Three Ways to Tame the Status Monkey in Us
On Meditation, Status Fasting and Peer Pressure Design
Let me share an open secret. I have been working in the world of marketing for some years now, and there is one thing that always sells. It is not sex, as the cliché goes. It is status.
Whether the product is a phone, a car or a handbag, the unspoken promise is the same — this will raise your stature in society.
The power of status comes from human evolution. Below is a section straight from one of the most cited papers on “evolutionary psychology of status-seeking.”
In English, this says that humans who cared more about winning the status game tended to be the ones who got to pass on their genes, since they got more food, power and choice of mates. After millions of years of evolution, we’re stuck with this status-hungry brain.
There is a dark side to this power. Its immediate gratification can be an obstacle to our long-term happiness. And fear of embarrassment — the loss of status — can hinder us from doing the right thing.
Fortunately, there are remedies. Humanity has always grappled with its own condition, endlessly experimenting with tools to master the self. These three are the ones that I found useful.
1. Meditation
The first step is to see what is messing with your head. This is hard, like your eye examining its own iris. You’d need a mirror.
Meditation is a tool with many functions. One of them is to be this mirror. This is the reflective part of meditation. To zoom out and look from the outside. To think of your own thinking, so that you can catch those hidden voices that influence your emotions and actions.
There are many ways to meditate. There is something for everyone. Let me share some from a source I trust as well as my own practice.
Non-religious meditation
I trust this guy, Tim Ferriss. He interviews top performers in varied fields to figure out their playbooks. I followed a nutritional approach from one of his interviews, and it is now my best productivity technique. Other episodes mention the following resources for meditation:
- Guided meditations by Sam Harris — here’s a sample
- From the Maria Popova episode: guided meditations by Tara Brach — here’s a sample
- Meditation apps: Headspace and Calm.
- The Stoics: Seneca’s Letters to Lucilius and Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations.
A friend of mine used Headspace during a very stressful time in his life, and he said it helped him maintain some serenity.
Tim Ferriss observes that 80% of the top performers that he interviewed have some type of meditation practice. It might be worth exploring just for this.
Religious meditation
It seems all ancient religions have some form of meditation. In fact, even the non-religious guides and apps above appear to be based on the Buddhist tradition of Vipassana (mindfulness).
I follow a different ancient tradition. As a kid I saw my dad meditate regularly with a large black book. I even remember attempting to distract him. God rest his soul. So when I started to take my faith seriously at 18, meditating felt as natural as voting for the first time.
Here’s what I usually suggest to guys starting to meditate:
- Start with consistency rather than quality. Treat it like a daily appointment with someone important to you. Use a habit app (I like Loop). Start with 15 minutes in the morning and 15 minutes in the afternoon or evening. Dial down if it is too difficult, dial up if already consistent, up to 30 minutes. But aim to have Japanese timeliness with whatever duration you choose. Begin and begin once again — with stubborn perseverance.
- The effort of going to a chapel is worth it. Or any place designed for prayer. Architects have thought long and hard about design of sacred spaces.
- Use a book written by a saint. I later found out that my dad’s black book was a 1982 edition of St. Josemaria Escriva’s The Way, the same book that eventually got me started with meditation. Read it how a real man drinks whisky — calmly, sip by sip.
Whether your goal is to win at life, to free yourself from desire and pain, or to follow Christ, the first step is self-mastery. This requires self-awareness, which could be achieved through meditation.
2. Status Fasting
Training is freedom. I had to learn sales to survive in business, and that freed me from my shyness. I trained to swim long distance, and that freed me to take part in open water competitions.
Freedom from the status-hungry brain also requires training — even more than business or sports.
Tim Ferriss practices some examples of this training, inspired by the Stoic philosophers. These are aimed at mastering fear of failure, which is closely linked to hunger for status.
- Once in a while, he spends several days living only on beans and rice, wearing only his cheapest shirts and jeans, to simulate what it would be like if he lost all his money. All the while he would ask himself, “is this the consequence of failure I so feared?”
- He would deliberately wear unfashionable and gaudy clothing to parties, to inoculate himself from that debilitating fear of people’s opinions.
Tim Ferriss is essentially doing a status fast, the opposite of status signaling, to free himself from its influence.
I follow a simpler approach. I have enough insecurities to give me daily opportunities to fast from status.
For instance, I use a kick scooter to go to and from my office. I have been doing this for more than two years. Yet I still feel a tinge of embarrassment when I am about to go on my six-minute ride.
Riding a kick scooter sounds cool in theory, like something a New York hipster or a Silicon Valley hacker would do. In reality, I look like a middle-aged weirdo in daddy clothes riding a child’s toy.
I realize that this is the opposite of that annoyingly delicious feeling I get every time I have the chance to drive an expensive car. My monkey brain shrieks with joy when I’m inside the ultimate symbol of the modern alpha male. I’m reminded of those inane day dreams in my teenage years — of driving by a group of pretty girls, elbow resting on the window sill, taking off my sunglasses, and winning their admiration with my irresistible coolness.
I can’t believe I’m sharing this. But I feel that I have to. My fast only makes sense with my hunger. We all have our own weaknesses, and a status fast has to be customized to train for this.
The best status fasts are those intertwined with daily life. Perhaps that thing that makes a lot of sense but the mere thought of mortifies you. Whatever form a status fast takes, it should train you to choose the right thing rather than the cool thing.
Training is freedom.
3. Peer Pressure Design
First is to have self-awareness. Second is to train for self-mastery. Third is to align the same hunger for status toward your life goals.
Let me share my most deliberate application of this — in the realm of entrepreneurship.
The status monkey is a threat to entrepreneurs. It endlessly clamors for recognition. This is a distraction from our actual job — that of creating value for our customers (expressed in revenue) and creating personal and financial growth for our team, done in an efficient manner (expressed in profit). “Success porn” is what we call those magazines and websites that exploit this hankering for status in business.
Last year, I stumbled upon a simple solution to this. Once a month, I have a meeting with three other entrepreneurs and we follow this agenda:
- Wins since the last meeting
- Biggest challenge you are currently facing (the rest try to help with ideas, contacts, resources)
- Goals to achieve by the next meeting
- Recommend something cool you discovered (does not need to be business-related)
This practice is called “Mastermind” in business circles. It has many benefits. Celebrating wins helps us practice gratitude (our tendency is to focus on problems). Sharing our biggest challenges forces us to choose our priorities. Publicly committing to goals makes us more likely to achieve them. And from our simple exchange, I discovered many interesting apps, books and films.
The Mastermind aligns our tendencies from evolution toward goals we choose, rather than to random constructs of success from the ether. We desire the approval of our tribe, whether or not we are aware of its influence, whether or not we deliberately train to master it. Better to form a tribe of real people who understand the game you are playing, rather than seek the applause of an imaginary audience.
Our group worked so well together that we eventually started our own podcast, 3rd World Startup. Check out our episode on the Mastermind.
The Mastermind is just one example of peer pressure design. A less structured way to do this is to be deliberate with the people you hang out with. “You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with,” as the adage goes.
However you design your peer pressure, you should be the one to design it, not the competing industries all too willing to design it for you.
Self-mastery and happiness
Looking back at the ups and downs of my life, I see that self-mastery go with the ups and the lack of it with the downs. These three are the best foundations to self-mastery I have come across. They have been effective for status as well as for other false gods with attractive but empty promises.
I’m still figuring this out so I’d love to hear what you think. Comment below or email me at monkeybrain@corazo.org if you want to discuss in private.
