Articlr

While watching the Nanny Diaries I came across this little nugget of knowledge: The biggest problem for any anthropologist studying a particular sociological model is that being exposed to this segmented group of people eventually leads to a total assimilation with them and the only way to stop this process is to immediately remove yourself from that environment.

That says a lot about the power of the environments we put ourselves in.

Here is a little story for you.

I was doing quite well before I came to America. My business was generating OK money and I was wearing nice suit and a long black cashmere coat with a silk scarf. I had never done manual labor and I wasn't planning on trying.

At some point our economy collapses, I loose everything and decide to come to America to start over.

I had no money, didn't know a soul, and took a job in construction because nothing else was open to me.

My environment changed drastically: from business-development to hanging vinyl siding, from a nice coat to Carhart overall, from a good food to McDonald's, from sedans to pickup trucks, from my friends with college degrees, clean clothing and intact teeth to a bunch of stinky beat-up dentally-challenged rednecks.

At first it felt awkward and in some sense entertaining, but then I started noticing that after a while my entire system of values started to degrade: good food would mean Burger King instead of McDonald's, good clothing would mean Carhart instead of Wal-Mart, good car would mean a beat-up pickup truck with a few hundreds miles on it that you can haul a pile of tools in instead of new shiny sedan (how are you going to put an air compressor in there?)

I even wore bandanas . . . in public!

It sucks you in! It starts to feel normal and acceptable!

It took years of swinging hammers and shifting equipment before I realized I wanted more (clean clothes, clean cars, good food,) longer to actually pull myself out of that environment.

Now, I don't touch McDonalds or power tools anymore.

If I had told those guys I used to work with my plans to become a successful Internet marketer or my dream of owning my own home-based business, how do you think they would have reacted? Seriously, I would have sounded crazy.

Was it hard to drag myself back up out of the mud? Yes, it was.

Do I regret any of the hard work I put in? Not one drop of it.

One more time: Being exposed to a segmented group of people eventually leads to a total assimilation with them and the only way to stop this process is to immediately remove yourself from that environment.

What is it that you do?