Environment Beats Personality.
by- Josh Bryant
In 1969, Stanford psychologist Philip Zimbardo ran a $13 experiment that still explains most human behavior better than a thousand self-help books.
Two identical cars. Same model. Same condition. Night white 1959 Oldsmobiles with no plates, hoods popped and left open.
One was parked in wealthy Palo Alto near Stanford. The other sat in the hard scrabble Bronx near NYU.
The goal wasn’t to study criminals. It was to see whether environment shapes behavior more than character.
The Bronx car lasted about ten minutes.
The first people to touch it weren’t gang members or teenagers. It was a father, mother, and young son, and calmly, like clockwork, they pulled the battery and radiator like a pit crew. Within 24 hours there were 23 separate incidents. Tires gone. Mirrors gone. Frame stripped. Nobody called the police. It wasn’t chaos. It was routine once the signal was given.
Meanwhile, the Palo Alto car sat untouched for over a week. People walked past it. Someone closed the hood when it rained. One man even directed traffic around it so no one hit it.
Zimbardo didn’t buy the explanation that Palo Alto just had “better people,” so after seven days he smashed the car himself with a sledgehammer.
That was the signal.
Within hours, strangers joined in. A man in a suit smashed the headlights. By nightfall the car was flipped. By morning it was stripped clean.
Same town. Same type of people. Different environment.
Once order broke, people didn’t need permission. They just needed proof that rules no longer mattered.
That insight later showed up again when cities cleaned graffiti and fixed broken windows and crime dropped. Not because humans suddenly became virtuous, but because order communicates standards.
Environment beats personality!
Applied
Louie Simmons used to say, “If you run with the weak, eventually you develop a limp.”
That’s not judgment. That’s reality.
Bad company is worse than no company!!!
At least with no company, you can build something. You can train at home. Paint the walls. Pick the music. Set the tone. A draining training partner will kill progress faster than training alone ever will. A draining life partner will do the same but only worse.
Think about addiction. You stopped drinking but still stopped by the old bar. You swear you’re just saying hi. Then the smells hit. The sounds. The faces. Maybe an old fling. Next thing you know, you’re three sheets to the wind, riding the mechanical bull buck naked, broken glass everywhere, bad decisions stacked on bad decisions. Not good!
The environment triggered the habit.
That’s why some psychologists recommend changing habits while traveling. Remove the cues and the behavior loses its grip.
Training Environment
Growing up, Saturday was squat day. Loud. Heavy. Intentional. Everyone showed up ready. Weight went up week after week. PRs mattered and they happened because the room demanded it.
Walk into Metroflex on a Brian Dobson leg day or one of those legendary deadlift sessions I ran with Johnnie Jackson and you could feel the energy from the Racetrack gas station down the street. People showed up just to watch. Some stayed to train. The energy was contagious. It felt like the cosmos were involved. Folks came from all around, followed the workout station to station, then ran it themselves after. That was the environment. You walked in, and if you chose to embrace it, your probability of succeeding just increased tenfold. Even down at the Waffle House a couple blocks away, there was this wild son of a bitch we called the Werewolf. Long black beard, trench coat, total lunatic but a true classic. Lived on coffee and street stimulants. He’d sit there staring at everyone with this grin. The running joke was that when we started deadlifting, he’d start howling. That’s how thick the atmosphere was.
But here’s the other side.
Tom Haviland trains alone. Quiet. Structured. Precise. He builds the environment perfectly and executes without distraction. Different setup. Same principle.
Psychology always trumps physiology!!!
In Life
This applies beyond training.
You won’t earn money if you surround yourself with people who “can’t get ahead.”
Give someone with a poverty mindset a million dollar opportunity and they’ll drag it back to minimum wage. Environment shapes self-image, and the subconscious enforces it.
This applies to everything.
If Starbucks makes you space out, study at the library. If your gym turns into a yapping contest with the guy reliving intramural glory days, find a new place to train. Or build your own with a rack, some plates, Waffle House coffee, and silence.
Motivation is short term and unreliable. Environment is leverage!!
TAKE HOME POINTS CHECKLIST
• Audit your inputs. People, places, routines. What you watch, listen to, and read. Anything that normalizes chaos is leaking momentum.
• No company beats bad company. Solo with intent is superior to group dysfunction. Circle jerks feel productive but kick progress square in the nuts.
• Engineer your space. Paint it. Set the music. Hang reminders. Your environment should demand effort.
• Make good habits obvious. Clothes by the bed. Shake in the bag. List on the mirror.
• Remove friction from winning. Delete apps. Mute distractions. Make execution easier than procrastination.
• Change location to change behavior. If it’s not working, move.
• Pre commit. Pay ahead. Schedule sessions. Force your future self to opt out instead of opt in.
• Protect standards. Broken windows invite collapse. Fix them fast.
• Psychology before physiology. Know why you’re there before you touch the bar.
• If the right environment doesn’t exist, build it. As they said in Field of Dreams, build it and they will come.
• Find a great one or create your own.
• Because once the window breaks, the mob doesn’t need an invitation.
The right program can transform the environment. Structure creates standards, standards create behavior, and behavior creates results.
