When life gives you a mouldy lemon...
You cannot heal in the same environment that made you sick.
You cannot grow in the same environment that doesn't evolve.
Most people don’t like that idea. It feels disempowering.
They prefer to believe that if we’re strong enough, self aware enough, positive enough, we can outgrow any toxic partner, boss, or group, circumstance without leaving.
In 2006, an organizational psychologist named Will Felps tested that belief without meaning to.
He took high performing teams and introduced a single consistently negative person.
One.
He assumed the group would correct the behaviour. That the healthy culture would influence the outlier.
The opposite happened.
Productivity dropped by nearly 50%.
But more telling than the numbers was the shift in behaviour.
People started snapping at each other. Information stopped flowing. Cooperation turned into competition. The group didn’t just perform worse. The previously high performing individuals changed too. They became someone else.
Different. Negative.
The explanation was biological, not moral.
Humans are wired to synchronise. Emotions and behaviours.
Brains scan the people around you to calibrate tone, threat, and safety.
If your environment is tense, your nervous system adapts to tension. Because survival depends matching the state of the tribe.
You aren't “absorbing negative energy” in a vague sense. It’s your brain doing exactly what it evolved to do.
The mistake is thinking you can out-regulate a system that surrounds you 24 hours a day.
If you are stuck in a loop you end up blaming yourself for a reaction that was never individual.
You literally are no longer yourself.
Isn't that wild? Your personality and capability are different because of it.
A fresh lemon doesn’t purify a moldy basket. It rots faster. Sometimes the most regulated thing you can do isn’t to try harder. It’s to step away.
That's why environment is one of the SSN pillars.
"The strength of a nation derives from the integrity of the home." -Confucius.
When we talk about Environment, this is what we mean. Mental and physical health, strength and success finds it’s foundation in a stable living environment where you can be or are treated best. This can mean choosing to change locations, or improving, securing and protecting your current one. It’s an upgrade in the circumstances of your immediate environment no matter how big or little.
I left the UK for good in 2021. Because the environment was no longer serving me, my family, or my higher purpose.
I no longer agreed with the politics, views, economics, education, and behaviours of the UK.
It takes strength to observe, the people, community, society, that are influencing your circumstances. To know its not their fault or yours, But then take action.
It was scary. But now I'm in a place where everything feels possible. Because the people and places make it so.
So consciously choose your environment - the study shows that even if you are a high performer, your productivity and capability will be effected. A lot.
Remember that nature will make you emulate those around you who are negative with all the effects of a narrower, fearful, painful life.
It spreads.
Just like the mouldy lemon in the bowl.