You Will Become Your Environment
It's not by chance that people who are living in San Francisco do well in startups and tech. This is exactly how it works.
You all have heard or read some version of this quote somewhere: you are the average of the five people you spend time with, and stuff like that, right?
I think for most people, they take it as some sort of metamorphosis. But I want to make this more real and actually explain the mechanics of how this works.
Thanks for reading Always be learning | #ABL! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.
Maybe some of you will feel like, duh, we know this, we are too smart for this. And that’s fine, you don’t have to read it. For the others, I think you will find the clarity that I felt once I understood the mechanics of it.
So let me transfer this, not to a hypothetical scenario, but actually a real scenario.
The part of Southern California I live in is heavily East Asian. And it’s a beautiful place, very family-friendly, and I enjoy it. I have friends who are East Asian, some American East Asian, some more traditional, and it is a very fun place to live.
One thing that I have noticed is now I eat more Asian food. I started going to a Korean spa. I started going to Eastern medicine acupuncture treatments. And so on.
And none of this happened in some grand event fashion. Instead, it all happened in a slow, step-by-step way.
I go to this gym where we do CrossFit workouts outside in a park. There’s a truck which has all the equipment, and we use it and we do it, and it’s really fun. But again, the folks I work out with include a lot of East Asians. And we were enjoying a birthday cake one time, and I said I can’t eat it because I’m allergic to dairy. That’s how the conversation started about going to an acupuncturist to cure my dairy allergy or actually build dairy tolerance. And I went ahead and tried it.
Then, in another turn of events, my wife’s friend’s bachelorette party was at this Korean spa, and my wife told me that I would really enjoy this because they have an ice room, a hot room, a salt room, and just a classic recovery place. And I went there and I really enjoyed it.
The point being, the metamorphosis happens slowly, and you become your environment.
So now I will use a hypothetical example for, I don’t know, someone young who still has five friends. Or if you’re lucky to have five friends.
Let’s say all your five friends are into running marathons. What they are going to invite you to, what you are going to be doing on that weekend, would be running or activities related to running. In the same way, if your friends are into going to breweries, that’s what you will end up doing.
And this is how the metamorphosis actually takes place. It does not happen in a grand change where you can note your personality changing or something feels new. It happens slowly. Your calendar changes first. Your conversations change. The places you go change. And eventually, you change.
And I think these mechanics have really helped me understand where I need to be in the next phase of my life or what I need to do.
It’s not by chance that people who are living in San Francisco do well in startups and tech. This is exactly how it works.
It’s not that you move to San Francisco and suddenly you have more job opportunities going into your inbox. I mean, just by location basis, maybe yes. But in reality, what happens is the people you meet at daycare, the people you meet at coffee shops, the people you have dinner with, they’re all doing the things that you’re doing.
Someone tells you about a company. Someone is starting something. Someone is hiring. Someone is building a product. Someone introduces you to someone else.
Your environment keeps putting certain ideas, opportunities, and behaviors in front of you until participating in them starts to feel normal.
So you end up doing activities related to tech and startups, and in turn, you start benefiting from those and delivering those goods.
And I realized the same thing has already happened to me with running.
I kept going to this CrossFit where everybody was a runner, and at some point I realized that I would need to start running. You can call it peer pressure or I felt competitive. There were other factors too, but this environment was clearly one of them.
For anybody who read the last post as well as this post, yes, I did finish the race on Friday and ran over 21 miles on a mountain, climbed mountains, most dirt and rocks terrain I have ever seen.
A few months ago, I wasn’t a runner.
Then I spent enough time around runners.
And eventually, I started running.
That is the mechanism.
Now do with this information what you will. I don’t mean to scare you. I don’t mean to motivate you. I just want to be a bearer of information and explain the mechanics.
The metamorphosis will happen whether you like it or not. You will become like your environment. So choose your environment carefully.
I love you all. Keep going.
Aakash
Proof of human writing:
Thanks for reading Always be learning | #ABL! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.
Originally published on substack.