How much of what you do is actually your choice?
Look around you.
What’s within reach.
What’s in your room, your house, your work setup.
Your friends. Your community. Your culture. Your country.
Pretty much everything you do each day is shaped by that.
Apart from your DNA, your daily behavior is largely a byproduct of where you are and who you spend time with.
A reflection exercise from a coaching course I’m taking asked a simple question:
What behavior do you want to change this weekend?
and
What in your environment could you change to make that behavior easier?
So it’s visible.
Remembered.
Convenient.
Close.
Supported by people on a similar path.
I sat with it for a moment and realized: there wasn’t much to change, except one thing.
More proximity to mentors.
More people walking the same road.
Not much else. I engineered my life to lead me exactly where I want to go - from my fridge, to social media, to conversations I choose to have.
Like many of my clients before they start working with me, I used to believe that what I do each day is something I decide… each day.
Through willpower. Through effort. Through discipline. Through intention. Through goal-setting.
Trial, error, education later, and I learned something uncomfortable and freeing at the same time:
Most of our actions aren’t chosen in the moment.
They’re defaulted to based on what’s visible, convenient, and easy.
The brain is lazy first because what saves energy prolongs your life. (At least for the moment)
That’s why when clients ask me to help them change behavior, I almost never start with “the person.”
I start with what’s around them.
We look at their setup.
Their calendar.
Their cues.
Their friction points. Their social circle that they are empowered by or lose sleep over.
Very often, just doing the prep - creating time and reminders, removing obstacles, making the right thing easier - does all the hard work.
The habit sticks.
And then the habit shapes who you become.
High achievers often struggle with this the most.
They believe deeply in agency.
In making good decisions.
In pushing through.
They believe in their personal power. That’s how they got where they are. (At least that's the thinking)
And it often becomes their blind spot.
They rely on will instead of design. And expect others to act on this every day too.
But then the brain gets tired.
Life gets busy.
Emotions run hot.
And everything collapses back to default.
The solution?
Start with design, not will.
Over to you, dear reader,
What behavior are you trying to change right now?
And have you actually designed the support setting first?
PS: It’s ironic how willpower and discipline backfire when we use them everywhere, instead of saving them for when they really matter.
