Fame, Fortune, and the Death of Principles

The Power Paradox: Why Success Blinds Us to Our Values

Why are so many folks seduced by power and status? Why do so many ditch any principles to the side for the fleeting chance of gaining money or notoriety?

It’s a question I’ve wrestled with for a long time. It was a central part of my book Win the Inside Game (which just had it’s 1 year release anniversary). It’s something I witnessed first hand when I worked at Nike and saw people fall for the allure of Lance Armstrong and others in person.

And it’s something that’s in the front of my mind as we just saw one of the biggest podcasters and writers in the health and wellness space, Peter Attia, show up in the Epstein files over 1,700 times. Attia released a statement. I don’t know the man. I’ve never interacted with him, and I can’t tell you whether his statements were genuine or false. I’m not here for determining what in the world went on in a world turned upside down. But I think the question for why power, fame, status, notoriety drag us kill principles is one worth diving into.

And to make it clear, I’m not evaluating things at the level of despicable of the Epstein files. I want to understand why otherwise normal folks throw away their ethics for a chance at ‘success.’

We can look at this on the small scale. Where people on social media will refuse to criticize or say anything remotely negative about podcasters who they desperately want to get on their show to expand their reach. We can see it on a larger scale, in cases of cheating, doping, and abuse in sport.

I saw it first hand early in my career. As I’ve written about, I was a whistleblower against doping at the Nike Oregon Project, which ultimately resulted in folks getting banned from sport. But during my experience, I saw first hand the impact of power, and how seemingly normal people start to do immoral things, or at best, ignore it.

There were so many situations where folks turned a blind eye, stayed quiet, or ultimately changed their story, presumable all to protect their relationship with the powerful. And after I left, there were situations where everyone saw the teenage Mary Cain get berated, but stay quiet.

It’s easy to label these folks as bad or evil. And in the horrific cases, that might be the case. But what I’m more interested in is how does the everyday person go down this path?

The Normalization of Deviance

I saw it so many times. I even experienced it myself. At first, it was something small. Take this prescription anti-inflammatory or asthma medication. It’s not yours, it came from someone else, but it’s okay. It seems a little weird, but athletes would justify it. My coach is giving me this. He’s got a direct line to team doctors. Everyone else took it.

That’s how it starts. And over time, the boundaries are pushed little by little, so that the taking of a sketchy labeled supplement becomes something much closer to the grey area, or perhaps over it. In psychology, they call this the normalization of deviance. In pop culture, it’s the slippery slope.

It’s a process where small departures from rules become the new cultural norm because they didn't immediately cause a disaster. You cut corners, do something a little “wrong,” and there’s no immediate feedback to your brain that there’s a consequence, so your zone of what you’re willing to do expands.

It also changes your brain’s story about yourself. We don’t just think our way into our values. Our brain monitors how we act and utilizes that information to determine who we are. So if we see ourselves blatantly cheat, we don’t internalize it as “I’m a cheater,” we start telling ourselves a story that incorporates that behavior into our conceptualization of ourselves as a good, decent human being. “Everyone is doing it. I’m just leveling the playing field. It’s not really cheating…His intentions were to help, not harm. He’s just being tough to help them achieve their goals. It’s not abuse…” We’ve all heard the rationalizations.

Our mind is a master sense maker. We’ve got an in built psychological immune system to keep us thinking we’re a good, decent person. So anything that contradicts that, we do our best to weave that story. And for some folks, their way more likely to believe their own BS, than others.

The Desperation of Success and Self

This is particularly true if we’re desperate. If winning the gold medal is all that matters to you. If it’s the central part of your identity, that makes you fragile. It transforms falling short from a tough loss to an existential crisis where your identity is at stake. In the psychology literature, we call this identify foreclosure. Your sense of self is cemented around one thing. And the potential stress of losing that sense of self is so strong, that it pushes us to move well past our comfort zones.

It’s why research tells us that we’re much more likely to cheat in sport or business if we have obsessive passion. A kind of unquenchable thirst for achievement and status to prove to ourselves that we’re worthy, and validate our identity. It’s when the external is far more powerful than the internal. Every game or race or sales report becomes a test of who we are. And we can’t fail.

And that’s what I saw firsthand. I witnessed many “heroes” who tried to fill that void with a blinding chase to achieve or gain power and notoriety. And they’d push aside of any ethical guardrails that impeded the path. So much of the blinding obsession to win at all costs, was really just deep insecurity. It was people wrapped up in the trappings of fame, fortune, power, status, likes, and follows. When fame, growth, and status are your apex values it’s a slippery slope to selling your soul.

And these folks would use that stress against others. In sport, they’d tangle contract negotiations over their heads, or even places on the team. They’d do everything they could to convince athletes that they wouldn’t be successful without them. That they needed them to reach their goals.

And in some cases, they’d utilize financial stress to amplify this effect. For instance, in my case while I was still working there and started to realize what I was navigating, I mysteriously stopped being paid for 6 months. It was just an accounting mistake that someone had to fix, I was repeatedly told. But the real story was almost certainly that it was a way to put pressure on a young individual without much savings to be controlled. After all, I needed money.

In these environments, people in power often use your desires and needs against you. They create stress to take your rational brain offline, and get you to default to surviving. “Don’t you want the job, the medal, the accolades?” They dangle it in front of you, trying to force you to make a decision. Which then your brain internalizes as a commitment to the program. Pushing you further down that slippery slope.

The Narrative of Exceptionalism

There’s one other key construct that plays a role here. Power makes us lose empathy and understanding. Especially if your susceptible to it. Psychologist Dacher Keltner has outlined what he calls the Power Paradox. We often rise to influence through pro-social behaviors like empathy, collaboration, and openness to experience. But once, we gain power, we lose those very skills.

His work has found that the experience of power leads to “empathy deficits” and “diminished moral sentiments.” For instances, studies have shown that high-status individuals are less capable of reading others’ facial expressions, a key marker of empathy. Neurologically, people in powerful positions show a diminished ability to “mirror” the experiences of others, such as wincing when they see someone else in pain.

Sure, are some people Machiavellian to start? Of course. But what’s interesting about Ketlner’s work is that it shows that as we rise through the ranks, we experience a kind of blindness. We lose the ability to consider others perspectives. We get self-absorbed.

And in turn, we start to craft stories about why we’re exceptional. How the rules don’t apply to us, and that we should be able to bend them, because we know better. We start using our status and success as a way to justify whatever comes next. The delusion becomes stronger the more power and status we have.

Fighting Back in an Insane World

This all seems depressing and sad. How do we combat the pull to power and status?

First, hold your values and principles tightly. Remind yourself of them. Have regularly scheduled check-ins where you evaluate whether you’re still living in accordance with them.

We often treat values as if they are slogans. Nice to repeat and project to the public. But their real impact comes when you are up against the wall. Slogans get pushed to the wayside. But if those values are something you live, that you reflect upon regularly, that you challenge yourself on, they’re more likely to stick around.

But…as we just explained, values aren’t enough. The honest truth is, so many of us will chunk them to the wayside. And it’s often those of us who are convinced that we never would. That moral certainty turns against us when the stress is on and the rubber meets the road.

We need another check. And that’s the people around us. When your mom asked if you’d jump off a bridge if your friends did, the real answer is you probably would. We are heavily impacted by those around us and the environment that we’re in.

They set the stage for what’s normal. If the environment around us is crazy, the insane gets normalized. In my own experiences, I witnessed this many times. People went along with crazy because everyone else around them acted like it was the normal thing to do. As I outlined in one of my books, there’s a slew of research that shows that the old saying of “you are the five people you spend the most time with,” is pretty dang accurate.

This is often why insidious environments often isolate you. They keep you surrounded by people who won’t rock the boat or stick their hand up and say “This is nuts…” It’s so the biggest check we have on the nefarious gets subdued. Instead, we look around and think, “Well, if Johnny and Suzy aren’t speaking up, it must not be that big of a deal.” This is even more enhanced if we see other people who are successful going along, especially if the person observing is “lower status.”

Taking it back to Peter Attia, it’s why this line in his statement is stands out, “At that point in my career, I had little exposure to prominent people, and that level of access was novel to me. Everything about him seemed excessive and exclusive, including the fact that he lived in the largest home in all of Manhattan, owned a Boeing 727, and hosted parties with the most powerful and prominent leaders in business and politics. I treated that access as something to be quiet about rather than discussed freely with others.”

We can be seduced by the rich and powerful in many ways. And if you are particularly susceptible, in desiring that fame, or have a touch of narcissism, guess what? The group collection of high status folks sends the signal to just go along with whatever is occurring. Don’t ask questions. You are in the club. Stay in it.

The good news is, we can use peer pressure and those around us to make a difference. If instead of sycophants, you surround yourself with people who genuinely care about you, and will call your BS and rationalizations, you’ve just created a safeguard. I was fortunate to have a few of these people in my corner. Who eventually when I described what was going on said, “This is crazy. You need to leave.” We need outside voices who can give us perspective. We need people who will hold us to our values.

You’re only as good and moral as the people you surround yourself with. Choose them wisely.

But, this also applies to us as a society. Our cultural norms impact our willingness to turn blind eye. If we hold up that winning at all costs mindset, then of course we’re going to push the boundaries, and perhaps not realize how far we’ve gone until it’s too late. If we succumb to the “everyone is cheating” like so many dopers want to, then it becomes easier to rationalize stepping over the line.

We need culture moorings to anchor us and pull back against the natural drift towards throwing away our values and principles for whatever version of fame, power, status, and money is your drug.

No one is perfect. But we can all do better.

Integrity matters. Principles matter. Doing the right thing matters. Supporting good people matters.

The ones who stay true to their values build something that lasts. It’s founded on something deeper and more fulfilling. It’s a longer game. But it’s the only game worth playing.

It might seem like in today's chaotic world that goes out the window. That the shortcuts win. That the only way to any kind of success is to compromise your values. I don't buy it.

My experience is: The stronger the pull in the other direction, the more sticking by your principles matters. The louder the noise, the more it's a superpower to have an anchor to keep you grounded.

I was fortunate to meet some “heroes” and be disappointed. I was fortunate to have my values tested, sometimes fail, but be forced to navigate that and do the right thing.

It was disillusioning. But also clarifying. I learned that reputation and character are different things.

Courage doesn't come from bravado or even strength. It comes from clarity. It's when you take control of your story, you let go of the fear, when you know who you are, what matters, and where you belong. That’s when you’re free. Because you’re standing on a foundation that no one else can touch: integrity, principles, and values.

Let’s all find a bit more courage.

-Steve