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People Who Are Obsessed with Success and Prestige

bennettnotes.com

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Re: People Who Are Obsessed with Success and Prestige

#51

Post by SCHiM »

Notice what the quote in the article, and the points made in the comments below, reveal?

Humans compare with their reference group. As your status increases you'll step out of your old group and into a new one. And then the cycle starts again. Your peers are again ahead! You've traded your group of 'job seeking undergrads' for 'ladder climbing professionals'.

I'm not sure if it's possible to have control over this automatic comparing, but the cure is not to keep climbing. It's to hack your mind to set your reference group to people that have lower status, aka: be gratefull for what you have, and think about the ways in which you are furtunate that others are not.

Re: People Who Are Obsessed with Success and Prestige

#52

Post by pjc50 »

lordnacho wrote: post #4

Heh this is only a very mild version of status obsession. To a degree it's actually a good thing to want, so long as you stay committed to doing the actual work of getting successful. What amuses me to no end is when I see a rich guy who wants to keep being in the news. As if to say "see, I actually deserve all this wealth". I've seen several of these people over the years. Somehow the media keep calling them to comm…

Dignity is really, really undervalued in the present era. Perhaps because it's hard to monetise.

Re: People Who Are Obsessed with Success and Prestige

#53

Post by codingdave »

bambax wrote: post #22

OT, and possibly unpopular here, but this really gets on my nerves: > In Paul Graham’s essay on, How to Do what You Love* he warns us about the prestige trap: (...) you have to like the actual work of novel-writing if you’re going to be good at it; you have to like making up elaborate lies* PG's contempt for anything literary pervades in many of his essays, which may reveal some kind of unhealthy obsession, esp. for…

Literature is a reflection of human nature, but only as understood by the author. It is not going to take you any farther in comprehension than than the original author had already figured out. So while it might be truth, and certainly holds value, it is sheer arrogance to say that it is the "only way to gain an actual comprehension of human nature".

Re: People Who Are Obsessed with Success and Prestige

#54

Post by huffmsa »

SCHiM wrote: post #51

Notice what the quote in the article, and the points made in the comments below, reveal? Humans compare with their reference group. As your status increases you'll step out of your old group and into a new one. And then the cycle starts again. Your peers are again ahead! You've traded your group of 'job seeking undergrads' for 'ladder climbing professionals'. I'm not sure if it's possible to have control over this au…

The cure is to not play the game and go do your own thing.

Re: People Who Are Obsessed with Success and Prestige

#55

Post by philbarr »

DoubleGlazing wrote: post #15

I look at this from the opposite perspective, the person who doesn't care much for success and prestige but has to deal with the toxic side-effects of those that do. I grew up an only child in as single parent household where I was taught that it's better to quietly build a stable secure foundation for your life, rather than to put yourself "out there" and hope for the best. My mothers attitude was that it is better…

How do people like that ever get investment? Like, surely the investors must think, "well, they just screwed up their last 4 or 5 startups so maybe I'll keep my money."

Re: People Who Are Obsessed with Success and Prestige

#56

Post by philbarr »

akhilcacharya wrote: post #9

> Got a FAANG internship? Well it wasn’t one of the good FAANGs, so if you really think about it, you really didn’t accomplish anything. This is funny because I’ve been straight up told this by multiple people. It’s not neuroticism, it’s the simple fact that hierarchies exist.

Which ones are the "bad" FAANGs?

Re: People Who Are Obsessed with Success and Prestige

#57

Post by [deleted] »

lordnacho wrote: post #4

Heh this is only a very mild version of status obsession. To a degree it's actually a good thing to want, so long as you stay committed to doing the actual work of getting successful. What amuses me to no end is when I see a rich guy who wants to keep being in the news. As if to say "see, I actually deserve all this wealth". I've seen several of these people over the years. Somehow the media keep calling them to comm…

[deleted]

Re: People Who Are Obsessed with Success and Prestige

#58

Post by Bahamut »

huffmsa wrote: post #54
SCHiM wrote: post #51

Notice what the quote in the article, and the points made in the comments below, reveal? Humans compare with their reference group. As your status increases you'll step out of your old group and into a new one. And then the cycle starts again. Your peers are again ahead! You've traded your group of 'job seeking undergrads' for 'ladder climbing professionals'. I'm not sure if it's possible to have control over this au…

The cure is to not play the game and go do your own thing.

I was going to reply something to this effect - it's ok to climb or whatever, but do things on your own terms without caring about how other people are doing. You can still be happy for their success and should be, but as long as you give an effort you're happy with, that should be enough.

Re: People Who Are Obsessed with Success and Prestige

#59

Post by LandR »

pjc50 wrote: post #48

> She would say, “Dave, you only got one award this year. Remember when you won seven last year?” > If it wasn’t that, maybe it was also because I am gay. My mother was never really happy about this Ah, the absolute pinnacle of neurosis parenting. That's a solid one-two punch to the child's psyche, which gives them a drive to please while at the same time ensuring it can never be met. Well done; you ensured your chil…

> She would say, “Dave, you only got one award this year. Remember when you won seven last year?”

I've had stuff like this from parents.

Nothing is ever good enough, I have a friend who is massively more successful than me that I've been friends with since we were children. Went to same nursery, school and university.

When I told my parents I got a bonus one year, instead of great, well done. I got asked how much, followed by asking what bonus did my friend get (them knowing his position, that his bonus would be a couple of orders of magnitude more), seemingly, just to put me down.

I've been told by my dad, despite me having my own place and what I consider a decent job, that I failed in life as my friend has so much more money than me and a better title.

I now just don't care what my parents think.

Re: People Who Are Obsessed with Success and Prestige

#60

Post by pkhamre »

> Should I learn to make pasta from scratch? No, that’s crazy. Nobody cares if you can make pasta from scratch and it’s not going to make any money.

I think the author got it wrong here. He mixes the words "successful" with "fame". By learning a skill like making pasta from scratch, you can make yourself and other people happy. And if you go deep into the field, you can even make money on it, if that's important to you :)

I started baking pizza and obsessed at making the perfect tomato sauce, the perfect dough, the perfect crust. Basically, the perfect pizza. I do know that perfect does not exist, but I got to a point where I make a pretty damn good pizza. I like my pizza better than most pizzi I can get in a restaurant. My next step is to build my own wood-fired outdoor oven, so I can reach the temperatures I need to get the pizza even better.

Being able to make this amazing pizza makes me so happy. It makes people around me happy. And I learn my friends and family how to make proper pizza. I smile and laugh and dance when I make pizza.

This is true success in my opinion.

And after I learned the baking skills, success kind of started snowballing in other areas as well.

Why are famous people successful? They do what makes them happy :) Why am I starting to be successful? I do what makes me happy :) How can you start to be successful? Do what makes you happy :)

If you think going down a certain path for happiness might seem a little crazy, that's a good sign.

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