Status Games

Why We Play and How to Stop

By: Loretta Graziano Breuning

Narrated by: Loretta Graziano Breuning

Bloomsbury presents Status Games written and read by Loretta Graziano Breuning.

Rewire your brain to avoid the trap of comparison and status-seeking to achieve more contentment and satisfaction from life

People care about status despite their best intentions because our brains are inherited from animals who cared about status. The survival value of status in the state of nature helps us understand our intense emotions about status today. Beneath your verbal brain, you have the brain common to all mammals. It rewards you with pleasure hormones when you see yourself in a position of strength, and it alarms you with stress hormones when you see yourself in a position of weakness.

But constant striving for status can be anxiety-provoking and joy-stealing. Nothing feels like enough to our mammal brain. It releases those stress chemicals when you think others are ahead of you.

Here, Loretta Breuning shines a light on the brain processes that encourage us to seek higher status. She teaches us how to rewire those connections for more contentment and less stress. No more worrying about keeping up with the Joneses. Your new way of thinking will blaze new trails to your happy hormones and you will RELAX.©2021 Loretta Graziano Breuning (P)2021 Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

Eye opening

I love this book. It helped me understand a ton about myself and others. I plan to take the advice and apply it to my life. I’m sure I’ll be reading again multiple times in the future as well.

Excellent content

Although the book is meant to focus on human behavior, but the accompanying examples are also worth reading for their own sakes. Real life examples and retrospective illustrates a concept best and the author has done that.

Really helpful

This book was really helpful for understanding how our physical, animal nature, especially our desire for the good feeling of serotonin contributes to our tendencies to compare ourselves with others as well as the pain (cortisol) that we feel when we are offended or rejected.

Animals and humans

Nothing really new to the subject and a lot of references to the animal kingdom.