How To Set Up Your Environment For Success

Is Your Environment Working For You Or Against You?

Picture this, you’re dropped in the Sahara Desert. No water, no food, no shelter. How long would you survive? Not long. You’d likely die of thirst before finding help.

Now slightly adjust the environment. Add a beautiful cool spring, shaded by palm trees, shelter (somewhere to sleep, be safe, and secure). A huntsman who teaches you to track and hunt. But, you haven’t changed. Your willpower and ambition are the same as before. However, your odds of surviving just transformed. I would argue, you could even thrive.

That’s the whole idea. Success is capped by your environment, not effort. You can work as hard as you want, but if the resources, people, and opportunities around you don’t support what you’re building, you’ll hit a wall before your ambition does. The real question isn’t “how hard am I working?”, it’s “am I in an environment where hard work actually pays off?”

As the old saying goes:

A rising tide lifts all boats.”

Therefore, you number one job is to position yourself in the right environment, so your surroundings start working for you instead of against you. But, how?

To answer the how, there are three environments worth auditing: internal, external, and digital.

Your Internal Environment

Before fixing anything external, we need to look inward. It’s hard to build outward success on a brittle internal foundation.

In May 2026, my wife and I went to the Maldives for our honeymoon. We had saved for over two years and we wanted to splurge. It was everything Instagram promised. I had never seen white sands like that before, pure white. And the resort we stayed in knew their assignment, they welcomed us like royalty.

But! Like every great story, something has to go wrong. And that something was my health. I caught a fever with no clear cause and spent four days in bed, drenched in sweat, cold as ice, and unable to enjoy any of it. I was in paradise, but in pain. I realised that no amount of external success matters if your health isn’t there to receive it.

I must admit that my prayers turned from wealth to health. So before touching your external environment, ask yourself:

• Physical: Do I spend a few minutes each day working on my physical health (e.g. going for a run, gym, swim, yoga, hiking, walks, drive, climbing)? Am I eating a healthy diet? Do I make grooming a priority, so I can look my best and feel good?
• Mental: Do I spend a few minutes each week meditating, praying, talking to someone I trust, setting boundaries, doing things I enjoy like watching good movies, or reading books, anything that will help you take care of my mental health?
• Emotional: If something were to happen financially, would I be in a position to hold it together emotionally, while I figure out the solution? Do I have someone I can trust like a spouse or partner I can confide all of my secrets? If you don’t have a significant other, do you have a therapist (shrink)? Am I practicing positive affirmations to reduce my negative thoughts?
• Spiritual: Do I believe in something bigger than myself? For me, I believe in the Universe and that it is always working for me. Do I have a purpose? Is my purpose used in service of others? What can I do to help someone else today?

Don’t try to answer everything at once. Just get honest about where you stand. You can’t fix what you haven’t noticed.

When I was on my honeymoon, financially I had it all. But physically, I didn’t. I realised that no matter how much money I had, it wouldn’t mean anything if I didn’t have my health. Therefore, I made it a priority to fix my health before I would fix anything else.

Your External Environment

Once your internal foundation is solid, you have three options for anything not working in your surroundings:

1. Fix
2. Change
3. Accept

Fixing

Start small, because fixing the small things compounds into big outcomes. I started with my home office because this is where I spent most of my time and it was a mess. It was covered with dirty laundry, a cluttered desk, a digital piano wrapped in polystyrene sitting in the dead center of the room for no good reason.

The clutter was affecting my mental health and I didn’t even know it. It wasn’t until I watched a documentary on David Beckham, whose home and workspace were immaculate. It finally clicked.

I couldn’t believe it. I was incredibly impressed and jealous. The truth is I wanted my environment to look like his. If I wanted to build something real, I needed to first get my own space in order. So I cleaned it up, and the shift in how I felt working there was immediate.

Changing

Once my immediate space was in order, I started questioning the bigger surroundings. Because when you improve one area of your life, it has a ripple effect.

We were living in Auckland, New Zealand, but I felt something was missing. It felt as if the season had come to an end and I needed something more. As Achilles in the movie Troy said it:

“What would all men want? I just wanted more.”

I wanted bigger opportunities, more innovation, more people building things. Auckland had given us what it could. But the ceiling was fixed, not because of a lack of effort, but because of the environment itself.

So we chose to change environments entirely. After returning home from our honeymoon, we sold our things and moved to Sydney at the end of June 2026, a bigger hub with a taller mountain to climb.

Side note: I’m fully aware that packing up and moving countries isn’t realistic for everyone. Honestly, it took savings, timing, and we were in privileged positions. We had no kids, no mortgages, and high paying jobs. My point is that “change” doesn’t have to mean something that dramatic. It might mean changing jobs, changing your friend group, changing the neighborhood you spend your weekends in, or changing which room in your own city you show up to. If it is not working for you, change it.

Accepting

Sometimes you can’t fix or change your environment. For example, a difficult manager, or a disgusting company culture. In those cases, acceptance isn’t defeat, it’s what lets you calm your mind long enough to see openings you couldn’t see while resisting. I’d always try fixing or changing first and use acceptance as the last resort, not the first instinct.

More importantly, acceptance allows you to be ready for anything unexpected. For instance, which person do you want to be; someone who is panicked, and anxious, and running around like a headless chicken, or someone who is calm and focused and can take on anything that comes there way.

Your Digital Environement

This is the environment most people never audit, even though they’re plugged into it for hours a day. I see them on the trains on their way to work, on their lunchbreak, on the ride home after work, even on the treadmill at the gym. Head down, thumb flicking up scrolling.

I used to spend four-plus hours a day on TikTok. And I can guarantee you 100% that every time I was scrolling, I’d see something that would piss me off or make me feel like I wasn’t good enough. Then it would get worse. I’d spiral into a negative headspace I couldn’t climb out of. Until one day, I had enough. I had enough of feeling bad about myself. I told myself I deserved better, and I respected myself enough to quit social media for good.

You see, two people can have identical goals and spend identical time on their phones. One doom-scrolling, the other consuming content that sharpens their thinking. Same device, same hours, completely different trajectories. You don’t need to swear off entertainment, but your feed should be doing at least as much for you as it’s doing to you. Afterall, your thoughts and ideas are a combination of what you consume. So, consume wisely.

Key Takeaway

Fixing, changing, or accepting your environment is the first part of your equation. Effort still matters. But effort in the wrong environment is like running on a hamster wheel. You are in constant motion, but you never cover any ground. Before asking how much harder you can work, ask whether your environment is even capable of rewarding the work you’re about to put in.

All Self-Help Articles on How Your Environment Affects Your Succes

Below you will find every self-help article that I’ve written on how your environment affects your success in your endeavors.

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Cheers,

Michael Hossaini

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