Movies and modern culture usually sell the story that you can win through all adversaries if you fight hard enough and channel your willpower. Unfortunately, that’s not the case in reality and most of the times, the environment you’re in wins over your will. This doesn’t mean that you don’t have a fighting chance. In this episode, Alex Mandossian equips us with the tools and principles we need to bend the environment in our favor. He brings to light the principles and forces that we have control over to make the battle with our environment easier. He explains in great detail through examples of real-life scenarios how it’s possible to turn the tides.

—

Listen to the podcast here:

Why Environment Always Wins

In this episode, you’ll learn three key insights that I believe are critical to making you a highly skilled ethical influencer. You’ll discover why nine environments that you can design, win over your willpower. You’ll also learn how your focus on your environments will lead to higher achievement. Finally, you’ll learn why momentum is the most powerful force in the business universe.

Lean in and read intently because this episode could have a significant impact on how you can quickly and easily win the hearts of others. If English is your second language, I hope you decided to read this and other episodes not once, not twice, but three times because nothing empowers language fluency more than learning the art of ethical influence.

—

The Nine Environments Of You

The nine environments of you. This is the story of the nine environments originally created by a friend Thomas Leonard. He’s no longer with us but he’s probably smiling down and being proud that this is being taught. He took over the reins of CoachVille and eventually gave it to Dave Buck after his death. What he created is a powerful way to see and design the world around you, the context of your world, not just the content.

We know that most human beings are always adapting to the world around them while at the same time, unconsciously creating the world as a reflection of themselves. In psychology, we call that projection. You will design the world around you so that you become who you desire and to be evolving in it, in an unexpected and even delightful way. If you control and design your environments first, you’ll have a more adaptive, more predictable, and more successful outcome.

The transformation from willpower to world power is not that difficult. History is full of stories of individuals who have achieved greatness by overcoming the environment. Through these stories, we get the idea that the environment is something to be overcome through willpower. This is possible, it’s not efficient, not effective and it’s a myth because the environment always wins.

Most of the time, the environment wins. The individual that means you, does not win through willpower. The willpower is finite. You start with so many units a day and then you’re exhausted by the end of the day. I believe that the more decisions, transitions you make in your day, the more you multitask, exhaust the willpower you have.

The environment doesn’t get exhausted because it’s there around you, that’s why designing it sets up a framework for success. That’s an ethical influence. That’s in team building. That’s with family, with colleagues, with friends, and of course growing your business to levels that you thought were impossible.

It means that you see yourself as a part of the environment and play with it as well as within it. The concept of world power versus willpower. World power means that you design an environment with the right balance and the right harmony to support and challenge you to grow and get results.

[bctt tweet=”Human beings are always adapting to the world around them while unconsciously creating the world as a reflection of themselves.” username=”AlexMandossian”]

Here’s a quick overview of the nine environments. Environment number one, you. The core that is unchanging is the you environment. You can picture this as a pie chart and you are right in the middle. It’s the core. Environment number two is the mimetic environment. These are ideas, TV, radio, newspapers, magazines, and websites. Memes have been common on the internet. They’re ideas. Like poetry they can evoke emotion as well as thoughts with other people with a quick view.

Environment number three is the body environment. That’s considered your radiance, your appearance, your clothing, the way you come off to other people. Environment number four is the self-environment. These are the inner game elements such as your strengths, talents, character. It’s what’s inside of you.

Number five is your spiritual environment. It doesn’t mean you have to believe in a higher power, but there is a spiritual element in everything that someone does, whether you’re an atheist, agnostic to any religious belief or not. The spiritual environment is deep connections and sacred spaces. It’s the power of belief in something.

Environment number six is the relationship environment. These are your close friends, family, close colleagues, your team. If you don’t have a team, the independent contractors you work with. Environment number seven is your network environment. Your network environment is the professional connections and the greater community that develop your network, whether it’s personal or professional.

The next environment is the physical environment, and those are places, things and technology, then there’s the financial environment, that’s money, wealth budget. Finally, the nature environment, those are the great outdoors, nature, beauty, the seasons. All of these are environments. The environment always wins, that’s the premise of this episode.

There’s a provocative mantra of this life-changing concept. Because without significant environmental design, and you get to control your environmental design. Either you control your environment, or it controls you. If you control it and if you design it, it can become more adaptive. It’s like creating your blueprint for success. It’s like designing your own home or living quarters.

Without significant environmental design, there’s no process of change that is sustainable because you’re always going to rely on willpower. The willpower is exhaustive. It’s finite. If you feel you’re living out of control, whether it’s financial or it deals with your body or maybe your inner thoughts, yourself.

Maybe your financial environment is out of control or your network. You don’t have one as effective as you’d like, or you don’t have the contacts or status that you would like. It’s because you haven’t deliberately, intentionally designed it. This has a lot to do with your level of ethical influence.

You may have noticed that most of the time when you do a change or any program. Whether it’s an emergent training like a seminar or a how-to course, you read a book, listen to audio online or offline, shortly after, you end up back to the way you’ve always been. Why is that? Why is this backsliding, or in some disciplines they call it recidivism?

 

That’s where people backslide and come back to where they originally were, despite their hard work. Why is that possible? This is because when you go back home or you go back to your default, then you’re going back to the environment that you set up.

You have to change your environment when you reach a new level, a new level of thinking and feeling which ends up and subsequently resulting in a new way of acting and ultimately a new level of outcomes or results. Everyone’s that way. We’re all born the same way. Naked, scared, needy, and having to be held otherwise we die.

Eventually, as we grow, we find out that we have to do things we don’t want to do, which is what I’ve said in the previous episode is the difference between an adult and a child. I tell my kids this, the only difference between you and me, I tell them, I have two kids Gabrielle and Breanna, is that I often do things I don’t want to do to support you. To pay for the bills, to work when I don’t feel like it. Some people call it responsibility. I call it being an adult.

Selling to others is the same way, sometimes you don’t want to sell when you know that you should. Rather than shooting all over yourself, the ideal scene is for you to set an environment so that you can give yourself a break and selling becomes fun. Ethical influence becomes faster, easier and better.

The Environment Always Wins And Willpower Is Overrated

My goal for you in this episode is for you to understand that the environment always wins and willpower is overrated. Free will is not willpower. Free will is what makes humans humans, different than the animal kingdom. Willpower is your level of will that by the end of the day will get exhausted depending on what your day looks like.

If you have unanticipated interactions, transitions, if you have stress and worry, that’s depleting willpower. That’s because your environment is having an impact on your willpower. For sustainable success, always design these nine environments to be the picture of your next evolution. Let me put it into a framework, willpower is always shacked. It’s always controlled by environmental design.

You don’t have to believe what I’m saying but it’s happening in your life right now whether you believe it or not. If you look at the brain, and if you ask anyone who has studied the brain, what is the purpose of your brain? Not your mind, but your brain, the physical thing that’s inside your head.

The purpose of the brain is to conserve your energy. That’s its job. Doesn’t it make sense that your brain was developed to conserve your willpower so you can make it through the day? After all, the brain was developed when we didn’t know where we could go get our food. We didn’t have a money system. We were getting hunted and we were being hunted. We didn’t know if we would procreate.

Conservation is the key. There is exhaust to the power that the environment has on us if we don’t design it. It controls us especially when we’re in any type of transition or switch tasking, also known as multitasking. These nine environments, you, mimetic, body, self, spiritual, relationship, network, financial, physical and nature. These will be effective and critical when you design them in priority.

[bctt tweet=”If you control and design your environments first, you’ll have a more adaptive, more predictable, and more successful outcome.” username=”AlexMandossian”]

Many times, the environment that has the most control over you should be the one that you start with first. If you’re in deep debt, financial could be a good place to start. It doesn’t mean that it’s a weakness. By raising the tide on financial, you’ll raise the tide on the you, the mimetic, the body, the self, the spiritual, the relationship, the network, the physical and nature.

Put another away, I would say that, “Environment equals context, and context is the determining factor in your life.” Context is decisive, as Werner Erhard who started the whole movement of rest that later turned into Landmark. He was first to say it. That’s where I heard it. “If the environment is context, then willpower is content.”

Imagine an environment where you’re influencing someone, if you’re an environment that’s loud, if there are lots of distractions, if you don’t have the complete attention of your candidate, prospect, or lead. I don’t like the word lead because it dehumanizes. Let’s say candidate.

If that environment is not ideal for creating a conversion or a sale, it doesn’t matter how much content you deliver. If they’re not listening, if they’re distracted, or if they’re stressed or worried, they’re not going to have any objections. They’re not going to be listening to you and you’re wasting your time. They’re wasting their time.

Look at the environment as the frame. The frame of a painting is important. If you have a very expensive frame the painting looks more valuable. I’ve heard of stories of paintings that were rolled up in canvas and were available in a garage sale. They were worth over $60 million. That was painted by someone very famous.

An American painter who died in a car crash due to alcoholism, because there was no frame and there was no context associated with it, it was sold for less than $20. Context is decisive. What’s the frame you want to live in to be effective? That means doing the right things.

Tenth Environment

I believe there is a tenth environment. That tenth environment and I don’t mean to trump what Thomas Leonard created because he was a genius, much smarter than I. The tenth environment for me would be focus. What lens are you looking through to prioritize which environment you’re going to work with if you have nine environments? What are you focusing on first, then second, third, fourth?

Remember, the Principle of Priority in the previous episode is knowing the difference between what’s important and what is urgent and doing what’s important first. What’s the most important environment for you to focus on? Is it the you, mimetic, body, self, spiritual, your relationships, your network, your financial, physical or nature?

If you’re many pounds overweight you may want to focus on health because you’ll have more energy as you lose weight. Feel great and then you can work on financial even if both are in a two-way tie for first place. Prioritizing your weakest environments are having an impact on you.

 

Weakest means you have no control over them and they have the strongest impact on you. That’s the place to start. It will change the way you do business. It will change the way you think and feel. It will change the way you think of sales and ethical influence.

Because your focus on the environments that have the strongest impact on you and that is controlling you can trigger exponential changes in your life. I’ve been teaching this for years. We have $30,000 and $100,000 clients. This is the first thing we teach them. Take back control of their environments. This is an ongoing process. You don’t do it once. It’s evolving as you evolved as a human being.

Alexism: Building The Force Of Momentum

The Alexism for this episode is this, “Focus on building momentum, not just growth.” If you don’t know what momentum is, simply put, it’s gaining speed on accelerated growth. Growth is not good enough for me, but momentum is gaining the speed of the acceleration of that growth. That’s why it’s exponential.

There’s no more powerful thing in the universe, at least in business than momentum. Focus on building momentum, not only growth because it’s better to aim for first downs not just touchdowns. If you don’t live in the United States, that is an analogy for American football. Focus on building momentum not only for growth but for your business. It’s better to go for first downs not just touchdowns.

That’s the key to a great American football coach. They go for first downs and they don’t go for the Hail Mary pass, which is a very long 50-yard pass. Many times, where they’re praying and spraying the football downfield. They’re taking a huge risk at the very final seconds of the game.

The environmental design puts the Principle of Momentum within your reach. What’s momentum? I mentioned this in an earlier episode. Bill Gates was known to put 1,000 inputs into his business when he was sleeping under his desk in the early days of Microsoft. Steve Jobs, too. Oprah Winfrey, JK Rowling of the Harry Potter books. They put 1,000 inputs to get one output.

Let’s say, an acorn that turns into a giant oak, that’s what’s expected in nature. It starts slow, but then it builds momentum where you can put one input as Elon Musk does, as Bill Gates does, as Warren Buffett has done for many years, as Jeff Bezos does. You get one input and it will produce one million outputs. That’s momentum.

It doesn’t seem fair but it is fair because you’ve been willing to put in the work and it builds momentum. The principle of more output with less input is a direct result of not only understanding environmental design but designing your environment so that you win without the risk of losing.

Let’s do a review of the insights you and I discovered in this episode. Number one, why the nine environments you design to win over personal willpower. That’s not talking about free will. We’re talking about willpower that starts strong during the day in the beginning and then gets weak at night until you have to rest and sleep.

Number two, how you’re focused on your environment leads to higher achievement. I want you to prioritize the environment that has the strongest impact on you. The environment that makes you the weakest, focus on that one first from the nine I’ve mentioned.

[bctt tweet=”We’re all born the same way. Naked, scared, needy, and having to be held; otherwise, we die.” username=”AlexMandossian”]

Finally, why momentum is the most powerful force in the business universe. Allow it to kick in. Don’t quit too soon because you never know when you’re on the cusp, on the verge of a breakthrough. Remember, these insights will only work for you if you work them.

Speaking of reviews, before we end this episode, I want you to go to AllSellingAside.com/iTunes. If you’ve done this before, then rather than putting your biggest takeaway or a-ha moment or insight that you experienced in this episode. Inside the iTunes review, I want you to put it on an index card.

If you haven’t given me a review, then what I want you to do is go to AllSellingAside.com/iTunes. It’s not very simple to find the review section. If you search around and explore, you will find it. It’s not very intuitive yet.

It will mean much to me if you put a review. I know it will mean much to you because when you affirm and declare an insight that has meant a lot to you to the rest of the world. First of all, it helps me because I get higher and higher on the charts of iTunes. At the same time, you’re writing it down. Writing is the doing part of thinking. It becomes physical. You can do this in the iTunes review section.

When you do it, iTunes will ask you right afterward to rate the episode. I hope I’ve earned five stars from you. I’ll do whatever it takes to get five stars because five stars to me are so much more powerful than four stars and iTunes thinks that as well.

Go ahead, declare your one big take away from this episode, not of the entire show. That’s what makes this unique. I’m asking you to review once. You’ll only do one review. That’s all you get. Do it from this episode. Visit AllSellingAside.com/iTunes. It will take three minutes out of your day, but what you declare could provide you a lifetime of learning.

I have one final gift. In honor of this 35th episode of the show, I’m talking about the complimentary access to my video eCourse that’s gotten worldwide acclaim. It will teach you how to identify your market niche. Create your irresistible message and also capitalize on the most lucrative media sources available to you right now. More is better than less when it comes to media.

That does it for this episode. I do hope our paths cross again for All Selling Aside. This is the show dedicated to making an ethical influence within your reach so you can achieve and even exceed your sales potential. Sales can be fun if you follow what we teach here.

I hope you read other episodes and I want you to do whatever it takes to join me next episode because our topic is going to be The Remarkable Power of Three. This is one you’ll want to read. I encourage you to invite a friend and bring a study buddy because it’s more fun to learn with someone else and compare notes. I can’t wait to connect with you then and all good wishes.

Important Links:

• CoachVille
• episode – previous episode
• episode – previous episode
• AllSellingAside.com/iTunes
• The Remarkable Power of Three – next episode