YouSaid · the spoken record

Will Storr

lines on the record: 114
first: 2022-08-08
most recent: 2022-08-08
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“Yeah, I suppose okay, so in the book I write that there are kind of three general types of status games that we can play. The first game is the dominance game. And so the dominance game we share with animals. We've been playing dominance games for millions of years and they are what they sound like they are. They're about aggression. But also the threat of aggression, bullying, you know, that kind of thing whenever we force somebody else to attend to us in status, that's dominance. There's success games, which is, I think, the best of human nature, competence. So when you're thinking about how do we become a valued member of our tribe, back in the days when our brains were evolving, we could be the best honeyfinder, the best storyteller, the best hunter, best finder of tubers. So that's how you're of value to your tribe, competence, being good at something. There's also virtue. We can play virtue games. And so in the tribe, that means that you know the rules of”
2022-08-08 · The Diary of a CEO · The More Successful You Are The Longer You’ll Live: Will Storr · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, that's a really good observation. I mean, status and connection, they're separate things. So we crave by nature both of them. People tend to be happier when they're more connected. But status is a separate thing. And I think that's right. I think that's absolutely correct. Some people's dials are set. I consider myself somebody who is relatively high in need for status, which is why I ended up writing books for a living. But I'm relatively low in the independent connection. I don't really have much of a social life. I don't really want one. I'm not bothered particularly. So, you know, everybody's dials are set in different ways. Some people have relatively low need for status and they're relatively high need for connection. And they're surrounded by friends and they're probably happier than I am. I'm sure they're happier than I am.”
2022-08-08 · The Diary of a CEO · The More Successful You Are The Longer You’ll Live: Will Storr · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“If you're a working, if you're a poor guy raised in a housing estate in Stockwell and you're only the only available status games to you are Tesco's bakery and this gang over here, I know what I'm joining. It's changed the way that I see Some of those issues that we are programmed to crave connection and status and we will find connection and status wherever we can. And so I think that explains when people are joining gangs, it's not because they're naughty. It's not because they're bad people. It's because they're just doing what they're designed to do whether in an environment where there aren't many status games to play. There's just not a lot of options.”
2022-08-08 · The Diary of a CEO · The More Successful You Are The Longer You’ll Live: Will Storr · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Maybe, but again, I do think that personality comes a lot into play, like anything. Some people are more interested in the status than other people. Like Elon Musk. Obviously, incredibly interested in his own relative status, and that's a big driver for him. Jeff Bezos, you know, Beyonce, you know, these people are very highly attuned to the status game. And that's what pushes them, pushes them, pushes them to work harder than I will ever work. So I don't necessarily think it's about low self-worth. It is probably to do with genetic things like extroversion agreeableness, which is a personality component, if you're low in agreeableness, you're competitive. It's that kind of type A personality. So there's definitely a genetic component to it, definitely. But there's also class comes into it. People on the lower socioeconomic groups have much less access to status games. So, you know, I think that's why...”
2022-08-08 · The Diary of a CEO · The More Successful You Are The Longer You’ll Live: Will Storr · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“As a dirt bike to somebody playing a game over there, like one might cost multiples more than the other, but it'll feel just as good because they're worried about they're only really concerned about what the other people in their game are thinking. So, yeah, we do care. And it's a good thing because the book does talk a lot about the negatives of status pursuit, but it also talks a lot about the positives of status pursuit. I mean, civilization, technology, that's what you get when people want to pursue status. When somebody wants to become the best technologist, the best vaccine designer, the best charity, we want to save the most lives. That's humans at their best. And that's also status pursuit. But it's good. It's positive.”
2022-08-08 · The Diary of a CEO · The More Successful You Are The Longer You’ll Live: Will Storr · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I don't want to over kind of Almost over promised the story. I think there's a danger where you can say, well, a Lamborghini, it's 100% status, there's nothing else. I think that's not quite fair on Lamborghini. They're amazing machines. And I've never driven a Lamborghini, but I'm sure it's a fantastic experience. driven sports cars a couple of times and it's been amazing so it's not just status like it is it's incredible to have like a camera that's like amazing photographs so so you are you are getting something extra for your money but it's but mostly i think what you're getting is is status that that's really mostly what you're getting and it's worth it i mean i i don't want to fall into that trap of being condescending to status it is a fundamental human need that we feel of value and you know if we're playing a high level status game with lots of lamborghini owners it's really really hard to feel a value in that group so you've got to work really hard um so that's why a brand new lamborghini for somebody playing that game will feel as good as a you know”
2022-08-08 · The Diary of a CEO · The More Successful You Are The Longer You’ll Live: Will Storr · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The quality of the stitching, by a tiny little detail on the corner of that bag, that that is a really good bag. And that's what matters because that's the game. They're playing a game with that person. They're not playing the game with me, so I don't care what I think.”
2022-08-08 · The Diary of a CEO · The More Successful You Are The Longer You’ll Live: Will Storr · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Logo space, you know, like half an inch smaller meant, you know, $500 more on the price. And the most expensive designer stuff has the logo on the inside. There's no logo on the outside. And so, and what that kind of speaks to is that, again, the whole world isn't one status game. There are kind of almost infinite status games. And people, we're not particularly, we're not that interested in what people outside games think of us. It's much more about what people are playing the games with us think of us. And so, you know, in my wife is the former editor of L magazine. So that fashion luxury world. People signal to each other. I will see a handbag and it will just be invisible to me what that handbag means, what the meaning of that handbag is. But the person, the owner of that handbag, won't get the first fuck right if they give it out of their handbag. They're interested in what that woman over there who knows about the handbag knows. And they'll know.”
2022-08-08 · The Diary of a CEO · The More Successful You Are The Longer You’ll Live: Will Storr · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's true. And in the book, I write about this hilarious study where they figured out because in the luxury goods game, the bigger the logo, the lower the status. Yes. And they figured out that I forget the exact measurements, but a certain amount of...”
2022-08-08 · The Diary of a CEO · The More Successful You Are The Longer You’ll Live: Will Storr · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“If you were hanging around with Gandhi in India, you wouldn't be playing the money game, you would have got more status for living, the more simpler your life became, the more status in that group you would earn”
2022-08-08 · The Diary of a CEO · The More Successful You Are The Longer You’ll Live: Will Storr · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“VM Davilies, but I've just got this thing. And I think he was trying to express the fact that he just didn't care. He just didn't care about his status. But for me, he did care. That car was every bit as much of a status symbol for him as the, you know, the brand new Mercedes four-wheel drives were for the other parents. It's just that he was playing a different status game in his game having a crap car is a high status thing. The same as the aristocracy in Britain. So, you know, if you remember the British aristocracy, you'll look down your nose at people who have a brand new Japanese lexus or whatever. They drive up beated up Landrovers. And so it all depends what game you're playing, different games use different things to symbolize status. And so that's how that game works. Lots of people play the fame game. Lots of people play the money game. But other people don't.”
2022-08-08 · The Diary of a CEO · The More Successful You Are The Longer You’ll Live: Will Storr · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I mean, and that's again an indicator of the rise in individualism. I think one of the important things to understand about status games is that the brain is so obsessed with status, it assigns kind of status points to anything. So for some people, for lots of people, the accrual of money, that's their status game. That's how they're measuring their status, how much money I've got. But for other people, it can be how simply I live. I know someone who is a lovely guy, but he considers himself to be sort of not materialistic and he's very much in the wellness space. And he was telling me last year that he's takes his kids to their private school. But the school gates, you know, he's got this beaten up old car that he's had since he was a student and he's got masking tape around the wing mirror and he was sort of talking, oh, you know, all the other parents have got these big Mercedes and nowadays.”
2022-08-08 · The Diary of a CEO · The More Successful You Are The Longer You’ll Live: Will Storr · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Your children would be, the greater your access to your choice of mates. So as we all know, survival and reproduction are the basic, most fundamental drives we have as living things and status when you rise in status, your chances of survival and reproduction just go up and up and up and up. So when we're in the tribes, the more, you know, people would try and get status in the tribes and the more status you got, the better everything else became. And so that was true. 10,000 years ago. It's true today. That's still true today. The more status that you earn, the better everything else gets. So it's this huge component of human behavior, but it's subconscious. So we don't like to think about it sometimes. We like to deny it, even though we all love to feel of value and we are all very, very sensitive to any indication.”
2022-08-08 · The Diary of a CEO · The More Successful You Are The Longer You’ll Live: Will Storr · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Reasons people kind of tend to not like this subject is that when I've sort of made the argument that we're all motivated by status pursuit, they think I'm saying we all want to be rich, we all want to be famous. And that's not what I'm saying at all. What I'm saying is that we all want to feel of value. So we evolved as these tribal animals. And to be successful in the tribe means two things. You've got to be good at connecting with other people. So being accepted and fomenting a sense of belongingness with other people. So that's belongingness, that's connection. That's not stated. That's something else. But once we're in a group, in a tribe, we want to rise within it. We want to feel like we are of value to other people. And so back in the days when our brains were evolving in when we were living in the tribes, the more status that you earned, the more and better food you'd get, the safer your sleeping sites, the safer you're”
2022-08-08 · The Diary of a CEO · The More Successful You Are The Longer You’ll Live: Will Storr · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Okay, so it matters massively. And the reason I wanted to write that book is because people just don't really talk about it very much. Even though our lives are full of status pursuit, people just don't talk about it very much.”
2022-08-08 · The Diary of a CEO · The More Successful You Are The Longer You’ll Live: Will Storr · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Mod Against social injustice and drinking his sugary drink is going to help. It's just all off. Yeah. So I think organizations are sensing that partly how we can be a light figure these days is by is by presenting as people who are assisting in these These political goals that have become very important to people, especially young people. And some people are getting it right, some people are getting it wrong.”
2022-08-08 · The Diary of a CEO · The More Successful You Are The Longer You’ll Live: Will Storr · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, yeah, exactly. And with the Nike example, I mean, we live in since the global financial crisis, we live in heightened political times. And so, you know, and people are always tribal. And so, you know, one of the big things that successful kind of persuaders do is to make those tribal appeals. And sometimes it works with Colin Cap and Act, like with the Gillette Razor campaign, it didn't work because you're kind of essentially attacking your target audience. So that was less successful. I think there was a terrible Pepsi I had with Kevin where they were kind of basically, yeah, where it was just making this.”
2022-08-08 · The Diary of a CEO · The More Successful You Are The Longer You’ll Live: Will Storr · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Revolutionized marketing, it changed everything because they'd figured out that kind of light figure form of storytelling.”
2022-08-08 · The Diary of a CEO · The More Successful You Are The Longer You’ll Live: Will Storr · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Who drives the snow plough, get to the snow plough, and it's just Volkswagen. And that's that really simple, really effective story. And it's showing Volkswagen's dislike figure. We are helping the hero achieve what he wants. And, you know, I don't believe that the Volkswagen was particularly good at driving through blizzards. I don't believe that. And they certainly weren't making any factual claim in the sense that we are better than Land Rover and whatever, whatever, whatever doing this because of this stat. It was as simple as that.”
2022-08-08 · The Diary of a CEO · The More Successful You Are The Longer You’ll Live: Will Storr · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“An ad that was broadcast, I think it was in the 60s by Volkswagen. And it was the first kind of modern advert. It was the first advert that you would look at and recognize as the kind of advertising that we do today. So before this Volkswagen ad, you know, all ads were just stats lists. Here's this amazing tire. And this will get you 0 to 60 and whatever. And then this Volkswagen did this amazing ad where it just, it was black and white because it was still in the days of black and white. And they had, it just showed this guy. It was all snowy. He's a big blizzard outside. And this guy gets in his car. He turns, he's like, it's like, you know, just before dawn, turns in his ignition, drives his car through the blizzard, through the blizzard through the blizzard, opens these huge shed doors, and then you hear this big engine start up and out drives his snow plough. And it's, how does the guy?”
2022-08-08 · The Diary of a CEO · The More Successful You Are The Longer You’ll Live: Will Storr · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Beliefs around the world. And those are goals, you know, people who target audience that they're appealing to want to achieve this kind of racial social justice and it's important to them. So what Nike are basically saying is, you know, we are light figures in this story. We are on the side of the Colin Kaepernicks of the people who are kneeling. We believe that Black Lives Matter. And so they're presenting as a light figure. And if you think about it rationally, it's kind of crazy. Like, why would a shoe company have this political thing? But it's because of the storytelling, because they're presenting as a light figure who is engaged in the kind of, you know, this particular mission in the world. And in order to kind of join the mission, you buy the Nike shoes and it worked. Really well. I mean, one of the archetypes.”
2022-08-08 · The Diary of a CEO · The More Successful You Are The Longer You’ll Live: Will Storr · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Nike's really interesting example. So obviously one of the things that Nike has done recently is its done the ad campaign around Colin Kaepernick, which is controversial, but did them, I think, I think they're something up to like 6% after that ad campaign. And that's a really good example of an organization who Behaving as a light figure. So that Colin Kaepernack, I campaigned, has nothing to do with shoes. What they're not doing is going, our shoes will make you run 8% faster. We've got these sprung soles. We've got these amazing laces that won't trip you up or whatever. You know, their stats list is not in there. It's purely they're telling a story. They figured out that their client base are mostly believing certain, you know, this set of...”
2022-08-08 · The Diary of a CEO · The More Successful You Are The Longer You’ll Live: Will Storr · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Here's what this person said about me. Here's some statistics and stuff. You're not a light figure. You're presenting as the hero. What people really want to know is how can you help me get what I want? And that's the story that you have to tell.”
2022-08-08 · The Diary of a CEO · The More Successful You Are The Longer You’ll Live: Will Storr · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, the audience, the person you're selling to. And then there's a brilliant story analyst called Christopher Booker, who wrote this amazing book called The Seven Basic Plots. And he writes about archetypal characters and storytelling that he calls light figures. And so the light figure is the example he uses of the three ghosts in a Christmas carol, the Charles Dickens Scrooge story. So Scrooge is the hero of that story. But the three ghosts come in to show him Christmas past, Christmas present, Christmas future. They help him get what he needs, which is to become a better, more selfless, more generous, more loving giving person so that they are going to arrive in his story to kind of show him the way to help him get what he needs. And so that's what I argue. That's the appropriate position for most companies and organizations and leaders is not to be the hero because your audience feels like they're the hero. You're the light figure. You're there to help them get what they want. So when you go straight in with his or my...”
2022-08-08 · The Diary of a CEO · The More Successful You Are The Longer You’ll Live: Will Storr · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, it's not. I mean, so what you're doing when you're getting into what your mother is you're connecting emotionally. So people They're on your side immediately and you're making them feel good. You're making them feel things emotionally. The kind of framework that I use for business storytelling is that essentially people's brains process reality in the same way. And that's the, you know, so they're the hearer of their story. You're not the hero standing on the stage. The company that's selling to you isn't the hero. They're the hero of their own story. They've got goals they're trying to pursue. We all have, you know, that, which are the plots of our lives. The audience.”
2022-08-08 · The Diary of a CEO · The More Successful You Are The Longer You’ll Live: Will Storr · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You want to tell persuasive stories, you need to first understand exactly who you're communicating with and you need to understand how they feel about the world, how they feel about themselves, how they feel about justice and what their values are. And so that means understanding them kind of tribally, what groups do they belong to? Who are their heroes? Who are their villains? What motivates them? What demotivates them? So before you can sort of write the story, you need to figure out how they feel about the world.”
2022-08-08 · The Diary of a CEO · The More Successful You Are The Longer You’ll Live: Will Storr · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, well, so quite a lot. I teach business storytelling at section four, which is an American ed tech organization. So I do a course there in the sciences storytelling for business. And we are storytelling animals. We think in story, narrative is basically how we experience ourselves and life. And so as I say in that course, if you're not communicating with story as a marketeer, you're not communicating. Logic and facts and data and statistics, that's not the language of the brain. The language of the brain is beginning, middle, and end, a character overcoming obstacles. I think a lot of the stuff we've been talking about is important, especially the idea that people think with their feelings. It's feelings first, story second. The story justifies the feelings. And so if”
2022-08-08 · The Diary of a CEO · The More Successful You Are The Longer You’ll Live: Will Storr · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Definitely. Yeah, I think how to think about it is that you could have a vulnerability to it. And that's the genetic component. And if something bad happens to you, then you're much more likely to kind of fall into that.”
2022-08-08 · The Diary of a CEO · The More Successful You Are The Longer You’ll Live: Will Storr · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Think since probably even the 60s, we've had this kind of therapy culture which wants to go archaeological digging in our past for the causes of our all of our problems. And, you know, I think there is a certain amount of truth to that stuff. I'm sure our childhoods affect us. We tend to blame everything on our childhoods, everything on our parents. And I think alcoholism is one of those things that it's mostly genetic. You've either got that problem with addiction or you don't.”
2022-08-08 · The Diary of a CEO · The More Successful You Are The Longer You’ll Live: Will Storr · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, and I've got that addictive personality. I was an alcoholic. I had to give up drinking when I was 26 because I'd lost control of how much I was drinking. And I still struggle with kind of, you know, sugar now. I've swapped booze for sugar is my problematic behavior, which is much easier to manage. So I get it. But yeah, it's not, I think part of the fact that with these storytelling animals.”
2022-08-08 · The Diary of a CEO · The More Successful You Are The Longer You’ll Live: Will Storr · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But you are born with a certain kind of genome, with a certain level of likely neuroticism, openness to experience, extroversion, agreeableness, you know, how kind of happy or kind of angry or uncompetitive you are, and so on. And so you're born kind of with a certain prevailing wind, and then your childhood experiences mostly will do the rest of that wiring up. So by the time you're in your kind of 20s, you're kind of who you are, like not 100% because still traumatic experiences can break you to pieces. You know, lots of things can change, but you're kind of who you are. As I said, people don't like that idea because it really goes against our individualist kind of credo of you can be Beyonce if you want to be. But it is nevertheless true that a huge amount of who we are is just how we were who we were born as.”
2022-08-08 · The Diary of a CEO · The More Successful You Are The Longer You’ll Live: Will Storr · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I think one of the things that I've learnt, well, certainly learned from research in that book was just the incredible power of personality and the incredible power of our genes. It's really, people don't like to talk about this stuff because they feel it's disempowering. So whenever you read a self-help book, most of them, 99% of self-help books never mention genes because it's unhelpful. They want to promote that idea of 100% self-control. I can be whoever I want to be. But genes are so important. And as I said, it's not that they dictate who we are or you're born with a kind of blueprint and that's all you're ever going to be.”
2022-08-08 · The Diary of a CEO · The More Successful You Are The Longer You’ll Live: Will Storr · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Happy and thriving and wonderful, and nothing is changed in the lizard, it's the environment that's changed. And I think part of being an individualist is that we look into ourselves, to our behavior, to explain the causes of our behavior. But actually, so much of our behavior is controlled by what's going on around us, by our environment. And the reason we feel, you know, Friday on Fridays, because it's Friday. And that has the cultural resonance. That is Friday night. Yeah, thank it's Friday. Five days of work, do we feel different? So I think a lot of it is about changing your environment. There is a lot to say about, you know, if you take yourself to the gym, you've changed your environment. If you can certainly with things like weight loss, I mean, it's a lesson that I never seem to learn, but do not have that stuff in the house. Oh my goodness.”
2022-08-08 · The Diary of a CEO · The More Successful You Are The Longer You’ll Live: Will Storr · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, in Selfie, I write about how important it is to change our environment rather than try and change ourselves. And the kind of story that I tell it, the lizard and the iceberg, where if you take a lizard from the desert and pop it on an iceberg, it's going to be a very unhappy lizard. If you put it back in the desert, it's going to be...”
2022-08-08 · The Diary of a CEO · The More Successful You Are The Longer You’ll Live: Will Storr · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, it's not how we think of ourselves. We think of ourselves as a certain kind of person with a certain boxed in set of values and behaviors.”
2022-08-08 · The Diary of a CEO · The More Successful You Are The Longer You’ll Live: Will Storr · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So it is that we almost I think pre and post ejaculation almost become a different person Monday morning versus Friday night we've become different people so i think that you know we're so fluid in in who we are depending on how we're feeling”
2022-08-08 · The Diary of a CEO · The More Successful You Are The Longer You’ll Live: Will Storr · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“When we feel a different way, we do almost become a different person. Like I remember writing in Selfie about, you know, when I'm trying to lose weight again. And on Monday morning, I'm absolutely resolute. It's like I'm going to keep my calories down. I'm going to exercise every day. I am a machine. I'm a stoic. I'm athletic. You know, that's who I am. But by Friday evening, I'm just like, oh, soddy, I'm going to give it. I need to have some chips. And it's like, it's not just that you feel a different way. It's almost that you've become a different person. But which, I mean, you have a different personality. You're much more loose and happy and good to be around on Friday than you're on Monday, whether you're like that. But you have a different value system. On Monday, I value this set of things. I value discipline and order and structure. And on Friday evening, I value fun and laughter and pleasure.”
2022-08-08 · The Diary of a CEO · The More Successful You Are The Longer You’ll Live: Will Storr · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Quite disturbing. Yeah, and I think before they'd masturbated, their answers were much more extreme in the direction of, yes, I would have sex with an animal. Yes, I would pressure somebody into having sex, then they would after masturbation. And I think most men can read that study and go, Can relate a little bit to not that I'm saying that most men would have sex with an animal, obviously, but how are... How our thinking is different. And I love studies like that because I feel like it.”
2022-08-08 · The Diary of a CEO · The More Successful You Are The Longer You’ll Live: Will Storr · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I haven't, I haven't read about that study for a good five years now, but I think it was something about, they were asked a series of questions about What they asked a series of questions about what they would do in certain”
2022-08-08 · The Diary of a CEO · The More Successful You Are The Longer You’ll Live: Will Storr · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Passionate about, you know, and what they actually good at. And if somebody saw promising me as a journalist or a writer, then that's they should have encouraged me in. But it was actually just a battle.”
2022-08-08 · The Diary of a CEO · The More Successful You Are The Longer You’ll Live: Will Storr · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And if that was identified, and if somebody said to me, God, you know, you should carry on writing. Literally, if one person, one adult said to me, these short stories, you know, they show real promises, you carry on writing these, it would have blown my mind. I'd have definitely carried on. But I just stopped, you know, I just stopped. So, yeah, but that's what I mean. I think the mistake is somebody in the research for selfie this Harvard psychologist Brian Little said it's the myth of unlimited control, that myth of you can, you know, you have full control over yourself as a human being. And that means that you can do anything. That's the problem. You know, that's the problem. But actually, I think what you should do is identify, what is this person?”
2022-08-08 · The Diary of a CEO · The More Successful You Are The Longer You’ll Live: Will Storr · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, yeah, yes, but that's what I mean about identifying your strengths. Like I think for me, writing was a strength, but nobody ever.”
2022-08-08 · The Diary of a CEO · The More Successful You Are The Longer You’ll Live: Will Storr · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I was always in trouble. I was always this sort of problem student. And I had this English teacher who was quite nice called Mr. Lanaway. And I thought, oh, you know, I'm going to start writing short stories in my spare time and I'm going to give them to my English teacher. It's just a way of getting a look. And I've written this thing. And so I gave him a couple. And I think I gave him number three after a third weekend, thinking that he was in my head he was thinking, oh, Will's, you know, William has found this thing that he's actually applying himself to, how amazing. And he said to me, you know this is all just extra work for me, don't you? Like that. So he kind of scolded me for giving him extra work to do. So I stopped writing those short stories. And I just think if I'd have actually been encouraged to be, I was never encouraged to be a writer by my school or, you know, I wrote a school magazine and that caused me all kinds of trouble as well. So I never actually had any encouragement. And I do kind of think if I was actually encouraged.”
2022-08-08 · The Diary of a CEO · The More Successful You Are The Longer You’ll Live: Will Storr · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But so weird the school thing. I mean, I have to say, I think I went to a really bad school. It was a comprehensive school. You know, you hear these stories about teachers that inspire you. And oh, if it wasn't for this teacher, I never had that teacher. They were all just really bored and resentful. We could go into class and there's one teacher who will just open his folder. Where were we? He'd read from his folder for 50 minutes and that would be the history lesson. And that was the school I went to. It was miserable. And I always wanted to be a writer.”
2022-08-08 · The Diary of a CEO · The More Successful You Are The Longer You’ll Live: Will Storr · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Know you shouldn't raise your children to believe that they can be Beyonce if they want to be Beyonce because the chances are they can't she's like an extraordinarily talented and driven individual she's the one in a billion you know so you know so I think that's an unhealthy message by which to raise our children and also you know talk to ourselves and it's much more about understanding our strengths our flaws and kind of finding the right games to play finding out that little corner of the world in which we can feel of value I think that's what we should be trying to do”
2022-08-08 · The Diary of a CEO · The More Successful You Are The Longer You’ll Live: Will Storr · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I think when individualism, I think there's a lot to say in its defense, but when it goes too far, that's where it becomes, it becomes that kind of screw you mindset. So I think self-acceptance is different than self-love. Self-acceptance is I'm flawed, broken animal, you know, as we all are. And, you know, a little like what we were talking about earlier on. It's about being that harsh but loving parent rather than that rather than being your own defense lawyer, you know, being that kind of harsh but loving parent and being accepted, you know, having this acceptance that you are a flawed and limited animal.”
2022-08-08 · The Diary of a CEO · The More Successful You Are The Longer You’ll Live: Will Storr · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think, you know, I like the idea of, you know, I think the idea that I kind of develop in selfie, partly it's about self-acceptance rather than self-love. I think self-love is that, you know, I used to be a massive fan of Big Brother when Big Brother was on. And there was always a thing in Big Brother where somebody would behave completely obnoxiously. They'd be like rude, aggressive, just deeply unpleasant. And they would always defend themselves in the same way they'd go, I'm just being me. That's just me. And if you don't like me, you know, and I think that's the self-esteem movement talking. It's like I'm going to be my authentic self. And if you can't handle that, that's on you. And I think that's wrong. You know, we're a social animal. We have evolved to exist cooperatively.”
2022-08-08 · The Diary of a CEO · The More Successful You Are The Longer You’ll Live: Will Storr · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“When you change the rules of the game of life, you change the people who play that game, which is what my latest book is about, really. And so we became more competitive as a people. And what psychologists find is a major study that found that since the onset of neoliberalism, levels of perfectionism have increased massively in the UK, in America, and in Canada. And perfectionism is implicated in suicide ideation, in eating disorders, in steroid abuse, and self-harm and so on and so on and so on. So that's what I wanted to begin the book there to show why this matters. It isn't just a kind of abstract academic. I wanted to begin with this is how it affects people”
2022-08-08 · The Diary of a CEO · The More Successful You Are The Longer You’ll Live: Will Storr · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Your success, then it only logically follows that you're also responsible for your failure. And so these individualistic ideas accelerated in the 1980s. And that was because of a variety of things. It was the self-esteem movement partly, but the self-esteem movement became successful because of the Thatcher, Reagan revolutionism, my argument, neoliberalism, that we changed the economies of the West. We changed the game. Before the 1980s, we were much more collective. It was much more socialist, even in America, the top rate of tax was 90%. It's extraordinary. And then the economy started going wrong in the 70s. So the neoliberal revolution happened and the idea, the central idea that, you know, Reagan and Thatcher pursued was we're going to increase competition wherever we can to reduce the social safety net, privatize everything, just everyone's got to be competitive. And it changed who we are.”
2022-08-08 · The Diary of a CEO · The More Successful You Are The Longer You’ll Live: Will Storr · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I suppose I wanted to start the book there to show, you know, why this matters, you know, where I ended up with in the book was this idea that we are in the West individualists. You know, we see the world as made up of individual pieces and parts and we are individually responsible for our fates. We're individually responsible for our success and our failure. And there's lots of good things to say about that. You know, it's an extremely motivating way of organizing your thoughts, organizing your life. You know, I am responsible for me and I will take care of me. But it's also kind of savage, you know, and it means, you know, that kind of Western myth we have is that you can do anything that you want. Just put your mind to it. You can achieve it. That kind of mindset. But very often we fail. And so if it's true that you're responsible for...”
2022-08-08 · The Diary of a CEO · The More Successful You Are The Longer You’ll Live: Will Storr · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT