Most of us go through life unaware of how our environment shapes our behaviour.

When we experience “road rage” on a crowded freeway, it’s not because we’re sociopathic monsters. It is because the temporary condition of being behind the wheel in a car, surrounded by rude impatience drivers, triggers a change in our otherwise placid demeanour. We’ve unwittingly placed ourselves in an environment of impatience, competiveness, and hostility – and it alters us.

Our environment can be the angel on our shoulder, making us a better person – like when we find ourselves at a weeding or class reunion. Everyone is hugging and promising to stay in touch and get together real soon. We are altered by the change. We forget our promises. We don’t follow up. We don’t stay in touch. Our environment elevates us, the other erases the good vibes as if they never happened.

Some environment lure us into acting against our interest. That’s what happens when we overspend at the mall. We have chosen to place ourselves in an environment that, based on past experience, will trigger the urge to buy something we neither need nor want.

So why don’t we do what we know is good for us?

Blame it on a fundamental misunderstanding of how our environment shapes our behaviour. It’s a choice between competing environments. Because we don’t appreciate how our environment influences our choice, we fail to make the right choice.

But for now let’s absorb and wallow that our environment is a relentless triggering machine. If we do not create and control our environment, our environment creates and controls us. And the result turns us into someone we do not recognize.

“In the end that was the choice you made, and it doesn’t matter how hard it was to make it. It matters that you did.”
― Cassandra Clare, City of Glass