Simple Changes That Can Help You Achieve Your Goals: The Power Of Your Environment
We like to think that we’re in total control of our choices and actions – that we decide exactly what we do. But the reality is that we’re not always in control of our behaviors. Everything around us influences the choices we make, consciously or subconsciously.
This is really important when it comes to your health and fitness goals. If you understand how your environment affects you, you can use that knowledge to set yourself up for success.
What is Your Environment?
Your environment is the places you go (like your home and work), the things you see (like the media you consume), and the people you interact with (your family, friends, and coworkers).
All those things can influence the choices you make. Your environment affects how active you are, what you eat, how much you sleep and much more, and that can make or break your goals.
How Changing Your Environment Can Make A Big Difference
“There’s no such thing as ‘neutral’ design. Small and apparently insignificant details can have major impacts on people’s behavior.”-Behavioral economist Richard H. Thaler in his book, Nudge.
Studies have shown that subtle changes in the environment can change people's behavior, often without them noticing.
One of the most famous examples of this happened, of all places, in the men’s bathroom.
At Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam in the 1990’s, there was a problem with people making a mess when using the urinals. Instead of posting signs asking urinal-users to be more careful (which probably would have been ignored) or stationing attendants in the bathrooms to hand out fines (which would have been expensive and inefficient), they did something much smaller and simpler.
They painted a life-size image of a fly in each urinal to give people something to aim at. This small, simple change decreased spillage on the bathroom floor by 80%!
Your Health and Fitness Environment
People change the way they eat in social situations based on the people they’re eating with, and tend to eat more when they’re served more or when they eat off bigger plates.
These aren’t conscious choices. People in these studies don’t realize they’re eating more and often don’t believe it when they’re told how much they ate.
Painting footprints on the ground that lead to the stairs and signs with brief reminders of the health benefits lead to more people choosing the stairs instead of the elevator.
That can be all it takes sometimes; a little nudge or a small change in the way the things around you are arranged, and you make a different decision.
Since everything around you impacts your behavior in one way or another, why not make your environment work for you?
You can become the architect of your own environment. You can set yourself up for success by making sure that your surroundings nudge you towards making healthy choices and achieving your goals.
“There’s just one way to radically change your behavior: radically change your environment.”–Behavioral scientist Dr BJ Fogg, in his book Tiny Habits.
When you change your environment to support your health goals, you make the healthy choice the easy choice.
How To Set Up Your Environment To Make It Easier To Achieve Your Goals
You can set up your environment in a way that keeps your goal at the front of your mind at all times and removes barriers to achieving it.
If you want to go for a jog in the morning, you don’t want to have to decide what to wear, dig your running shoes out of the back of your closet, search for your headphones… That makes it more difficult to get going and increases the chances that you won’t follow through.
Instead, get your workout clothes, running shoes, and headphones out the night before and put them in front of the door so you’re basically tripping over them when you leave the room.
If you want to eat more healthy snacks, put a bowl of fruit out on the counter so it’s always in sight and within reach.
You also want to discourage yourself from bad habits by putting up barriers for any behaviors you don’t want.
Get rid of unhealthy temptations, or at least put them up on a high shelf in the back of your pantry where you can’t always see them. Even a small amount of friction can be enough to prevent you from making a choice that would move you away from your goals.
Tips For Changing Your Environment
I think we can split up our environment into two categories: big things and small things.
Big Things That Affect What You Do
Your big environment is the people and places in your life. If all of your coworkers take the elevator every morning and sit at their desks at lunchtime, you’re likely to do the same thing.
If you drive past a certain fast food place every day on your way to and from work, you’re more likely to turn into the drive-thru. These kinds of things are hard to control, but there’s always something you can do to tweak your environment in your favor.
How To Change Your Big Environment
Work around what you can’t change.
If you’re currently in the habit of taking the elevator because that’s what your coworkers do, you might avoid that situation by going in through another entrance and taking the stairs.
If you know that driving past that fast food place influences your dinner choices, find a different way to drive home.
Expand your circle.
Find people who already have the healthy habits you’re trying to build and spend time around them.
You could join a running or strength training group, or attend healthy cooking classes, or befriend your coworker who goes for a lunchtime walk each day.
Be in it together.
Talk to the people in your life about your goals and ask if they want to join you. Enlist your family or friends and agree to work on building healthy habits together.
Be the change you wish to see in others.
You are affected by the behaviors of the people in your life, but they are also affected by you. It’s not always easy to stand up and be different, but you have the opportunity to inspire others with your actions.
Make a choice to order a healthy meal even if your friends don’t usually do that, and maybe you’ll be helping them change their behavior too.
Small Things That Affect What You Do
Your small environment is the more subtle things you interact with each day. This could be the food you have in your house, the way you pack your bag for work, the apps you use on your phone, even the way your furniture is arranged.
These things are much easier to control, and you can use them to steer your behaviors.
How To Change Your Small Environment
Decrease the number of steps between you and your healthy behavior.
Pack your workout clothes the night before
Put your running shoes and headphones by the front door
Keep home workout equipment in your living room
Keep healthy options in sight and within reach (fresh fruit on the counter, easy to prepare whole grains in the pantry)
Print quick-and-easy healthy recipes and display them in the kitchen
Keep a grocery list near the fridge
Plan and prep your food ahead of time so it’s ready and available when you’re hungry
Keep your goals at the front of your mind.
Set reminders (alarms, post-it notes, etc.) to complete healthy behaviors
Write your scheduled workouts and meals on a calendar that you look at often
Post inspirational messages to yourself where you’ll see them often
Use your surroundings to shape your behaviors.
Portion snacks into containers to avoid mindlessly eating out of the package
Hide your remote so you have to get up to change the TV channel
Place often used utensils in low cabinets so you have to squat to get them
Put up barriers to unhealthy choices.
Remove unhealthy temptations from your house or office
If you can’t remove them, relocate them out of sight and out of reach.
Serve yourself from the stove so you would have to get up to get a second helping
Make it as easy for yourself as possible to follow through and as hard as possible to fail.