If You Are Stuck, Change Your Environment

When I was twenty years old, lost and confused, I decided to jump ship.

I moved to my aunt’s den in Glendale, California.

I left everything behind.

Friends.

Family.

Everything I knew growing up in Hawaii.

I made a fresh start in Los Angeles.

If I had not made that one decision, I would not have found Grandmaster Han.

I would not have met my wife, Amy, at a Valencia hapkido school.

I certainly might not have found my way to working as a union electrician.

That one change of environment changed everything.

The Vietnam Statistic

There is a statistic that stuck with me. Roughly 25% of soldiers who went to Vietnam tried heroin.​

That is an insane number. In the US, 90 percent of heroin addicts who go to clinics relapse.

The stats are completely reversed for soldiers who did heroin in Vietnam and then came back to the US.

What changed?

The environment.

People are in the environment where they are addicted. They change environments and they go to a clinic.

They change the environment, they change their behavior.

Then they go back to the same environment and their behavior changes yet again to match it.

If you want to change your actions, the easiest thing you can do is change the environment.

Because what happens is you eliminate all the triggers and cues that are associated with the habit you are trying to destroy.

The Pattern I Kept Using

I never stayed with a shop for more than four years.

Usually six to twenty-four months was enough for me to move on to the next shop and project.

And it was deliberate.

Every time I changed shops, I was changing my environment.

New crew. New foremen. New project managers.

New ways of doing the work. New problems to solve.

New people to learn from. New habits to build.

Some people saw that as instability. I saw it as growth.

Every time I stayed somewhere too long, I started coasting.

I started doing the same thing the same way because it worked.

And the moment you stop learning, you start dying.

Changing environments forced me to stay sharp.

To adapt. To prove myself again.

To drop the habits that stopped working and pick up new ones that did.

That pattern worked for me on the jobsite.

And it worked for me off the jobsite too.

The Social Environment Shift

When I first started working in construction, I went where the guys went after work.

Strip clubs. Sports bars.

Late nights drinking and talking about nothing that mattered.

And I fit in. Because that was the environment.

That was the culture. That was what you did.

Then I started training in martial arts.

And my social environment shifted. I stopped going to strip clubs and sports bars with coworkers.

I started going to the dojo.

I started hanging out with fellow students for dinner. For kung fu theater movie nights.

For conversations about technique and philosophy and what it means to be disciplined.

Same job. Same city.

Different environment.

Different habits.

Different version of myself.

The environment you are in shapes who you become.

And if the environment you are in does not support who you want to become, you need to change it.

Why Amy and I Are Looking at Europe

Right now, my wife and I are looking at properties to buy in Europe.

We are considering Italy. Spain. Maybe Portugal.

We are thinking about setting up new roots. A new lifestyle. A new chapter.

This is not because we hate the US.

This is not running away from something.

This is running toward something.

The world is too big and too amazing to limit our life experience to the American way of living.

We want to learn a new language.

We want to see a different way to live.

We want to experience a different culture.

We want to be forced out of the habits and patterns we have built over sixty years and see what we become when we have to rebuild them in a new place.

That is what changing your environment does.

It forces you to become something new.

Because the old habits do not work anymore.

The old patterns do not fit.

The old triggers and cues are gone.

You have to build new ones.

And in building new ones, you build a new version of yourself.

The Hardest Easy Decision

Changing your environment is one of the easiest and hardest things you can do when you are stuck.

Easy because the mechanism is simple.

Move.

• Change jobs
• Change gyms
• Change friend groups
• Change cities
• Change countries

The action is straightforward.

Hard because the emotional cost is real.

You leave behind what is familiar.

You lose the safety of knowing how things work.

You give up the comfort of being around people who already know you.

You step into uncertainty.

And uncertainty is uncomfortable.

Most people will not do it.

They will stay in the environment that is killing them because it feels safer than the risk of starting over somewhere new.

They will keep the same job they hate because it is stable.

They will keep the same friends who drag them down because they are familiar.

They will keep the same city even though it stopped serving them years ago because moving feels too hard.

And they will wonder why they are stuck.

​"Better the devil you know..." and all that.

Who You Are Becoming

Here is the truth.

Your environment either supports who you are becoming or it does not.

If you are trying to get in shape and everyone around you eats poorly and never trains, your environment is working against you.

If you are trying to build a business and everyone around you thinks entrepreneurs are crazy or greedy, your environment is working against you.

If you are trying to become someone you respect and everyone around you is coasting, your environment is working against you.

You can fight it.

You can try to build willpower and discipline and grit to overcome the environment.

And sometimes that works. For a while.

But eventually the environment wins.

Because the environment is always there. And willpower is not.

The smarter play is to change the environment.

To put yourself in a place where the default behavior is the behavior you want.

Where the people around you are doing what you are trying to do.

Where the triggers and cues support the habits you are trying to build.

That is what I did when I moved to LA.

That is what I did when I stopped hanging out at bars and started training at the dojo.

That is what I am doing now learning BJJ instead of staying in the striking arts I already know.

That is what I am doing building a business and putting myself in different social circles where the conversations are about marketing and systems instead of construction and martial arts.

That is what Amy and I are doing when we think about moving to Europe.

We are not running away.

We are stepping into an environment that forces us to become the next version of ourselves.

The Test

If you are stuck right now, ask yourself one question.

If the answer is yes, stay.

Double down.

Build.

Grow.

If the answer is no, you have two choices.

Fight the environment every day and hope you win.

Or change the environment and let it work for you instead of against you.

Fighting works sometimes.

But it is exhausting.

And the moment you let your guard down, the environment pulls you back to where you started.

Changing the environment is harder in the short term.

But it is easier in the long term.

Because once you are in the new environment, the default pulls you forward instead of backward.

Your Move, the Ultimate Version of Putting It On the Mat

Changing your environment is not an easy decision.

But it is an important option.

And if you are serious about becoming someone different, it might be the only option that actually works.

You do not have to move to a different country.

You do not have to quit your job tomorrow.

You do not have to cut off every friend you have.

But you do have to ask yourself whether the environment you are in is helping you or hurting you.

And if it is hurting you, you have to be willing to change it.

Start small if you have to.

Change gyms.

Change friend groups.

Change where you spend your time after work.

Change the inputs.

Change the triggers.

Change the cues.

Or go big.

Change cities.

Change careers.

Change countries.

Jump ship the way I did when I was twenty and see what you become on the other side.

Either way, stop pretending that you can become someone new while staying in the same environment that made you who you are now.

You cannot. The math does not work.

The environment wins.

So change the environment.

And let the new environment build the new you.

⚔ The Dojo Drill

Today’s training:

The Stoic Drill

Ask yourself:

Focus only on those things.

📚 Leader’s Library

Book I recommend this week:

​​​Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink​

Why?

Because if you don't take ownership for your life, you are giving your power away, making you weaker, more stupid and less successful.

P.S. Know a martial arts gym owner who’s stressed about money or student numbers?

Do them a favor: send them to The Leader's Dōjō, my website where I help owners get more students and keep them longer with simple systems.

One forward from you could change their gym: The Leader's Dōjō​

Chuck