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- Environment is Everything
Happy Thursday!
I love studying and thinking about mental models.
Mental models are simply interpretations of how things work that we use to make sense of our environment.
We constantly create and re-create mental models to more effectively navigate the invisible architecture of the world around us.
Today I want to share with you a model that quietly governs the trajectory of every human life.
It’s one of the most underappreciated forces in personal health transformation.
Yet research shows it influences everything from longevity to income to emotional stability to whether someone even believes their goals are possible.
It’s our environment.
Here’s some data around our environments and how they shape our lives:
Studies show 40–50% of your daily behavior is dictated by environmental cues, not conscious decision-making.
Obesity, smoking, and alcohol habits spread through social environments like viruses.
Your five closest relationships predict your stress baseline, ambition level, income, and health outcomes more accurately than genetics.
The #1 predictor of whether someone succeeds in a new habit is whether their environment supports the behavior.
We love to imagine we’re self-determined beings. And to an extent, I agree we are.
However,
We are shaped, sculpted, and programmed by the container we place ourselves in.
Today, I will discuss how our environment dictates our life outcomes around health and well-being.
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Identity
The environment is the architecture surrounding your nervous system at all times.
It’s the people, energy, cues, beliefs, norms, aesthetics, and expectations.
Live around entrepreneurs? You start believing entrepreneurship is normal.
Live around apathy? You adopt apathy.
Live in a household where fitness is expected? You internalize the identity of someone who trains.
Live in a relationship filled with chaos? Your identity becomes managing chaos.
Identity is nothing more than the brain making predictions based on repeated environmental feedback.
This is why people stay stuck.
They’re trying to form a new identity inside an environment coded for their old one.
The environment whispers to us at all times.
This is who you are. This is how we behave. This is what is normal here.
And so identity forms inside it like a liquid taking the shape of a container.
Habits
Once identity is formed, habits follow automatically.
The gym-goer goes to the gym because it is “who they are.”
The entrepreneur works late or wakes early because it is “who they are.”
The smoker smokes because it’s “who they are.”
Identity makes behaviors inevitable.
This explains why trying to “force” good habits rarely works.
If the identity doesn’t support the behavior, the behavior feels foreign, fragile, temporary.
It collapses under stress.
But when identity does support the behavior, the habit requires no discipline at all.
It becomes self-reinforcing.
Most people try to install new habits without upgrading their identity.
If identity is the operating system, habits are the apps.
You can’t install new apps on an outdated operating system.
And identity itself is coded by the environment.
The chain continues…
Destiny
Destiny sounds like a mystical concept, but in a biological, behavioral sense, it’s pretty straightforward.
Your destiny is the long-term expression of your repeated actions.
Daily habits compound into character.
Character compounds into outcomes.
Outcomes compound into the life you live decades from now.
People don’t “end up” somewhere by accident.
Environments create identities, identities produce habits, and habits shape the trajectory.
This is why two people can start with the exact same goal, and one transforms while the other stays stuck.
The difference is the system they’re embedded in.
If your habits reflect a high-ambition, high-energy, high-purpose identity, your destiny will match it.
If your habits reflect survival mode, your destiny will shrink to fit survival mode.
Destiny is something you’re becoming through invisible daily repetition.
Why Change Feels Violent
When you understand this model, you see why personal change feels so destabilizing:
To change your destiny, you must disrupt your habits.
To disrupt your habits, you must disrupt your identity.
To disrupt your identity, you must disrupt your environment.
And disrupting the environment is psychologically violent.
It means breaking patterns.
Breaking expectations.
Breaking relationships that anchor you to an old self.
Breaking routines that comfort you.
Breaking the unspoken agreements you have with the people who know you as you used to be.
Most people fail because change requires environmental rebellion.
You can’t become the future version of yourself while living in a container built for the past version.
This is why every spiritual tradition requires withdrawal from the old environment.
This is why entrepreneurs move cities.
This is why people who want to get healthy join new communities.
This is why people in toxic relationships only heal when they leave.
Change is hard because the old container resists its own destruction.
Final Thoughts
If you want to change your destiny, work backwards.
Change your environment
Identity evolves
Habits shift
Destiny realigns
Change the container, and the contents evolve naturally.
The most brutal truth to accept is that your life is perfectly designed for the results you’re currently getting.
If you want a different destiny, you need a different container.
Ask yourself, “Does the environment you live in honor the person you’re trying to be…or the person you’re trying to outgrow?”
Destiny is architected, one environmental change at a time.
Best,
Hunter Williams