Chasing Status Is Low Status

I recently heard Naval say that it's low-status behavior to chase status. And it is true.

I grew up in Sydney watching most of the people around me burn their lives chasing the appearance of a life they weren't actually living.

Borrowed lifestyles, borrowed faces, borrowed identities running on borrowed money.

The girls all wanted to look like Kim Kardashian… Botox, lip fillers, dresses cut shorter every year, cleavage out as the personality. The guys pretended they could afford a lifestyle that on paper they obviously couldn't, dropping rent money on bottle service desperate to impress.

I played the game for a stretch too. I'm not discounting myself from the equation.

But at some point you are supposed to mature beyond that phase. A lot of these men and women today are now mothers and fathers still chasing the same shallow pursuits, still hitting the same clubs and bars, still seeking externally what they haven't yet realized they have to give themselves.

The chase for status itself is the lowest-status thing a person can do. Because to the discerning eye it is clear that you don't believe you're enough without the costume.

The status that lasts doesn't need an audience. The people I respect most don't need anyone to know what they have, and most of the time you'd never guess.

Real status is quiet. It is a life you wouldn't trade even if no one were watching.

Build something you'd still want with the lights off, or stop pretending you've built anything at all.