#16: The Environment of Self

How Setting Controls Identity

Welcome to Recalibrating! My name is Callum (@_wanderloots)

Join me each week as I learn to better life in every way possible, reflecting and recalibrating along the way to keep from getting too lost.

Thanks for sharing the journey with me ✨

This week we are going to talk about the third and final pillar of Story: setting, and how our environments impact our sense of self.

You can read this entry online here.

Recap From Last Week

Last week, we touched on the plots for your attention and why you should care how they work. This mining of attention shortens your ability to pay attention and reduces the likelihood of finding flow. Anti-Flow.

This week, we are going to continue by discussing the final pillar of story: the setting.

The setting initiates the main backdrop and mood for a story. The setting can be referred to as the story world, including context that goes deeper than merely the physical environment of the story. The culture, environment, time, political systems, and more all influence the setting.

Environment and the Brain

Our environments have a drastic impact on our behaviour, perhaps more than anything else. About half of our brain is dedicated to processing visual information.

That is a substantial amount of brain power for a single sensory input.

We use the sense of sight to look for danger and to find safety. We constantly look around our environments to see what is changing and what is staying the same.

Our environment is a mix of vision, sound, and smells, leading to even larger sensory input to the brain.

We ask ourselves: what has the potential for danger and change? What do we know will provide safety and stability?

Environmental Impact on Self & Identity

Throughout our lives, we experience many changes to our Setting. In stories, the Character (the hero, you) has to adapt to this changing setting so that they can continue to develop their skills and work their way through the plot, solve the main dilemma, and return back to the ordinary world.

As children, we often experience world-shifting change. Moving from one house to another, between the houses of divorced parents, to a new town, new school, etc.

We then grow up and go from elementary school to high school, another major change. Some people go to university or college, changing cities or countries, moving far away from friends and family.

All of this takes place within the time frame of about 18 years. We are relatively used to changing environments as a child, in part because we have little to no control over these environments until we move away from home to begin our adult lives. Even then, we are just starting to learn what it means to be an adult individual; the person we will be for the rest of our lives.

No wonder our sense of self as a child/teenager feels so confusing.

Once we graduate, we then find a job based on the last 18 years of our education. For many people, this is where the first stable environment begins to set in. We stay in the same role/company with only minor changes to our environments across the years. Typically, people work from the ages of ~22-65, so over 40 years. About double the life we have already lived at the time we start working.

As working adults, we now have full control over our setting, the environments we place ourselves in. For many people, this is their first glimpse of stability and they are in no rush to change it. Over time, this stability sinks deeper and deeper into our sense of self and we become more fearful of change to our circumstances. New things? No thank you.

Employers typically operate in a way that limits individual environmental control during the workday. There are incentives to operate in the way things have always operated, to not rock the boat. Incentives to belong in the incumbent system.

Over time, we begin to recalibrate our sense of self to our identity as an employee. Job expectations, workplace culture, and societal norms have greater and greater impacts on who we are. We sink deeper.

Our individuality becomes curbed by the collective whole as we lose a bit of our self to the expectations of others. The paradox of tension between self and other is easier not to think about, so we conform.

This alignment with others is not necessarily a bad thing. It's a positive to feel like a part of a community while contributing to something bigger than yourself. Putting a part of yourself out there to fuel the stabilization of the system can be rewarding.

The problems begin when this stable system is destabilized. Something outside of our control disrupts our carefully crafted system.

After so many years of stability and conformity, we no longer remember how to deal with change as an individual.

Stabilizing Our Environment Through Habits and Anchors

As mentioned in previous entries, the prime human fear is fear of the unknown. Change is representative of the unknown, since it indicates a shift from where we are now to a place whose future is uncertain. A changed setting.

To assist with our fear of change, we anchor our sense of self to different aspects of our identity. Thoughts and actions we can return to when the waves get rough. These anchors form as a result of consistent actions taken daily that remind us who we are. Habits.

As discussed in Atomic Habits, our environment plays a huge role in the development of habits. At their core, habits are really just the systems we maintain that form who we are. Our habits shape our self.

Habits have four components: cue, craving, response, reward. We are cued (triggered) by stimuli, resulting in a craving that dictates our response to achieve the reward.

The Habit Loop by James Clear

Environment (location) is one of the most powerful cues. Remember ~50% of our brains are used to process vision. Our environment is a mix of vision, sound, and smells, leading to even larger sensory input to the brain.

As much as we would like to think that we are independent individuals operating with intention, we unconsciously fall back on our habits and automate our actions based on what we have done before. We fall into consistent ruts. Patterns of behaviour that control what we do. Patterns that become who we are.

The more time we spend in a particular environment, the more comfortable we become. We enter fight/flight states less often since we know what to expect. Our habits have taken over. Auto-pilot.

Here's a quote from James Clear on the impact of location on habits:

we mentally assign habits to a particular location. This means that all of the current places that you’re familiar with (your home, your office, etc.) already have behaviors, habits, and routines assigned to them.

Effectively, we turn the cues to our habitual responses into anchors. Consistent points that help hold us in place despite turbulence around us. Familiar cues. Safety. Stability.

In the employment environment, our habit systems anchors are established predominantly through job expectations, coworkers, bosses, and the workplace culture.

We think this is a good thing, and it might be at first. We are just trying to fit in. To belong.

In many situations these anchors have been shifted from within our internal self to an outside external location. The locus of our identity has shifted away from ourselves and more into what we do for a living.

Unfortunately, this removal of anchors to external locations and situations poses a massive problem: we forget how to maintain our selves when disrupted by change. Our default response is not one of self, but of other. We rely on our employment for our sense of identity.

What we do instead of who we are.

Stabilizing Despite Change

The only constant in life is change.

Panta Rhei ~ everything flows.

While our stories may have periods of consistency and stability on a chapter by chapter basis, the overall plot, characters, and setting will inevitably change.

When new characters or plots enter the setting we have become familiar with, we may experience a period of stress as we try to recalibrate our senses to the new stimuli.

However, this change is often a minor form of recalibration. A habit may need to be adapted, but the habit system still remains mostly intact. The change is inconvenient, not existential.

When our environments change completely, our habit systems get thrown out the window, often causing increased stress and anxiety.

Actions and thoughts that have become second nature based on our situation are suddenly a struggle to identify with.

When we have secured ourselves through external anchors, we have given up emotional control of our environments. If we get fired, laid off, transferred departments or cities, a new boss, etc., there are changes to our externally anchored sense of self that can be difficult to cope with.

External anchors get swept out to sea in the roughest storms, leaving us with a void that we have forgotten how to fill.

Instead, we need to remember how to establish internal anchors that are solely within our own control. Anchors that move with us because they are a part of us.

Reflections of our selves that remind us of who we are.

However, with environmental changes comes a loss of habit systems. We lose our repetitive exposure to unconscious actions and begin to forget.

When we are in a given situation, living and breathing it, we can easily remember aspects of our habits and actions. Our memories are cued by our environment, reminding us of what we have learned in that setting and who we learned it with.

When that setting is removed or disrupted, so too is the deep connection with the knowledge we gained. It's easy to lose track of knowledge as our environments change and we are no longer discussing the same topics with the same people.

But remember, this change is not a bad thing. Change is constant, so we might as well learn to live with it.

The problems arise when we fear change and forget useful memories. Our sense of self is tied to our past as we move to our future. If we forget who we have been, it's more difficult to find out who we are and will be.

How To Remember Your Selves

There is a parallel to Finding Your Voice discussed in Entries # 13 and 14 that I won't get into now. Feel free to revisit the concept of Flow and how writing can help identify patterns in your life.

As a quick overview, journalling provides a method of capturing your experiences. Over time, these experiences build to provide data and information. By revisiting this data and information, you can form knowledge and identify patterns in your thinking that help improve your self-awareness.

Instead of keeping your knowledge and memories in your head, subject to the turbulent stimuli of changing environments, we can create anchors for our memories and knowledge that are independent of our environment.

We think that we will retain our habits and our knowledge of how to operate, but really, habits and knowledge are largely tied to the environment we experience them in.

We need a safe place to store the moments that matter in our lives so that we can remember and leverage them in our pursuit of internal anchors and remembrance of the self.

That way, when disruption comes, our anchors are not swept away in the storm, but hold us firmly in place.

Moments that Matter

Some moments matter more than others. Dinner with your brothers? Movie with a friend? A call with your parents? You are probably going to value those moments more than scrolling on social media for hours when you really meant to be cooking or reading or working out.

Remember the concept of Anti-flow: everything blurs, one scroll to the next as time slips away. We may have had the motivation to change, but we lose it to distraction.

With all of the modern systems mining your attention with short form content, attention spans themselves shrink. Short attention spans make the moments that matter shorter and more fragmented. They become less deep and harder to remember the specifics. See Stolen Focus for an excellent overview on this topic.

The more you write down your experiences (journaling) the more you will begin to identify the moments that matter to you and the more you will be motivated to keep making those moments.

You are investing your attention to build to your future by offloading the memory to your second brain. That sounds much better than spending your attention on numerous 1-6 second videos that lead to nothing. Investing your attention in a consistent worldview instead of a fractured reality.

Regardless of what is happening in your worklife, you can take the time each day to jot down some thoughts about what you liked or didn't like. You can identify and establish your sense of self internally rather than as part of an external environment.

Your journal can become an internal anchor, something that you can bring with you anywhere, especially if you are using a digital journal (phone, tablet, computer, voice notes, etc.)

This digital environment is one that can be adapted to any situation, providing a sense of stability for your self, despite the changing circumstances of reality. (Provided the digital journal is decentralized, a topic I will cover more later when we get into self-sovereignty).

Furthermore, writing about the changes you are experiencing to your external anchors may help you identify patterns for why you are happy/unhappy with the changes, leading to greater epiphanies on how to positively change as you move forward.

You create a safe space to find and remember your selves.

Reframing the Setting of the Internet

Once you have a safe place to store your thoughts, ideas, knowledge, inspiration, there is less friction between you and creation. It's easier to create when you are doing it for yourself first in a space that is free of pressure and judgement of others.

You can explore what works for you as internal anchors before thinking about sharing the result of that expression with others. Of course, you do not need to share anything with anyone.

These exercises can be purely for yourself. That said, if you have found patterns you are passionate about, it's beneficial to share those epiphanies with others to build a community around that passion.

Once you have found your Voice, you can begin to use it.

The last few entries have been part of the series of Maslow's Hierarchy Level 3: Belonging and Love needs. I wanted to address the concepts of your Voice and Character Development as a primary goal before moving to the secondary goal of sharing with others to build True Community.

Now that we have developed the character (your Voice) and established internal anchors (your identity), it is time to enter the world of the digital renaissance: the Internet. Or, depending on the news hype-cycle of the week, the metaverse.

In my experience (validated by many other creators and knowledge workers), one of the best ways to proceed with sharing your Voice online is by reframing how you think of sharing in the first place.

Sharing is not for others. Sharing is for you. Others merely get secondary benefit from your sharing, with the primary benefit being a public place to develop your creative and intellectual skills. More on this primary and secondary value in Entry #7.

Sharing to your website or social media can be reconsidered as scrapbooking, a timestamp of your particular skill-level and focus. In a way, it is a form of public journaling to keep track of the progress of your Character (digital identity).

I also find that public sharing helps to keep me accountable with my creative pursuits. Committing to writing this newsletter each week helps my motivation levels if there are times when I don't feel like writing. In the end, I'm always happy to have taken the time to write down my thoughts and share it with others.

Thanks for keeping me accountable :)

The consistent sharing of your creativity and knowledge (public journaling) will build over time to create entire worlds of knowledge and creativity. You are taking your worldview, packaging it in a way that others can experience it, and sharing it with them.

You form connections with others as you build your world, building community, and improving the reputation of your digital identity.

Once your internal anchors are established, you can leverage them on your path to self-actualization ✨

Next week

We have completed the series on Story as part of Maslow's Hierarchy Level 3: Belonging and Love Needs. This topic is a difficult one to discuss because of the tension between self and other we experience on a regular basis.

It's important to remember that your Story is primarily yours. You are the only one living it. That said, learning to identify your Voice and become comfortable with it is strengthened by using it to share your Story with others.

Next, we are going to level up to Maslow's Hierarchy Level 4: Esteem. I have been excited to get into this topic since I began the series almost four months ago.

Stay tuned ✨

P.S. If you are interested in learning how I format my second brain to capture moments that matter and identify patterns to solve the problems of my life, please consider upgrading your subscription to paid. Your support means more than you know 😌 ✨

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