environment is like a firewall

(you are also your environment)

It amazes me how often I have to get myself unstuck from old ways — and how easy it is to slip back into them.

If you feel the same way, this “falling back” often brings guilt and a deep sadness. As if you didn’t live up to your own expectations. As if you didn’t deserve the new life you’re imagining — the life where you don’t rely on others’ approval, on alcohol, on food, on distraction.

For some, it seems simple.

But for me — and maybe for you — it feels like an infinite loop:
trying, succeeding for a day or two, failing, trying again, succeeding briefly, failing again.

Firstly, I want to reassure you (and myself) that change is not easy. We are wired to seek comfort. We rely on certain things because they work. Addiction, in many cases, is a natural form of coping — and it serves us in some way.

These behaviors become defaults. They have years of scaffolding. It feels safe to fall back on them because they worked for so long.

But life doesn’t have to stay this way. And in your heart of hearts, you know you deserve for it to be different.

“It is what it is” is a very dangerous slope to go down.

The truth is — it is what it is because we allow it to be that way.

We always have agency, but we often misuse it. We try to change ourselves when we should be looking at changing our environment first.

A bird cannot learn to fly in a cage.

It’s far harder to become sober if you work at a brewery.

“Becoming one with the furniture” sounds like an innocent joke, but it points to something true: what you’re surrounded by becomes your normal.

Even if you resist it at first, it’s in our nature to settle into our environment. We adapt in order to stay sane. We make ourselves comfortable because we have to.

This applies to:
people
spaces
media
routines
internal narratives

In this way, our environment becomes a filter — a firewall.

It filters what feels possible.

Over time, we stop noticing what restricts us.

This explains why change feels disorienting — not because it’s wrong, but because it’s new.

And when we seek change, we often feel deeply challenged. Our daily energy is finite. We may have enough willpower and conviction when we feel good — but when we’re tired, overwhelmed, or depleted, we revert to old programming.

Changing our environment can significantly alter our behavior. We are adaptive creatures. In this era, that adaptability matters more than ever. The world is changing rapidly. We need to stay true to ourselves without being swept away by its currents — while still understanding them.

And because of that, it becomes even more important to ensure that what we can control supports who we are trying to become.

When the environment shifts, behavior follows naturally.

We don’t need more discipline. We need better conditions.

The environment becomes scaffolding for the self you’re growing into.

What that means for you, I’ll leave in your hands.

You can empower yourself without shaming who you’ve been.

We are all shaped by our environments — and we have both the right and the power to change them.