Did you ever feel like you had kicked a bad habit for good only to be faced with a person of situation that triggers that habit all over again?

I’ve had that happen a lot of the years with both myself and clients so I decided to investigate what was going on in my brain. 

In May of 1971 congressmen Steele and Murphy returned from a visit to the front line of Vietnam with grave news: 46% of American troops were self confessed Heroin addicts.

Had the atrocities they had witness led them to try and shut off their minds and quiet their dreams or was it merely homesickness meeting boredom and availability?

What ever it was 128,800 troops were set to return to America with an addiction to Heroin the treatment of which would be painful and drawn out for the soldiers and their families.

Not to mentioned the huge potential cost to the government, coupled with the fact that few drug treatment protocols had proven effective for long term rehabilitation.

Richard Nixon quickly announce a drug intervention programme. He also enlisted the services of psychiatric researcher Lee Robins and assigned her the task of tracking the addicted soldiers on their return.

Contrary to what was expected her investigation showed that 95% of those self confessed addicts were found to be clean one year after their return. 

So controversial was the data that at the time and for many years after experts refused to accept the result as genuine. What happened here flew in the face of all drug intervention protocols and programmes at the time.

It was though and still is for the most part that removing access to the drug for a time deemed sufficient to get the chemical dependents out of the system as well as some form of punishment like a criminal record would serve to keep an addict on the straight and narrow.

The findings in Vietnam should have served to flip the treatment of addiction on its head; very little in fact actually changed. 

Imprisonment, persecution, criminal records, weening off are still very much the system that we use.

Heroin addiction might seem like an extreme example but recent studies placed changing eating and drinking behaviour as being harder to change than Heroin addiction. The things that we believe to be true about the world contain what is possible in terms of behavioural change.

The story of brain chemical addiction makes us believe change is almost impossible and available only to those with formidable willpower. In reality the story of brain chemical addiction is only part of the addiction equation. To a very large extent, our environment determines our behaviour.

We create associations with environments, they fill us with thoughts and emotions that motivate certain actions.

Colours, pictures, clothes, lighting, music, ornaments and books, photographs, kitchen utensils, rooms, sizes, furniture, the office even certain people. 

Everything that we can see, smell, hear, taste, touch evokes a feeling. They take us up or down, or neutral, they can make us feel energise, tired, focused, inspired. or like dabbling in a cheeky drop of heroin. 

Our surrounding have the power to inspire our behaviour and we...

We have the power to create our surroundings.

To control what we hear and wear. 
To control what our house looks like.
What is in it and what is not.
We get to decide how we feel in every room.

We get to decide the places we go to regularly... 

Want to feel like rocky, then go to a gym that makes you feel like rocky.

Want to feel rich, then put yourself in a position to give money to someone less fortunate than you.

Want lose weight, then create an environment that inspires you to create delicious food, create an environment where you feel like you deserve healthy food.

Want to be less stressed, then create an environment free from stressors like technology or clutter.

Want to be super productive, isolate what you need in order to feel that way. 

Find a particular environment calming, then put yourself in a position to go there often.

Rather than ask what changes do I need to force into my current environment, ask yourself what environments allow me to more often be the version of myself I wish to be?

That's the thing...

People aren't stressed or not stressed
They aren't healthy or unhealthy
They aren't lazy or active
They are productive or unproductive
We are all all of these things.

But those who are being less of what they want to be are living in a environment that is supporting that.

Change your environment and you'll change your life.

Ed Ley