Your environment is programming you
Free will or invisible programming? Series, part 8.
You go home. Not to your current home, but to where you came from. The house you grew up in, the old circle of friends, the familiar place where some old version of you was once formed.
And within a couple of hours you have become someone you thought you had left far behind. The old role returns. The same tone. The same silence at the table. The same way of justifying yourself. The same irritable edge that always used to rise in that room. You did not decide to become this. The environment simply pulled it out of you.
In the earlier articles we looked at what happens inside you. Now we look at something we tend to underestimate. How much of you is really you, and how much is the environment you happen to be in?
We like to think we are an island. That we have a fixed character we carry, unchanged, into every room and every relationship. But a person does not really work that way. A human being is a thoroughly social creature, and the environment shapes them constantly, quietly, often without asking permission.
You do not have to allow it consciously. It simply happens. You catch people's moods like a contagion. When someone beside you is tense, your tension rises too. When someone laughs, your own mouth follows. When you spend a long time among people who speak in a certain tone, you start using that tone yourself. When constant rushing is treated as normal around you, calm starts to feel like laziness. When pushing past your limits is treated as normal, rest starts to feel like guilt.
This is not weakness. It is how a person is built. We learn far more from what we see others doing than from what we are told. A norm rarely arrives with a label saying norm. It simply repeats until it feels natural.
There is a good example from the animal world of how behaviour spreads in a group.
On the island of Koshima in Japan, researchers studied macaques for decades. One day a young female monkey began washing the sand off her sweet potato before eating it. No one lectured her about it. She found a way that worked. And then something interesting happened. Others saw it. First her closest companions. Then some of their mothers and the younger animals. Slowly, year by year, the behaviour spread more widely through the troop.
Myths have grown up around this story, especially the so-called hundredth monkey legend, which promises a sudden, almost magical leap in collective consciousness. That is not what we need here. The real story is simpler, and actually more interesting: someone does something, another sees it, another copies it, and over time one new behaviour can become the group's ordinary way.
Something similar happens with people. You become like those you live among. Not because you decided to, but because you see them every day. You see what they treat as possible. What they treat as embarrassing. How they handle conflict. How they handle money. How they treat their bodies. How they speak about people who are not in the room. And slowly your nervous system learns: this is what normal life looks like.
Here comes an uncomfortable conclusion that ties this article to the last one.
In the previous part we talked about the small space between trigger and reaction. About willpower, noticing, the body's anchors, and building a new track. But here is something worth saying honestly: if you try to change yourself in an environment that keeps feeding your old pattern, willpower very often loses.
You cannot endlessly out-muscle an environment that programs you in the opposite direction every day. If you want to be calmer but live in constant chaos, your new track fights the old environment daily. If you want to trust yourself more but are surrounded by people who question your every step, it is like swimming against a current that never ends. If you want to eat better but your home, your calendar and your relationships are built so that the only easy choice is to grab something random in a hurry, the problem is not only your character.
This is why inner work alone is often not enough for change. A person who truly changes must, sooner or later, also look at what surrounds them. Not because the environment is to blame. But because the environment is a force, and a force is better kept on your side than against you.
But here is the good news too.
Environment is not fate. Unlike your childhood, which you did not choose, much of your present environment is something you can shape, at least to a degree. Not all of it. Not always quickly. Not always completely. But more than you usually think.
You can choose who you spend your free time with. You can choose what you read, who you listen to, what comes before your eyes each day. You can choose whether to begin the morning quietly or hand your nervous system over, in the first five minutes, to the news, the messages and other people's anxiety. You can choose how much access you give to people around whom you become smaller, and how deliberately you seek out those around whom you become clearer, braver and calmer.
It is often said that you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with. You do not have to take it as mathematical truth, but the direction is right. The people you live among shape your norms. They influence what you think possible, how boldly you think, how much you limit yourself, how natural growth, honesty, responsibility, money, health, calm or ambition feel to you. Choosing your friends is not only a social question. It is also a question of identity. You choose the people around you, and at the same time you choose which version of yourself grows stronger beside them each day.
This does not mean you should judge your friends by usefulness or coldly weed people out. But it does mean it is worth being very honest about whose influence you are under each week. Some people make you wider. Some smaller. Some braver. Some more cynical. Some wake a better discipline in you, some an old escape. Friendship is not only about who you have a good time with. Friendship is also the environment in which your next version grows.
This is what shaping your environment means. You do not have to be its victim. You can begin to be its gardener.
A gardener does not shout at a plant to grow better. They look at the soil, the light, the water, the space, and at what is happening around the plant. With a person it is often the same. If you want to grow something in yourself, the question is not only what is wrong with me, but also what soil am I trying to grow in.
Environment does not mean only people.
It also means space, light, noise, the quality of your sleep, movement, screens, food, your calendar and the rhythm of your ordinary day. Some rooms make you calmer before you have time to think. Some make you anxious before you can explain why. Some homes support rest. Some constantly remind the body that something is unfinished. Some desks invite focus. Some systems of screens and interruptions teach you to live in permanent partial attention.
This matters especially because many people try to solve with willpower what is actually a question of architecture, rhythm or access. If the phone is always within reach, the question is not only whether you have enough discipline. If you sleep badly, eat randomly and move little, the question is not only why it is so hard to be calm. If your day is built so that you never reach a moment of contact with yourself, it is no surprise that the old program takes over.
Freedom is not only an inner state. Sometimes freedom is very practical: putting the phone in another room, making the first ten minutes of the morning quieter, clearing some clutter from the desk, moving more into the light, spending time with a person around whom your body understands that it does not have to keep defending itself.
Here is the heart of this article.
You are not an island. The environment programs you quietly and constantly, more than you like to believe. But the environment can be shaped. And when you choose more deliberately what surrounds you, you indirectly choose who you slowly become.
You can do a great deal of inner work, but if you return every evening to an environment that feeds your old pattern, it is a hard road. And sometimes you can make a very small inner decision, yet change something in your outer world so that the better choice becomes far easier. Not because the environment does the work for you, but because it no longer fights against you.
This is where change becomes wiser. You no longer ask only, how can I force myself harder. You ask, how do I create an environment where the better choice would be more natural?
What this doesn't mean
This does not mean you must cut off all your old relationships. Life is not that simple. There are people you cannot, and do not want to, leave out of your life. Family stays family. Work often stays work. Leaving is not always the answer, and sometimes it is not possible at all. Shaping your environment does not always mean leaving. Often it means adding new people and new influences, making some boundaries firmer, and changing how much access you give to what.
It also does not mean you are simply the environment's victim. In the last article we saw that there is a small space in you where choice lives. The environment is strong, but it does not erase you. The right picture is not me or the environment. The right picture is me and the environment, working together. You influence it, and it influences you. Freedom is not stepping out of that circle. Freedom is seeing the circle and shaping it more consciously.
And it does not mean you can now blame the environment for everything. Blame is convenient, because it takes responsibility off you. But it also takes away your power. The moment you say it is all their fault, you hand over the wheel. The goal is not to find someone guilty. The goal is to see the forces honestly and ask what you can do within them.
This also does not mean you should view your circle of friends as a cold cost calculation. People are not tools for your growth. But relationships are fields of influence. And maturity means you can hold two things at once: love for people, and honesty about how their closeness affects you.
A small exercise
Think through your ordinary week. Whose company are you in? What rooms are you in? What do you let into your eyes and ears each day? Which people, screens, conversations, spaces and rhythms shape your nervous system most?
Then ask, about one person or one place at a time: which version of me comes out around this?
There are people in whose company you become lighter, braver, more yourself. There are people in whose company you become smaller, more careful, somehow duller. The same goes for places and habits. Some rooms open your chest. Some round your shoulders. Some habits make you clearer. Some scatter you before the day has even begun.
Look too at your five most frequent sources of influence. They need not be only friends. They can be family members, colleagues, news feeds, social media accounts, podcasts, group chats, or people whose thoughts you constantly let inside you. Ask honestly: if I become their average, does that take me where I want to go?
You do not have to change anything big right away. You do not have to end a relationship or turn your life over. Just look honestly, without judgement. Who pulls the better you out of you, and who pulls out the old you? Which room supports the person you want to become, and which one feeds the person you have been trying to grow out of?
When you have seen it, ask about one small thing: could I spend a little more time where the better version of me comes out? Or a little less time where the old program always grows stronger? Not to overturn everything. Just to shift, a little, where your time, attention and body go.
This was the eighth article in the series. In the first half we looked at where patterns come from. In the seventh we looked at the inner space between trigger and reaction. In this one we looked at the outer force that either supports that space or tears it down.
Inner work and outer environment are not two separate things. They work together. A person changes most when they keep both in view at once: what fires inside them, and what feeds that firing around them every day.
You do not have to rebuild your life today. Just notice one place where the environment pulls the old you out of you. That one noticing, and you are no longer entirely at the mercy of that force.
The environment is hard to see honestly, because you are inside it. A fish does not see the water it swims in. You may not notice how your surroundings shape you each day, precisely because they are so familiar. Here someone from the outside helps, someone who sees your environment more clearly than you do, and can gently ask: is what surrounds you growing you, or holding you in place? Not to tell you where to leave or where to go, but to help you see what soil you are actually trying to grow in.
This is part of what we are building at Evoluna. A place where you do not have to go on alone.
In the next part: why we look for answers in invisible forces. How stories that promise a miracle grow up around the truth, and what those stories say about us.
Pert Lomp is the founder of Evoluna and an EMCC-certified mentor.
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Pert Lomp
Strateegiline mentor ja süsteemide looja
Olen strateegiline mõtleja ja süsteemide looja, kes aitab inimestel ja organisatsioonidel liikuda kaosest selguse, struktuuri ja tulemuste suunas. Minu tugevus seisneb võimes näha suurt pilti ning siduda omavahel tehnoloogia, finantsid ja juhtimine tervikuks, mis päriselt töötab. Mul on üle 25 aasta kogemust erinevates rollides – alates tehnoloogia ja meedia valdkonnast kuni juhtimise, äriarenduse ja strateegilise nõustamiseni. Tegutsen täna eelkõige mentorina ja partnerina inimestele, kes on jõudnud punkti, kus järgmine samm ei vaja enam rohkem infot, vaid selgust, otsust ja suunda. Mind käivitab kasv – nii inimeste kui süsteemide tasandil. Usun, et enamik piiranguid ei tule väljastpoolt, vaid meie enda mõtteviisist, harjumustest ja uskumustest. Minu roll on aidata need mustrid nähtavaks teha, need lahti murda ning asendada need toimivate, teadlike valikutega. Minu lähenemine on kombinatsioon ratsionaalsest strateegiast ja sügavamast inimlikust mõistmisest. Töötan seal, kus kohtuvad loogika ja sisemine areng – kus otsused ei ole ainult õiged Excelis, vaid ka kooskõlas inimese tegeliku potentsiaali ja suunaga. Mentorina olen otsekohene, kohal ja tulemustele suunatud. Ma ei paku pehmendatud vastuseid, vaid selgust. Samas loon ruumi, kus inimene saab turvaliselt mõelda, näha ja kasvada. Minu jaoks on kõige suurem väärtus hetk, kus inimese sees tekib “klõps” – kui segadus asendub arusaamisega ja ebakindlus muutub teadlikuks liikumiseks edasi. Kui oled punktis, kus tead, et oled võimeline enamaks, aga vajad selgust, struktuuri ja tuge järgmise sammu tegemiseks, siis siin me kohtume.