You are your Environment

It’s often said that you become your environment. If you surround yourself with wealthy go-getters you yourself will become a wealthy go-getter. If you surround yourself with drug abusers you yourself will become a drug abuser.

I think it’s important to recognise that we are responsible for our environment. I chose (either consciously or otherwise) the environment in which I exist. You chose the environment in which you exist. Ok so you didn’t choose your family or the region you grew up in, but you did choose the friends you hang out with. You chose your pastimes. You continue to choose the food you consume and the content you consume. As an adult you have the choice to remain living amongst your family and the friends you grew up, the choice to stay in your hometown. And you have the choice to leave.

You yourself are a constituent part of your environment and therefore will be raising up or bringing down the others in your sphere. You are an active participant in your environment.

As society encourages you to drink alcohol, you encourage your friends and family to drink alcohol. Where once you were the enticed, now you are the enticer. As your kids reach a certain age you welcome them into the drinkers’ club with open arms.

In any given environment you are as much the influencer as the influenced.

I always find it interesting when someone says they fell in with a bad crowd as though they had no control of the situation. And as though they are somehow separate from the bad crowd. You rarely hear someone take responsibility for being the bad crowd.

Equally I find it interesting when a player in a struggling football team says they need to get new players in. The inference is that it is others in the team that are the cause of the poor performances and need to be replaced, not themselves.

I have always gravitated (ooh that sounds a little passive, like I couldn’t resist the pull) towards softer, gentler, more easy-going people. People who aren’t going to challenge my laziness and my procrastination. Not complete and utter losers, but people who reside just on the loser side of the scales. And I’m sure these people feel equally comfortable around me as I enable their passive behaviours. I actively resist hustlers, chancers, people who are full of themselves.

Quite possibly I actively avoid successful people. Actually there is no possibly about it. I go about my business quietly side-stepping successful people. Quietly seeking out the unsuccessful or having them seek me out. Even as I write this it sounds ridiculous, almost that I fear I might be tainted by the success of others if they are in my vicinity. Maybe I am intimidated by their success, rather than inspired. I must admit I like feeling the most successful of my friend group, even if my successes are moderate. Even if my success only exists in relation to their failures; their inability to hold down a decent job, or to stay fit, or to stay sober for any length of time.

One of the first companies I worked for made a lot of people redundant at one point. For some reason I wasn’t one of those that was culled. The bosses gathered all the remaining employees in a room to tell us about the redundancies and how those of us in the room would be taking the company forward. I should have been happy to keep my job. Instead I looked around the room, upset to see all the gentler people had been let go and I was left in a workforce full of cocky go-getters.

My son has played football all his life. He often remarks on how he always seems to end up playing for ‘nice’ teams, rather than one of the win at all costs teams. I too used to think it was a bit strange, but now I realise it was a choice, our choice.

Many people like working in negative, toxic environments. It gives them plenty to gossip about and absolves them of responsibility. Any issues are the fault of the management or the culture. You only have to witness the regularity and enthusiasm with which they talk about the toxicity. It’s hard to imagine such a person in a positive environment. Somewhere where they too would have to express positivity.

Even as I write this blog I can sense the association I am making between mercenaries and success, between ‘nice’ people and failure. There’s a pejorative tone when I talk about successful people. I’m going to set myself a couple of challenges: 1) to try to talk about successful people in wholly positive terms and 2) to seek out and spend time with successful people.