
Status independence means that you are the same person at work as you are at home as you are in a local bar as you are in a different country. It means that outside of situations where it directly affects your livelihood (perhaps work-related), there are no people who are better or worse than you, only different. And because we’re all different, most judgments don’t matter. And when judgments don’t matter, social context doesn’t matter, which means that social anxiety and social stress are mitigated. And the thing about this is that, with this level of integrity, you begin to go into every situation with absolutely nothing to prove, nothing to show, nothing to gain. And because everybody else is always trying to prove something, it’s always impressive to people to see someone with the restraint not to do the same.
In every single interaction we have, status is at play. Most of the time, this is unconscious and expressed in our body language relative to a person or a group. You can even think that you don’t care about it, but if you haven’t truly outlined your own values and principles to reflect your own unique individuality, and if you haven’t gotten over the irrational fear of rejection, then you are likely still accumulating stress from social anxiety by simply being around people who you perceive to be better or worse than you.