Reality Creation: New Environment Immersion

Glen / 20 Comments / January 22nd, 2009 / Subscribe via RSS

As many of you know, the main theme of this website is to help people plug into their identity (?) and create their own reality. I’ve wrote a few posts on the topic, already including how you can take control of your life, how you can create your own reality and also a post on making sure you aren’t settling back into old ways.

However, as I expected on this journey, along the way I’m going to evolve ideas I’ve had previously and find out ways people can apply them with greater ease and practicality. After testing this on multiple occasions, I’ve found that New Environment Immersion (NEI) is one of the best ways to create your own reality. Let me explain…

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Reality Creation?

Before I get too deep on explaining new environment immersion and how it can improve your life, I just want to say a short piece about what reality creation actually is. First of all, I want you to think about your current life situation including the music you listen to, the house you live in, the type of clothes you wear and your favourite days of the week for whatever reason.

Now as you are picturing your life, also include the friends that surround yourself, think about all the tasks and hobbies you do to keep yourself occupied. And finally, going a little deeper, think about your current mindsets and qualities. Are you confident? Can you make a good income? Are you healthy? Do you believe you deserve the best in life and you trust yourself enough that you are just going to go and get it?

Whatever you visualize in your mind right now, whatever your answers to those questions are: this is your current reality. One of the main aims of this site, as stated, is to help people create their own reality. What this means is that people need to realise their current life situation, their current qualities are expectations are not factual, they can change, and sometimes very easily.

About a year before I came to South Africa I was quite shy, didn’t go out all that much (working on my business) and wasn’t entirely sure where I was heading in life. Now I’m much more social (I’ve been to nightclubs on my own numerous times as personal challenges), I go out 4-5 nights a week with different people and I know where I want to be in the next 5 years – and how to get there.

Back in the UK my reality wasn’t that special, my current life situation left a lot to be improved. However, I’ve completely managed to turn that around and see countless people do exactly the same. I’ve realised one of the biggest factors to my success in this area is one thing: new environment immersion.

Your Current Environment

If you are like most people, you’ve probably been living in the same house / city / country for most of your life. I know in my case I had lived in the same house all of my life and often spent my time around the same groups of people, rarely veering away from my current world-view.

This isn’t a problem as such, in fact, most people like living the same way and in the same place, but it does make some things difficult. For instance, when you are in this environment it can be hard to ‘see’ things being any different in your head. Let me give you a couple of examples to show what I mean:

1) Say you are young, live at home with your parents, and aren’t very social. Yet, one of your aims is to become amazing socially in terms of making friends and having more women in your life. In your current situation it can be hard for you to visualize it because it is so OUT THERE and so different to what you are used to.

2) Assume that you are in your 30′s, you’re married and you have a couple of kids. However, your ambition and aim is to start a company / become a rockstar / learn a new language. Something that is radical is hard to visualize because it is just so different to what we have experienced or succeeded with in the past.

You need to be able to realistically visualize your goals in order to actually achieve them.

My ‘current environment’ in the UK went a little like this:

• College 5 days per week, work 2 days per week
• Lived at home with my mom and sister
• Went clubbing most weekends
• Had random girlfriends here and there, nothing serious

In that situation, where I’m so used to my current reality, it’s hard to see how there is potential for there to be anything different. It’s hard to see myself going out 5 nights per week, not being in college, bringing girls back every other night of the week. In other words: it’s out of my reality. It’s out of my current reality that this life situation is possible, it’s out of my vision.

New Environment Immersion

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When I moved to South Africa on my own at 18, I was still the same person. The environment I mentioned in the bullet-points above had been my life for quite a few years (obviously college replacing high school). However, now my ‘current environment’ is a bit like this:

• I work 5 days per week, and love my job
• I live on my own in a modern apartment
• I go out with my friends 4-5 nights per week
• I’ve been / am in, open relationships

If you had of told me this when I was in the UK I wouldn’t have believed it. Why? Because it was so out of my reality, I couldn’t visualize it so I certainly didn’t believe I could LIVE it.

The main reason I’ve had such positive changes in my life is because I’ve pushed myself but also immersed myself in a totally new environment.

South Africa is nothing like England, far from it. I’m not going to go into details here but the complete change in lifestyle and society hit me quite hard, and literally forced me to change who I am or at least how I act and imagine myself. I can’t see myself going back to the UK and acting like I did, but I can’t see myself acting like I do now if I hadn’t gotten out of the environment and made a radical change in my life.

I’ve never written this before, but I’ve found the secret to instantly losing your ego and being in the now: do something stupid (embarrassing). I know that sounds strange, but it’s so true. If you can walk into a busy sports store and start trying to breakdance in the middle of the store – your ego dissolves (yes, I did this). You are probably going to feel embarrassed but you are doing it, it’s being done, you are breaking down all feelings regarding the judgments of others.

I say this because this relates to an ‘instant’ fix I’ve found for creating your own reality: immerse yourself in a new environment. It’s difficult, it’s going to be a challenge, but you WILL be forced to adapt, you WILL see how your old environment could have been holding you back and you WILL see your own potential.

The reason New Environment Immersion works is because you aren’t held back by what has happened in the past. If you haven’t been very social for the last X years in X country, then it can be hard to see how you can change that. However, if you go to a new environment you believe in the possibilities as there’s no past references to make you think you can’t succeed.

Don’t see this as running away from your fears: adapting to a whole new environment and life situation on your own is one of the most challenging and difficult things you can do. Try and push yourself into a new environment, whether it be a different city or country, whether it be for 1 month or 1 year. If you don’t reap the benefits, I promise to pay you back your accommodation bills ;).

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