Status Games

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.
Loretta Graziano Breuning, PhD, is founder of the Inner Mammal Institute and author of Habits of a Happy Brain: Retrain Your Brain to Boost Your Serotonin, Dopamine, Oxytocin and Endorphin Levels, The Science of Positivity: Stop Negative Thought Patterns by Changing Your Brain Chemistry, and Tame Your Anxiety: Rewiring Your Brain for Happiness. She is professor emerita of management at California State University, East Bay. The Inner Mammal Institute offers resources that help you rewire your mammalian brain chemistry, including books, videos, podcasts, blogs, and graphics. Breuning’s work has been translated into Spanish, Russian, French, Turkish, German, and appeared in Forbes, Wall Street Journal, Psychology Today, Time, Cosmopolitan, Real Simple, and Fast Company, and on Fox, Dr. Oz, NBC, and many podcasts. She resides with her husband in Oakland CA.

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