How Your Environment Prevents You From Achieving Your Life Goals
Can we intentionally choose what to think? Or thinking only generates base on how the mind experienced its environment?
How does the environment affects our thinking abilities, decision-making skills, health and even our future?
How much of our surroundings do we need to adjust or even omit so we can have not just good thoughts but optimal performance to achieve our goals?
One of the key takeaways from the book “The Japanese Art Of Decluttering and Organizing” by Marie Kondo is that “When your room is clean and uncluttered, you have no choice but to examine your inner state. You can see issues you have been avoiding and are forced to deal with them. From the moment you start tidying, you will be compelled to reset your life. As a result, your life will start to change.”
There is more on this book than tidying a room, it highlights how environment serves as a mirror of an individual’s current thoughts and later on the mirror of his future.
The environment that you choose to see, experience and live by has a very big influence on bringing you to the life that you really want. If you want to upgrade your life you will start by upgrading your environment.
An environment is not just physical surroundings such as your room, the places you visit, or your workplace. Environment is everything you interact externally. Such as:
- the people you get along with
- co-workers or family member
- social feeds you entertain or person you follow
- TV series you watch, information you read
- habits you keep
- food you choose to eat
- physical activities
- thoughts and beliefs you welcome
How those factors contribute on achieving the things you really want in your life?
How much of these inspire you? How will these environment bring you to the level of person you want to become?
Athletes’ Physical Strength Is Worthless Without This
Most people believe that exceptional achievements start from inside factors. For example, working 13 hours a day, enduring “over-busyness” and being workaholic.
But Denzel Washington argues that, “Just because you’re doing a lot more doesn’t mean you’re getting. Don’t confuse movement with progress.”
Diligence on a wrong opportunity would not always measure to success. Busy is not always equal to being productive.
The “just do it” mentality without a clear goal and concrete planning is scary. Stephen Covey on his book tells, “If a ladders is not leaning against the right wall, every step that we take just gets just to the wrong place faster.”
If we will study world’s greatest athletes, one of the key traits that contribute to their wins is not just their physical strength. It’s more than we might think.
One might easily conclude that, what contribute on their success is the kind of environment they set for themselves every day. Environment such as the running track, the sports stadium, and the training ground.
But what makes them a champion is having an influence that doesn’t only involve the gym.
“Your environment will either push you or pull you towards your goal” — Benjamin Hardy
Surroundings play a big role for them to have focus and to have what they call single-mindedness.
An article from olympic.org defined single-mindedness as “With unwavering focus, athletes turn barriers into motivators and disregard destabilising influences.”
They disregard destabilising influences. They proactively choose influences that will make them a champion. They have a good mental filter.
How an athlete’s surrounding influences contributes to their success? The journey of an athlete begins on the number of years before the game.
Their surroundings not just today but years ago are what shapes them.
No great athlete spend 90% of their time in an environment that won’t help them to be a champion.
Athletes choose what to eat, the best amount of sleep. They dedicate time to be alone and visualize their wins. They have unbreakable habits, they spend time with the right people, surrounded by coach and co-athletes.
They intentionally choose the kind of environment that will help them be on the level that they want.
If we put the athlete in a different environment, how it will affect his performance?
Some Type Of Surroundings Can Delay Success
Many psychological experiments show that stress(bad stress) results to pessimistic attitude or even depression. Happy people, in contrast, tend to make an optimistic decision and positive outlook in life.
This is why, like an athlete, in order to achieve the certain goal we want in life, we have to deliberately choose what type of environment we will have.
Bad environment leads to stress and bad decision making. Even micro decisions if compound over time can play huge effects on big things in life.
Good environment, on the other hand, leads to positive mood and good decision-making skills, an important trait that will help you on achieving bigger goals you set for yourself.
We can clearly see the projection of a great athlete who will remain constant in his everyday environment and routine. How about for a non-athlete like us? how can we predict these projections?
Start with examining not just your thoughts nor your mindset, but most especially your environment.
Does it help you perform? Upgrade? Mentally and physically?
Do your surroundings stress you? make you feel bad? Or does it inspire you?
How does your environment gravitate you nearer to your goal?
Now it’s your call.
Never choose an environment that will delay your success. Practice saying NO to destabilising influences.
Become a mental athlete, surround yourself with influences that will make you build that mental muscle. This what brings you to being a champion, who deliberately review and aim for an ultimate goal which is getting his own definition of medal of success.
Ready to upgrade yourself to the next level?
I’ve designed a Journaling Template to put yourself to be a constant GOAL achiever. You follow this daily, your life will change forever.
