Success Isn’t Just About Changing Your Environment, It’s About Understanding It

One of the more popular ideologies that is being repeated within the world of success hacking is the idea of molding and shaping your environment for success.

However, it’s never really explained why this is an important tool to cultivate and get better and better at. Yes, there are tools, templates, how to guides on how to evaluate your environment, but this AsSumption is: there is something wrong with your environment, rather than explaining why there might be something wrong with your environment. there is not necessarily a reason why that is given. That’s what this article is about.

As humans, we have been conditioned to except certain people into our world and reject others. In simple terms, this is just called boundaries. However, if you hyper identify with notions of compassion, or are typically an extrovert, then your worldview Comes with a bias that everybody in the world should be loved.

Now, of course, this is not just with those who are extroverted. This is the cultural phenomenon that has been hyper focused on in the west, the need to define love as something that embraces everything about everyone. Although, this is not going to be an article on philosophy or love, it’s important to understand why we are where we are.

So what is this have to do with being an entrepreneur?

Your environment shapes your understanding of success, of progress, of the most important aspects of what it means to develop a business, two and a hand to your skills, to drive towards a goal.

If you surround yourself with people who believe that success is defined by manipulating other people to get what you want, then you simply surrounded yourself with Machiavellian type characters that inform you in an ongoing feedback loop.

But where does this originate from, this need to cultivate healthy boundaries? Where does this need to now be consciously aware of our environment and actively participate in editing it to build a micro-cosmology that pushes us closer towards our goal?

One of the many elements of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs is a Esteem. In simple terms, this is just how we see ourselves, but by extension, how we see others. Now, there were certain things in our childhood environment that may have affected in such a way that we now define those who are in our lives by certain particular characteristics. For example: are crazy ants. Everybody has one, every house that crazy uncle or aunt in their family, that they try to avoid a family gatherings.

These archetypal examples simply exist to demonstrate that there are elements in our lives, in our childhood, that had affected us and that we’re outside of our control and created archetypal truths of how to engage with our environment. Example: if you had an abusive parents, you might fear of Authority, or you might want to please authority/your boss.

Without focusing on this too much, we have to come to realize is that our own personal environments have an effect on how we define our boundaries and what that looks like in practical terms.

So, we have to be very aware of what those certain triggers are when we are building our business, when were chasing success, when we are promoting our products. Who are those people in our lives that are affecting our environment in a negative way? But also, what in my own personal worldview is affecting me to see them as a negative aspect of my environment?

The second question is a lot harder than the first question, mainly because we are constantly looking for ways to define when something goes wrong, i.e., if the product doesn’t sell as expected, or if the process towards building your company falls flat, and etc. So, we have to be very sensitive and aware to the reality that our own biases will affect how we need to change our environment.

I do agree that those that are in your environment that are bringing you down, even if it’s your parents, need to be dealt with, or removed from your life, some of them you can’t help but have in your life. What does that means is that you need to be strategic with your time, and when you hang out with these people.

So, does your environment have an effect on your success? That is a resounding: yes. Have you ever tried to put a polar bear in the middle of a South American jungle and see how the environment will affect their own flourishing.

Yes, our environment affects our success. So, we need to be actively weeding out those people in our lives that impede our growth, that impede our self development, that ultimately are constantly enemies to our progress.

This also implies that you will need people in your life, that you need to actively seek out, better templates for you to chase after the dreams that you want to make real in your life. That means you need to be strategically and actively involved in the making of the new environment. The question is, what is your priority?

Is your success your priority, where is it making others happy? Because one is not necessarily the same, you will have to let go of those people in your life that are keeping you down. And that is the hardest choice you’re going to have to make during this process of building into the life that you deserve.