Environment and You

Hi, this is Bill Chan again with The 5 Elements of a Fulfilling Life at 5Element5.com, and today I want to talk to you about the environment and you.

How do you influence the environment, and how has your background influenced you? Did you know that 50% of who you are, is affected by your environment, and the people you hang around with define who you are?

We must surround ourselves with people we want to be coming later in life, increasing our chances of success.

 I know that when I was young, I used to hang around with many heavy drinkers, and I mentioned it last time when I was working out in Kung Fu; my buddies were all hefty drinkers, so after class, we would go out drinking all night.

I don't know how I ever got home, but it was a complete blackout, and later on in my life, due to business, my clients and my partners were all heavy Drinkers, and guess what? I had this relationship with alcohol that I could shake all my life.

Until only recently, four years ago, I just cut it cold turkey, and I haven't been drinking ever since, because of Covid I wasn't hanging around these people anymore, I didn't have a chance to gather with my buddies, and I wasn't traveling as heavily as I I used to, so I was able to cut alcohol out of my life.

Who you hang around with really makes a huge difference; there's a glitch that says that if we hang around with the nine depressed friends, we will soon be the tenth depressed person in the group.

It sounds a bit sarcastic. The absolute truth is that Harvard did this study; they found that if your friends are obese, you have a 50 chance of being obese. If your friend's friend is obese, you have 20 percent; if your friend's friend's friend, who you never even met, is obese, then guess what? You still have a ten chance of being obese.

Wow! you don't even know them, so as a famous saying goes, your wealth is the average of five people you hang around with in life; whether it's your health or your success, you're the average of five people you spend the most time with.

So say you're working with apple or Amazon; your sense of success is much more improved than working for a passive small company.

Now, this could be triggering all areas of our life; there is a saying that a lot of rich people or affluent families send their kids to Ivory league schools not because they can learn so much more from the ivory league schools but because they can make the right connections, they were in the white networks.

If they're in the right group, the chance of success will significantly improve; now, we are social animals as humans. We affect others as others affect us all the time, which is built into us through our evolution.

Belonging is part of evolutionary survival because in ancient times, if we didn't belong to a group or tribe, chances are that we would probably become lunch or dinner to another Predator.

As humans, we're not stronger or faster than all the other animals, so we need to stick together in a group where we're strongest.

Now that's why humans are so genetically inclined to work in groups from our ancestors to commonalities like religion, ideology principles, and cultures that bind and mobilize us in large groups; that's something very different from other species because even though bees and elephants they might work in small groups but they can't gather groups that they don't know.

As humans, we are the unique species that can do this; we can achieve so much by Gathering people with common interests, common backgrounds and cooperating to achieve a common goal.

This could be positive, or it could be harmful as well because we isolate people who are different from us as well. 

So throughout our history, we have fought people who are outlines, they don't belong in our group, so we declare Wars, and we want to get rid of people who are different from us and create lots of hatred.

It creates a lot of discrimination, which is also uniquely human.

If we look at America today, we have the Democrats fighting with the Republicans. You're different just because you're not in the same political party or social affiliation as me.

There's so much bipolar in this country right now; we need to put aside our differences and start thinking of us instead of you or me because we need to work together to tackle many problems in this world. Individuals alone could never do. We need to belong to those groups that we affiliate with and work hard to accomplish common goals.

I saw a video once about an older man yawning, and then when he approached a young woman, he yawned, and the young woman yawned in return. Then she approached a substantial young man. He yawned in return; an old lady came, and she yawned as well, and guess what? She yawns. At the film's end, the dog gets affected, and you see the dog walking alone, yawning; this is called the butterfly effect. When thoughts affect others, it starts to Cascade and multiplies.

The environment influences us, but we can also affect the environment if we're willing to make an effort, change, and become less reactive.

We need to tackle these as a group; no one can do it alone, and someone has to take the initiative to start the movement. If we're willing to do that, we can shape the environment that we live in.

If you go out to the library, you tend to want to study naturally; if you go to the gym, you're probably going to work out; by being at that the right place at the right time, you might be able to find the person that can help you to make that change. Still, you have to take action in life and be proactive, and when you're willing to do that, life starts changing, and you become the captain of our ship.