Have you ever thought about how much your surroundings influence you and what the three main factors are? Could you come up with the three main factors without looking at the content below? Who are those people who influence us the most? I have divided this article into five pieces. Let’s get to it…
- Why is our environment so important? – Compass
- Our Close Ones (Family, Friends)
- A Sizable Crowd
- The Powerful and Influential
- My Conclusion and Debate
Your surroundings are one of the main factors in your life because they change everything about you: your thinking, your decisions, your way of talking, your goals, and everything about your identity. It changes you from top to bottom. Some people are more focused; they realize their surroundings and are harder to influence. I would say that they know who they are, but that doesn’t necessarily have to be true. They just know what they want and don’t want. However, not everyone is like that. Most people are deformable and shapeable like rubber.
People have the urge to fit in, form relationships, and strive for praise and recognition from others. That is why some people are easily changeable. They drink more just to fit in. They berate others to look cool. They do stupid things to amuse others. Sometimes, it is almost frightening what one can do just for a little bit of recognition from others. We change because we mimic others, mainly from our family/friends, large crowds, and influential figures. We adopt our feats and habits from these groups.
Our close ones – family/friends
There was a 23-year-long study that examined 12,000 people. They found that ‘A person’s chances of becoming obese increased by 57% if he or she had a friend who became obese in a given interval.’ It also works oppositely. Another study found that if a person in a relationship loses weight, so does his/her partner. Our close ones are the first main factor that influences us – especially OUR PARENTS or somebody who has taken care of us while we were growing up. Additionally, your close friends are the other half of the first main factor. The more you grow old, the less changeable you are (harder to change).
A sizable crowd
The larger the crowd, the more pressure it creates, and the more influential it is. We constantly monitor the environment and ask ourselves, ‘What are others doing? What are they thinking?’ It is natural for humans to go by the crowd and draw the same conclusions. There were plenty of tests where one person was put in a room with actors, and all present should answer some simple questions. At first, the actors answered correctly, but after some time, they answered incorrectly on purpose. The test subject looked confused and insecure as more actors were answering incorrect obvious questions. In the end, the subject went with the flow and answered as the others did. The more actors, the more pressure was created.
The Powerful – Influential
Naturally, we want to earn respect, praise, and admiration just like the powerful ones. We copy from those people marketing strategies, ways of living, new habits, opinions, communication skills, and much more. The influential could also be your favorite YouTubers with their techniques of living or speaking. People naturally want power and influence, and that is why we copy from those people who already have it.
If you seek change in your life whether it is physical or mental, it is important to find the right environment and get along with new people in this area. Example?
Let’s consider you want to lose weight and start a healthier life. You told yourself, that you want to eat less sweet and fat food, eat more vegetables, stop overeating, and start working out. One of the most effective ways to achieve this goal is to join the environment, the surroundings, and the culture that considers this as normal. Start connecting with people who already have experiences with working out and living a healthy life. Listen to them and do not be feisty. It also helps if you have someone who wants to achieve the same goal as you (friend, partner, family member), but it is not necessary. For someone, it can be hard to start working out at home, so go to the gym. It has a different ambiance, you connect with people, and you see the progress and successes of others. It is easier to skip or quit working out at home because the environment doesn’t influence you that much. You don’t want to leave the gym so easily, you drove there, you paid for it and you won’t quit, because everyone else in the gym, didn’t as well.
Most people will not feel comfortable after a big change, like when they start saving money or a change in diet. But if their surroundings do that as well, then they go hand in hand; it is easier to change in a group of people rather than alone.
It is simple. When you meet with people who work out, you have higher chances of starting too. If you meet with people who play musical instruments, you might as well start playing too. You can implement this everywhere.
Now, what is the wisdom to take away from this article? There is much more to talk about, but we will leave this to a different time. My wisdom for you is to realize. To realize the environment around you, to feel it and be aware of it. Sometimes, you do or say things in a group of people that you wouldn’t normally do, and I just want you to BE YOURSELF.
This article was inspired by the book ‘Atomic Habits’ by James Clear. So what are your thoughts? Do you think there are more main groups than those three? Write all your thoughts and prompts in the comments or contact us directly. Don’t be shy; write everything down. I accept all criticism and praise. Also check out one of my other blogs also inspired by ‘Atomic Habits’ here.
