Via The Wealth Ladder by Nick Maggiulli:
As Robert Sapolsky wrote in Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers: When we sit around and worry about stressful things, we turn on the same physiological responses—but they are potentially a disaster when provoked chronically. A large body of evidence suggests that stress-related disease emerges, predominantly, out of the fact that we so often activate a physiological system that has evolved for responding to acute physical emergencies, but we turn it on for months on end, worrying about mortgages, relationships, and promotions. If you find yourself chronically worried in life, finding ways to destress will be paramount for keeping your mental wealth intact. Studies show that exercise, sleep, meditation, yoga, as well as various mindfulness techniques can help to reduce stress. Whatever you decide to do, finding what works for you is what’s important. Lastly, focusing on yourself and your self-esteem is another key component of mental wealth. And for many, self-esteem is built on how they perceive their social status. If you believe that you haven’t accomplished anything, then you will probably feel low status. But if you believe that what you do has purpose, then you will feel high status. More importantly, your perceived status does not need to be based on money or career accomplishments. You can find status and self-esteem in many areas of life. Once again from Robert Sapolsky: So, the lowly subordinate in the mailroom of the big corporation may, after hours, be deriving tremendous prestige and self-esteem from being the deacon of his church, or the captain of her weekend softball team, or may be the top of the class at adult-extension school. One person’s highly empowering dominance hierarchy may be a mere 9-to-5 irrelevancy to the person in the next cubicle.
You get to, as suggested by Calvin & Hobbes creator Bill Watterson, “recreate constructively” and construct life’s meaning. Unlike most games, the status game allows you to choose how to keep score.
Status is relative to the context in which it is being evaluated.
In some contexts, the aspirations of status can even backfire. The trappings of wealth, in the wrong setting, can function more as a cloak of shame. Being deliberate in your context (career, schools, neighborhood, etc) has an incredible impact on perceived status. As in, which Joneses are you trying to keep up with?
Thankfully, you get to choose which status game you want to play and how you want to evaluate yourself. This is both a blessing and a curse, because you can be objectively great at something and feel like a failure or you can be just okay at something and feel like a massive success. It’s all based on how you feel. It’s based on the story you tell yourself about yourself.
I am reminded of David Brooks’ distinction between resume virtues and eulogy virtues.