A Product of Your Environment
August 6th, 2007 - Jarkko
This is a guest post by Graham Lutz, a young entrepreneur blogging about business and entrepreneurship at The Young Capitalist. Check out his blog, I’m sure you’ll enjoy it just as much as I do. But here we go: the stage is yours, Graham!
So ya know when you see that preppy kid you knew from high school, and 2 semesters into college he’s turned into a skater type who does drugs? What the heck happened to that guy? How did he go from being the big man on the high school campus to one “F” away from failing out of college?
His environment changed.
He was not ready for the fight it would take to maintain his standards, so he succumbed. When I speak about this subject, I generally find that people are violently opposed to the notion that they are simply a product of the environment in which they live. The fact of the matter is that the majority of our thoughts, actions, emotions, behaviors, and habits are a a reflection, whether directly or indirectly, of our environment.
One may like to think that they are not susceptible to the “product of your environment” ideology, but people are inevitably pulled down to the lowest common denominator among their peers unless there is a healthy atmosphere of personal development and growth. This then becomes a choice. Do you like what you have allowed your environment to mold you into?
If not, something needs to be done.
It may be your social circle, your co-workers, business partners, teammates, or even television and print publications that have formed you, and it is now up to you to change your environment. We have two main avenues through which we are effected; our eargate and our eyegate (i.e. those things you see and hear). This being the case, some drastic action needs to be taken and having now made the decision to change yourself for the better, you meet the challenges that come with that decision.
Let me give you an illustration.
You have a 20 oz. cup of water that has been systematically and consistently filled with dirt. You cannot empty the cup and there is a steady stream of muddy water flowing into the cup. How do you cleanse the water? It seems to me that the first course of action would be to stop the muddy water from entering the cup, so let’s divert the muddy water into the sink. Second, we must clean the water, but like we heard earlier, we cannot empty the cup. We now have to begin to flush out our cup with clean water. First we pour 1 oz. of clean water in, and it gets a bit lighter in color. We then pour in more and more. Eventually the clean water will flush out all of the dirt left over from the flow and we are left with a perfectly clear glass of water.
So are our minds. The cup is your brain, the dirt is your friends dirty jokes, the latest news stories, celebrity gossip, sitcoms, and everything else you see and hear on a daily basis. Before you can begin to change the way you think and the actions you take, you must first stop the incoming negative flow. Personally, I cut out my cable television and stopped listening to the local news. As you can imagine, it was quite a shock to be without my daily information consumption, but I quickly found out that my life was much more enjoyable without the junk.
The next step is to engage in a proactive personal development program including reading, audio materials, seminars, and mentorship. The best program I have found is through John Maxwell’s Maximum Impact. From there, you need to make the hard decision of whether or not to continue down the same social path. This is one of the hardest decisions you will make in your life, and I sincerely hope that this has been helpful so please do not hesitate to contact me if you would like to discuss this further!
I want to give a big thanks to Jarkko Laine for allowing me the honor of
writing to his audience!
Its good to see people giving their quality posts out even when blogging for others
Nice info
I think Graham Lutz have a good point there, but I still slightly disagree with environment being our only, if even the biggest influence, which affects us in what we are. It sure has effect, but I would say the biggest influence comes from our minds, and the influence being so big, that it affects even the environment where we are living.
So instead of what Graham said I’d say there happened something in the mind of that preppy high school kid before the environment changed. It was actually the change of his mindset, that influenced the environment where he was living.
What I’m saying here is that one shouldn’t use too much energy to change the environment where one is living, but consentrate in developing a new way of thinking and a new mindset. A mindset which resonates with the kind of environment where one would like to be! That way the environment would strart to change with just a little effort or no effort at all!
But still, I think both ways work. While you change your environment your thinking will start to change. When you listen to personal development programs, you begin to have new thoughts, which will eventually change your mindset.
But the key, in my opinion, is your mindset and your thoughts. By focusing in it, you can change your environment. Even if there seemed to be no way to do it, it will start to change accordingly, as soon as your mindset will change. By changing your thoughts on things, your life will change.
Lauri, you have an interesting point of view, but I still don’t quite get it.
I agree that if the kid that Graham uses as the example in this post would have been stronger in his convictions he wouldn’t have started hanging out in the wrong company but instead would have stayed true to his values.
However, I don’t quite understand what you mean by changing your environment with “just a little effort or no effort at all” by just changing your mind set.
Let’s take a look at the example again:
1. There’s this kid getting good grades and being a “good kid”.
2. He gets to bad company where his new friends are doing drugs and not studying at all.
Now there are two options:
a) He gets new friends with better standards (as Graham suggests) or
b) he stays with these guys and just changes the way he’s thinking and thus changes his friends as well (as you suggest).
If I would be given those two choices I would definitely pick the first one.
Why?
Because it’s just so much easier.
If you stick around with people who are doing all kinds of bad things and just try to be different than them, you have to be really tough. It’s so much easier to let the peer pressure take over and just go with the crowd.
Then again if you choose your crowd well, you don’t have to fight for your beliefs (at least not that often) but your friends can actually support you in staying true to yourself.
Maybe I didn’t understand some key point in your argument, but at least for now I can’t agree with you, Lauri…
Ok, let’s ask a question…
Why is the kid in “bad company” at the first place? Why did he choose to change his friends?
There must have been a reason, and I think the reason was in his own mind. Maybe something happened and he started to think that he is not good enough to get good grades and that there is no point in studying. Not until the shift in his mindset about himself did he start to hang around with these new friends.
So when we are looking the situation again with this background in mind, we can see the point (or at least I do).
If you think the kid’s situation for yourself with your actual mindset, you can’t see yourself hanging around some guys using drugs etc. You don’t have any reason to do it. It’s easy to you to change friends. There’s a little effort, or no effort at all for you to do it, like you said yourself. You would pick the first one, “because it’s just so much easier.” – for you! You already have the right mindset for not hanging with bad company. (bad from your perspective)
But for the kid it’s different. He don’t propably see his company so bad at all.. they are all like him, not good at school and they don’t care too much about boring stuff like studying and careers etc.. He sees some downsides in his new life, but why change it, cause “there’s no point in life anyway”… he could be thinking something like that.. That’s his mindset in his situation.
You can see that with his mindset, it would be quite hard to change company.
In his situation, changing his environment would be much more easier, if he first changed his mindset. If he would start to think “I’m good at school. There’s a point in life. I want to study and have good grades.”, what would happen? With those kind of thoughts it would then be easy to change company. His environment would change with no extra effort.
Like attracts like. If you think you are not good at school, you attract people who are not good at school. If you think you are smart and successful, you attract smart successful people.
Easiest way to change your life, is to start think differently about yourself.
Hmm… I guess I’m sort of starting to get what you mean with your mindset idea.
You’re right in the sense that if the kid would have a different mindset he wouldn’t have started hanging out with bad company in the first place. Namely if he would have been stronger in his own convictions.
But the fact is that not many of us are.
If you think about the situation. This kid is far from home, far from his old, safe circles that protected him previously. He doesn’t know anyone, so he’s happy that some people start hanging out with him.
At first he might not realize what it’ll get him into. But when he does, he’s already attached to these people in some sort and they have already started to affect the way he thinks…
“Like attracts like”
At some level yes. It’s easier to be with smart and successful people if you feel that you are smart and successful.
But what if you really aren’t smart and successful, but want to become one?
I say the easiest way is to start hanging out with smart people and learn from them. Get them to share their learnings and understanding with you.
If you really aren’t smart (yet), thinking that you are smart won’t get you anywhere. In fact it might keep you from learning anything.
So while I now understand and agree on some of your points I still wouldn’t sign your last sentence. I mean, it’s good to think positively about yourself, but if there are things that aren’t good in you, I think it’s much better to change them first and only then start to think positively about those aspects of you.
Otherwise you’re just cheating yourself.
Hey hey! Good see I’ve started some conversation!
This kid, we’ll call him mark, his friends changed because they were in the environment he was put into at school. One was his roomate, and his roomates best friend from highschool. Once he started hanging out with them, their negative atmosphere attracted more and more negative situations.
Lauri, I agree with what you are saying 100%, but in this situation it definately was his environment that changed his mind, and not vice versa. I mention in the post that it is an enormous challenge to change your environment because it takes a change of mind to do so, that is when you are going from negative to possitive. It is much easier though, to go from possitive to negative if you are not on your guard. Let me illustrate.
You’re standing on a stool, 3 1/2 feet off the ground. Around you are your friends, your tv set, the radio shows, and your drug problem. Would it be easier for you to pull all your friends and all up to your level? or do you think they would much more easily bring you down? just a thought!