The More Successful You Are The Longer You'll Live! Will Storr

shouldn't raise your children to believe that they can be beyonce because the chances are they can't wilstar is an award-winning author of six critically acclaimed books his ideas are disruptive challenging and life-changing and some of them will make you feel incredibly uncomfortable people don't like to talk about this stuff ninety-nine percent of self-help works never mention genes they want to promote that idea of well i can be whoever they want to be but a huge amount of who we are is who we were born as that myth of you have full control over yourself as a human being that's the problem it's not about embracing your flaws it's about accepting your flaws our lives are full of status pursue the more status that you earn the better everything else gets that was true ten thousand years ago it's true today the brain is highly attuned to where we sit in a pecking order the lower we are down in that pecking order the more unhealthy we became if you take two smokers the one higher up is less likely to have a smoking-related disease than the one lower down that's mental it matters massively how do we advance in the status game that there are kind of three general types of status games we can play first game is a without further ado i'm stephen bartlett and this is the diary of a ceo i hope nobody's listening but if you are then please keep this to yourself [Music] will first of all thank you for being here um take me right back then to your early years because i think when i was reading through your different books here throughout them you have glimpses of your own perspective and it hints back to what i read about your your early years um so take me back right back to the start you know before the age of let's say 12. okay so yeah um i was brought up in tumblr 12s in kent um middle-class family very catholic um it was quite a victorian um strict superstitious religious upbringing not the happiest upbringing i have to say why um because my parents were very strict my father was very strict especially um and they were very much in the grip of the catholic belief system which i just didn't never like always baffled me even as a kid like what ha ha how can you believe this stuff and i went to a catholic school so so and i was quite uh i was probably difficult if you were to ask them they'd say i was a difficult child um because i was pushing against that all the time you know i thought it was crazy i wasn't very good at authority and rules so it was a bad fit i would say um and i think that's what's you know one of the things that that's kind of driven my interests into adulthood my you know my my second book the heretics was looking at why do otherwise smart people believe end up leaving these crazy things because my parents are smart people but um yeah you know they believe in heaven hell satan all of that stuff i i think that's how my childhood has informed my interests as an adult trying to figure out how how that happens in your in your book selfie you you talk a lot about self-esteem and the role that plays what was your give me the context of yours how your self-esteem was shaped in those early years oh well um how it was shaped in its early years i guess it was poorly would be the answer um i think the you know because my behavior was not great the continual message i would get from teachers and parents was that you're you know you're a bad person you're going to end up in prison you're going to end up in care um uh yeah so so there was very little kind of positive feedback in my in my childhood which i think is that that causes damage that you're never going to get over i i believe do you think you never get over that damage yes because i think you know we're all born with a certain kind of personality with a certain genome and that that's not fate that doesn't define who you're going to be forever um but but it sets you on a certain course it makes you vulnerable to a certain kind of mindset um and you know i think a good childhood a good upbringing can you know correct that to a certain degree but a bad one can can set it on a sort of negative course and i'm quite a neurotic person i'm anxious i've always worried a lot so so when you take that kind of natural personality type high neuroticism and add into that a childhood which kind of reinforces that sense that the world is dangerous that people are out to get you all of that stuff that the the the reality isn't safe i i i and then you know what happens is your brain is still being formed really up until you're in your mid-20s you know that it's in your mid-20s when when they when those kind of learning processes um stop and so it's very hard and probably i would argue probably impossible to reverse 18 years of that kind of feedback once it's happened because that's those are the years in which your brain is learning how the world works and and so yeah so i i don't think it's fixable that's one of the the ongoing um conversations or debates or things that i've kind of been chewing over from doing this podcast and listening to people from all walks of life that have achieved amazing things that still have um underlying trauma or sort of self stories that are controlling their their their life and their behavior and i i spent a long time talking to people about whether you can ever truly eradicate some of these traumas they're like the puppet master that's in the back room controlling your your biases and all these things and my conclusion over the last literally weeks has been that we can diminish the power that our early traumas have over us but they're always going to be there and is that is that where you find find yourself but in terms of your belief that we can diminish the power of yeah those stories but they'll always be there absolutely that's exactly right that's what i believe exactly yeah we can definitely diminish their power and i i you know i'm 47 now and it still amazes me that you still you never stop learning and you never stop learning about yourself you never stop learning about things you get wrong and i've got to stop doing that you know it's overly simplistic to think of consciousness as this battle between reason and emotion um uh but but there is something like that going on you know like our emotionality is usually in charge of what we're thinking and what we're doing you know we respond emotionally and that voice in your head then tells a story about what you're feeling and usually it's to justify that emotion it's to say yes you were right to feel like that you were right to respond in anger and hostility at that person and then the next day you think oh maybe it wasn't you know you know so so um i think what we call what we used to call reason that reasonable voice in your head actually often isn't reasonable it's just justifying and um validating your initial emotional response which is you know sometimes right sometimes wrong so so i think what what you're doing when you're learning for me anyways is your learning actually really i mean almost a parent yourself to turn that voice in your head into a someone that isn't going to be a harsh judge or on the other extreme someone who's just going to accept and validate and defend everything every behavior you do every thought you have every mistake you met you make you're looking for that that balance all the time and you're looking to spot i think you're looking to spot those occasions on which you're making the same mistake over and over again you know have you got a harsh judge in your head absolutely yeah yeah definitely yeah i have i i you know i'm so i'm self-employed i've been a i've been a writer for you know without an employer for 20 years you you kind of i think you have to have a harsh judge to get yourself out of bed to get yourself in front of the computer to do eight hours plus work a day um so i think to it's kind of weird i think i think to achieve any anything significant you've got to there's got to be a harsh harshness to i'm just trying to think where the judge is the right right word like i've read recently that the ideal parent is kind of firm but also kind and caring and understanding and i think that's what i think that's if that's the ideal parent i think that's really that that's that's the idea of who should be inside our own heads really you have that balance um and i think you can go you can go wrong in either direction your book selfie yeah um what was the i mean i love the name it was very of the time in 2017 it was yeah um what was the inspiration behind writing this book right so the book before that was called the heretics and the heretics was as it says before it was kind of inspired by this idea of what how do smart people end up believing crazy things and so that that but was all about when we have these stubborn beliefs that kind of that that are irrational that we don't let go of so i was hanging out with holocaust deniers i was hanging out with creationists ufo believers and people like this um and then in the promotion for that i was asked again and again and again by people so what makes people change their minds you're saying that people can never change their minds and i didn't have an answer to that question i was going to have to bluff through it so i thought that's no i don't understand that so um maybe i should try and find out so i was a journalist at the time as a day job and so i started interviewing lots of people who changed their minds like in big dramatic kind of powerful ways one of those guys was this amazing psychologist called professor roy baumeister he spent his kind of early professional career in the self-esteem era of the 80s you know when and this is the era i was brought up to when everything was about self-esteem it was all about that the kind of message out there was if you want to be successful just love yourself you're amazing you're fantastic you can do anything that you want you know it's whitney houston um the greatest love of all is yourself it was it was that kind of era and i remember it from school i remember like you know teachers saying to me the problem with you will is you just have low self-esteem and they always got self-esteem a social vaccine and if you if you loved yourself it would meant that you would be more successful you'd be happier you'd have a better marriage and you know in america they thought the self-esteem was going to solve homelessness um gang culture teenage parenthood was a big moral panic of the time they thought was going to cure that and he was like well is it true is this actually true and so they looked into it and they found actually that there was no evidence that any of this was true that every study that quoted it as being true just referenced another study and you went in this breadcrumb trail of studies they were all just quoting each other and there was no actual evidence any of this is true and they just did they actually tested to see whether that self-esteem myth was true or not um and it wasn't um it wasn't true um it was it was originally based on this idea that they this this observation that um school children who did well in exams also had high self-esteem so they assumed that having high self-esteem made you good at exams but actually they had high self-esteem because they'd done good in their exams it was it was the other way around because it's obvious in retrospect but that's what you know so that that was the error they made correlation causation that old chestnut um so so he um um published this study and the initial response was just you know it was absolutely torn to pieces um he was either ignored or attacked um but slowly he was proven to be right and so when i was i i wrote a profile of baumeister and um you know he was a fascinating guy and then what i realized was that this idea had um not just changed a person but it changed the culture like the whole culture of the west britain america canada and lots of europe when i was growing up in the eighties and nineties we were just obsessed with this idea and it just was just wrong because it's completely wrong so that was the that's the heart of selfies like this this idea of you know how did selfie culture happen how did we become so self-obsessed and the self-esteem movement is was a big part of that story and it's the kind of is that it's the kind of central story of the book chapter zero yeah um the dying self was a was quite difficult to read ah okay yeah i thought it was a very um you know you explore topics like suicide and um your own sort of self-doubt and things like that and um your own suicidal ideation at times why why did you choose to start the book in that way i suppose i wanted to start the book there to show you know why this matters you know where i ended up with in the book was this idea that we live that we are in the west individualists yeah you know we see the world as made up of individual pieces and parts and we are individually responsible for our fates we're individually responsible for our success and our failure and there's lots of good things to say about that you know it's an extremely motivating way of organizing your thoughts organizing your life um you know i am responsible for me and and i will take care of me um but it's also kind of savage you know and um i it it means you know that that kind of western myth we have is that um you know that you can do anything that you want just put your mind to it you can achieve it that that kind of mindset um but but very often we fail and so if it's true that you're responsible for your success then it only logically follows that you're also responsible for your failure um and so um these individualistic ideas accelerated in the 1980s and that's because of a variety of things it was the self-esteem movement partly but the self-esteem move became successful because we because of the thatcher reagan revolution is my argument neoliberalism that we changed the economies of the west we changed the game you know before the 1980s were much more collective it was much more um you know socialist even in america the top rate of tax was 90 percent you know it's extraordinary uh um so and then the economy started going wrong in the 70s so the neoliberal revolution happened and the idea the central idea that you know reagan and thatcher pursued was we're going to increase competition wherever we can to reduce the social safety net privatise everything just everyone's got to be competitive and it changed who we are you know it when you change the rules of the game of life you change the people who play that game which is what my latest book is about really and so we became more um competitive as a people and and what's what psychologists find is a major study that found that since um the you know the onset of neoliberalism levels of perfectionism have increased massively in the uk in america and in canada uh and um perfectionism is implicated in suicidal ideation in eating disorders in steroid abuse and you know and self-harm and so on and so on and so on so so that's why i wanted to begin the book theory to show why this matters you know this isn't just a kind of abstract academic exploration of the self you know i wanted to begin with this is how it affects people if perfectionism can be quite an insidious um issue in western cultures where we're getting more individualistic what is a better approach do you think to take for what is a better message to share with society in the world about um about that um i think you know i like the idea of you know i think the idea that i kind of develop is in selfie partly it's about self-acceptance rather than self-love i think self-love um is that you know i used to be a massive fan of big brother i wouldn't be brother and there was always a thing in big brother where um somebody would behave completely obnoxiously they'd be like rude aggressive just deeply unpleasant and they would always defend themselves in the same way they go well i'm just being me that's just me and if you don't like me you know and i think that's that's the self-esteem movement talking it's like i'm my i'm gonna be my authentic self and if you can't handle that that's on you and i think that's wrong you know you know we're a social animal we've we have evolved to exist cooperatively and i think when individualism i think there's a lot to say in its defense but when it goes too far that's where it becomes it becomes that kind of screw you um mindset so i think self-acceptance is different than self-love self-acceptance is i'm flawed broken animal you know as we all are and you know i i like what we're talking about earlier on it's about being that harsh but loving parent rather than that rather than being your own defense lawyer you know being being that kind of harsh but loving parent and being accepted you know having this acceptance that you are a flawed and limited animal like you know you shouldn't raise your children to believe that they can be beyonce if they want to be beyonce because the chances are they can't she's like an extraordinarily talented and driven individual she's the one in a billion you know so uh you know so i think that's an unhealthy message to by which to raise our children and also you know talk to ourselves and it's much more about understanding our our strengths our flaws and kind of finding the right games to play to find out that little corner of the world in which we can feel um of value i think that's that's what we should be trying to do had your parents told you that you were beyonce and had those schools told you that you were beyonce would you have been happier do you think um i mean i was sometimes told that that i could succeed at school but i just wasn't applying myself and it's such a waste it's such a waste yeah um but it's so weird the school thing i i mean i have to say i think i went to a really bad school um it was a comprehensive school um you know you hear these stories about teachers that inspire you and it wasn't for this teacher i never had that teacher they were all just really bored and resentful i remember one minutes and that would be the history lesson you know and that was the school i went to it was miserable and i and i'm i always wanted to be a writer and i was always in trouble i was always this sort of problem student and i had this english teacher was quite nice called mr lanaway and i thought oh you know i'm going to write start writing short stories in my spare time and i'm going to give them to my english teacher it's just a way of getting a look and i've written this thing and so i gave him a couple and i think i gave him number three uh you know after on a third weekend thinking that that he was oh in my head he was thinking oh will's you know william has found this thing that he's actually applying himself to how amazing and he said to me you know this is all just extra work for me don't you like that so he kind of scolded me for giving him extra work to do so i stopped i stopped writing those you know short stories and i just think if i if i if i'd have actually been encouraged to be i was never encouraged to be a writer by my school or you know i i wrote a school magazine and that that caused me all kinds of trouble as well so so i never actually had any encouragement and i i do kind of think if i was actually encouraged um to be a writer i would have probably got there sooner and probably been a better writer today well on that point of beyonce though it seems to me that if someone had turned around to you and said you you are beyonce you can do anything you could be an amazing writer it seems to me that that actually might have helped yes yeah yes but but that's what i mean about identifying your strengths like i think for me writing was a strength but nobody ever and if that was identified and if somebody said to me god you know you should carry on right and literally if one person one adult said to me these short stories are you know they share real problems you should carry on writing these it would have blown my mind that i'd have definitely carried on um but i just stopped you know i just stopped er so yeah but that's what i mean i think the mistake is um somebody you know in the research for selfie this harvard psychologist brian little said it's the myth of unlimited control that myth of you can you can you know you have full control over your yourself as a human being and that means that you can do anything that's the problem you know that's the problem and but actually i think what what you should do is identify what is this person passionate about you know and what actually what they actually good at and if and if and if and if somebody saw promise in me as a journalist or a writer then that that's what they they should have encouraged me in but it was actually just a battle in um in the in the chapter the good self in that book chapter four you talk about um the different forces that are controlling our behavior and uh it made me think i've you know that i've also had this this ongoing thought about how control of of my life i over what the forces are that are actually controlling my life because we tend to believe obviously as we would from this first person view that i'm making my decisions but when i it sounds quite i don't care i'm gonna say it when i reflect on the stories i've heard from men regarding their behavior before they've ejaculated and after they've ejaculated it is pretty it's and i actually said this in like podcast number four when no one was actually listening and it was just me and under the stairs in manchester i said the change that i saw in my behavior or how i felt before and after ejaculation is extreme yeah and i watched rogan talk about this he described it as being before ejaculation at the back of the bus and you're just being swung around he said it's foggy there's papers everywhere and then and then he says post ejaculation it's like you zoom forward onto the wheel of the bus and go what was going on and you gained back control yeah and just this um it for me that was one of the clearest signs that my decision-making as is not as intentional as i thought it was yeah um and you talk about that kind of thing a little bit in that chapter do you talk about a study where um men are asked um a variety of different questions while they're masturbating can you can you share that study and also like what you learned from it about the way that we make our decisions well i haven't that was i haven't read about that study for a good five years now but i think it was something about they were asked a series of questions about um what were they our series of questions about what they would do in certain yeah it's like the sexual preferences right yeah would you would you be attracted to an animal would you be absolutely yeah yeah yeah and i think before they'd masturbated their their answers were much more extreme in the direction of yes i would have sex with an animal yes i would pressure somebody into having sex than they would after um masturbation and i think most men can can read that study and go you can relate a little bit to not not that i'm saying that you know most men would have sex with an animal obviously but but but how are how are um how our thinking is different and and and you know i i i love studies like that because i feel like it you know when we when we when we feel a different way we do almost become a different person like i'm writing in selfie about um you know when i'm trying to lose weight again and on monday morning i'm absolutely resolute it's like i'm gonna keep my calories down i'm going to exercise every day i am a machine i'm a stoic i'm athletic you know that's who i am but by friday evening i'm just like oh sorry i'm going to give it a go i need to have some chips you know and it's like it's not just that you feel a different way it's almost you've become a different person but which i mean you have a different personality you're much more loose and happy and good to be around on friday than you're on monday when you're like that but you have a different value system on monday i value this set of things i value discipline and order and structure and on friday evening i value fun and laughter and pleasure so it's so so it is that we almost you know i think pre and post ejaculation we almost become a different person monday monday morning versus friday night we become different people so i think that you know we're so fluid in in who we are depending on how we're feeling we don't want to be though no it's not how we think of ourselves we think of ourselves as a yeah a certain kind of person yeah with as a certain boxed in set of values and behaviors i think you know there's probably somewhere above 50 of people listening that can relate to that monday issue of you know on monday i am you know a greek god and i am disciplined and i am everything i'll become everything i want to be on by you know by next week um and then something happens how does i would be remiss if i didn't ask what can you tell us about how to stop or how to maintain or be consistent as our monday selves is there anything you've learned about the psychology there that might help us to be our monday selves come friday so in in selfie i write about um how important it is to change our environment rather than trying rather than change try and change ourselves and and the kind of exact the kind of story that i tell is i call it the lizard and the iceberg where if you take a lizard from the desert and pop it on an iceberg it's going to be a very unhappy lizard if you put it back in the desert it's going to be happy and thriving and wonderful and nothing has changed in the lizard it's the environment that's changed and i and i think part of being an individualist and we is that we look into it into ourselves to our behavior to um explain the causes of our behavior but actually you know so much of of um of our behavior is controlled by what's going on around us by our environment you know and the reason we feel you know friday on fridays because because it's friday and that has the cultural resonance so it's friday night yeah i think thank it's friday and i'm going on five days of work we feel different um so so i think a lot of it is about changing your environment you know there is a lot to say about you know if you take yourself to the gym you've changed your environment um if you um if you can certainly with things like weight loss i mean it's a lesson that i never seem to learn but do not have that stuff in the house guarantee that you will eat it um you know it's it's it's a drug uh and and so so i think i i think maintain your environment to maintain yourself you know i i think that's that that's one of the one of the key takeaways that i've learned how to stay alive in the age of perfectionism how does one stay alive one of the interesting things in that chapter was um you kind of debunk this idea that alcoholism for example and a lot of these things you know that i've spoken to guests about on this podcast that they've suffered with um don't necessarily stem from having a unhappy childhood i've got a friend that you know is very public about the fact that he became an alcoholic and um i i guess i believed it was because of traumatic early events i tended to believe that that was the case but you debunked that quite clearly um and and kind of assert that personality is the causal factor in in most of our predispositions yeah i i think one of the things that i've that i've learned um well certainly from research in that book was just the incredible power of personality and the incredible power of of our genes um it's really people don't like to talk about this stuff and because it it it they feel it's disempowering so whenever you read a self-help book most of them 99 of self-help books never mention genes because it's unhelpful they want to promote that idea of 100 self-control i can be whoever i want to be um but but but genes are so important and as i said it's not that they did dictate who we are or you know or um you're you're born with a kind of blueprint and that's all you're ever going to be um but you are born with a certain kind of genome you know with a certain level of likely neuroticism openness to experience extroversion um agreeableness you know how how kind of happy or kind of angry and competitive you are and so on and so you're born kind of with a certain prevailing wind and then your childhood experiences mostly um will um do the rest of that wiring up so by the time you're in in your kind of 20s you're kind of who you are like not 100 because still traumatic experiences can break you to pieces you know you know lots of things can change but you're kind of who you are as i said p you know people don't like that idea because it really goes against our individualist kind of credo of you can be beyonce if you want to be but it is nevertheless true that a huge amount of who we are is just how we were who who we were born as you know and i've got that addictive personality i was an alcoholic i haven't i'd had to give up drink when i was 26 because i'd lost control of how much i was drinking and i still struggle with kind of you know sugar now i i've swapped booze for sugar as is my problematic behavior which is much easier to manage um so so i get it and and but but yeah it's it's not it's i i think part the fact that with these storytelling animals um i think since 70s since it's probably this well even the 60s we've had this kind of therapy culture which wants to go archaeological digging in our past for the causes of our um all of our problems and you know i i think there's there is a certain amount of um truth to that stuff like i i'm sure our childhoods affect us um but but um there are we we tend to blame everything on our childhoods everything on our parents and i think alcoholism is one of those things that it's mostly genetic you know you've either got that problem with addiction or you don't could it can can it be accelerated by trauma though because you know when i when i speak to psychologists they often talk about it being a form of escapism um in many ways and other drugs and you know other self-medications being a form of like trying to escape pain or trauma definitely yeah i i think how to think about it is that it's um you could have a vulnerability to it yeah um and that's the genetic component um and if something bad happens to you then you're much more likely to kind of fall into that dress as someone else who doesn't yeah exactly yeah okay yeah on that point of storytelling you mentioned storytelling there in our um in our narrative your book in 2019 was about storytelling i having worked in marketing was very compelled to read this book for the probably you know we talked before we start recording that a lot of people will see a book about with the word storytelling on the front of it and think that they can use it from a marketing capacity or in a business sense what have you learned about how people can tell great stories in the context of business and marketing yeah well um so quite quite a lot i teach uh i teach business storytelling at section four which is a american ed tech um uh organization so so i do a a a course there on in the science of storytelling for business um and and you know we are storytelling animals we we we think in story we we um you know narrative is basically you know how we experience ourselves and and life and so as i say in that course if you're not communicating with story as a marketeer you you're not communicating you know logic and facts and data and statistics that's not the language of the brain the language of the brain is beginning middle and end a character overcoming obstacles i think a lot of the stuff we've been talking about is important um especially the idea that people think with their feelings you know it's feelings first story second the story justifies the feelings and so if you want to tell persuasive stories you need to first understand exactly who you're communicating with and you need to understand um how they feel about the world how they feel about themselves how they feel about um you know justice and uh what their values are and so that means understanding them kind of tribally what groups do they belong to who are the heroes who are their villains what motivates them what demotivates them so so before you can sort of write the story you need to figure out how they feel about the world so a bad story then would be one that was because you know i thought about this a lot and my previous business was um very successful in storytelling so my first company's social chain it's grown to be a very big business maybe a thousand employees worldwide we were um we started out as a marketing agency never had a sales team because we we focused on telling stories those stories were told on social media and on stage by me so when i would go up on stage and talk about our agency to try and win business from apple or coca-cola whoever it was um i would actually start by talking about my relationship with my mother and that would be the first sentences out of my mouth when i walked on stage if there was a thousand people or 15 000 people there it would be about my mother and through that story about my mother and my and my upbringing and my battles and all those things eventually you learn about our business and what we do and about the great work we do but that was the preface of it and that meant we never needed a sales team i've always believed that if i'd walked on stage and started with a case study yes i i think this is one of the biggest mistakes businesses make when they pitch when they when they speak on stage when they post on social media i think they have a they believe that the the listener wants big numbers and to how many views they got for their clients or yeah and it just doesn't seem to be consistent with reality no it's not i mean so what you're doing when you're going through with your mother is you're connecting emotionally so people are you know wanting they're on your side immediately and you're making them feel good you're making them feel things emotionally um the the kind of framework that i use for business storytelling is that is that is that you know essentially people's brains process reality um in the same way and that's the you know so they're the hero of their story you're not the hero standing on the stage the company that that's telling you isn't the hero they're the hero of their own story um they are you know that they've got goals they're trying to pursue we all have you know that which are the plots of our lives the audience yeah the audience the person you're selling to um and then there's a brilliant story analyst called christopher booker who wrote this amazing book called the seven basic plots and he writes about archetypal characters in storytelling that he calls light figures and so the light figure is uh the example he uses are the three ghosts in the christmas carol the charles dickens scrooge story so scrooge is the hero of that story but the three ghosts come in to show him christmas past christmas present christmas future they help him get what he needs which is to become a better more selfless more generous more loving giving person that so that they are going to they arrive in his story to kind of show him the way to help him get what he needs and so that that that's what i argue that's the appropriate position for most companies and organizations and leaders is not to be the hero because your audience feels like they're the hero you're the light figure you're there to help them get what they want so when you go straight in with his or my awards here's what this person said about me here's some statistics and stuff you're not a light figure you're presenting as the hero what people really want to know is how can you help me get what i want and and that's that's the story that you have to tell what kind of example can you give me to really make that make me understand that in a real practical sense is there a brand you've seen do this really well is there an example of a i mean i my brain went to nike for some reason yeah yeah well that's oh and nike's really interesting example so so obviously one of the things that nike has done recently is it's um done the ad campaign around colin kaepernick which is you know controversial but did them i think i think that something was like six percent like uh after that that ad campaign and that's a really good example of um an organization who is um um behaving as a light figure so that colin kaepernick campaign has nothing to do with shoes there's you know what they're not doing is going our shoes will make you run eight percent faster we've got these sprung souls we've got these amazing laces that won't trip you up or whatever you know their stats list there's not in there it's purely they're telling a story they've figured out that their client base are mostly believing cert you know this set of beliefs around the world uh and and there's those are goals you know people who you know the the target audience that they're um they're appealing to want to achieve this kind of racial social justice and that's important to them so so what nike are basically saying is you know we are light figures in this story you know we we are we we are on the side of the colin kaepernicks of the people who are kneeling you know we believe that black lives matter um and and so they're presenting as a light figure and if you think about it rationally it's kind of crazy like why would a shoe company have this political thing but it's because of the storytelling because because they're presenting as a light figure who who is engaged in the kind of you know this particular mission the world and you know in in order to kind of to to to kind of join the mission you you buy the nike shoes and and it and it worked you know it works really well i mean one of the archetypal examples um that i talk about that i love is that there was a an ad that was broadcast i think it was in the 60s by volkswagen and it was the first kind of modern ad advert the first it was the first advert that you would look at and recognize as the kind of advertising that we do today so before this volkswagen ad um you know all ads were just stats lists here's this amazing you know tire and you know this will get you naughty 60 and whatever um and then this volkswagen did this amazing ad where um it just it was black and white because it was still in the days of black and white and they had um it just showed this guy it was all snow into a big blizzard outside and this guy gets in his car he turns he's like it's like you know just before dawn turns in his ignition drives his car through the blizzard the blizzard opens these huge shed doors and then you hear this big engine start up and outdrives his snowplow and it's how does the guy who drives the snowplow get to the snowplow and it's just volkswagen and that's a really simple really effective story and it's showing volkswagen as this light figure we are helping the hero achieve what he wants and you know i don't believe that the volkswagen was particularly good at driving through blizzards i don't believe that like and they certainly weren't making any factual claim in the sense that we are better than land rover and whatever whatever whatever doing this because of this stat it was as simple as that and it revolutionized marketing it changed everything because they'd figured out that kind of light figure form of storytelling and in that are they saying that the volkswagen volkswagen enables you to be the hero exactly yeah nike are saying that the nike shoe associated with colin kaepernick enables you to be the social activist hero exactly yeah colin kaepernick was yeah exactly yeah yeah fascinating it's gonna change a few things about my uh few of my companies i think the basis of that yeah i think i think we i think in the course of business we all forget that emotion is the most important thing i'm thinking about all the newsletters that my companies have been writing i've got various companies and the newsletters they write and the videos we make and how and how sometimes we we think that facts and figures and information is what the viewer is looking for in their lives but the most compelling way to draw them in to whatever we're doing whether it's a newsletter or a tweet or whatever is by putting emotion first and really yeah what the emotion of the content is yeah yeah exactly and with that with the nike example i mean we live in since the global entry crisis we live in heightened political times and so so you know and people are always tribal and and so you know one of the big things that that the successful kind of persuaders do is is to make those tribal appeals um and you know sometimes it works with colin kaepernick like with the gillette razor campaign it didn't work because you were kind of essentially attacking your target audience um so that was you know less successful um i think there was a terrible pepsi ad with kendall jenner where where where where they were kind of basically yeah we were just making this yeah well it put a super rich uh beautiful model white woman as the uh the hero against social injustice and drinking this sugary drink is gonna help yeah you know so it's just all off yeah so so i think organizations are sensing that partly how we can be a light figure these days is by is by presenting as people who are assisting in these th these political goals have become very important to people especially young people um and some people are getting it right some people are getting it wrong there's a real science to it though isn't there yeah more we've spoken i've realized how how there is a science to it when you understand the the roles and also the audience the roles of the characters in your content or your piece and also where the it's really about where the audience sees themselves yeah yeah and how they feel represented as you probably know vodafone are one of our amazing sponsors on this podcast if you're a small business owner listening right now this tip is for you the only constant in business as you'll probably know if you run a business is change your business your team and your company culture need to be designed to embrace and welcome change when the world changes without you change resistant businesses and teams often get left behind and that's why i've partnered with vodafone business and their vhub to help small businesses access the knowledge they need to embed that philosophy into their companies a philosophy of change the v-hub has completely free resources tips insights and expert one-on-one vhub digital advisors to chat with you so you can stay at the very forefront of change search vhub by vodafone now your 2021 book the status game this is the book that when i was reading through all of my notes i have by far the most amount of notes on right because maybe it's just you know the way i'm compelled or whatever but it was really really fascinating and very felt very relevant status as a topic why why does status matter and what is status for people that don't understand the word okay so so so it matters massively and and the reason i wanted to write that book is because people just don't really talk about it very much even though our lives are full of status but people just don't talk about it very much status or status well americans say status brits tend to say status but i guess it's both yeah it's both um uh so so i i think one of the one of the one other one of the kind of reasons people kind of tend to not like this subject is that when i when i sort of make the argument that we're all motivated by status pursue that kind of thing i think i'm saying we all want to be rich we all want to be famous and that's not what i'm saying at all what i'm saying is that we all want to feel of value so we evolved as these you know tribal animals and to be successful in the tribe means two things you've got to be good at connecting with other people so so being accepted and and influencing a sense of belongingness with other people so that's belongingness that's connection that's not stated that's something else um but once we're in a group in a tribe we want to rise within it we want to feel like we are of value to other people and so back in the days when our brains are evolving in the in you know when we're living in the in the tribes um the more status that you earned uh the more and better food you'd get the safer your sleeping sites the safer your children would be the greater your access to your choice of mates so i mean as we all know surviving reproduction are the basic most fundamental um drives we have as living things and status when you rise in status your chances of survival and reproduction just go up and up and up and up so when you're in the tribes the most you know people would try and get status in the tribes um and and the more more status you got the better everything else became and so that was true ten thousand years ago it's true today that is still true today the more status that you earn the better everything else gets so it's this huge um huge component of human behavior but it's subconscious so we don't like to think about it sometimes we like to deny it even though we all love to feel of value and we are all very very sensitive to any indication that we that somebody considers us to be of lesser value you know you said at the start of that when you introduce this topic people will have kind of an allergic reaction because they think they think you mean and it goes back to what we were saying about your audience receiving that message in a bad way because of where it frames them it frames them as being kind of narcissistic and selfish and you know and those are no nobody wants to admit that they they are selfish or they are you know they're concerned with status they don't admit it it's true but no one wants to say i'll say it it's just the way that we are um um but and then you went on to say that you know people don't like to admit they want to be famous but i tend to believe that a lot of people do want to be famous and in that book you talk about children in particular when they're asked what they want to be when they're older it's quite pretty alarming right yeah i mean and that's i mean that's that's again an indicator of the rise in individualism uh that that's the the more and more kids in the west since the levant has been saying we want to be rich you want to be famous but there are all kinds of status games that we can play and i think i think the i i think the the one of the important things to understand about status games is is that the brain is so obsessed with status it it assigns kind of status points to consent to anything so for so for some people for lots of people the accrual of money that's their status game that's how they're measuring their status how much money i've got but for other people for it it can be um how simply i live you know i i i know someone who um he's a lovely guy but he considers himself to be sort of not materialistic and he's very much in the wellness space and he um you know was telling me um last year that he's you know he takes his kids to their private school but the school gates you know he's got this beaten up old car that he's had since he was a student and he's got masking tape around the [Music] the the the wing mirror and he was sort of talking oh you know all the other parents have got these big mercedes and audis and vmws but i've just got this thing and and i think he he was trying to express the fact that he just didn't care he just didn't care about his his status but for me he he did care that car was every bit as much of a status symbol for him as the you know the brand new mercedes um four-wheel drives were for the other parents it's just that he was playing a different status game in his game having a crap car is is a high status thing the same as the aristocracy in britain so you know if you're if you remember the british aristocracy you'll look down your nose at people who have a brand new japanese lexus or whatever they drive up beating up land rovers and so so it all depends what game you're playing different different games um use different things to symbolize status and and and so so that's how that game works lots of people play the fame game lots of people play the money game um but other people don't you know if you if you were if you were hanging around with gandhi in india you wouldn't be playing the the money game you you you you would have got more status for living the more simpler your life became the more status in that group you would earn it's so true i've played all those games in my life i'm still playing many of them uh i'm not here to lie so that's that's just what it is um and i think really interestingly on that as well is um one of the status games i was playing when i was a little bit well i say insecure but clearly i'm still insecure if i'm still playing status games status games now um was how much designer stuff can i buy and champagne can i buy in nightclubs i played that game between 18 and 24. yeah and then when i actually got money when i actually was successful i actually saw louis vuitton as a lower status thing so i just started wearing all black and got rid of all of my designer stuff because i now think that it's a different game yeah it's a different game yeah and so i don't now i have an allergic reaction to anything designer because to me yeah it's weird i think it's low standard i think in my head it's true and in the book i write about this this hilarious study where they figured out because in the in the luxury goods game the bigger the logo the lower the status yes and they figured out that i forget the exact measurements but a certain amount of um logo space um you know like half an inch um smaller meant you know 500 more on the on the price and the most expensive designer stuff has a logo on the inside it does no logo on the outside and so as a and and what that kind of speaks to is that again the whole world isn't one status game there are kind of almost infinite status games and people we're not particularly we're not that interested in what people outside like games think think of us it's much more about what people are playing the games with us think of us and so you know in in my wife is the former editor of elle magazine so it's uh you know so you know that fashion luxury world um you know people signal to each other i will see a handbag and it will just be invisible to me what that handbag means what the meaning of that handbag is but the person the owner of that handbag won't get the first why i think about their handbag they're interested in what's what what you know that woman over there who knows about their handbag nose and they'll know by the quality of the stitching by a tiny little detail on the corner of that bag that that is a really good bag and that's what matters because that's that's the game they're playing a game with that person they're not playing the game with me so i don't care what i think it's so you know i have this very unproven um thought that just came to mind when you're saying about the size of the logo that when you're at the very when it comes to luxury goods at the very bottom of the status ladder you want the biggest logo possible yes you want it all over the garment and if you think about certain like you know people you know where they are in that status thing they will have they will wear a track suit of that logo and then as you rise financially or in status the logos you say gets smaller and then it disappears so if you look at billionaires they're not wearing jeff bezos is not wearing a louis vuitton track suit they have the yacht they're playing that game yeah yeah how many feet is the yacht but yeah super interesting makes me wonder do we actually really care about these things do we actually really um we i i spend we spend our lives telling ourselves that we want that birkin bag we we really genuinely love the lamborghini but do we do we actually like the lamborghini or we do we just just like what it's signaling about us well i i don't want to over i don't want to over um kind of i almost over promised the story like like i think there's a danger where you can say well a lamborghini is 100 status there's nothing else i think that's that that's not quite fair in lamborghini they're amazing machines and i've never driven a lamborghini but i'm sure it's a fantastic experience you know i i you know i've driven sports cars a couple of times and it's been amazing so it's not just status like it is it's incredible to have like a camera that's like amazing photographs so so you are you are getting something extra for your money but it's but but but mostly i think what you're getting is is status that that's really mostly what you're getting and it's worth it i mean i think i i i don't want to forget that trap of being condescending to status it is a fundamental human need that we feel of value and you know if we're playing a high level status game with lots of lamborghini owners it's really really hard to feel a value in that group so you've got to work really hard um so that's why a brand new lamborghini for somebody playing that game will feel as good as a you know as a dirt bike to somebody playing a you know a game over there like one might cost multiples more than the other but it will feel just as good because they're worried about they're only really concerned about what the other people in their their game of thinking so so so yeah we do care and and it's it's a good thing because it's that you know the book does talk a lot about the negatives of status pursuits but it also talks about the positives of status pursuit i mean civilization technology that that's what you get um when people want to pursue stages when somebody wants to become the best technologist the best vaccine designer the best um um you know the best charity we want to save the most lives that's humans at their best and that's also status pursuit but it's good it's positive what is the toxic downside of being addicted to status though and and my sub question to that is that is insecurity and sort of a lack of self-worth a predictor of being addicted to status games being human is a predictor of being addicted to games we're all addicted to status games and do you not think people that would believe in that didn't that were that were lo that were low status in childhood in some contexts yeah are those that then seek status most as adults um maybe but again again i do think that personality comes a lot into play um like anything some people are more interested in the status than other people like elon musk is obviously incredibly interested in his own relative status and that's a big driver for him um uh jeff bezos you know beyonce you know these people um are are very highly attuned to the status game and that's what pushes them pushes and pushes them to work harder than i will ever work um so i don't i don't necessarily think it's about um low self-worth it might it's probably to do with genetic things like extroversion agreeableness which is a personality um component if you're low in agreeableness you're competitive it's that kind of type a personality so so so there's definitely a genetic component to it uh definitely but there's also you know class comes into it uh people on the lower socioeconomic groups have much less access to status games so so you know i think that's why you know if you're a working if you if you're a poor guy raising a housing estate in stockwell and you're only the only available status games to you are tesco's bakery and this gang over here i know what i'm joining you know it's changed the way that i see some of those issues that you know we are we are programmed to we are programmed to crave connection and status and we will find connection and status wherever we can and so i and i i think that explains you know when people are joining gangs it's not because they're naughty it's not because they're bad people it's because they're just doing what they're designed to do but they're in an environment where there aren't many status games to play there's just not a lot of options it's interesting because when i i think think of some of my friends that i that i believe in my own you know ill-informed observation are addicted to status the ones that are really addicted to status the ones that are really pursuing it are actually pursuing at the cost of connection and what i mean by that is my my richest most successful friend that i have that lives in a massive mansion in the middle of nowhere because that's the place that he could buy the biggest house and has all the sports cars um is is also the loneliest yeah that's that's a really good observation i mean status inc and connection they're separate things so we we crave by you know nature both of them we people are tend to be happier when they're more connected but status is a separate thing and i think that's right i think that's absolutely correct some people's that people's dials are set i i consider myself somebody who is relatively high in need for status which is why i ended up writing books for a living but i'm really learning to find a connection i don't really have much of a social life i don't really want one you know i'm not bothered particularly um so you know everybody's dials are set in different ways some people have relatively low need for status and their relatively high need for connection and they're surrounded by friends and they're probably happier than i am i'm sure they're happier than i am is there instances where we can be too consumed with status and that can cause us to have um adverse personal consequences um yeah i suppose okay so in the book i write that there are kind of three general types of status games that we can play first game is the dominance game and so the dominance game we share with animals we've been playing dominance for millions of years and they are what they sound like they are they're about aggression but also the threat of aggression um bullying you know that kind of thing whenever we force somebody else to attend to us in status that's dominance um there's success games which is i think the best of human nature um competence so when you when you're thinking about how do we become a valued member of our tribe um back in the days when our brains were evolving we could be the best honey finder the best storyteller the best hunter best finder of tubers so that's how you're a value to your tribe competence for being good at something but there's also virtue um um you know we we can play virtue games and so in the tribe that means that you know the rules of the tribe you enforce the rules of the tribe you know the rituals you believe in the spiritual stories um so virtue isn't just about being selfless and kind and loving to the your tribal members it's also about being an enforcer and i think you know there's no such thing as a pure game that's the other thing to kind of point out like like you can see um a boxing match as a dominance game it's pretty clearly a dominance game but it's also got a virtue element to it there's some rules in boxing you can't just go and kick them in the groin you know like there has to be some virtue in there too so you call that dominance virtue game and i think that i think the worst games i think the games that are most destructive are what i call virtue dominance games so a virtually dominance game is one in which i i'm raising status by enforcing rule but by following rules and knowing the moral rules the dominance um uh component is i'm going to force you to do it so so you know that's what you see on social media a lot those cancer culture mobs people attacking each other for believing the wrong things that's a virtue dominance game um at their very worst a virtually dominant game you know in the book i write about the rise of the nazis i write about the find the final chapter which kind of brings the whole thing together is the story of the rise of the communists and the soviet union uh from the perspective of status and and you know that that's also a virtue dominance game they're not interested in competence in in success they're interested in you're going to believe this and if you don't we're going to punish you yeah that's a lot of that going on at the moment there's a lot of that going on at the moment and i think a lot of it is because um you know trying to be kind of open-hearted about it i wrote about this in selfie and i wrote in in the status game is that since the financial crisis life has got harder especially for young people success get you know like it's hard to get on the property ladder uh people are leaving university with student debt there's massive underemployment for graduates we've got what they call elite overproduction we're producing too many smart educated people for the roles to fit in it's it you know we're now entering a new recession apparently so so life is much harder for millennials and gen zeds and it was for boomers and gen x's so success games are harder to play so what you i think what you're seeing is online people people get status wherever they can so they they start playing virtue games instead one of the alarming things you talk about in this book is that um status did i say that right yeah yeah that's the english way i need to because i'm not american and that will harm my status attack me in the comments section um this idea that status games actually have an impact on our health and mortality that we will die younger if we have lower status what evidence have you have you got have you got or found to support this idea well there's lots of evidence um there's a big a lot of it comes from this guy called dr michael marmar who's just did this incredible set of work which he calls the whitehall studies so obviously whitehall is the bureaucracy that kind of runs that kind of takes the order you know the civil service that kind of works with the government so it's an enormous organization highly stratified and so marmot um looked at um kind of health outcomes for people on different levels of that kind of hierarchy that status game and found that the the the the the lower you went down that status game the worst health outcomes became so the obvious thing is oh that's just because if you're being paid less you maybe can't afford the personal trainer you know you're eating worse but it wasn't that that wasn't that case at all literally one rung down below at the very top so still a very very wealthy successful high status people had worse health outcomes than the person at the very top so so it really did seem like um the brain is highly attuned to where we sit in a pecking order and the lower the lower we are down in that pecking order the more unhealthy we became another set of scientists looked at this in the in a laboratory so they took a bunch of monkeys um uh uh who um obviously like us very hierarchical without a status games and um they deliberately felt it's a terrible experiment it's very it's pretty awful but it deliberately fed them a terrible diet of like fast food like chocolate and crisps so they so they ended up having a high level of athletic plaque which is you know so they they were getting clogged up basically and vulnerable to heart problems and so on and they found that it was the same that the lower you went down the monkey pecking order the more likely the monkeys were to die of these heart related diseases because of their bad diets than the ones at the top and then importantly they um conspired to change the hierarchy of the group i don't know how they did it but they changed them but they took out the top monkey they changed the hierarchy of the group and um they found that the health outcomes changed in lockstep with a change in hierarchy so what if a monkey went up they became less likely to die and so so then you might ask what this is crazy like why is this and so so the closest answer that the scientists have come there's a whole field called social genomics it's a new field and social genomics is all about how does our social world affect the function of our genes so you know we're social animals our brains are constantly monitoring how we're doing in the world what are our levels of connection what are our levels of status we have this status detection system that's constantly monitoring our level of status and so so the idea is uh that uh when the brain registers that we are you know dropping in status we're not too high in status it prepares ourselves it changes the way our our genes work and our and the actions of ourselves change in such a way um that it kind of prepares us for kind of trouble um so inflammation goes up antiviral response goes down and so the body changes in such a way that we become more ill there's a really um a narrative in there which some might deduce from hearing all of that which is that your level of success relates to your health and this i'm going to say in the really gruesome way which is the more successful you are um the longer you you'll live obviously there's loads of factors yeah yeah if you're eating burgers and smoking and exactly doing classy drugs that's going to probably be a stronger sort of determinant in your outcomes but but generally speaking if two people are eating the exact same thing if they're living the exact same lifestyle in terms of what they're consuming and the way that they're living and the only variable is their level of success in a status game yeah then they will be they're less likely to die if they're higher up yeah that's true yeah quite a bit as you said there's so many confounds i mean life is much more complicated than that there's there's always other you know it is true that people you know smoke and don't smoke and and so on but but but you know what marmite finds is that is that if you take two smokers the one higher up is less likely to die of smoking-related disease than the than the one lower down in the status in the status game yeah whatever yeah interesting yeah and one of the other things that i wrote down reading that book was workers at the bottom of the office hierarchy have at ages 40 to 64. four times the risk of death of their i guess administrators means managers yeah at the top of the hierarchy yeah that's from the white hole studies yeah that's part of what doctor's mental yeah it's crazy so they're really significant it's not marginal they're you know when you when you it will be marginal from one layer to the next when you actually look at the whole game it's very significant the the difference is the health outcomes from the top and bottom it's absolutely mental i've never really considered that idea before that status is playing such a significant role in my biological situation um the same is true for connection so when we're lonely the same thing happens the lonelier we are when we lack status the same thing we know we we have that our uh information goes up antiviral response goes down which is bad for us in the long term and there's the same with uh the social genomics people say it's the same with loneliness which is why loneliness is bad for our health too the other thing that i found particularly interesting was that um when we lose our status the consequences of that can be pretty morbid yeah and that suicide is often the result of people losing status and the speed in which they lose their status yeah yeah so so this is why i never believe the jeffrey epstein conspiracy theories i think he did kill himself because he's just at this huge um drop in status it just makes him incredibly vulnerable to suicidal thought and ideation so yes it's not just drops in status it's especially sudden drops in status makes us very vulnerable um and also i found it was interesting the research says it's it's also being left behind so if we if we stay still and everybody else everybody around us accelerates that that's that also makes us vulnerable to uh potentially you know anxiety depression and potentially suicidal ideation that in particular is quite um an alarming thought that if you're in a group of five friends best friends and four of the best friends do really really well professionally in their careers whatever just because of the context in which you you're existing you might become depressed because your forefronts did well and this in some respects might explain jealousy of course it does yeah i mean i mean you know we we we've evolved to um want to feel of value but unfortunately being of value is kind of relative like if everybody is equally valued then nobody's valued 200 million we're all in the same level so you it's that i i think that's what it can become quite damaging yeah and that's where life can become quite exhausting especially in this kind of highly um competitive neoliberal world that we live in where everybody's pushing pushing pushing to succeed pushing to succeed you know it's true you know i hate you we hate it when our friends become successful parts of us are always going to because it kind of devalues what you know what we have you know it's just um an unfortunate byproduct of the of the status game you talk about how we look up to people who are like us yeah but we also seem to be more jealous of people that are like us yeah because they because they are the the clearest evidence of our own inadequacy yeah it's that that was a really sort of um um kind of naughty paradox for me to get my head around when i was writing the book and the closest solution i could come to it was so when you look at um how human social groups work um there's a really amazing research in america called joseph henrich who studies this stuff and has written about a couple of books about this and and he talks about how how we learn and so so in those again those groups in which we evolve which we've sort of looked to to figure out why we are like we are what you'll find is that is is the is that when you were growing up you know young people look they identify high status people from which to learn and those high status people um are going to be like them in some way they're probably going to be the same gender and they're going to have the same kind of interests and you know that kind of thing and so so this mechanism switches on which is copy flatter conform so you start copying their behavior because the brain goes well this person's high status i want to become high status um so say if i want to become high stages because i got to do everything they're doing if i do everything that they're doing oh you know it'll work so it switches ons and then we've got the flatter process which is i need access to this person i want to be around this person to be able to learn everything that they're doing and you do that with you know flattery is a good way of doing that it's like um you know you're amazing i love this what a great book what a great podcast you're amazing businesses and then you know so so we'll let people in who treat us that way and conform you you do what you do what you do what you're told you you behave and and so and so you know you can you can you can think about that when you think about celebrities you know like i i i remember when i was seven or eight years old i was obsessed with this guy called this guy nick kershaw and i remember seeing him on tv am and he was crossing his legs in a certain way with his ankle on his knee and his legs sticking out and i just found myself sitting at school in the same way as nick kershaw you know so so like that my copper you know my copy flatter conform mechanism is switched on so i i think that's i i think that's how kind of fame works i i think it's that we we we see people who feel like a piece of us but a highly successful piece of us like that person's like me but amazing and so so these very ancient evolved mechanisms switch on even though we're pretty never going to meet that person they just switch on and we become and so you know you'll notice that um people read the same books as their idols they dress the same way as their idols they might even you know i find i mean i'm embarrassed about it but i think it's probably very common when when i've watched a stand-up comedy special and i've loved it i'll find myself talking like that comic the next day like using their inflections a bit um it's just kind of weird you know or laughing like them you know so so generally speaking we're quite envious creatures we don't like high status people and but there's a very narrow class of people that we identify with and those are the people that feel like super successful versions of us like we we relate to them we identify with them and and that's when that very evolved ancient mechanism switched on which i call in the book copy flatter conform yeah it's so interesting much what you've described as well as explains influence marketing and why it's so effective why why you know if you look up to someone they can sell you anything absolutely yeah that's what the whole industry is based on um the other the other point that you talk about in the book around the role that status is playing which really alarmed me and made me ponder quite a lot was about how our pursuit for status is more important than our pursuit for money when we've kind of addressed the money topic and how you know many employees would would rather accept a higher status job than a pay rise yeah a different job title yeah that's that's pretty alarming yeah it's it well it is but it's not that surprising when you think about the evolution of the brain we haven't evolved to crave money because money hasn't been around long enough we've evolved to create status and money is just one way that we can measure status but there are loads of other ways we can measure status so it doesn't you know it doesn't have to be money-based you know so and as you said though that was a quite a major study i think it was 15 000 people in the uk that they surveyed and found that most would accept a diff a higher status job title over a modest pay rise yeah so instead of you know i've got jack sat over there he's the producer director of this podcast so jack what's your job title right now um director slash producer okay so if i change jack's job title to ceo of the podcast yeah versus giving him one thousand pound pay rise he'd probably take the ceo of the podcast yeah yeah yeah but he's also smart thinking because because you know when we're judging other people's status it isn't just how much money they have in fact the money's often invisible the the the title says a lot so if you were to you know make jax you know he's my podcast ceo he's more likely than to go on and get a better job somewhere else higher status more money because of that bump in status so it's actually the instinct is correct it's a smarter move to take the title than the grand so i could reduce his salary by half no yeah i think that's something i think we're so sensitive to um reductions in status that is there we'll never fly that's interesting um you talk about the cues as well within status games that we we kind of look for what are those four cues yeah this is this is again joseph hendricks's work where he looks at um um you know how do we identify the people that we want to copy flatter conform um so there are various cues um one of them is um uh with they think on success cues so so in um the hunter-gatherer tribe it might be a hunter has a big necklace of teeth one tooth from every creature that he's killed um you know so so that's why we have jewelry these days because it's it's a success cue and it's amazing when you read about the detail because the you know the brain is some neuroscientist called it has his status detection system so we are constantly all of the time uh monitoring our environment for status queues and you know playing that game and and so so we're constantly monitoring other people's body language um we we can measure someone's relative status versus uh you know submissive versus dominant in 43 milliseconds that's how quick when we see somebody we we measure how dominant or submissive they are in in terms of status so that's how quick it is so so so we're looking at things like um successful interruptions in conversation the more successful interruptions you make the higher status you are like we've all been in situations maybe you not for a while where you're trying to get a word in edgewise and everyone's just everyone's just like maybe in a family situation and you just think oh it you know i have here smorgan on the podcast so i can get a word of hedge rates with him but that's but that's that's actually a perfectly valid point he sees himself as higher status than you yeah and so he and so and so both of your games subconsciously were playing a status game and and so so we are um we so that's another way we we're also measuring another cue is how other people are attending to that person so if we notice lots of people are attending to a person we will automatically assume they're worth attending to and so what's interesting um joseph henry writes is that is that these effects were designed to work in small groups of people because that's how we we evolved in very small tribes they weren't evolved to um operate in in a global environment of modern media in the internet so you get these feedback leaps where lots of people are looking at one person so more and more people start looking at that person then they get reported in the press and then more people start looking at them and they call it the paris hilton effect because i think when they figured out what was going on paris hilton was the big why she famous person but you might as well just call it the kardashian effect or whoever the latest person is that every that happens to be really famous and then no one can quite work out why it's because it's a feedback loop once you lots of people start looking at that one person everyone just piles in and because their brains are receiving they must be high status they must be worth attending to if everyone's attending to them people attend to them and then you know you've also talked about how their their health outcomes would be better potentially as well so should success queues go up their success queues go up you know it sounds like a wonderful life to live so should we all start pursuing status well no we uh well we i again i say we we already are but but i think you know another way that all this research has made me understand the world a lot better is that when we look at very high status people really rich wealthy successful people half our brain is just jealous it goes out lucky them and we imagine have this brilliant life and they're so happy and everything's wonderful but with the other half of our brains we know that's not true because when you meet very rich and successful people they're often not happy [Laughter] you're right yeah exactly there's suicide there's alcoholism there's workaholism you know they're like they're not happy the marriages don't last so it it it's made sense of that to me it and that's tha it's actually quite a nice understanding that it the the there isn't this this hierarchy of happiness where the richer you are the happier you are because we're all playing individual status games so you know those people playing high-level status games the millionaires the billionaires the elon musks they're competing with the people immediately around them they're competing like elon musk is competing with jeff bezos and tim cook so they're no happier than the people at school who are competing to be the best well i say no happier that's the general i mean i don't know but but but but you know the higher you go the harder that game becomes so so so you know that's taken away a lot of that oh wish i was this i wish i was that yes i'd love a yacht you know but still you know i'm not naive anymore to how how difficult and punishing that life can be at the very top because you're not competing with me anymore or the people down there or you know or or even above me you're competing with people they're competing with the people who they're playing against and they're all highly successful highly motivated um uh incredible individuals it's become really interesting this whole um space race yeah richard branson jeff bezos elon musk exactly you go really you all really care about exactly exactly but the other thing to say about that is and this is again a half change i mean i'm a lefty i've always been a lefty but this book has really opened my mind to the idea that actually we do benefit from these people not just in the obvious ways they they hire a lot of people they give you know people get meaning and purpose from their jobs they people get to live a life and pay their mortgage from their jobs they pay taxes that keeps the you know that keeps the countries running so they're they're they're doing all that but also with the space race they're competing because they're playing a status game that's obvious but but science and technology benefits from that too i mean i mean i don't you know that there will no doubt be a number of innovations that that are hugely useful to humanity that come as a result of this um you know this space race or races like it amongst these highly motivated top level players chapter 29 of this book you you kind of you talk about how we can advance in the status game status game factor again and the seven rules of the status game um how how do we advance in the status game and what do you mean by advance do you mean win no because you can't win i mean that's the thing i think the brains the brain has this story that we live by where where and stories can take happy endings and happy ending is if i achieve this then i'm going to be happy and again it's weird because we know that's not true when we've lived a bit of life because you know but we still kind of believe it if i get this if this next book sells 100 000 then i'll be happy and it's like i know that's not true but um so so so you you don't ever win it that's an illusion that's the storytelling brain you know just giving you a bit of a lie to keep you motivated i i think there are there are various ways that you can succeed in the status game um you know some kind of are quite practical i think i think one of the most practical is that is this amazing revelation that status is more valuable than money to most people and it's free like we have status to give and you can save money as i've just shown you you can get call him a ceo and you can go pay him half it's unbelievable i wish i'd known this earlier but we can but we know but but we so we have loads of opportunities in our lives to um to give status to to to our employees to the people around us and we often don't and you know and so so i think that and and that feeds back in a kind of real politicky kind of slightly cynical way is if we are generous with status people are going to want to be around us and they're going to want to work with us and and and and some of that status will wash back so so i think you know don't treat status as if it's a limited resource in the business context i think there's a really it's not in that final section but one of the other sort of light bulb moments for me in the business context was this difference between um uh competition and rivalry so when you first think about competition and rivalry in business you think that's the same thing but it's not so competition is bad um and and rivalry is good so so when i'm talking about competition i'm talking about a corporate structure like enron so that's the example i used in the book so enron famously had their rank and yank system where the top i think it was 15 got promoted i think they were judged that justin at least twice a year everybody in the company got judged um the top 50 got promoted the bottom got fired and the middle were just terrified so that's competition so so competition is is a sense of all against all you you go into work and it's a war and and you've got to grab and you know and i think that that's when you end up with extremely toxic and ultimately potentially corrupt corporate cultures because status is very hard to come by um and um so that's what you want to avoid and and you know it's thought that like a very moderate amount of competition is quite good to motivate people but it very quickly goes wrong um the alternative to that is rivalry now rivalry is is healthy and a massive motivator and rather than being all against all rivalry is one against one so that's one individual against one individual or one group one team against another team or one organization against another organization and rivalry is characterized by um having this status competition that's characterized by lots of near misses and skirmishes so you can think about apple and microsoft had a period where where there were great rivals and and that rivalry kind of pushed them on and in the book i tell the story um of the true origin story of the iphone which is quite amazing and it begins when steve jobs to draw his wife was friends with somebody from microsoft and she would have regular parties barbecues and so this microsoft executive this unnamed microsoft would come to the barbecue and um be bragging to steve jobs and and one day he was bragging to steve jobs saying um we've solved computing you know it's over for you guys we've figured it out we've got these tablets with these styluses they're going to change everything and then um the next day the monday steve jobs comes into work furious because his rival microsoft is is dragging their faces in saying we've solved computing and he says let's say let's show these pricks how it's really done it's not done with stars it's done with fingers that's how it's done and that became the ipad which well that became the iphone well first it was the ipad but they released the iphone and then it re-emerges the ipad and as um scott falstal who was the guy that told that story said it was very bad for microsoft that steve jobs ever met that guy but that's the true origin story of the iphone this device that's changed the world is status and rivalry this guy from microsoft rubbing steve jobs facing it at a barbecue so that's healthy that's good well not good for microsoft but that's that's what you want to be um in a corporate sense in an organizational sense you want to be um you want to be encouraging rivalry and not competition interesting i've always tried to make sense of my um my love of rivalry and i've always i've always wondered if it was a toxic uh flaw in me or because it seems to be such an unbelievable motivator i'm so i'm so i've always said competitive but now i'm hesitant to say that word but i'm always looking for a rival yeah even you know i have 10 friends we're in a fitness competition and um every month we hand out oh these fake awards there's gold silver and bronze yeah and four days out i won gold last month and then four days out from this month my friend good friend of mine he's managing director of one of my companies olivia onsherv he starts talking to me and i was so happy he did because i realized that in those last four days of the month i was gonna do i was gonna work out three hours four hours a day to beat him and it was and it's almost i reflected on what i saw in michael jordan's documentary where michael jordan would it would seem look for rivalries he would so much so that he would make them up and when they went and asked the other person if it happened they'd go now that didn't happen but michael jordan had created a rivalry in his head to motivate himself there's actually a clip on youtube called it became personal with for me which is just a compilation of michael jordan repeatedly saying a story that might might not have or might have happened and then saying it became that's when it became personal with me and then it shows him slam dunking on that person or winning another title or whatever this constant search for rivalry is as a motivator that's fascinating that's exactly right yeah that's that's fascinating and and so that that that description you say if somebody who's highly deserved constantly looking for rivalries i think that's that that's correct and i i also think it's it it's a mistake to think is it healthy or like is it toxic is it a good thing or a bad thing i think i think one of the things i try not to do my books is to categorize what's good and what's bad it just does because because in real life reality it's usually a trade-off most things are trade-offs and so yes in lots of sense if you're playing your success games um it will be it's a good thing it's a massive motivator it was for steve jobs it was for michael jordan it sounds like it is for you but that doesn't mean it's a hundred percent good thing if you start losing that's going to become a source of a lot of misery for you so i think we often make mistakes when we try to figure out whether something's good or bad because i think the reality is that most things are trade-offs you're completely right it is a trade-off and go working out for three four hours a day was not a good idea yeah it was a significant cost to that with my my relationship with my sleep with you know with my productivity so it is a trade-off and i guess it all depends what your objective yeah your objective ultimately is you've written um a number of books now many many books more books than i think i'll ever write in my life because um i i think i struggle to to to write books and you know you find yourself in a place in life now where you're 47 47. it was difficult to find find your age online i had to go back to an article i think where you said you were 38 and do the math so i wasn't sure if you're already saying but um what else are you are you in search of in your life personally what else if i i've asked this question in maybe the last i don't know 10 episodes to my guests but if if if your overall happiness was a um a recipe consisting of a set of ingredients what are you looking for personally now in your life to fulfill that happiness recipe that's a very good question so i i think that one other thing one of the things i've done recently is i've um i've not started yet but i've i i've i it's going to be happening this month is i'm just going to start volunteering to a charity because i feel like as we've already spoken about one of the things i don't have is much connection like i've got a great marriage but you're outside the marriage i i i don't really see people that much and i feel like because i don't have children i don't actually do anything for anyone else so it's going to i felt like i was becoming quite a selfish life everything was just about either my part of my dogs so i i'm obsessed with i don't do anything for anything else so i i figure that's that that's a bit of a hole in my life so that's why i'm going to start volunteering um um if i've got to be interviewed by this charity but assuming that goes well so i think i i think that's a whole and and i do um i i do want to sort out the connection side of things like i've started having semi-regular meetups with some old school friends recently which has just been an absolute joy to to see these people after you know so long and i kind of i kind of in my head start telling the story it was me that had failed on my exams and was a total disaster but it was amazing to see on there with all these lots of that's a lawyer and there's also successful people we all failed our exams it was just a really bad school but we all kind of succeeded um regardless of that um so so that's been a that's that that's been really fun and i've had to kind of um yeah so so i think it's i think it's moving the dart on connection that that's what i'm missing we have to become more and more intentional about that connection i think especially i feel like men probably more so definitely yeah you know and it's one of the things i've said to my five friends is i've said to them you know as we get older when it's a birthday or when there's a wedding make sure we all go because it's going to become increasingly this there's gonna become increasingly more excuses as to as to why we shouldn't go or we can't go we live further apart we have families yeah and you really i feel like as a man you really have to fight for that connection as you age and so yeah i mean i i kind of i kind of really do believe that there are basic biological differences between the genders on average you have to say generally speaking it was huge overlaps of course we're more like than we are different but i think on the average i think you know men and women are you know there are differences and i i do think that one of them is how we manifest socially i think you know um women are much better instinctively at the group yeah you know whether that's um politically or um uh in a friendship context they're just they're just there just seems to be men just seem to have an instinct for going it alone yeah and women seem to have an instinct for the group together going it together that's a lovely way of putting it yeah and um and and and i think that you're right i think men especially have to fight against that i think that's why the suicides are so much worse for for men and and i and as the suicide expert i spoke to herself he said the solution isn't that men should be you know should be more like women um because that's you can't change biology but but but i think you're right i think especially with the social connection thing we have to push ourselves a bit harder and i always notice with the social stuff it just seems to always happen where when you've got a social appointment coming up you think oh what did i say yes to that for but then ask a hundred percent of the time we think i don't want to go but then when you go you go i had a great time this is amazing i should do this more often and that's also 100 of the time it's so weird that um we we've seen so like men especially seem to be so bad at predicting how much we're going to enjoy a social occasion on that point with a suicide expert you know because much of the narrative i do here regarding male suicide is that we we just need to talk more and we're often with that argument often comes the the sub point that if you look at how women are open and communicate with their social circle with their yeah you know their friends and they they say i'm feeling this i'm going through this blah blah blah blah men don't do that so men need to do more of that yeah what did you learn from your conversations with that suicide expert well his view and mine too um is that i don't think i i i like sure talking helps but but but but just saying to men you should be more like women is not that helpful and actually what we need to do is figure out what are men like and um and um start trying to develop solutions that are specifically designed for men i just think saying to men that you should learn to cry i haven't cried for years you know it's like it's it's just not um it's not fair on men it's not smart there needs to be more work done in how can we actually help men in a male friendly way you know um i i i i think that's i i think that's um the way to go what are men like what are men like because you know you said we have to figure out what men are like yeah cater to their unmet needs i'm guessing in a in a in a way that kind of they can relate to what is that well again like you've got to be very careful but but by by not generalizing yeah there's a huge variety in what men are like you know you know but but but just to sort of underline the fact we're talking sort of generally speaking here my sense is that as as i said before women are much better in your great words at going together but whereas men tend to be mine but pretend to be more by instinct going alone and and like everything that's a trade-off um and and the negatives are um uh that we are you know we are less good at talking to other people and and sharing our kind of burdens i think that i think i've got no scientific evidence to back this up but my my impression is that that that male identity um is focused more around success personal success so i think i think that's why you see lots of male suicide in middle age because in middle age men and siblings in their bodies they their careers might grow into a whole their um relationships with their children might start going wrong they might get divorced and divorce you know you know uh yeah it's not good so so i i i think that that's where men um particularly might get into trouble when when men feel like i'm not a success i'm not looking after my family i'm failing in my job it's that sense of being a failure um i yeah i think i think that's very very hard for men the suicidal ideation you describe in selfie was that linked to those reasons yeah i think i think it's connection and status for me i mean the the last time it happened really badly was when i moved back from i lived in australia for four years and did quite well in australia as a freelance journalist but came back with nothing no job because i was a freelancer and so yeah and then for a while i just thought i was gonna have to start doing day shifts you know uh in magazines like it was bad i just felt like i'd everything had gone wrong and so that i think that was very much connected to um uh status i mean i'm very bad because in the in the book i recommend um playing lots of games playing multiple games i mean the science is pretty clear that um the more status gains people play in their life the more sources of status they have the more groups they belong to the more stable their personality the happier they tend to be and as i said earlier on i just i tend to do writing that's kind of what i do that's partly the selfish reasons for the volunteering i i want to have another source of status to protect myself against the inevitable getting older thing when we realize that status games are like a comparative thing so um you know being a journalist if there's a journalist that's the editor and is doing amazingly well then and you're underneath and then there's somebody at the very bottom of the the ladder and the person at the bottom of the ladder is going to be lower status just by measure of comparison so does that mean that in some regard in the society we live in that is based on status there will always be someone at the bottom that is feeling that way because just by a measure of comparison there's going to be someone else who is making them feel inadequate or like low status yeah there's always going to be a hierarchy you can't remove the hierarchy from the human it's how we process reality i mean when you go into any sort of situation if you've me if you if you're introduced to five strangers you know this you know like you have a conversation within minutes you'll start getting a sense of who's up there who's down there and it'll be body language it'll be who's got the jobs who's got the clothes you know your brain's just calculating you can't stop it it's gonna happen and and and you can't stop it because everybody else is doing it to you too you know so you know that that's something that other people give to us as well is that is our sense of status we sense it from other people um so so so so there will always be people um you know at the bottom in inverted commas but there are a few things to say that sounds grim but there are a few things to say about that the first thing is that um again we all play individual little games so so it isn't as though the cleaner in the office feels like they're competing with michelle obama because if they did they would just walk they'd just throw himself out the window that's not how life works that cleaner is comparing themselves to the other people in their life people they work with their families their cousins they you know so they're not feeling horrific because they're not the king of thailand so that's that's not how it's working it's not life isn't that brutal two we have amazing imaginations and you know we're very good at buffing ourselves up and finding ways of of c you know seeing more of value and i think in in a healthy organization as i say in the book you can go to a meeting as the lowest status member of the organization in that formal status game make a fantastic contribution and leave feeling like the king of the world like the best person in the room and that and if that's a healthy organization that's how you'll be made to feel too you'll be like oh it's brilliant that's amazing so so so even within those kind of formal games that we play in life we can still have a encounter an experience in which we actually feel hugely of value um it's it's so there's also that to say so and there's also you know life is a never-ending game as long as we're not suffering from depression if we're a mentally healthy person we're a little bit optimistic we're backing ourselves a bit you know that's that's what people are like you know i'm i feel like i'm going to i have the capacity to achieve x y and z you know so so so yes um there will always be people at the bottom but but a they're probably not going to stay there for very long because the game's so fluid and b that that doesn't mean that they're condemned to a life of constant misery and torture and and as you said earlier they can you know they might also play for a sunday league team and be top of the league and yeah captain of that team or they could be religious i mean their religion is a status game and and that's a virtue game as of you know a a and it's often a healthy um virtue game you know in a religious game i've got to follow the ten commandments and to go to the church and do whatever i've got to do and then i become a high status christian or whatever and then and that's you know that's a big journey i've gotten i used to be very angry and hostile about religion because of my background but but now i see that religion although it's not for me it's hugely valuable to people um because it gives them a status game to play and meaning and purpose and exactly i was the same i was religious up until i was uh 18 very religious household and i rejected it quite passionately for many years until i stopped caring about it so i'm just like do what you like exactly so which is a funny arc we kind of go through where yeah the aggression against it and then the acceptance of it um we have a closing tradition on this podcast where the previous guest asks the next guest a question okay right in the direct diary so i get to read it now jack keeps the diary until this point um the question left for you is when it all gets too dark what helps you find the light when it all gets too dark what helps you find the light i mean creation i i mean that's that really is true if i'm feeling depressed um i just i've got this it's quite cheesy but i've got this little i've got this little saying i say to myself in the head which is the only way out is art and and so if i want to feel good i'll go and do some work do some writing and if i'm proud of it it'll sort of pull me out of it so that that's kind of what helps me see the light my my my art and how does that relate to the status game book status game massively because i i feel good about myself you know if i this is my game writing and if i feel like i've written something good i feel like there's hope and it kind of gives you a psychological status boost absolutely yeah because we you know we we we have this imaginary audience in our heads we're not just being judged by other people we're being judged by ourselves so so yeah i think that's hugely important well thank you incredibly illuminating and it's given me a tremendous amount of food for thought you know when we do this podcast i'm always selfishly looking for um ways that i can make changes to my life or understand the decisions i'm making so that i can make decisions more in line with my values or more in line with where i want to go and i think you're this book in particular the status game i pause every time i say it because i'm scared to get it the status game yeah this book in particular the status game um is is one of those that isn't tremendously illuminating because it explains so much it's almost like it's turning a light on in a huge room that i didn't even know was there um and really revealing to me what what the forces are that are controlling um much of my decision-making for better or for worse it's not to say that i will abandon a band try and abandon those forces because i don't actually believe i can i think that's who i am but being more conscious about them which i think is exactly what this book allows you to do as they relate to your relationships your personal life your business is i think something that we can all benefit from so thank you for writing such an amazing book and thank you for writing all of these amazing books but this one in particular um is my favorite the status game came out last year i believe um yeah just down paper back two weeks ago on people back two weeks ago and i've had a lot of people specifically because you've had a few conversations with some friends of mine really raving about this book so i highly recommend everybody checks it out um of all these books i love them all but this one in particular is my favorite i can't be more excited to see what you write next fantastic thank you for your honesty as well not everybody is so willing to be so open and honest and i think there's something so um so important because it's huge it's human and it's truthful about the way you're willing to be honest about your own struggles in your life and the things that you're searching for as it relates to connection and those things that is we're all we're all going through the same battles and hearing that from you as well i think is particularly important so thank you thank you thank you for your amazing questions too steven i had a really good time thank you i had a few words to say about one of my sponsors on this podcast crafted are brands that sell really meaningful affordable men's jewelry and i've been a crafted customer i think for about three years now the piece of jewelry i wear the most i want to introduce you to the pieces and why i wear them is this sand timer unsurprisingly and the thing for me about sand timer is it's probably the most clear reminder that our time here on earth this finite and when you live in such a way where you can literally see your time pouring away and you realize that it is scarce and that we're not all here forever you start to make better decisions you stop worrying about pettiness and trivialities that consume our lives i always have this crafted sand timer around my neck as a reminder of that and this is why i wanted crafted to sponsor this podcast because i can use their meaningful jewelry every episode to deliver a meaningful message 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Channel: The Diary Of A CEO

Views: 66,811

Keywords: The Diary Of A CEO, podcast, the diary of a CEO podcast, CEO, being successful motivation, being successful in life, The More Successful You Are The Longer You’ll Live, will storr, how to be successful in life, how to be successful, status game will storr, story telling, the science of story telling, marketing, marketing strategies for small business, marketing plan, marketing strategies, nike marketing strategy, nike marketing campaign, volkswagen marketing strategy, beyonce

Id: qC-U7qy7cH4

Length: 105min 54sec (6354 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 08 2022