Scarcity Brain: Fix Your Craving Mindset and Rewire Your Habits to Thrive with Enough

by Michael Easter

Our drive for influence also creates anxiety.

seeking influence isn’t bad. The reason we did it and still do it today is that it helped us survive and thrive.

It can lead us to work hard, to be more generous, to do good and help others.

our drive for influenc...

competitiveness, overconfidence, materialism, aggression, ...

This is likely why social commitment was one of three compulsions the Buddha had to o...

“These two emotions evolved specifically for social rank and hierarchy,” she told me. “They motivate us to do or not do various behaviors that help us attain social rank and convey to others around us that we’re deserving of social rank.”

Pride & Shame Emotions

Pride is the emotion we feel when we evaluate ourselves positively. “Pride feels great,”

there are two types of pride. One has a bright side; the other has a dark side.

“authentic pride.” Authentic pride is good. It’s the type of pride we feel when we achieve something great and deserve that pride.

Question: What is authentic pride?

“We feel authentic pride even if no one sees what we’ve done. But if someone happens to see the great thing we did, then it feels extra good.” Authentic pride boosts creativity and long-term mental and physical health and gives us lasting influence.

Even if no one sees what we've done

“hubristic pride.” Hubristic pride is undeserved pride. It’s a type we project without accomplishment.

What is hubristic pride?

hubristic pride come with problems,” said Tracy. “Hubristic pride leads us to behave in ways where the goal is all about getting other people to appreciate us.” It’s driven people mad and into self-destruction.

authentic pride comes from doing awesome things. Hubristic pride comes from falsely advertising ourselves.

“As you increase your status by letting people know you’re great, you simultaneously decrease it by letting people know you’re great. And that makes you look like a jerk.

much harder but more effective way

is to actually go out into the world and do great things. And then sta...

controversial opinions get the most traction on social media,

Cancel culture is society launching a full-on blitzkrieg of shame.

smartphones with cameras and an internet connection has allowed people to put shame at scale.

With the rise of artificial intelligence, our games often know us better than we do. They dribble out rewards on the exact schedule of unpredictability that sucks us in.

we must realize that our drive to be liked and influence others influences us far outside the internet. It is perhaps the biggest determinant of the course of our life and who we become. It’s steered our thoughts, actions, and well-being since birth, in the real world.

Our mind is ingrained with social conceptions, compulsions, and assumptions that alter how we see the world, make judgments, and relate to others.

Cognitive BIASES

scientists found that most people aren’t all that judgmental and quickly forget single errors. But because we overblow the implications of every social move we make—because we believe that everyone cares so deeply about our every public action—it causes us anxiety and stress.

The overblown implication effect

“spotlight effect,” which is how we overestimate how much other people think of us. It’s as if we believe we were living in our own prime-time television show—

the reality is this: we’re usually too blinded by our spotlight to stare at anyone else’s.

fundamental attribution error.” It’s how we attribute other people’s actions to their character but attribute our actions to factors outside our control. When someone else is late to a meeting, they’re lazy. When we’re late, it’s because of traffic.

Fundamental Attribution error

“overconfidence effect.” This is how we tend to have excessive confidence in our beliefs.

Overconfidence Effect

“false uniqueness bias,” which is our tendency to see ourselves and our work as more unique than it is. It often leads us to focus on the differences we have with people rather than our similarities.

False uniqueness bias

We are all, it seems, plagued by “naive realism,” the belief that we see reality as it is. Nope. We don’t.

Naive realism

perhaps our drive for influence does lead us astray.

“Do you want to be right or happy?”

Reflect question

our capacity to reason didn’t necessarily develop so that we could find better beliefs and make better decisions.

In our interactions with others, scarcity brain acts like our puff person, weaponizing reason to protect our status and make us look and feel good in the short term.

“Do I want to be right or happy?” we take the long view and insert perspective into the equation.

could be “do I want to look good or be happy?”

“do I want to be right or be a good friend, co-worker, or ...

Choosing the latter option can be uncomfortable in the immediate short term (we’re fighting against our pit bull brain). But over time, it has a way of dissolving the bullshit that causes our everyday suffering. And when ...

Scarcity brain evolved in a world where food was often in short supply. So it’s built to crave all foods, but especially foods that are packed with calories.

The more rich and calorie dense a food, the more delicious it is. The more delicious it is, the more likely we are to crave it and, in turn, eat a little more than we need. Our body stores that extra food as fat.

Humans began farming wheat, peas, lentils, and chickpeas in the Middle East.

REMEMBER THIS INFORMATION FOR GROCERIES

Potatoes, beans, corn, and peanuts in Central and South America. Rice in China.

REMEMBER THIS INFORMATION FOR GROCERIES

They became staples of the human diet because they can deliver many people enough calories, vitamins, and minerals to thrive.

Tsimane eat vegetables the way humans have for aeons—as a supplement that gives them a bit of a nutritional boost.

popular diets focus far too much on meat.

Until 1900, she said, meat was generally considered a treat. It still is in many low-income countries.

In our past, most of us had diets like the Tsimane: staple foods like grains or potatoes supplemented with a bit of meat and vegetables.

humans began eating primarily starchy carbs like roots, similar to today’s sweet potatoes. This may be what led our brains to double in size rather than the fatty meat some claim is entirely responsible for our brain growth.

plain staple foods paired with some meat and vegetables are perhaps the most potent combo to fill us up yet keep us from overeating.

REMEMBER THIS INFORMATION FOR GROCERIES

Foods our scarcity brains are built to crave. Calorie-packed concoctions of sweet, salty, fatty, crunchy, tangy, and so on.