place.

And this will only increase throughout your life, which means that your best bet is to squash the need to chase status early on.

ACTIONABLE NEXT STEPS:

Try to identify where you’re chasing status in your own life and look at it from a bird's-eye view: are you doing things that you actually want to do in order to get that status, or are you doing things that you want to do?

LESSON OF THE DAY ⤵️

The best place you can find likeminded people to connect with is through joining groups.

Join the groups of influencers that you look up to because chances are you’ll find people within those groups that are interested in the same things.

From there you need to provide value to others and become someone that you would want to connect with in order to attract the right kind of people.

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