Status anxiety definitely exists at a political level. Many Iraqis were annoyed with the US essentially for reasons of status: for not showing them respect, for humiliating them.
We need tremendous energy to bring about a psychological change in ourselves as human beings, because we have lived far too long in a world of make-belief, in a world of brutality,
violence, despair, anxiety. To live humanly, sanely, one has to change.
I can't imagine turning into one of those codgers who no longer reads fiction. I'm regularly stirred by it and suffer no anxiety of influence. Influence me! That was my credo then, as I was developing and learning, and remains so now, as I'm developing and learning.
I was about to meet Beyonce, and I had a full-blown anxiety attack. Then she popped in looking gorgeous, and said, "You're amazing! When I listen to you I feel like I'm listening to God."
Conscious attention is a designed function of the brain
which scans the environment for any trouble making changes.
If you identify yourself with your trouble shooter, then naturally you define yourself as being in a perpetual state of anxiety.
Anxiety was born in the very same moment as mankind. And since we will never be able to master it, we will have to learn to live with it—just as we have learned to live with storms.
The mind is intrinsically tranquil. Out of this tranquility, anxiety and confusion are born. If one sees and knows this confusion, then the mind is tranquil once more.
If you want to understand entrepreneurs, you have to study the psychology of the juvenile delinquent. They don't have the same anxiety triggers that we have.