Did you know that there is an invisible force in your life that largely impacts what decisions you take and what habits you build?
That force is your environment––everything that surrounds you at home, work, and everywhere else you go. Let’s break down how your environment shapes your behaviors and see what you can do to make better decisions day-to-day.
Anne Thorndike’s Experiment
Anne Thorndike, a primary care physician at Massachusetts General Hospital and a published researcher, had an interesting idea.
She ran an experiment to see if she could improve hospital staff and visitors’ behaviors without even talking to them. To do that, she and some of her colleagues changed the arrangement of the hospital cafeteria.
Part of the experiment was to add water to refrigerators that were previously only full of sodas and place bottled water next to food options throughout the cafeteria. The result? Soda sales dropped by 11%, and water sales increased by 26%.
They also made some changes to the food arrangement around the cafeteria and saw similar results. People chose to eat better without being instructed when given access to healthier foods.
Though seemingly insignificant, this experiment revealed something interesting about human nature:
We adapt to our environment and choose options that are readily available to us.
Though we may not realize it, we choose things when and if they are convenient and ignore them the rest of the time.
Let’s discuss how your surroundings impact your choices and what you can do to stick to healthier habits without relying on motivation or willpower.
Your Environment and What You Choose to Eat
Many people rely on willpower to eat better and lose weight. While some discipline and restraint play a crucial role, solely relying on them is akin to swimming upstream––sure, you may get to your goal if you try hard enough, but it will be incredibly difficult.
A simple example would be if your kitchen were filled with all sorts of ‘goodies’ like cookies, ice cream, microwave popcorn, and potato chips while trying to change your behaviors and lose weight.
You can resist these foods for a while, but how long before you reach for the box of cookies? Most people can stick to healthier choices for a while, thanks to motivation, but the strategy rarely works in the long run.
Of course, that might not always be your fault. For instance, you may want to get junk food out of your home, but perhaps your roommate or significant other keeps buying it.
In such a case, open communication is key. Explain what you’re trying to do and ask for cooperation to reach a mutually beneficial agreement. For example, if your significant other wants ice cream, maybe look for a reduced-calorie option so that both of you can enjoy it from time to time.
By replacing junk food with healthier alternatives like fresh fruits, oatmeal, yogurt, nuts, and seeds, you achieve two things:
- Unhealthy eating habits become more challenging because having a tasty treat involves extra steps––getting dressed, going out, and driving to the store.
- Healthy habits become easier and turn into your first choice. Even if you want to eat some potato chips, you may think, “Eh, I’ll just have a handful of nuts and an apple instead.”
Environment and Exercise: Is There a Link?
The connection between your environment and exercise habits is not as clearly defined, but it still exists. The environment where you live and work can significantly influence your physical activity levels.
For instance, people who live in neighborhoods with plenty of parks, walking paths, and recreational facilities are more likely to engage in outdoor activities.
In contrast, those who live in areas with limited access to safe outdoor spaces may struggle to stay active unless they are willing to drive to other parts of town or do home workouts.
Speaking of home training, consider your layout. Is there some space for you to jump into a workout without needing to move furniture or make other changes that take time and energy? If so, you can more easily initiate workouts and be more active on average.
The same goes for equipment. Having access to some basic workout items like a cardio machine, a pair of adjustable dumbbells, some resistance bands, and perhaps even a bench would provide more exercise options. That would make it easier to think of some workouts or find something on the internet.
In contrast, not having any equipment means you must be more creative, which requires more time and energy, making it more difficult to stay consistent.
This also applies to your available space. If you need to carefully arrange furniture and take your equipment from your basement to your living room, you’d be less likely to stay consistent.
So, here is what you can do to optimize your environment for exercise:
- Dedicate a small space at home for working out. This area should be clear all the time, allowing you to quickly roll out an exercise mat and start working out.
- Keep your workout gear organized and accessible. Regardless of what items you have, keep them within reach so you can easily put them in your workout space for each session.
Environment: It Goes Beyond Your Home or Workplace
Your environment, which influences your behaviors and decisions, extends beyond your home and workplace. It also encompasses the daily choices you make and how you structure your days.
For example, let’s say you want to do a workout after work. But rather than driving straight to the gym after work, you go home first. While at home, you take a shower, eat, and sit down to watch TV to rest for a bit and get your mind right for a productive session later.
But then, the comfort at home pulls you like a magnet, and you think, “There’s no way I’m going out and driving to the gym to work out now.” So, you reason with yourself, “Eh, I’ll just make up for it tomorrow and grab an extra workout session over the weekend.”
While catching up can work sometimes, this reveals a fundamental way in which your environment impacts your behaviors and willingness to follow through with positive habits.
Consider this scenario, but played out differently:
Rather than going home after work, you prepare your gym bag in the morning and drive straight to the gym after work. Instead of going home first and allowing yourself to relax, you leverage the momentum you’ve already created.
This allows you to immediately tackle the task at hand (working out) and stay consistent with your fitness plan.
Change Your Environment to Change Your Life
When people think about making changes (say, eating better or exercising), they often look at the desired behaviors (or, more often than not, the outcomes) in isolation.
For example, if someone wants to eat better and lose weight, they may research the best diets, what foods to eat or eliminate, and what meal frequency works best. Learning these details is not bad, but it often doesn’t work out because there is no emphasis on what a person must do to be consistent.
This is where looking at one’s environment comes into play. Rather than researching the best weight loss diets, ask yourself, “What changes in my environment should I make to eat better and limit unhealthy tendencies like snacking on cookies in front of the TV?”
The same goes for exercise. You don’t need the perfect diet; instead, you need to find something sustainable and organize your environment to encourage some physical activity.
After all, what good is a perfect, tailor-made workout plan that requires you to hit the gym five days per week if you can’t stay consistent and often miss workouts?
Below are five actionable tips you can follow to improve your environment and become more mindful of how different cues affect your behaviors:
Identify and Eliminate Triggers
Changing your environment starts with mindfulness––making a conscious effort to see what things about your surroundings push you down a path you don’t like.
Triggers can be behaviors you don’t think about, things about your surroundings, or even some people in your life.
For example, having junk food around your kitchen is a common trigger for unhealthy eating habits. This makes sense if you think about it because what’s the normal reaction to seeing a box of cookies or a bag of chips on the kitchen table? Exactly.
Similarly, we often don’t realize it, but certain behaviors can act as triggers for habits. This is also known as habit stacking, a tactic popularized by James Clear in his book Atomic Habits.
This can be good or bad, depending on how you pair habits. To give you a simple example, if you sit down to meditate for five minutes after having your morning coffee, that’s a good way of using habit stacking.
In contrast, if you feel the urge to light a cigarette with your morning cup of coffee, that would be an example of poor habit stacking.
Beyond current habits and things about your surroundings, the people you communicate with can also act as triggers for certain behaviors. For instance, if one of your friends is an active runner who follows a healthy diet, you are more likely to adopt some of these behaviors and feel inspired.
Plan Your Day the Night Before
Planning your days out may sound cliché, but it’s an excellent way to follow through with actions that get you closer to your goals.
It’s one thing to say, “I want to lose weight,” and another to ask yourself, “Okay, what must I do tomorrow to get closer to my goal?”
The great thing is that it doesn’t have to be anything special. It could be as simple as writing your next day’s to-do list in the evening.
If to-do lists are not your thing, consider what behaviors you want to follow through with (for example, eating healthier at home or exercising after work) and make a concrete plan for what you need to do and how you need to organize your environment to support these habits.
Use Visual Cues and Reminders
Visual cues and reminders can be powerful motivators that remind you what your goals are and help you follow through with the small steps you must take.
For instance, let’s say you want to lose weight. One option is to hang some encouraging pictures in your room of the type of body you’re striving to get. While that may sound superficial, it’s been shown to work because it’s a constant reminder that keeps people’s goals in sight.
Reminders are also tools worth exploring. For example, let’s say you want to work out at home after work. In this case, you can lay out your workout gear in the middle of the living room.
This would serve two purposes. First, it would remind you of what you wanted to do. Second, it would make the act of starting much easier.
Focus on Gradual Changes
Too many people make the mistake of trying to change everything at once, which rarely works because we are creatures of habit.
It’s because we are creatures of habit. Whether you realize it or not, your current behaviors are probably not new – they’ve been around for years, maybe even decades, and have slowly molded you into the person you are today.
So, trying to change too much about yourself from the start is unlikely to go well because improvements take time. Building better habits is a slow and challenging process, and breaking bad habits is also difficult.
A better approach is to isolate one or two things and work on them, preferably on a small scale, to gain momentum and build confidence.
Let’s say you want to start eating healthier. What’s the first thing you should do? Go on a restrictive diet? Sure, that can work while you’re still motivated, but most people give up after a while.
Instead, you should remove most processed foods from your home to reduce temptation but leave a couple of snack options in relatively small quantities. Also, get plenty of healthier alternatives so you have options when you want to sit down for a meal or enjoy a snack.
Conclusion
Your environment is the invisible force that impacts your decisions and habits.
So the next time you want to improve something about your life or build a healthy habit, consider what things about your surroundings may be stopping you and what changes you can make to do better.