Feel Better, Live More with Dr Rangan Chatterjee - The Science of What Really Makes Us Tick, How Status Impacts Your Health & The Modern Epidemic of Perfectionism with Will Storr #354

Episode Date: April 18, 2023

What does the word status mean to you? For most of us, it probably brings up ideas of wealth, celebrity or material possessions. But could it be something much more meaningful and central to who we are as humans? Today’s guest believes status is simply about being of value, and it underpins so much of what we choose to do in life, impacting the way that we feel but also having significant implications for our health.   Will Storr is an award-winning journalist whose writings have appeared in The Guardian, The Sunday Times, The New Yorker and the New York Times. He’s also the author of 6 critically acclaimed books including Selfie, The Science of Storytelling and his latest book, The Status Game, which is all about our social position and how we use it.   In this conversation, Will argues that as humans, we’re programmed to compare ourselves to others – and to care about how we stack up. He explains that status is actually our social standing, based upon how valuable we are to those around us.   Will also shares the 3 types of status game we all play; the 3 ways in which we try to be of value to those around us. I think that throughout this conversation, you will start to identify which of those status games you have previously played and which ones you are currently playing in your own life.   We also discuss the relationship between status and health, the link between growing rates of perfectionism and rising rates of mental health problems like anxiety, depression, self-harm and eating disorders - and Will also talks about the importance of having multiple sources of status and how becoming aware of this, led to him becoming a volunteer for Samaritans - something which has enhanced his life immeasurably.   Ultimately, Will explains that we are not supposed to win the status game, just to play it. And he makes the powerful case, that simply knowing this fact, can make life feel a lot easier.   This really is a thought-provoking conversation and one that I am hopeful will have you reflecting on your life and viewing it through a different lens. I hope you enjoy listening. Support the podcast and enjoy Ad-Free episodes. Try FREE for 7 days on Apple Podcasts https://apple.co/feelbetterlivemore. For other podcast platforms go to https://fblm.supercast.com. Thanks to our sponsors: https://www.athleticgreens.com/livemore https://www.vivobarefoot.com/livemore https://www.calm.com/livemore Show notes https://drchatterjee.com/354 DISCLAIMER: The content in the podcast and on this webpage is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your doctor or qualified healthcare provider with any questions you may have. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have heard on the podcast or on my website.

As we go through life, we're trying to achieve a level of status with other people. We're trying to feel like we're good enough. We're trying to feel like we're valuable people. We all have this kind of bar that we're trying to meet. And the question is, where is that bar? How high is it? Who sets it? Well, the bar is all around us. The culture sets the bar. Television sets the bar. Social media sets the bar. Taylor Swift sets the bar. Love Island sets the bar. We're surrounded by ideal selves, these heroic figures. And so subconsciously, that's giving us this repeated message, this is what good enough looks like, this is what good enough looks like.

And I think that's one of the reasons why we're seeing this great rise in negative mental health. Hey guys, how you doing? Hope you're having a good week so far. My name is Dr. Rangan Chatterjee, and this is my podcast, Feel Better, Live More. When you think of the word status, what comes up for you? I think for most of us, it probably brings up ideas of wealth, celebrity, or material possessions. But could it be something much more meaningful and central to who we are as humans? Well, my guest this week puts forward the idea that status is simply about being of value, and it underpins so much of what we choose to do in life,

impacting the way that we feel, but also having significant implications for our health. Will Storr is an award-winning journalist whose writings have appeared in The Guardian, The Sunday Times, The New Yorker, and The New York Times. He's also the author of six critically acclaimed books, including Selfie, The Science of Storytelling, and his latest book, The Status Game, which is all about our social position and how we use it. In our conversation, Will argues that as humans, we're programmed to compare ourselves to others and to care about how we stack up.

He explains that status is actually our social standing based upon how valuable we are to those around us. Will also shares that three types of status game we all play, basically the three ways in which we try to be of value to those around us. And I'm pretty sure that throughout this conversation, you're going to start to identify which of those status games

you have previously played and which ones you are currently playing in your own life. We also discuss the relationship between status and health, the link between growing rates of perfectionism and rising rates of mental health problems like anxiety, depression, self-harm and eating disorders and Will also talks about the importance of having multiple sources of status, and how becoming aware of this led to him becoming a volunteer for Samaritans, something which has enhanced his life immeasurably. Ultimately, Will explains that we are not meant to win the status game, just to play it. And he makes the

powerful case that simply knowing this fact can make life feel a lot easier. This really is a wonderful and thought-provoking conversation, and one that I'm hopeful will have you reflecting on your own life and viewing it through a different lens. Will is a wonderful human being and a truly fantastic writer. I hope you enjoy listening. And now, my conversation with Will Storr. When we think about our health, we don't really think about perfectionism. And in your latest book, The Status Game, you make the powerful case that social perfectionism and materialistic goal-seeking is linked to all kinds of problems, including depression, anxiety, eating disorders, self-harm, and suicidal thinking. What's going on? Well, you know, as we go through life,

we're trying to achieve a level of status, you know, with other people. And so we're trying to feel like we're, you know, good enough. We're trying to feel like we're valuable people. And so we're trying to feel like we're good enough. We're trying to feel like we're valuable people. And so we all have this kind of bar that we're trying to meet. And I think that's, you know, one of the reasons why we're seeing this great kind of rise in negative mental health problems that people are having. Perfectionism appears to be on the rise. There's a lot of research now supporting, I think the ideas that you first put forward in Selfie quite a few years ago now. Is perfectionism on the rise? And why is it on the rise? Yes, the perfectionism is on the rise. You know, there was a major study by British psychologists

that looked at 40,000 people in the UK, the US and Canada, and found a really significant increase in perfectionism since the 1990s. And so it is on the rise. And it is, you know, it's a serious issue, because as you say, it's linked to self harm, eating disorders, suicidal thinking, you know, depression, anxiety, you name it. And so what perfectionism is, is a sensitivity to failure in your environment. So when we're made to feel over and over again, like we failed somehow, like we're, we're too low in status, we're not good enough that's that's that's what it feels like to be a perfectionist because you sort of you know you're pushing yourself forward all the time trying to be to become more and more perfect so is it this idea that we are constantly less than so we've all got

an internal ideal inside our heads we we've all got these internal ideal inside our heads. We've all got these stories about who we are, who we think we are, who we think we should become. And are you really saying that actually, if that bar is set too high, then no matter what you do, you will never meet that bar. And so the problem is you always feel inferior and that's why we get stressed out

on our mental health suffers. Yeah, that's absolutely right. That's absolutely right. And so, you know, who sets the bar? Where is the bar? Well, the bar is all around us. The culture sets the bar. Television sets the bar.

Social media sets the bar. Taylor Swift sets the bar. You know, Love Island sets the bar. Like we're surrounded by ideal selves. We're surrounded by these heroic figures. And so subconsciously, that's giving us this repeated message. This is what good enough looks like. This is what good enough looks like.

And so that's stressful, especially for young people, especially for people who are kind of much more sensitive to those kinds of signals. So I think, you know, that's why we're seeing this rise in perfectionism. And also, you know, life in general is getting harder. You've got to think about the economy too, and how the economy is almost kind of turned against millennials and people in the, you know, Gen Z, Gen Z generation. It's harder than ever to feel good enough in an economic sense. It's harder than ever to be on a property ladder. The millennials are the first generation in history

to be less wealthy than their parents. Even if you go to university in this country, in Canada, in America, there's no guarantee anymore of having a successful career. There's huge underemployment of graduates. So for all these reasons, people are feeling, especially young people are feeling, that they're not good enough anymore.

You know, there's a level of status which they should be achieving, and they're not achieving it.. There's a level of status which they should be achieving and they're not achieving it. And that's painful. What's changed Will? Because you say young people are maybe exquisitely sensitive now to the perfectionist ideal that's been portrayed to them. And it's obvious to put all the blame on social media, for example, and I'm sure we're going to get into that. But if we just zoom out for a minute, like I'm in my mid-40s, what was different when I grew up compared to how people are growing up now?

You know, what I'm trying to get at is why is perfectionism actually going up? Because I would have seen as a kid, I mean, top of my head, you would have watched Top Gun and seen Tom Cruise with an amazing body playing volleyball on the beach. And, you know, as a young impressionable boy, you're like, oh my God, that's what a man is. That's what a successful, achieving man is, right? So why has it changed? Because it was always there, wasn't it? Well, yeah. So I'm going to introduce a jargony word. And the jargony word

is neoliberalism. So it's a scary word, but I was just going to sort of unpack what that means. I think it's really important that we understand what neoliberalism is, because it kind of defines our era. So neoliberalism is this economic theory that was embraced by Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan at the end of the 70s and into the early 80s. And what they decided to do was to, you know, because the economies of the West were going wrong, right?

So they had to think of a new way of running, running our countries economically. And the idea was we're going to like ramp up individualism. We're going to ramp up kind of competition. We're going to ramp, we're going to sort of get individualism. We're going to ramp up kind of competition. We're going to ramp, we're going to sort of get rid of all these kind of collective ideas

like unionization, you know, regulations on banking and business, even things like council houses, like anything that was, that has a sense of everybody's looking and after everybody else are going to get rid of all that stuff and force people to become super competitive.

And what's amazing about that is it worked. They did that. And this really sinister phrase that Margaret Thatcher used when she was in the Sunday Times, when she first became prime minister, she was asked about, well, you know, what are you doing?

What is this big master plan you've got? And she said, well, the project is economic, but the object is to change the soul. And that's really sinister because that's what happened. She changed the soul of us in the West. And so what happens when you change the rules of the game of life is that we change in lockstep. So what you see in the 1980s, beginning in the 1980s, is we all become neoliberals. In other words, we all become super competitive, super individualistic. So think about 1980s culture versus 1960s culture.

Like 1960s culture is hippies, it's collective, it's anti-materialistic, it's screw the man. What's 1980s culture? It's keep fit, it's cocaine, it's greed is good. You know, that's how we changed. So I think that was our, you know, I'm in my kind of late 40s. That was our childhood, the 80s and the 90s. So Top Gun, you know, I'm in my kind of late 40s. That was our childhood, the 80s and the 90s. So Top Gun, you know, Tom Cruise's character in Top Gun is very different to a hero that you might find in a 60s or a 70s movie. It's an action hero. And so that's got a new thing in the 90s. That's a neoliberal idea.

So I think that's the first thing to understand, that we are by design of governments living in a super competitive environment. And the other thing to understand is that it's never ended. And in fact, what's happened in our life is we've become more and more and more individualistic, more and more and more competitive. So you bring up the example of Tom Cruise. Yeah, I saw Top Gun when I was a kid and that was a hero to look up to.

But what I'd ask you is, what do male superheroes look like now? They don't look like Tom Cruise did in Top Gun. They are out here. They have bodies which are impossible for any mortal to get. Like they have become even more, in inverted commas, perfect. The bar, like if you were the best, like I went to school with a guy called Nick Moore. He was a good looking boy. He looks a bit like Tom Cruise. And you know, if you were the best, like I went to school with a guy called Nick Moore. He was a good looking boy. He looks a bit like Tom Cruise. And, you know, like, but nobody at school looked like a Marvel superhero.

They're unbelievably, they're almost CGI. They're so beautiful. But, and that's, that's difficult. Like if you think about male body image, you know, like Love Island, for example, the young men on Love Island, I mean, they're beautiful. Their bodies are incredible. They're insane. No one looked like that when we were kids in the 80s and 90s. Like no young person looked like that. So that's an example of how in our lifetime, the bar for what's good enough, the bar for what is high status or sufficient status has raised to

kind of sometimes crazy levels. I mean, it's so powerful, Will, hearing about that, because it, I mean, we're going to hopefully get to optimistic notes in this conversation. But if you just sort of take a step back and look at the scene, I mean, there's a couple of things that just came up for me as you were saying that. I really like Dr. Gabor Mate, who's been on this podcast several times. And

in Gabor's latest book, he kind of makes the case very well that we are products of our environment, right? I think he says something like, you know, if you were in a lab, for example, and you had a cell in a petri dish and it wasn't thriving you wouldn't think there was a problem with the cell you would understand that there's a problem with the culture there's a problem with the petri dish the environment in which it's in let's move the cell into a different environment yeah to allow it to thrive and so if we look at society and as a medical doctor this is of huge interest to me and we've never covered really perfectionism on this podcast before which is one of the reasons I really want

to talk to you Will is because if the culture is setting our expectation of what is okay of what is normal and if that expectation is unrealistic for many of us, for most of us, no wonder rates of stress and anxiety and depression and eating disorders and, you know, keep the list going are on the rise because we're constantly feeling like we're not enough. We are less than. We're not meeting what we should be meeting. So it's really, really problematic, isn't it? Yeah, it is. And the way I think about it is, if you think about it in its most simple terms, and this is to me in its most simple terms, is that 99% of people in the UK and Canada and the US, they've got housing, they've got food, they're safe,

they're not going to get killed. You know, like most of us, we're fine. And so why aren't we happy? You know, like, if you think about it rationally, it's insane that most of us very often feel less than, feel not good enough, feel like we're not achieving enough, when most of us are looking after our kids perfectly well, are feeding ourselves perfectly well, are not at risk of homelessness or, you know, violent attack. You know, why is that? And as you say, it's because our culture is setting the bar, our social environment, our economic environment is setting the bar for what is good enough. And, you know, the bar is too high. You know, the bar is crazy high. And, you know, the bar is too high. You know, the bar is crazy high. In Selfie, you talk about the different types of perfectionism. One of them is social perfectionism.

I found this really interesting, particularly in that section. I think it's in the first chapter, Will, where you talk about suicide and the link between that and social perfectionism. So I wonder if you could just speak to that. What is social perfectionism and how does it relate to suicide? Yeah. So when most people think about perfectionism, they think about what's called self-directed perfectionism, which is I've got my idea of what's good enough and what's acceptable and what's enough status and I'm not meeting it so I feel bad I want to push myself further but social perfectionism is is even more toxic than that because social perfectionism is um it's not self-directed it's other directed it's like um other people have these expectations of me and I'm not meeting those expectations so it's so it's very rooted in identity so it's so for example it's this this idea of what does it mean to be a good enough

father? Well, in these people's eyes, I'm not a good enough father. In these people's eyes, I'm not a good enough, you know, whatever my job is. In these people's eyes, I'm too fat, I'm too bald, I'm too whatever it is. So, you know, it's toxic because it's rooted in our imaginations of what other people are thinking about us. Which may not even be true. Exactly. And often it isn't. I mean, we all know what it feels like to spiral and have these kind of neurotic thoughts about what other people are thinking. And social perfectionism is especially linked to suicide and suicidal ideation.

And, you know, when I was researching selfie, I spoke to a world expert in suicidal psychology, which is Dr. Rory O'Connor, an amazing guy up in the University of Glasgow. We were talking about, because I think it's quite well known that suicide mostly affects men, like in the UK and in English-speaking countries, around 80% of people who kill themselves are men.

And the kind of pat response to that is that men are more violent and all that stuff. And I'm the kind of pat response to that is that you know men are more violent and all that stuff and i'm sure there's truth to all that stuff but that's not the whole answer by a long way and so you know there's this idea that social perfectionism impacts men in a particular way and that's because um of this idea of masculinity that we have and and that masculinity being a man is something that it's not something that you get automatically just by having a certain kind of, you know, certain stuff between your legs. It's something that you earn. It's a cultural idea.

So there was a very interesting study that I talk about in Selfie where they asked people, men and women, what does it mean to be a man? And the list was insane. You've got to be a protector. You've got to be a provider. You've got to show mastery and control at all times, but you've also got to be vulnerable and you know, all this stuff. So when you look at the list, it's like, oh, that's a crazy list. Like how can we, you know, and I think this is why suicide especially impacts middle-aged men because it's in middle age that we feel like, you know, success becomes a bit more of a struggle in middle age. Our bodies change. We might, we might kind of find our careers stalling or even collapsing. So, so suddenly this idea of, you know, I'm a bad father because I've lost my job and I'm a bad husband. And so

there's this kind of link between social perfectionism and the very state of being a man. perfectionism and the very state of being a man. How do you think this mythical idea of the perfect man affects you? That is a good question. Well, I mean, I think it does affect me. Yeah. I mean, I think it does. I mean, you know, it's, um, even at 48, I'm very aware of body image issues. I'm always trying to lose weight. You know, I'm aware of the baldingness, you know, I've just had this lump laser off my eye, you know, so, so, so yeah, like you'd think you'd get to a certain age and even a certain level of status, perhaps where you could stop worrying about that stuff. But you don't. And I think that partly is because, you know, in the status game,

I write about this concept in neuroscience, what they call the status detection system, that the brain has got this always on bit of evil technology called the status detection system. And it means that we're constantly, unconsciously looking for signals of status in our environment

and where we sit in that up and down thing and you know weight whether we like it or not um in a body the way our bodies look um how attractive we are is a status game well i'd say in the west probably all over the world um probably i expect more so in the west um So it's this, you know, it's this game that you can't help playing in a way. Yeah. You said just before we started recording that you've started weightlifting.

Yeah. Is that for your health or is it to meet this ideal of the mythical man? It's 100% to meet this ideal of the mythical man. It's 100% to meet this ideal of the mythical man. Like I know it's good for me. Like I know like sarcopenia, like as you get old, you lose muscle mass. And I would love to sit here and say to you,

oh, it's because, but it isn't. It's because of the aesthetic, you know. I remember the moment I was with my wife in Australia and I'd um i'd been at a literary festival and somebody had sent me pictures of me on the stage and the literary festival and you could see my belly poking out of my shirt and i was like oh god i look awful and we were walking along we're doing the walk from bondi beach to uh to to to i can't remember what the walk's called but we're walking from bondi beach Bondi Beach. And I saw this guy who's a middle-aged guy

and he had pecs. And I was like, and I remember thinking, I want that. I really want that. And then I was like, and I promised him when I get home, I'm going to buy some weights and I'm going to start.

So I did. And I've been doing it for years. I know it doesn't show, but I was starting off from a very low base. I've always been very, really like skinny. You know, most things in life, Will, there's upsides and downsides. So when you were talking about perfectionism, I think you started off talking about self-directed perfectionism. So as you were talking about that, it made me think, well,

That can be a good thing up to a point, I presume, i.e., I want to get better at this particular skill. Oh, I can see that person who's really good at that skill. I'm going to look up to that person, learn from them, and try and improve myself. So at what point does this start to become toxic? Because looking up to people, having people to aspire to, it's not necessarily all bad, is it? No, no, that's a good thing. But I think when psychologists talk about perfectionism,

they're talking about when it becomes damaging, when it starts leading to, you know, anxiety, depression, suicidal ideation, self-harm, disorder, all that stuff. But what you say is exactly right. That's how we're wired to learn. That's how we're wired to play status games. And that is positive. So we have these ways of subconsciously identifying people to look up to. And we have this urge to get near to them because we want to learn from them.

And we do, like in the book I call it, you know, copy conform, copy, flatter, conform kind of instinct. That's what we do naturally to high status people. And, you know, that's why high status people are treated so well. It's like a bribe to persuade them to let us be near them. And we want to be near, the brain wants to be near them because it wants us to learn from them. And that's why, you know, we over copy often.

So if you, like I always remember, you know, when I was, when I was nine years old, my first idol was Nick Kershaw, the singer Nick Kershaw. And I remember being very conscious of like, because I saw him on TV, I am being interviewed. And I watched it on video loads of times. And his particular way of sitting where he'd cross his legs and he'd have with his ankle on his knee. And I remember being at school and I was i started sitting like that and i remember thinking i quite like that i'm sitting like nick kershaw but also isn't it weird that i'm sitting like nick kershaw and that's the that's natural that's what that that's what we're designed to do yeah

yeah it's it's again it's it's like everything it's not good or bad it's just in what context yeah to what point do you go how far do you go with this well i'd argue that it's not good or bad it's just in what context yeah to what point do you go how far do you go with this well i'd argue that it's good mostly because it is how we learn like it like it's good that we identify successful people and try to become successful ourselves that's how we develop as we progress where it becomes toxic is where the where the bar for what we consider successful um becomes too high i think the way to understand it is to think about our evolutionary history. So all this cognition, all this wiring that makes this, you know, copy-flatican form and interested in becoming good enough,

you know, as you know, it all comes from the hunter-gatherer kind of era, that very long period in which our brains were evolving and we were becoming human. And so in the tribal context there wouldn't have been that many people who were high status in the group and and what surprised me when i was doing the research into the status game is that because we live in this world full of leaders and full of very high status people in the groups in which we evolved there was very rarely like a big man like leader figure. It was mostly leadership was done by consensus. And when particular decisions were made, like a senior council would come together and discuss and they would try and form consensus. So, you know, so that's how we evolved. That's how we're kind of in a vertical and we're supposed to, you know, behave. So in those groups, you know,

who were the high status people we were measuring ourselves against? Well, there weren't that many of them because it was just, you know, it was a relatively small group of people and it was divided by gender. So men would tend to mimic, you know, mimic men and women would tend to mimic women. And it was even, it would have even been sort of divided

in terms of age, you know, like you tend to mimic people who are closer to you in age. So the bar wasn't massively high because we're not living cheek by jaw with Taylor Swift and Barack Obama and, you know, Serena Williams and all these incredibly impressive people. We would never have come into contact with a level of perfection that insanely high. But today we come into contact with those kind of levels of perfection multiple times a day. Yeah, I think a key point there for me, Will, is we can know with our rational brains that when I go online, people are presenting the best side of themselves. They're not presenting the dirty laundry or the dishes that are in their sink. They've gone to a different

part of the house to post a nice photo where things look good. And I don't think we should really even be criticising people for doing that. I think that's human nature. But even if we know that's happening, I think our subconscious still takes in the message that that's their life. That's their life. That's their life. That's their life. So we can read the book. We can read your book. We can read about it and go, yes, that is happening. That is not real. Yet, if you spend 10 minutes, only 10 minutes, scrolling Instagram, maybe you'll come across 50 posts. It's not unreasonable for some people. So that's 50 signals to your brain saying your life is not as good as someone else's life.

I think that's absolutely right. I mean, I think it's interesting. I think absolutely right that we can consciously know something, but subconsciously it doesn't seem to make that much difference. And I think that's right. And I have that experience as an author. You know, I only really use social media as a way to kind of promote my, you know, business as an author. Like I'll tweet book news and when I'm doing courses, I'll tweet that. And when I've got a nice book review, I'll tweet that, but I'll never tweet the bad ones. You know, that's my perfectionist presentation. But, you know, when I'm having kind of down days and, you know maybe i'm feeling bad about my career and i see other authors tweeting about their amazing book review and

they're at the hay festival or whatever they're doing it it feels bad like it like it like it makes me feel god so you know i feel that so even though i know the reality of their career is probably a bit like well my ups and downs and downs, you know, and sharing the good stuff. It's still like, oh God. So, you know, like, like I've muted, I've muted a whole bunch of, you know, friends who have minor writers because like, it became too painful for me to see this constant river of success they were having. And it's, you know, it's kind of, in a way it's embarrassing to admit, but actually I don't think it should be. I think that's what we should be doing to kind of protect ourselves. And also, I mean, you know, I, I, I have a good idea that I've also been muted by lots of writer friends and you can kind of tell because when you tweet good news, they don't react in a polite way. So you think I'm muted by those people. So,

but I don't, I completely get it. Like, like I know I've annoyed them by tweeting too many good book reviews. Like I get it. But like, say, if I, as a 48-year-old man who's published six books and all that stuff, feel that pain, then what is it like for a 17-year-old boy or a 17-year-old girl? It's going to be worse, I think. Yeah. I mean, this is great, Will, because this is a really practical thing that we can all do online, let's say. Now, the really interesting thing about that story is, well, and this speaks to perfectionism, it also speaks really to status. I want to go into status shortly, you know, I really want to understand your definition of status and why you decided

to write an entire book, a brilliant book, but why you decided to devote an entire book to it. book, a brilliant book, but why you decided to devote an entire book to it. I would argue that most people would look at you and go, wow, Will's an incredibly successful writer. He gets great reviews. He's considered a very stylish author. He's sold hundreds of thousands of books. But the problem is everything's relative. So even though you know that, or part of you knows that, you are still just as susceptible as anyone else to go online and perceive that that person is doing better than me. And here's the reality. We all have bad days, right? Yes, it would be great to get to the point where we examined, why does that bother me, right? Let me sort out that. Let me look at that insecurity. And I'm all for that kind of stuff,

for sure. But at the same time, I recognize that we live busy lives. And if you find that someone is, not intentionally necessarily, but if you are feeling bad when you constantly see posts by a particular person, of course, you could unfollow. But sometimes that feels like an aggressive act to some of us, you know, because we're worried about how we'll be perceived if we've unfollowed. Probably no one will even notice, but we think that they're going to notice. So muting, I think is a very practical tip. I mean, you've used it, Will, in respect to your career. I think I shared once on this podcast before that a friend of mine, when their mother was in the final stages of her life. And, you know, they were really going through the male cancer end stage. He realized that at that time, going on Instagram made him feel awful.

So I think he went off it for a period of time, or he certainly muted a lot of accounts because he didn't want to see even his mates having good times. He just didn't want to see it at the time. It was too much for him to handle. So I think this is a really practical thing that we all can do in the modern world, because we do live in the modern world. We do live in the online world. Many of us spend hours each day or certainly a lot of time online each day. And I think we do need to understand that we've got to take a bit of control here where we can. Absolutely. Yeah. And I think that we shouldn't feel bad about muting. It is human nature to compare ourselves to other people around us. That's how it works. That's how the status

detection system works. It's automatic. You can't help it. So you should stay away from that which hurts you. And if you feel like it's hurting you, then mute. You know, don't feel bad about it. Mute proudly. I'm just pulling up the start of the status game, right? Because I think the opening is just amazing. It's so pacey and seductive. And there's one particular bit that comes to mind. Here, you put it here.

As the psychologist Professor Brian Boyd writes, And there's one particular bit that comes to mind. Here, you put it here. As the psychologist, Professor Brian Boyd writes, we naturally pursue status with ferocity. We all relentlessly, if unconsciously, try to raise our own standing by impressing peers and naturally, if unconsciously, evaluate others in terms of their standing. Now, well, I think many of us would like to think that we don't play that game. Okay. We don't try to raise our own standing by impressing others. We don't try to judge others and make an opinion of them based upon what they're wearing or how they're behaving. But in this book,

you say, we all do. It's fundamentally who we are as humans. Do you still stand by that? Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, it's human nature. You can't get rid of it. We play status games. So what is status? Just taking a quick break to give a shout out to AG1, one of the sponsors of today's show. Now, if you're looking for something at this time of year to kickstart your health, I'd highly recommend that you consider AG1. AG1 has been in my own life for over five years now. It's a science-driven daily health drink with over 70 essential nutrients to support your overall health. It contains vitamin C and zinc, which helps support a healthy immune system, something that is really important,

especially at this time of year. It also contains prebiotics and digestive enzymes that help support your gut health. All of this goodness comes in one convenient daily serving that makes it really easy to fit into your life, no matter how busy you feel. It's also really, really tasty. The scientific team behind AG1 includes experts from a broad range of fields, including longevity, preventive medicine, genetics, and biochemistry. I talk to them regularly and I'm really impressed with their commitment to making a top quality product. Until the end of January, AG1 are giving a limited time offer. Usually, they offer my listeners a one-year supply of vitamin D and K2, and five free travel packs with their first order. But until the

end of January, they are doubling the five free travel packs to 10. And these packs are perfect for keeping in your backpack, office or car. If you want to take advantage of this limited time offer, all you have to do is go to drinkag1.com forward slash live more. That's drinkag1.com forward slash live more. That's drinkag1.com forward slash live more. I think what upsets people sometimes when I talk about status is that they think, and what makes people think that's not me, that they they associate status with things like celebrity and money and showing off and all that stuff um and it can be those things but it isn't isn't necessarily those things status is simply the feeling of being valued is the sense of i'm a

valuable person so we used to think about connection being a fundamental human need and belongingness and that is a fundamental human need so we want to get along with people um but we also like so we want to feel loved uh and accepted but we also want to feel valued like we like like we have value to other people and that can be like a moral value we can be a courageous person or a selfless person or it could be a competence-based value like good at something like a great tennis player, a great, you know, hunter, or if you're in the hunter-gatherer context or, you know, so yeah, it's simply the feeling of being valued. I think when I hear the word status, I don't immediately go to value. And I think many people won't. I think they will think, as you say, money, celebrity, fame, that these things symbolize status or designer clothes or a better car or

whatever else. That term status I think means different things to different people. But I think you do beautifully explain in the book how it is relevant to all of us. And it's really of being of value. So you talk in the book how it is relevant to all of us. And it's really of being of value. So you talk in the book about these two fundamental human needs. We need to connect. And we've spoken about connection many times on this podcast and how important it is for us as humans to connect with others. But I think you made the case in the States game that connection is the kind of first step. You need to feel like you belong first of all, but I don't know, I can't remember quite how you word it,

but it's, it's basically, but once we've connected, we're not that content to be on the lower rungs of the ladder for long. No, no. So we, we, we, we don't want to feel likable, but useless. Nobody wants to feel likable, but useless. Nobody wants to have it said to them said of them yeah they're a nice person but they're a bit rubbish aren't they they're a bit point you know you know that that's not a good thing i mean nobody likes to be insulted that's because it's a we're being told we're kind of low status and there are very solid evolutionary reasons for this so you know as you know we're you know we're a tribal we're a we're you know tribal species we're hyper social so so the way humans have evolved to solve the problems of survival and reproduction is to connect into groups. And it isn't the individual that solves

the problem. It's the group that solves the problem. That's how we, that's how we are as humans. And if you think about human life, that's what we do. But, you know, whether it's a nation or a company or a football team, you know, we solve problems in the context of groups. or a company or a football team. You know, we solve problems in the context of groups. And so the psychology that enables us to do that, it wants to incentivize us to join groups in the first place. And that's the connection piece.

We want to feel like we belong to a tribe. But once we're in the tribe, the tribe has got to become functional. It's got to become good at what it's trying to do, whether it's simply survive or to solve a particular problem. So nature also has to incentivize us to be of value. So back in the hunter-gatherer context, there are kind of two ways of earning status in that group. One was by being virtuous, so by being selfless, by being courageous, but also by knowing the rules of the tribe, the traditions of the tribes, the rituals of the tribe, following those rituals. And so that was a way of being valuable. And the other way of being valuable was by being good at something, being a great hunter, a great honey finder, a great storyteller, or, you know,

whatever it might be. So, so evolution's incentive is to, you know, when you become useful to the tribe, you're rewarded with status. So other people go, God, that's a really, that's a really great person. That's somebody I to be around and but but also the rewards aren't just psychological they're they're they're they're real so when you when anthropologists study hunter-gatherer tribes they find that the more status that you have in these tribes the more food you get the better food you get the slave the safer your sleeping sites um the greater your the the access to your choice of mates so, it's this fundamental rule of the subconscious human mind, go for status, because if you go for status, everything

else gets better. And that was true 100,000 years ago in the savannah. And it's true everywhere around the world today. Go for status, because if you go for status, everything else gets better. So status in the hunter-gatherer tribe didn't necessarily mean you're the alpha male, you are the best hunter, right? That's one way of acquiring status and sort of sending signals out that you are a value. You're showing that you're a value by bringing back the hunt, right? But not everyone can be that person. Yeah, there are multiple status games. The person who's best at finding sweet potatoes, the person that's best at finding honey, but also the virtue stuff. So, you know,

ritual and sacred belief are very important to humans. So you could become a holy person like a like a sorcerer in some tribes so so it's it's also about who get who who believes the the the sacred beliefs most um you know most fiercely who polices the tribe so if you think about the you know the modern day like the pope what's the pope the pope is a very high status person with his massive hat and his gold and his palaces and you know he's yeah you know and and all the deference and worship but he's a he's a virtue status celebrity like you know he's becoming incredibly high status in that because he he knows the rules he believes the beliefs he follows the rules i mean this is interesting well like there's different status games right because i i suspect that some people may listen and go yeah yeah, I get it that there's people around me

who are pursuing status. Well, I can see them. They're the ones who are really driven. They're working all hours, they're working at weekends. They're driven to get to the top. I think that's quite obvious to us that, yeah, okay, now that you mentioned status, I get it. They're seeking out more status. But you mentioned the Pope there, and yes, his clothing. But I don't know, what about someone like the Dalai Lama? How is he playing a status game? Because he's not, at least to my knowledge, trying to acquire more money and necessarily influence. Well, maybe influence, I don't know. Well, I would argue that.

Okay, go on. So one of the most reliable signals of high status is influence. Like the more status that you have, influence and well maybe influence i don't know well i would argue that i mean okay go on so one of the most reliable signals of high status is influence like the more status that you have the more the more influence that you have and dalai lama has huge amounts of influence in his tribe and i think the way to look at it is that every human group has a hierarchy there are people at the top people at the bottom and people in between that's a status game and so you know the dalai lama is at the top of his status game. So, you know, and he'll be treated with deference by people

and respect by people and they'll let him speak. And so- So hold on, he's playing a different status game, let's say, compared to, I don't know, a politician. Well, yeah, he's playing what I would describe as a virtue game. So go on, tell us, what are the different status games that we play? So there are three, essentially.

There are things like age and beauty, but they're not particularly interesting. I mean, there are three main status games that humans play. The first one is dominance. So dominance is the form of status we've been playing since we were animals, so for millions of years. The dominance is violence, the threat of violence, but also social violence,

bullying, ostracization, name-calling. So when you force somebody else to attend to you in status, think of like a mafia don, that's dominance. But then the two more recent kind of forms of status games, the two games that really define our humanity

are these status games that are all about, as I said, being of value to our tribe. And the first one is virtue, the virtue game. So what does that mean? By being a good person. By developing the reputation as a good person. Okay, hold on.

This is a really nice one, right? Because we might push away from the dominance one. We might think, even though it's maybe fundamentally who many of us are, we'd like to think as humans that we've evolved now to not necessarily need to do that. I know you make the case that that's not the case. But the virtue on being a nice person, doing things where people perceive you as being nice, that's quite a nice game to play, isn't it?

Absolutely, yeah. I think what I'm sensing is like, people automatically assume that status is a bad thing. So they get into this defensive idea, but it isn't. Status is a reward for being valuable. Like that's a good thing. But because we kind of programmed to think about status in terms of money and fame, we think of it as a bad thing.

And it is terrible in lots of ways, but it's also amazing in lots of ways like it's amazing that the human animal has evolved a system of reward for when we're selfless for me good for me do things for other people like like when we give of ourselves and do something good whether it's you know a tenor to somebody who's homeless or whatever, firstly, we feel it inside us. You feel a jolt. You can almost feel yourself move up in your body. Like, so you feel better about yourself. Your self-judgment improves. But also, you know, if you tell other people, if other people see you, they think better of you too. So you raise a little bit in status. Like that's not a bad thing.

That's a really good thing. Like if you took away that from humans, life would be horrific. You know, like, like, like, so the fact that we, that nature has evolved to incentivize us to be selfless and giving of ourselves is a wonderful thing. Okay. So we've got two out of the three status games, but I'm just going to pause you there because I was thinking, so if I think to patients of mine in the past who may have been struggling, right? One of the things we talk about a lot on this podcast is the difference between success and happiness. And how a lot of the time we're driven for more and more success. We think about a car, about a phone, about a holiday, a nicer house. These things are going to make us happier. And there's countless stories of people who have acquired all

those things, have got those ticks, yet when they get there, they're still feeling unhappy and miserable. And actually, that drive caused them to work too hard, not sleep enough, not look after their health. So there's a real consequence on their health as well. And I guess now looking at that through the lens of the status game, they're playing this game that they keep thinking more and more and more is going to make them happier. But well, problem number one, the way I see it is you can't win that game. Because let's say money is how you are defining your status. Until you are Jeff Bezos, someone's always got more than you. So it's pretty dark that because if you're driven by that, you can never win. And that's very true. Like in the book,

it's a great flaw in human cognition. So there's a sense in which the conscious experience of life is a story, but the subconscious reality of life is this game, this set of games we're playing, but we experience life as a story with happy endings. It's like, when I get that iPhone, I'm going to be happy. When I get that job, I'm going to be happy. And it's this kind of weird lie that your brain's telling you, you're going to be happy. There's a happy ending. There ain't any happy endings. You know, that's not how life is because we're actually playing a game with no end. And so that's functional because it keeps us getting out of bed in the morning. It keeps us striving. It keeps us pushing. It keeps us wanting to be a value again and again and again. So it's good and bad. But it's also bad. Yes, exactly. Because we could, we never get there. And, and, and it kind of makes life

exhausting. In a way it's kind of comforting too, because, because, because often what, you know, we, we, we can kind of be guilty of looking up at very high status people like Jeff Bezos or, I don't know, Taylor, I'm picking on Taylor Swift today, but Taylor Swift, and be jealous and think, oh God, if only I was more like them. But I ain't happy either. And that's why, like, I think we know that. I think, you know, I think there's a general kind of folk understanding that money doesn't buy you happiness. And that's why, because what people are pursuing isn't really money, because money hasn't been around long enough for us to evolve us to evolve a craving for it it's status and you never win the status game because there's always somebody that's above you there's always a threat to your status like you know the

most powerful successful person in the world can be treated as low status by a taxi driver and feel bad and feel oh you know so so we're constantly measuring our status all around us. And no matter who we are, we're vulnerable and sensitive to signals that we are less than we would like to be perceived. There's so much going on in my brain at the moment, Will, as you expand upon your ideas. I want to get to these virtue games in just a moment. Before I do, though, you mentioned Taylor Swift again. Yeah. Before I do though, you mentioned Taylor Swift again. Yeah.

And again, let's just use her as, you know, an archetypal kind of celebrity who many people around the world will look up to. And we spoke about perfectionist presentation right on social media, how people put out their best self. And I think we can all rationally get why that's problematic. We're comparing ourselves to an unrealistic and unattainable ideal. But then let's take that one step further. Because people now are showing more vulnerability and realness online. Just follow my thread here, because I'm not quite sure where I'm going, but I think there's something at the end of this, which is if Taylor Swift also posts,

hey guys, I've had a really bad day today, really struggled with this, and workload was getting on top of me, just wanted to share that, right? Whatever. So she shares something, which is not perfectionist presentation. It's actually quite relatable. It's like, oh yeah, it's not all perfect in her life. Now we would think, or you would think initially that's a good thing, but I'm now starting to wonder, does that even reinforce the distance between you and Taylor Swift even more? And what I mean by

that is we kind of get that even though we don't, maybe our subconscious doesn't believe it, we sort of get that, you know, I'm sure Taylor Swift's life isn't all great, even though it seems to be all great. We appreciate that, yeah, I'm not going to be on stage singing in front of thousands of people and having number one singles and albums. But if they start to become more relatable, because they also have a bit of anxiety and stress like you, I actually wonder, does that reinforce the gap even more? Because you think, yeah, she's just like me, but she's not like me because she sells thousands of records. Do you know what I mean? I always think I have a slight conflict with that.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I see the point. I do see the point. Yeah. And I do think it's, I do think it's,

you know, a good thing that people are much more aware. I mean, as a selfie was published in 2017. And since I wrote that book, people are much more, I'm not saying it's because of the book, obviously,

but, but it just, it is because of the book. You really did put it on the map. I didn't at all. But like, but, but like,'s because of the book, obviously, but it just isn't. I'll say it, it is because of the book. You really did put it on the map. I didn't at all. But like, but, but like, but, but, you know, people are aware of these ideas now. And there's more of awareness that we've got to show our,

that even celebrities should show their full selves and that things aren't perfect. And I do think that, you know, that, that, that is a, you know, that is a good thing in general. But, but, but I think you've also got to factor in the crazy obsession that humans have with status and that, and that actually what might happen then. And I think it is happening to a, to an extent is, is now being sad and miserable and stressed and anxious becomes high status because Taylor Swift is doing it to say. And, and so, so And so I think that's the danger that actually,

especially amongst younger people who are really, when you're an adolescent, you're very interested in status. You're very interested in copy, flatter, conform, what other people are doing. And so I think there's a danger that when high status people start broadcasting their misery, that misery itself starts to become seen as high status. I think that's a potential downside.

I think we are seeing that. I want to just echo what you said. I agree it's a good thing when we see other shades of that person, not just the singular shade that the marketing machine would like us to see, definitely. I think that is a good thing, but I think we are seeing a rise of performative vulnerability, performative authenticity, which is there for some people maybe without even realizing it. That's how seductive this stuff is, without even realising it. I think people, some people may end up

performing to get the validation because it is high status now. Yeah. How vulnerable can you be? Yeah. You see it also in the privilege discourse that's all through social media, which is, you know,

like back in the 80s, being rich and successful was high status and that isn't anymore. Like, you know, because we the 80s being rich and successful was high status and that ain't anymore like you know like you know because we've got this idea of privilege so you see this almost comical attempt of very very privileged people like highly educated very beautiful successful people just searching for anything they can find to to say well this i'm low privileged on this thing and then that becomes their kind of brand. And that's all part of the status game,

that privilege is very low status in this current culture we've got. So there's this search, everyone's got this kind of search on for how I can present myself as less than privileged. Yeah, I think a key point there for me, Will, is it's very easy to hear that story and look down on that person. But I think that's a danger.

I think that's a mistake because the idea I get from reading the status game, the real message that sits with me is that actually we're all playing this game. We may not realize we're playing this game, but we are playing this game. And some of the humans want to be seen as of high status. So you can almost not blame that person. If now low privilege is a status symbol, you almost can't blame that person for trying to acquire status in that way, can you? Well, it's not even about almost, you're absolutely correct. I think when you, it's like an observation of comic, when you observe this thing and suddenly realize how

weird it is, it's a bit funny. But you're right, it is completely human nature. We all do it. No one's exempt from this stuff, not even the Dalai Lama. So it's like you shouldn't look down your nose at people that are doing that because they're just being human. This is what humans do. This is literally human nature.

If there was a human book of instructions, this would be a massive chapter. This is in our source code. there was a human book of instructions, this would be, you know, a massive chapter. This is our source code. There's two things there, right? Again, I'm coming back to the prologue of the book because there's just so much gold in it, right? And there's a bit where you're speaking about whatever you, maybe it's not in the prologue,

but you were basically saying whatever you want in life, whether it's more money, whether it's to help the world, whether it's more sex, whether it's more followers, whatever you want in life is going to be served better if you play the status game. Is that an accurate reflection of what you wrote? Absolutely, yeah. So if you are an entirely selfless person or as selfless as a person gets and devote your life to helping, say, the homeless, you know, if you're an ordinary human, it's not just that you want to help the homeless,

it's that you want to help as many homeless people as you possibly can. So you want to be as good as you possibly can at the job of helping the homeless. So that's your status game. And that's when it's good. Like, because you're incentivized to be incredible. And that's the best of human nature.

Other animals don't have this incentive to be incredible. They just want to survive. But humans, we want to be incredible. And that's a brilliant thing. Before we get to Virtue Games, which I keep trying to get to, I feel that this idea that it can be a double-edged sword, that it can be good, this driver status, to get us out of bed, to try and be better, to master a skill, to be of more value. But if we cross that threshold, it sounds a bit like hormesis to me, the stress response. A little bit of stress helps us perform better, right? A little bit of stress before you go on

stage, before you record a podcast, gets your brain working better. Too much stress for too long a period of time without recovery from it is going to mean before a podcast that I can't get any thoughts out on the mic or on stage. My brain is fried. There's a sweet spot, right? There's a sweet spot. But I think it's chapter 16 in the Sase, The Floor. Yeah. Wonderful chapter. And you talk about Paul McCartney. Yes. I wonder if you could tell that story because Paul McCartney is that person,

is a person, first of all, who's considered a really nice person. Yeah. Like anyone in the music industry who meets him and talks about it says, wonderful guy, right? But the story you tell in there of Paul McCartney really shows us that none of us, I think, are immune to playing this game.

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forward slash journal or click on the link in your podcast app. Yeah, again, I feel a bit bad picking on Paul, but the reason I've picked on him is, as you say, he's a nice guy. I don't think you picked on him. You used him as an example. Yeah, I used him as an example bad picking on Paul, but the reason I've picked on him is, as you say, he's a nice guy. I don't think you've picked on him. You've used him as an example. Yeah, I've used him as an example. And just to underline the fact that, as you said before,

I'm not saying that he's done anything wrong. It's just that he's human, and this is what humans do. So basically, Paul McCartney, he has had more status than probably anyone walking on this earth today. Can you imagine? He basically invented modern pop music. I mean, he was in the Beatles, for God's sake. How much status can any one human take? And yet, you know, he has this kind of history

of getting really, like, when him and John Lennon started working together, they made this sort of pact, they made this agreement in the bedroom when they were teenagers, that no matter how much anybody contributed to any song, they'd all be credited to Lennon McCartney right so that's the nice thing we'd say it doesn't matter so you can write it I can write it we can both write it doesn't matter it's always going to be Lennon and McCartney

but but you know in his middle age he started to get a bit annoyed about this because it's like why should John Lennon's name come first when I did most of the work on that song you know and it bothered him it bothered him to the extent that that when he would um record live albums with the wings and they would do Beatles songs he would flip reverse the names on the album sleeve so it was McCartney Lennon um and you know he got into a big kind of row with Yoko Ono who who who uh owned the kind of publishing I think she said you know John Lennon's kind of rights had passed to Yoko Ono. And there was even a threat

of legal action from her. And yes, so, you know, I love that because it's like, even, because who cares? Like to anybody that isn't

for McCartney, who cares what order the name comes in? Everybody thinks you're a genius, mate. Like they do. You got it in the bag. And yet,

he just couldn't leave it alone. This Lennon-McCartney thing. It bothered him a lot. Yeah, I mean, it's so powerful that because it really is that. If Paul McCartney, with all his status,

success, fame, money, all the things that the modern world will value, he's got them all. Despite all of that, the order of the names bothers him. I think there's two ways you could take it. One way is

it's like there's no hope for anyone, or it can mean we can be a bit more forgiving to ourselves and go, you know what, it's human nature. It's human nature. And it then speaks back to what you said about, let's say, muting people. Yeah. Right? It's like, listen, it doesn't make you a bad person that you are unfairly comparing yourself to someone else. You are. That's okay. And if it makes you feel better day to day, just mute that person. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And don't feel bad about it day to day, just mute that person. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, and don't feel bad about it because your brain is just doing what your brain is designed to do.

So, yeah, you know, mute away. Don't feel bad. Yeah, I completely agree. And it's, yeah, I mean, as you say, if it's affecting Paul McCartney, it's going to affect all of us. Virtue Games was the second type of status game you were talking about. And I started thinking about previous patients of mine who were maybe not getting status from their work.

Or for whatever reason in their life, they felt as though they weren't achieving or doing enough. Maybe they came to see me with mental health problems. And when you talk about virtue games, I'm thinking a lot about volunteering and how we know the benefits of volunteering are huge. They're profound. I've written in previous books about how patients of mine, when they started going to parkrun, not necessarily to run, just to volunteer, their lives would start to change because suddenly they had a community. People would miss them. They felt a value. If they didn't show up, people would ask, hey, listen, you know,

we really miss you last week. You know, there's something felt so they belong. So that's, I guess that's community, but probably also status as well. So my question is, Will, if someone doesn't feel they are getting adequate status in a certain element in their life, can they compensate for that by getting status in another area, i.e. for working for a charity or volunteering? Yeah, 100%. And actually, it's one of the things I recommend at the end of the book is like, you know, play multiple games. You know, I think that's... Play multiple status games. Play multiple status games. Absolutely. Because, you know, the research is crystal clear and that's the more groups people belong to, the happier they are, the more stable their kind of emotionality. So it's really good for us to be members of multiple groups. And for me, you know, a big part of that is that you've

got multiple sources of status. So, so yeah, and, and, and absolutely, I mean, in our kind of success focused world that we live in, you know, volunteering can be a, you know, a fantastic way of, of, of just creating a new status game for yourself, creating a new source of that signal to your subconscious brain that I am of value to other people. So, okay. So play multiple games. Now, why is that? Is it because if you play multiple games, a bit like spread betting, right? If one of those games falls flat or, okay, let's say for example, and I want to talk about retirement here as well, because I think it really fits in here, but let's say that your job is what gives you your sense of status, right? You know, yeah, I'm a, whatever, I do this, I drive this

car, I do, you know, whatever it might be, but that's the only game you're playing. Is the problem with just playing one game that you become vulnerable, that if you get fired, or if the economy changes and you lose that job, or whatever, someone else gets promoted above you and you suddenly feel, wait a minute, I've been waiting for that promotion. Are you saying that having a different game means that you're less likely to fall into the depths compared to if you just relied on one? Yeah, so it's a hedge.

That's one of the main reasons. But I think, you know, the bigger thing about this is that, to understand is that your status games are your identity. Like it's that important to who you are, to your sense of self. You are the games that you're playing. Like you are a doctor.

You are a podcaster. Like our sources of status, you know, they are who we are. So they're that important. So when they go wrong, sometimes they do go wrong. Sometimes doctors get complaints made against them. Sometimes podcasts fail, you know. You shouldn't underestimate how damaging that is to the human self. It's your identity that's being kind of undermined and attacked.

So, yeah, I think that's why it's good to play multiple games, because you're hedging. And if you're just playing one game, even if it isn't the case of that one game completely catastrophically failing, which it might do, but, you know, that game's going to have ups and downs and ups and downs and ups and downs. And if you've only got one source of status, those down days are going to be a lot worse than if you had, you know, perhaps two or three sources of status. You're playing two or three

different games. Does this in any way play into, I don't know, emptiness syndrome, for example, where, you know, of course, every situation is different. But the sort of stereotypical idea that, let's say a mother, for example, has devoted her adult life to looking after the children and, let's say, has stopped working. In order to do that, that can often be a real problem in terms of how they view themselves when the child then leaves home. Let's say goes to uni or gets a job and moves out, whatever it might be. Is this related to just playing one status game? I played that status game and now that's gone. I've got a real problem? Well, it's definitely related to it because it's identity. Like if

all of your identity is being a mum or a dad, then of course, emptiness syndrome is going to be a real problem for you because, I mean, and I actually had a conversation very recently with somebody I went to school with, and when I went to school with who's having exactly that issue, you know, she was saying to me, like, I just, all my kids are going to university and I don't know who I am. That's what she said. I don't know who I am. And it's like, well, that's because, you know, identity is so bound up in our status games. And her identity was, I'm a good mum. I'm a great mum. And I've got horses for them and, you know, all this other stuff. And I think that's the interesting thing about parenthood. It isn't just that we want to be mums and dads. We want to be good mums and good dads. And, you know, again, that's a function. It's a good thing

that we want to be like that. So, you know, status is bound up in our sense of how effective we are as parents. The other interesting thing about parenthood is that we start playing status games through our children. So we start earning, we want our children to start earning status for us on our behalf in a kind of weird way. So we've become, you know, kind of,

I don't want to say irrationally proud of our children, because it's not irrational, but our children's successes can take on enormous importance to us personally, because they're almost playing status games on our behalf. So I think that's something else that can happen. And that can, of course, become incredibly problematic. I was chatting to a tennis coach last year, really nice guy I know. And he was telling me how one of the kids who he was coaching, he had to actually have a chat with the parents say, listen, I don't think you being here when he's playing is helping. Like he had to actually ask them to not come to the coaching. And many coaches or teachers will say that actually,

sometimes parents are living through their kids. And often it's the dreams that they could never meet. And of course, there's pros and cons of this, but I've seen it slip into really quite toxic behaviors a lot of the time. And I really know, I try, I really am trying to say that with compassion because I do understand that every parent is really trying their best based on what they know, based upon the means that they have. They're trying their best for their children. But I do think sometimes we do need to ask ourselves, why are we asking our child to do that? Is it for them or is it for us? Yeah, I mean, I had this growing up with my parents.

My dad worked in education. And so my mum was like chairman of the governance for the school I went to. So education was their status game. And they put enormous pressure on me to succeed at school. My dad was, they were determined I was going to go to Oxford University. And I, you know, I perform, I don't want to blame them

for my terrible performance at school because it wouldn't be fair. But as you say, they wanted the best for me. But it caused immense stress and, you know, misery for everybody concerned when I was growing up

because of the, you know, I even had like a, you know, a teacher sit me down and say, we know how much that your parents are putting too much pressure on you, but you can't let it get to you. You can't let it affect you. So, so, so yeah, I mean, I had that experience myself because the only value that they could see was education. It was everything to them. And, and I, I, it, it, it wasn't what I was pursuing when I was a young man. It's funny, Will, hearing that. And it's a very common narrative in immigrant families, certainly in Indian immigrant families, that success in education is prioritized above everything. I always thought it was about money and security.

I always thought it was about money and security. But reading your book is making me think, is it really about status? Because as immigrants to a different country, you're often not getting that status. I remember my dad, and I think it was a few months before dad died, he said to me,

because he never complained about this stuff throughout my life, but he said something to me, Will. He said, I put up with this because this is not my country. You won't put up with it because you were born here. It's pretty powerful, isn't it?

It's incredibly powerful. Yeah, it was really powerful. And I think that's right. I think, because, you know, status is always upstream of money and security. Because as I said, it's that basic rule that the human brain knows, it's go for status. Because if you go to status, you're going to get the money, you're going to get security, or you're going to get what you need

to survive and reproduce, you're going to get by going for status. In terms of these virtue status games, I think you started volunteering maybe about six months ago. Was your decision to start volunteering because of what you learnt when writing the status game? Yeah, yeah. So that's right. So I started volunteering at the Samaritans and, you know, that's had its roots in status. The first piece I ever wrote for a broadsheet newspaper when I was in my twenties, it was for The Observer and it was an interview with the then CEO of the Samaritans. And I was interviewing him and he started crying halfway through the interview. And he was like, oh, you're good at this. He said, you know, you should join the Samaritans. You'd be a great Samaritan. And, you know, that status, I'm thinking, oh oh you know you should join the samaritans you'd be a great samaritan and you know that status i'm thinking oh you know you know so that kind of planted the seed but when i wrote

the um the status game you know i i recommend in the back of that book play multiple games and i was just thinking that's so hypocritical man because you do all you are is a writer like i'm not a parent like you just write that's what you do like your whole life is dedicated to your books that's it you were playing one game a success game which makes you vulnerable yeah because if yeah if i don't know if one of your books doesn't do as well as you perceive it should do yeah then you're vulnerable to go into an exospiral very negative yeah it's catastrophic it's like it's depression because that's who i am that's my identity and now my identity is tumbling. So I was like, so I think now's the time. And the other thing was that because I'm not a parent, you can't really count dogs. I'm not a parent. I was thinking, you know, what do you, what good do you do? Like, where's your virtue game? You know, boyo, you know, like this is not good enough. So, so I thought I'm going to, I'm going to do that Samaritan's thing. I'm going to do it. And, um, you know, I found it incredibly, um, rewarding, um, you know, like, and it's gratifying in a sense because everything I wrote in that book,

I've now tested it for myself. And it's true. Like even when I was still training and I wasn't yet taking calls, you know, I would, um, you know, leave the training sessions, just feeling, feeling just really good about life. Like just feeling, you know, 10 kilos lighter. And the next day I'd be sort of upbeat as well. And now I'm actually taking calls and helping people. It's, you know, the, the effect is kind of magnified and it's, and it is, so I, you know, so it's, so it's a new source of status, but it's also like with the identity thing, it's like a new version of me. Like I've created a new universe

in which I can play the game of life in. So it really has been a powerful kind of, you know, lesson to me. And, you know, sometimes you have shifts and you feel like you've not really helped anybody, don't really go very well. But sometimes you do feel you've and and you know when you know sometimes you have shifts and you feel like you've not really helped anybody don't really go very well but sometimes you do for you if you've really you know you you somebody calls up and they start off there and they end up up there and you feel you know you drive back at three in the morning feeling great and it's like and and and and that feeling is i have been of value this evening no and that is a fact it's inarguable. I've been of value to humanity in some way this evening.

And it's automatic. It feels good. So yeah, that's been a really powerful thing. And if I hadn't written The Status Game, I don't think I ever would have done it. Writers often write the books they need for themselves. They do, yeah. I think about my books.

I think about your books. I speak to so many authors on this podcast and it's incredible how many times that comes out. That there's something, which makes sense, doesn't it? Because why would you go deep into a topic if you weren't personally invested in it in some way? If you didn't want to understand it and know it better and learn from it. I mean, volunteering is interesting. As you describe that story, Will, you went into volunteering to help you spread bet, to play

another status game, or at least, you know, that's one way we can look at it. What were some of the unexpected benefits that you got? Connection. I mean, I still remember like walking into the room, the training room for the first time, it's in this little terrace house in Ashford in Kent, and you go up these steps and it was this room just with 12 complete strangers in it. And, um, I think I was one of two men in the room. It was all female and, and, and, you know, being very introverted and being a loner, like it was really threatening. Like I felt so uncomfortable, like, and it was just, and I, and, and, and I immediately was

going to this kind of defensive shell and, you know, it's, it's not a good place to be and to kind of force myself out of it. And now I can, I can't, all of those people, you know, really good friends. And, and, and I think one of the things I've got out of it. And now I count all of those people, you know, really good friends. And I think one of the things I've got out of it is that it's connection. You know, as I said, that even when I wasn't taking calls, I wasn't being a value to anybody.

I was just sitting in training for three hours on a Thursday night. I would leave feeling good because I'd experienced human connection. I'd experienced, I'd had the fundamental kind of elemental experience of sitting around a table and being with other people and having them look at me as an acceptable person. So that for me as somebody that was struggling with feeling very isolated, you know, being a writer working at home, that was also very, it was what I needed.

It was this kind of social vitamin that I was seriously deficient in and it was something that I needed and in fact before I put my application in to join the Samaritans the one thing I wanted to know was is this a working from home deal or do we go out because if it's working from home I ain't doing it but no you have to

go in because you have to do it with other people With hindsight now looking back were you lonely? Yeah, extremely lonely. And I would talk about it often, you know, with my wife, you know, like it was my one main thing. Like, you know, like I'm really lonely. I gave up drinking alcohol in my mid-twenties

and because I had developed a problem with it. And because I had developed a problem with it. And giving up drinking alcohol meant the immediate kind of collapse of my social life because it all revolved around alcohol. And the people that I was hanging out with, they were drinking buddies and drug buddies as well. You know, so from that point on, I was extremely isolated. isolated you know I had my

wife you know who's great and he's both my wife and my best friend but that's too much pressure to put on a wife yeah a lot of people will struggle with health change because their pre-existing friendships and communities often revolve around a certain behavior you just spoke beautifully to that whereby you used to go out drinking with your mates or with your crew. And whether it was the alcohol or the connection or the camaraderie, whatever it might be, you were getting a lot from that. So when you, and let's take it away from you for a minute, because many people, let's say they want to give up drinking or reduce it or start eating a different way, but their friendships, their existing communities still do that behavior,

they find it really, really hard. So through the lens of status, can we say that sometimes people will have to give up their status in order to make positive health change, which ultimately ends up being the reason why they can't stick to it because the community power is much more, it's much stronger than that individual power. Yeah, I think that's right. I think, you know, it kind of can hold you back.

And sometimes you have to see that this, if a source of status has become toxic for you you have to have the kind of courage to kind of leave it and you know join a new join a new game yeah i think that's that's true and i think that's how you know um things like crossfit and weight watches work and you know that because because because they've made status games out of a kind of health outcome. And that's why people find them successful because, because, um, you know, by showing up and sharing your progress on this journey towards, you know, losing excess weight or becoming more

physically fit in the CrossFit, um, thing that, that, then you're, you're, you're making a status game of it. And so that's very powerful. And I think that's the kind of secret power of those organizations. So talk to me a bit about CrossFit. How does it play into status? And why has it been so successful? So CrossFit is one of those things where, you know, there's that old joke about how can you sell when so... I mean, I always think about it being Oxford University because in the media world where I've done my kind of work over the years if someone's been to Oxford or Cambridge they'll find a way of letting you know

in three seconds and CrossFit's one of those ones where like and I always find the interesting because it's because that's always a source of status if that's one of those things that somebody just always finds a way of letting you know within about three minutes that's a that's a big source of status and CrossFit's one of those things and And, you know, people even call it a cult. And as I write in the status game, a cult is like the ultimate status game. Like it's a pure, a cult is such a successful status game

that it just literally takes over people's minds. And that's, you know, so it does have kind of cultish aspects. So that's why I wanted to write about it because it's really interesting. And also I went to, as a journalist, I went to the CrossFit Games in LA a few years ago and saw just how unbelievably obsessed people were with with with the discipline I mean it's it really is incredibly

successful you know to the extent that people will push themselves and push themselves famously beyond their limits and you know they don't do it anymore because they've got a lot of pushback but but there was a time in the early crossfit years where um pushing yourself to the point where you vomited uh became a status symbol and they would even wear t-shirts and um with with this dragon vomit with vomiting it became a so that's how that's how successful it was as a status game and so there's been some psychologists have gone into crossfit to try to figure out what is it about crossfit that gives it these properties that's why is crossfit different going to a gym and what they've said is that that is exactly that so CrossFit has it has they call it a WOD a workout of the day but but and so everybody does the same

workout but but the critical thing is is um it's kind of tuned up or down to your personal ability so so so so that means that it's not like um um it's not like a a contest of of member versus member like in a race everyone's just trying to achieve the workout they need to the best of their ability so so there isn't individual competition and the other cultural thing in crossfit CrossFit is that the rule is that everybody has to massively support everybody else. It doesn't matter who you are. It doesn't matter how fit you are. Everybody crowds around you. It's very American. Crowds around you and just gives you, come on, you can do it. You can do it. You can do it. You can do it. So everybody's pumping each other with status. And that's why it becomes addictive. That's why people become

obsessed with it. That's why people love it so much because it's this beautifully designed status game where everybody's being maximally generous with the status that they're giving to each other and they're not um you know the other the opposite version that would be like if it's self against self nobody wants to give status out because i want to keep it all for myself that's that's a kind of toxic status game that's the modern corporate world. Yeah. And in the book, as you know, I contrast it to Enron. You know, Enron, one of the most corrupt, or if not the most corrupt company in history. And the way they designed their corporate status game was, they called it the Yank and Rank system.

So every few months, the CD management would get together literally with a spreadsheet of everybody who worked for Enron, and they would put them in an order. And the top, I don't know, I think it was 15% got promoted. The bottom 15% got fired immediately, and everybody else was just terrified.

So that is toxic. And that led to huge amounts of corruption. Yeah, because people are so desperate to earn status. Status is in such short supply. That they will do whatever it takes. So climbing over each other, but also breaking the law. And so that's what happened.

It's interesting, the CrossFit example, where it really speaks to this idea that status is neither good nor bad. It just is, right? It can be used up to a point to get more and more people fit and staying engaged with movement and natural movement and whatever it might be. But then if it goes past that point to where you're being encouraged, or some people feel as though they're being encouraged to vomit and that's been celebrated in t-shirts, then they start getting injured.

It becomes problematic. Now let's contrast CrossFit to Parkrun. Because Parkrun is also very successful at getting people to come regularly, feel part of a community, regularly, feel part of a community, feel as though they belong. You can be competitive, but I would say it's a pretty non-competitive environment in general. And then I'm drawn back to the central case you make in the introduction about these two core needs. One is connection, but once we've connected, we want status. Parkrun, to me, appears to be a connection piece. But I don't know if you've been to Parkrun or not, Will, but can you make a case that any of that is status as well? Yeah, I would agree with you that it's mostly a connection piece.

But also, there's the very front of fundamental kind of basic um um idea that by people applauding you and cheering you and saying well done that status as well so it's competence-based status we want to feel like we're good at something so the you know in the book i talk about the various studies that show like if you have a tug of war and if there's a cheering audience the the tuggers will pull much harder athletes will run faster in front of a cheering audience than they will that can run faster in front of a cheering orders than they can run without one so you know so so so just so I would agree with you that the compared to CrossFit part run is much more about belongingness

and connection which is you know equally equally important to status um but But the element of the cheering, the people who volunteer for part run, they're feeling like they've got that virtue status because I'm here setting up the banners and I'm making this happen. But you're not saying that in a bad way. The word virtue, again, because of virtue signaling, has almost become a toxic word to many,

but you're not using the word in a bad way, are you? So that's a good thing. Of course it is. Yeah, well, I I would say of course it is, but yeah, yes, absolutely. I mean, I think that's one of the big problems of talking about status is that people immediately put this kind of negative signal on it. And as you so eloquently said, it's neither good or bad. It just is. So virtue status of course is, you know, like often a huge positive, you know, like the whole voluntary sector is based on kind of virtue status um um the the reason that we have um you know we don't have untrammeled

capitalism in the west there are rules you know you you have to treat your staff fairly you have to you can't just fire somebody without going through a proper system that's virtue that's also virtue it's like you've got to be fair to people that sense of fairness but also virtue can be incredibly dangerous i mean virtue is um uh lies at the heart of genocide virtue you know like hitler thought he was a you know virtue is local to its group so every group has its own idea of what's virtuous so hitler thought eradicating the Jews was a virtuous act. Stalin thought killing millions of people in the Soviet Union was a virtuous act. So virtue can be, just like status itself, is both the best of us, but it's also the very worst of us, because people use virtue to justify the most horrific acts.

The three types of status game, we've covered the dominance game, the virtue game. What's the third one? The success game. Yes, a competence. So I'm good at something. So Elon Musk is playing a success game.

Jeff Bezos is playing a success game. Serena Williams plays a success game. The people who invented the vaccines that got us out of the COVID pandemic, they were playing a success game. The people who invented the vaccines that got us out of the COVID pandemic, they were playing a success game. So success games is all about how can we achieve this specific success-based outcome. So if we are, what's the first principles then? So if we get good at something and then we get validation from others for being good at that thing, that's how we get status. So the status doesn't come from the intrinsic value of being good at that. So let's just work this through. Let's say Serena Williams just practiced by herself every day and became an excellent tennis player,

but no one knew about that. Would she still be getting any status from that or does the status come when you're with other people and they go, wow, Serena, you're amazing. We can see how good you are. Yeah, I was smiling when you said that because that idea of Serena Williams becoming privately the best female tennis player in the world and nobody knowing. It's funny because

it's so inhuman. Like it's literally, it's never going to happen because that's so not human. But yeah, so that's a really good question. So status comes from other people, right? So other people give it to us unless it's dominance and we, we force them to give it to us uh unless it's dominance and we we force them to give it to us um but but there is a little caveat to that and that's this idea which um psychologists talk about this idea of the imaginary audience so this is you know we've evolved this part of the brain where we can almost rehearse how people are going to respond to our behaviors and our actions in our head and And so another way of thinking about the imaginary audience is the conscience. So when we do something bad, we feel low status, like a bad person.

We degrade ourselves. That's the imaginary audience in our heads warning us, if people find out about this, or if you actually do this thing that you're imagining, you're going to get a drop. And equally, if we imagine, like if I right now imagine what it must be like to have a New York Times number one bestseller, I feel good. And that's my imaginary audience going, yeah, that's you're amazing. So to a limited extent, you know, we can feel kind of good in, you know, intrinsically

about the stuff that we do. But ultimately, we want is, ultimately that's just a rehearsal for what we really want, which is the status from our tribe. You know, we're a tribal animal. There's nothing wrong with that. You know, we want to feel of value to the tribe and then the tribe lets us know and that's the status.

You also make the case that one of the reasons we're so stressed and unhappy is because the status games we play now are just so enormous. Take it back to the tribe, you know, what Professor Robin Dunbar, the Dunbar's number, that the human brain has evolved to only know 150 people. I think about that with respect to my own life. And if I went looking, I think I could probably get close to several hundred, if not a thousand opinions every day. It's not healthy for me

to be exposed to that amount of opinions, whether they're good or not. Like, it doesn't do you any good. So I've really changed my own relationship with social media. You know, I do use it. I try my best to use it for positive outcomes, to help people with their lives, to drive them to this podcast, whatever it might be. But there's a similar argument there with status, right? Isn't there?

Whereby we haven't evolved to play status games on this scale. And if you're playing them on the scale, that's probably why you're struggling. Yeah, exactly. We were evolved in the context of small groups. And so we've evolved to play small status games. And I really believe that the reason why we, you know, why all this safety and security and comfort

that we have in the West hasn't brought us reliable happiness is because of the status game. It's because we're constantly, we're playing these enormous games now with people incredibly sort of vastly higher above us on that, you know, ladder of status. And, and, and it's just not natural. I mean, you know, like if you think about the companies that we work for, these enormous organizations, like how, how far away is the CEO from you? Like it's galaxies away. I mean, one of the amazing statistics

I found when I was researching the book was, you know, when we was talking about, you know, about how corporate our status games are these days, they said that 69 out of the 100 biggest economies in the world aren't nations. They're companies. Like, that's amazing. You know, like, that's how big and powerful the companies that we work for are.

And a company is a status game. You know, if you're working for Apple or Microsoft or, you know, Walmart or Tesco's, you know, or whoever it might be. Like, that is a, you know, that that is a big scary status game to play i mean the other thing i mean and i'll never forget this moment when i was um when i was still a journalist i went to i was doing a story about this male escort at the world like britain's most successful male escort and i went back to his hometown in wales to talk to his friends and family about you know why he left for the bright lights of l and his escorting work. And I'll never forget it. So, so one of his, um, friends was walking me down the high street of this small town in Wales. And he said, um, you know, this was once a mining town and, and, and people were proud to be miners. There was, there was dignity

in that. There was value in that, you know, to be, to, to, to be a miner in a mining family was, was a good thing. But then the mines shut down. And he said, but then we had loads of small businesses. So along this high street, there was the butchers, the baker, the haberdasher, all these ones. And that's great. You know, if your family owned the local shop and you as a young person,

you were going to inherit the business and you'd be imagining, say if you're going to inherit the butchers, well, when I take over, I'm going to do this. I'm going to do this. I'm going to start stocking chorizo or whatever it is. And he said, but then what happened was the Tesco's moved in. And then when the Tesco's moved in, all the local businesses shut down.

And he said, you know, he said, I'm sorry, you can get a job behind the Tesco's butcher's counter, but it ain't the same as having the family, you know, your dad or your mom owning the local butcher shop and you inheriting it. And that always struck me because it's like, I've never heard that expressed before. Because if you look at it, if you look at it on a pure economic basis, well, they had a job in the butcher shop. Now they've got a job in Tesco. So they got a job. It's the same. It ain't the same because what happens in these, you know, in our, with these huge status games is the status is

massively diluted. In the status game of your parents' butcher shop, there's four of you perhaps, and you're going to be the king or the queen one day. But behind the butcher's counter in the local Tesco's, you're way down that pecking order. Your life is not the same. Your identity is not the same. The rewards are not the same. And it really matters. It's interesting. A a few months ago i spoke to a doctor on this podcast about how to age well and as part of the research into his book he visited areas around the world where people are aging very well you know the so-called blue zones and i feel with this anti-aging movement, I think we're missing something really important. One of the things he said in his book was that in these blue zones, in these areas,

what he observed was that people knew their place in their community and in the society in which they lived. They knew who they were. They knew what their role was. And I really, I can't shake this idea at the moment that I keep thinking, we're talking about nutrition and muscle to stop getting sarcopenia and how much movement should we do and how much sleep do we need? And of course, I'm not going to argue that those things are not important. You know what I do, what I stand for, right? Of course, those things are important. But I think meaning, the meaning of our lives, how we fit into our community, I think it's more important. I'm convinced it's more important than these

downstream physical behaviors. And I think what you just said about the mining town really speaks to that. It sounds like 20, 30 years ago, people knew who they were. You know, they could get the same income now for the big corporation,

but they're just a number. They don't feel that sense of belonging. They don't feel as of value. Yeah, and therefore, and actually, maybe this is a good place to start closing down this conversation, is there's a strong relationship

between status and health, isn't there? Yeah, it's massive. I mean, and this is what the thing that convinced me that you've got to write a book about this because it really matters.

And so there was a famous set of studies called the Whitehall Studies and a doctor called Dr. Michael Marmot went into, you know, Whitehall is the, you know, famously the British bureaucracy that takes all the government policy and turns it into action. So it's a huge, highly stratified kind of status game. And so Marmot kind of measured health outcomes in the Whitehall and found that the higher you went, the healthier, the better the health outcomes were, the lower the kind of risk of early death was. And so the automatic thing people think is, well, that's because the higher they were up, they can afford a personal trainer and a gym

membership. But that's not the case. Like these people are all employed by the civil service, they're all getting a good wage, they can all afford the gym, they can all afford to eat what they wanted to eat. so uh and indeed what he found was that literally one one level down from the very top so still an executive very very powerful and rich and successful was slightly less healthy than the one above them um and and then this was replicated in the lab with monkeys so so they took a bunch of monkeys and they gave them this um very unhealthy diet of pizza and chocolate. So the monkeys developed high levels of atherosclerotic plaque.

I'm probably saying that wrong. Atherosclerotic plaque. Yeah, I knew the doctor would correct me. And so what they found was that the monkeys at the bottom of the hierarchy would be much more likely to fall ill as a result of that than the monkeys at the top. And critically, when they conspire to change the hierarchy the health outcomes changed in lockstep so it was the hierarchy that was that was that was causing um the difference and and it was a really significant difference so in whitehall your health outcomes were four times you i think

you're four times more likely to die early at the bottom of the office hierarchy than you were at the top. So it's extremely significant. And it was all about where you stood on that pecking order. The Whitehorse study that you just mentioned, you are using it to talk about status. So the lower status you are, the worse your health outcomes. We also know that applies to people of low socioeconomic status. Now,

clearly, I would say a lot of people of low socioeconomic status are probably also of low status, but not everyone. But you can still get status even if you aren't living in an affluent area, right? So how do you sort of marry those two things together? Yeah, 100%. So the Whitehall is one status game, right? That's a game because you've got the hierarchy, you've got people at the top, people at the bottom. But how it works is we all play multiple games.

And so socioeconomic status, I mean, it's almost like the good thing about it is that we're not competing, everybody isn't competing with everybody. So we compete with our little groups. We play kind of status games within our socioeconomic status. So somebody who's living in a council estate doesn't feel like they're competing with somebody who's living in Downton Abbey. They don't really give a crap about person living in Downton Abbey. give a crap about person in nathan abbey what they care about is what the next door neighbor thinks of them and what the person that what the what the handsome boy over the road thinks of them

and what their parents and friends think of them so so you know again we've got those tribal brains so we still kind of even though we live in these huge kind of gargantuan kind of status games we still have a tendency to of thinking and feeling tribally, like we try and play as small a game as possible. So it's perfectly possible to be low in inverted commas on the socioeconomic scale. But if you're, you know, above average on the street, you've got the best car on the street, or one of the nice houses on the street, or you've got the only house that's got a garage on the street, that's high status, that's good, you're going to feel, you know, that's going to make you feel good. It doesn't matter that there's Downton Abbey, you know,

20 miles down the road where they've got all servants or whatnot. You don't care about that. Because, you know, we prefer to play these small games. We naturally play these much smaller games. And that's why when you go around the world, there's no correlation between wealth and happiness. You know, like when you go around the world, you see people living in terrible poverty who

who are happy because they're not measuring their status against you they're measuring against the people that they're living around near it's all relative yeah it's all relative yeah it's all relative and you mentioned cars there think, are a really interesting one because a lot of people do measure their status or an element of the status that they get is probably from the car that they drive. But it's not on all societies, is it? No. No, no, totally. So you might be playing it. So every status game has its own way of measuring status. It's like a board game where, you know, everyone's got different counters and like different kinds of monopoly money.

Like you can measure state, you can use anything to measure status. We're so status obsessed, we use anything. And every status game has a different way of measuring status. And so if you're a top gear petrol head, cars are your status game. You want the best car possible.

But there's loads of people who just don't care about that. Who just don't care about what car they drive. It's not a source of status for them. Like it was always interesting to me, like how I've never really been interested very much in clothes. Like I don't care about clothes very much. But then my wife is a former fashion editor.

She loves clothes. And it's just, it's not, and it's simply that I don't use clothes as, I don't attach my status to clothes. And she does. So it's not a good thing or a bad thing. It's just that we're playing different status games. You once mentioned to me about British aristocrats

and how actually they don't want to be seen in a flash car. Yeah, yeah, totally. I think this really speaks to that. These are unique games that are unique to your tribe. You know, we need to figure out what game we're playing, basically. That's right. So if you're a British aristocrat,

you know, what's high status is driving a beaten up old black Land Rover covered in dog hair. And if you see somebody driving a brand new, like Lexus, shiny Lexus, you're going to look down your nose at them because that's so middle class. You know, like having the label and the fancy car.

And so, like, you know, so Prince Charles famously has his, you know, his barber jacket that's, he's repaired it by hand, you know, multiple times. That's so Aristo. That's an Aristo status signaling. That would be King Charles to you, mate. Oh, sorry. Sorry. Blaspheme against the relative. Yeah, yeah, no, King Charles to you, mate. Oh, sorry. Sorry. Blaspheme against the royalty.

Yeah, yeah, no, King Charles, of course. Yeah, but that's his status game. So it's not cool if you're an aristo, if you're a royalty, to have a brand new barber jacket. You've got to, you know, it's much cooler if it's a hand-me-down, ideally, you know, from your parents or something.

Yeah, and it's interesting how people progress through the ranks and how we value different things depending on who we are. Like the affluent billionaire can rock up anywhere in a hoodie. It's fine because they're getting their status from, you know, their success in life or the company that they built. So they can almost, they don't have to play the clothing status game. But I think it's more than that. I think certain status games have certain rules.

And so in Silicon Valley, for example, it's not cool to be flash. So it's low status to be flash in Silicon Valley. Like they'll happily drive a Tesla, but they won't dress in fashion clothes. It's all about the hoodie. And Mark Zuckerberg famously has a relatively small house. Like that's cool. So it's high status to be less flash. So, so my wife works for a Silicon Valley tech company now, and they fly over our economy. Drives her mad. But, but, but like even the top executives fly economy because, and it's not because they can't afford business because they totally can't afford business, but it's not cool in Silicon Valley to be flashed like that. It's all status signaling.

It's basically the first line of your book, life is a game. Yeah. It is, isn't it? Yeah. It's a game. Yeah. And it's kind of what game are we playing?

I mean, to close this down, Will, I'm pretty sure everyone now who's listening or watching will recognize that they are playing or probably have played at some point a variety of different status games. But if someone is listening to you, Will, and going,

yeah, I'm hearing what you're saying, mate, but I don't know what status game I'm playing I don't think I am what would you say to them well I think that what the easy way to identify what status games you're playing is by thinking about your identities like how do you identify not just as a male or a female but like hobbies um stuff you know what do you love what do you do with you know what do you do that you think you're quite good at like that's your status game and if you can't find anything then i would say that's a problem because because that means that you don't have any like if you've got if nothing that you're doing in your life makes you feel of value if you don't think i'm good at this

about anything that's a problem and and that's a problem that you should address because you know status is an essential social nutrient we need it to survive so yeah if you can't figure out where your sources of status are then i would i would recommend strongly that you you find some really powerful well well i i think you've just done such a phenomenal job with these books. I'm interested as to where you're going next, because there does seem to be this sort of consistent through line through your work that you keep developing, keep developing, really trying to explore human nature. Who are we? Why do we make the decisions that we do? Why do we act in certain ways? You've written a lot of brilliant books. If you were going to direct people to one to start their Will Store journey,

which book would you encourage them to start with? I mean, probably Selfie, I would say. Yeah, you know, Selfie, you know, we talk about perfectionism and talk about just the power of culture to kind of, to affect kind of who we are and how we experience ourselves. I think I would recommend beginning with Selfie. And then from there to the status game yeah yeah brilliant reads um

we've talked a lot about perfectionism status throughout this conversation i always love to leave the audience with some practical takeaways if possible that they can think about saying i understand the concepts I get why it's problematic. What is it I can actually do now in my life to start addressing some of this? Do you have any final words of wisdom for people? Yeah. I mean, so playing multiple games has been the big one for me. You know, recognizing that you're not competing with everybody in the world. So, you know, like that was the big takeaway my wife took from this. And she still talks about it now is that because she's, you know, she's a very successful business person.

And, you know, I think she felt that she for a while that she was competing with everybody else in the world. And then just that understanding that you're not, you're playing a little status game has been sort of very liberating. So bring it right down, make it local. Yeah, make it local. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Make it local. So shop local it local. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Make it local. So shop local for foods and play local status games. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Stop feeling like you're competing with the king of Thailand or whoever it is because you're not. Focus in. And if you feel that you're kind of lacking in status, then I think one of the liberating things for me was that we always think about money, money, money, money, money. It's money that drives the world. It's money that's the root of all evil. It ain't. You know, status is way more important than money. You don't need to be rich to be happy. You don't need to be rich to feel like you're of value. You just need

status. And actually, it ain't that hard to come by. Just find something that you're quite good at and you'll get it. Well, you're doing incredible work, changing lives. That's for coming on the show, buddy. Thanks for having me, Rogan. I really appreciate it. Really hope you enjoyed that conversation. As always, do think about one thing that you can take away and start applying into your own life. Now, before you go, just wanted to let you know about Friday Five. It's my free weekly email containing five simple ideas to improve your health and happiness. In that email, I share exclusive insights that I do not share anywhere else, including health advice, how to manage your time better, interesting

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