How does the environment affect a person?

It is commonly believed that habits appear from our intentions, but in fact they depend to a greater extent not on what we think and want, but on what surrounds us. We are much more dependent on our surroundings than we realize, and this can be used to create positive habits.

One of the main functions of the mind is to identify patterns and use them to quickly sort information that comes from outside. This is where habits come from - we automatically do things without thinking or spending time and energy.

That is, habits depend on the type of information that comes to us from the outside world. It becomes a pattern, a habit, but as soon as the environment changes, habits change along with it.

One study proved that our environment matters much more to us than our own intentions and motivation. Two groups of students participated in the experiment - one group was transferred to another university, while the control group remained in the same place where they studied before.

Students who transferred to another University changed many habits and noted that it was quite easy for them to act in a new way because they were in new circumstances.

The results of this study support the theory of stimulus control, or the influence of stimuli on behavior when the environment or some part of it provokes a person to automatically perform an action.

How does the environment affect a person?

The influence of others on a person should not be underestimated. Let's look at examples of what the environment can influence.

Attitude and enthusiasm

For example, a young man who leads a modest life wants to change it dramatically. He begins to read books on self-development, attends seminars and trainings. But when he comes home, he hears only ridicule addressed to him. This can greatly undermine your resolve. He may succumb to fear and return to his previous lifestyle.

The influence of the environment can be seen in the example of giving up bad habits. If a person is trying to quit smoking, he will be more successful in the company of non-smokers than among those who pick up a cigarette in any situation.

Success

As for success, a person is always at the same level as his immediate environment. The people around you are not only a source of psychological influence, but also information.

For example, a person wants to save some money and open his own business. Close friends who like to have a good rest often invite him to various establishments, where he spends large sums. If he does not change his environment, he will not achieve success.

Read more: 10 methods for responding to rudeness

How to get rid of the old environment

If you are interested in changing your environment, try to get rid of the old one. To do this you need:

Citing a serious reason, refusing to meet with old friends;
If it is work-related, start looking for a new one. You may be able to unlock your hidden potential, as a new area of work will force you to express yourself differently;
Create a busy schedule for yourself that will help fill the void so that you don’t relapse and return to the old things that you so want to get rid of;
Find yourself a new friend in the gym, training or classes;
You shouldn’t change your mind for good; take a responsible approach to finding new friends.

You should also take into account the fact that you cannot recklessly part with the past or deliberately quarrel, as well as say offensive words. After all, friends are not scattered. You only need to get rid of those who have a detrimental effect on you or are trying to interfere with your goals. You can safely continue to communicate with other people.

Is it worth changing your social circle?

To understand whether the immediate environment is suitable, it is necessary to conduct an in-depth analysis of it. This will help you find out who is pulling to the bottom and will tell you what kind of communication you should strive for.

Before analyzing your immediate environment, you need to make a list. It should include relatives, friends, acquaintances, and employees. Next you need to make three columns. Each of them will be responsible for a certain criterion:

Is the person satisfied with his life?
His income level.
Will he be able to help and give the necessary advice?

Next to each name in the columns you must put “+”, “-“, “0”. With a negative environment, it is better to reduce communication to a minimum. And don’t be scared if it’s a close relative. If you don’t listen once again to how bad his life is, it will only be for the good.

You must deal with a neutral environment at your own discretion. You should focus your attention only on positive communication.

Why is it difficult to part with old friends?

We become attached to the people who surround us. Having lost one of them for a certain period, we begin to experience a feeling of loss. It’s just that our usual life “runs away” and that’s when it’s necessary to introduce a replacement into it.

After all, until this part of life is filled with other content, we will feel as if out of place.

Please note that any changes will cause discomfort. They need to be overcome and driven away, because this is the only way to adapt to new conditions and situations that will change fate for the better.

How to change your environment

Let's look at some preparatory tips for changing your environment.

Information noise

First you need to clear the space of information waste. You need to stop watching news, low quality films and various talk shows.

It is worth reading several books for self-development, giving preference to TV shows about nature and sports, or stopping watching TV altogether.

You must be a member of several communities. They will help create a strong environment around you. Sometimes meeting a new person can completely change your life.

Preparing for the shift

Before you change your environment, you need to be prepared for discomfort. Leaving your usual social circle is not easy. Often you have to break old, strong ties, build relationships with new people, get used to them, adapt to their circumstances.

But how to change your environment? You shouldn't sit still. You need to attend training events. These could be various seminars, master classes or training on personal growth. At such events you can kill two birds with one stone: gain new knowledge and make friends who can help in the future.

Read more: How to understand that a girl likes you? Nonverbal signs

Make yourself known

Statement of your goals will also help you change your environment. You can talk about this on a page on a social network, on a personal blog, or share your desires with your immediate circle. This will help you find like-minded people.

A person can change their social circle in two ways:

By replacing it with a better quality one, increasing the number of needed people and reducing the share of those dragging down.
By adding new, necessary ones to the usual but neutral people.

The first way to change communication is more useful. During communication, a person wastes his strength and energy. If he spends a lot of time with neutral people, then he will not have enough strength for the right ones. To get the maximum effect, you need to spend more time with useful people.

Changing our social circle

If friends interfere with successful growth, then communication with them must be reduced to a minimum and gradually eliminated. You need to add people to your environment who have reached heights in their development. Looking at them will be an incentive to grow further. You can also learn from their experience, ask for advice, find out their opinion on a particular issue.

But what to do if a person’s social circle consists only of work colleagues? Changing jobs is not always the way out of the current situation. It is unknown which team will get the new location. The best solution to the problem will be career growth. Higher positions involve communication with successful people: managers, business partners, and the like.

Also, in order to achieve success in life, you need to be serious about choosing a life partner. More often than not, it is the spouse who influences goals, aspirations, and success. It’s worth choosing a person who has an advantage in some way and can motivate you to succeed.

By changing your environment, change your life!

Reading Time: 4 min.

The impact of the environment on a person is undeniable. Perhaps you were the person who bought clothes and food in cheap stores, saved on everything, and paid off your debts in parts.

And then the moment comes when you decide to change your life once and for all. You become confident that everything will work out and you resolutely promise yourself that poverty is over. You begin to set goals that you previously only dreamed of and outline paths that until recently seemed insurmountable.

And so, you find yourself at another feast with family and friends, where you happily announce your new plans. All your excitement and self-confidence disappear the moment some negative relative makes a sarcastic comment about your entrepreneurial abilities or expresses doubts about your competence. Sarcasm kills all initiatives in the bud. As a result, you return to your previous thinking, which leads to humiliation both morally and materially. Fears and concerns again rule your world. Your environment has put a barrier to your new actions.

Your environment, consisting of friends, acquaintances, colleagues, parents, brothers and sisters, influences the formation of your common life goals. No matter how incorrect and ridiculous the assessments of the people around you are, you are unable to ignore them and you have to agree with them.

Analysis of the influence of your environment on your development:

Who do you spend your free time with?
What kind of people surround you at work?
What is the level of income of the people around you?
Is someone from your environment ready to come to your aid in a difficult situation?
How do people around you treat you?
What actions have they ever done towards you?
Is communication with the people around you really useful for you?
Do you love them?
Do you like this communication?
Is every meeting with this person constructive and positive?
Have these people recommended anything interesting to you to read or watch recently?
What places did they advise you to visit?
What did you analyze with them and what conclusion did you come to?
How have people around you supported you?
How did they influence your thoughts and feelings?
What did you talk about during your recent meeting?
Can we say that your environment supports you in your desire to move forward and change something in life?
Does this person develop you or limit you?

Lifebuoy

First of all, you need to rid your arboretum of weeds, that is, clean your social circle. The most detrimental influence on you is those who express their negative opinions and lower your self-esteem. It is this kind of environment that slows down your development, prevents you from achieving your highest goals and destroys faith, oppressing your dignity.

Choose solitude over participation in stupid judgments of other people or disputes.
Don't allow yourself to waste valuable time by participating in unnecessary meetings.
Avoid gossip and talking about someone in his absence.
Do not allow someone to be judged or humiliated in front of you, even verbally.
Learn to speak the unpleasant truth rather than assent and nod for the sake of maintaining your reputation as a good girl.
Always say “no” if you don’t know how to do it.
Feel free to refuse the person with whom you do not want to have anything in common.
Be firm. There is no need to remain polite and attentive to someone who does not appreciate it or does not deserve it.

A new environment is the main component for new victories

You need to expand your circle of friends. You need to make new acquaintances, establish contacts, find smart and interesting people. It makes sense to surround yourself with people who have aspirations and goals similar to yours. Who have already achieved a lot in the areas that inspire and attract you. Such people will help you constantly improve personally and grow spiritually.

The environment that you create anew will help you change your outdated type of thoughts. Familiar old patterns of behavior will be destroyed and you will take your life to a new level.

Your decision to reach a higher material level is a clear analysis of those people who surrounded you yesterday, today, and who may surround you tomorrow.

By regularly communicating with funny, smart, rich people, you not only become more successful, but also begin to believe in yourself! After a couple of years of such communication, you become a comprehensively developed, joyful and happy person.

Obviously, if you put a fresh cucumber in a jar of pickles, after a while it will also become salty.

Exercise

Write down 5 promising, successful people whom you want to be like, who inspire you and serve as an example. Establish a connection with them, try to help. Be useful to them, and they themselves will want to meet with you.
Write down 5 people who constantly lead you astray. Most likely, they will be the dearest and closest ones with whom you have been friends for a long time. Previously, your interests overlapped, but now you are developing in different directions.

If your former friends are dear to you, then try to make them your allies and share your new knowledge.

Dear friends, take a closer look at your surroundings and make adjustments! Be happy, joyful and rich!

You will learn how to influence your environment and learn masterful communication at the online training by Itzhak Pintosevich “Influence! The art of communication." Register now!

Where to find the right people

To change your social circle, a person must attend events where you can meet people with similar interests.

Cons of unnecessary friendship

The influence of the environment on a person is stronger when the interaction of people is built not on mutual assistance, respect and understanding, but on base needs. Thus, there may also be ill-wishers (conscious or not) in your social circle. Those who keep you in one place with all their might, preventing you from moving forward. There are many negative sides to communicating with useless, spiritually alien people. Among them are:

Low self-esteem.
If a person has a tendency to underestimate himself, it is noticeably enhanced by the influence of public opinion. It happens that acquaintances assert themselves, directly pointing out your shortcomings and mistakes. It doesn’t matter what motivates them: envy, hidden anger and a sense of inferiority. It is imperative to exclude such people from your life.
Sometimes the circle of people who influence the decline in your self-esteem includes close people or those with whom you inevitably have to interact on a daily basis: friends, parents, management. If you cannot protect yourself from such communication, you need to cultivate firmness in yourself, in advance, before communicating with them, prepare yourself for dialogue, if possible, think through what to say. But do it with the most confident attitude possible.
No forward movement.
Sometimes friendships simply outgrow themselves. Over time, your school friends may simply become uninteresting to you. This is normal, since each of you has chosen a new direction in life, changed the city, got married. For example, your friend devoted himself to his family and had children. You have focused your energies entirely on advancing in your career. We met, but there was nothing to talk about. Do not force yourself with obligations to him and regular communication if it does not bring pleasure or benefit to any of you.
Poor psychological state.
Sometimes the influence of the immediate environment can lead to neurosis. If your friends regularly complain to you, discuss acquaintances, ask for something, creating an unpleasant atmosphere of communication for you and burdening you with their problems, it is imperative to protect yourself from them, at least for a while. It is better to do this after a personal conversation. If after it a new portion of negativity spills out on you, and the person does not plan to change, keep communication to a minimum.
Negative worldview.
Even for a self-sufficient person, the immediate environment plays a significant role in life. If your social circle consists of losers, those who abuse alcohol, slackers and “wasters of life”, then you should not expect that you will get very far by communicating with them on the same wavelength. You may not become exactly the same as your alcoholic friend, but you certainly won’t benefit from such a relationship.
Read also: What is “morality” in the modern sense? (4 photos)

Disadvantages of unnecessary communication

Unnecessary communication drains, takes away time, physical and psychological strength. But a person could spend these resources on unlocking his potential, developing in his profession, growing in life, and searching for his soul mate.

And unnecessary communication also returns to old patterns of behavior. Why does drug rehabilitation involve complete isolation of a person from his old life and immersion in a new group of people with similar problems and common goals, as well as those who are ready to support and help them? Because you cannot change while remaining in the same conditions, since each problem has its own system and it needs to be changed on all fronts.

Thus, the disadvantages of unnecessary communication include:

a drop in a person’s self-esteem and confidence;
fatigue and decreased performance;
stagnation of development or degradation;
psychological and psychosomatic problems;
irritability and a pessimistic vision of the world.

Change your environment or your friends

Many people who are interested in how to change their environment try to change their friends, and this fact is quite understandable, since it is much easier to make an effort, trying to achieve any success from strangers, rather than parting with the past forever.

Such aspirations instantly fail. The thing is that your friends have their own opinion on everything, as a result of which it is impossible to change them without their desire.

Perhaps you will influence someone, but this will be an exception to the rule. So if you want to change your life, start with your environment.

What if friends are pursuing

Sometimes it happens that the old environment does not let go. Acquaintances and friends regularly call, offer to go somewhere together, come to visit you, etc. In order not to offend them, try to refer to your employment. Saying every time that you can’t meet is also not an option.

This problem needs to be approached from a different angle. For example, a friend suggests you go to the cinema at 18:00, and at 17:00 you have a dance. Tell her this, but suggest if she wants to go to the dance together, warning her in advance that you need to rush home after class because you have an important project to submit on a tight deadline.

Believe me, it’s unlikely that your friend will agree to this, but at the same time, she will be sure that you really can’t spend time with her.

Does not work

Are you tired of numerous trials and attempts to make adjustments to your life? Are all your aspirations and undertakings doomed to failure? Are you tired of this life?

Then there is only one way out - start it from scratch. To do this, you need to quit your old job and move to live in another city, in a place where no one knows you, where you have never been before, but you like it in absentia.

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Having decided to take such a drastic action, you will begin to live from scratch, surrounding yourself with the people you need, at your discretion, get a new job that you have dreamed of for so long, and gradually begin to establish life in a new environment and society, without making old mistakes.

Having moved to a new city, you should not fall into depression and apathy towards everything new. Take it for granted, learn to enjoy your surroundings, don’t sit at home, try to walk as much as possible, make new friends, engage in your hobbies and self-development.