Why You Keep Falling Back Into Old Habits (It's Not About Willpower) | John R. Miles - EP 795

What if the reason change feels so difficult has less to do with willpower than you think? In this episode, John reveals how your home, workplace, phone, and daily routines are quietly influencing your behavior—and how small changes to your environment can create lasting transformation.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01John R. Miles?

  Hey friends, what if your biggest problem isn't that you're not doing enough, but that you've spent too long proving that you are enough? You can be successful, needed, and surrounded by people and still feel completely unseen. That's the problem I explore in my new book, The Mattering Effect. I show you how we become hyper-visible for what we produce while quietly becoming invisible to ourselves, and introduce the matter framework to help you reclaim meaning, autonomy, trust, time, energy, and reciprocity. Stop auditioning for your worth, start living from it. The Mattering Effect is available for preorder now at matteringeffect.com. Coming up next on Passion Struck. Have you ever wondered why some changes seem to stick effortlessly while others feel

• 0:46John R. Miles?

  like an endless uphill battle? You can clear your calendar with the best intentions and somehow fill it right back up. You decide you're going to spend less time on your phone, and before you know it, you're scrolling again. You promise yourself, this is the week you'll finally create more space for the people and priorities that matter most. Then, life quietly pulls you back into familiar routines. For a long time, I assumed those moments said something about my discipline. Over the past week, I came to a very different conclusion. I realized that many of the choices I thought were personal were actually being shaped by the environments around me. And once I saw it, I couldn't stop seeing it. Welcome to Passion Struck.

• 1:31John R. Miles?

  I'm your host, John Miles. This is the show where we explore the art of human flourishing and what it truly means to live like it matters. Each week, I sit down with changemakers, creators, scientists, and everyday heroes to decode the human experience and uncover the tools that help us lead with meaning, heal what hurts, and pursue the fullest expression of who we're capable of becoming. Whether you're designing your future, developing as a leader, or seeking deeper alignment in your life, this show is your invitation to grow with purpose and act with intention. Because the secret to a life of deep purpose, connection, and impact is choosing to live like you matter.

• 2:17John R. Miles?

  Hey, it's your friend, John. Welcome to episode 795 of the Passion Struck Podcast. If you've been following this month's series on flourishing, you've probably noticed that each conversation has built on the last. We began by exploring why flourishing starts with presence. Last week, we discovered that lasting change requires teaching our nervous system to trust a different way of living. Today, we're taking the next step. Because even when we understand why change is difficult, most of us still end up blaming ourselves. We tell ourselves we need more discipline, more focus, better habits, more willpower. Those are worthwhile things to pursue.

• 3:00John R. Miles?

  But what if the reason change feels so difficult isn't simply because of what's happening inside you? What if part of the answer has been sitting around you all along? By the end of today's episode, I think you're going to start looking at your home, your office, your phone, even your daily routines a little differently. Because once you see how your environment quietly shapes your attention, your decisions and your behavior, you can't really unsee it. And the good news is that once you see it, you can begin designing a life that makes flourishing feel less like something you force and more like something your environment naturally supports.

• 3:42John R. Miles?

  Thank you for choosing Passion Struck and for choosing me to be your host and guide on your journey toward creating an intentional life that matters. Now, let that journey begin.

• 3:58John R. Miles?

  Have you ever noticed how easy it is to blame yourself? You tell yourself you're going to eat healthier. By lunchtime, you grab something you never planned to eat. You pick up your phone to answer one text, and 20 minutes later, you're still scrolling, wondering where the time went. You promise yourself that tomorrow, you'll be more focused, more disciplined, better at protecting your attention. I've had all of those moments, and for a long time, I interpreted them the same way most of us do. I assumed they were failures of discipline, that I needed better habits, more willpower, a stronger morning routine.

• 4:41John R. Miles?

  But over the past week, I found myself wondering if I've been asking the wrong question. Because there are moments when the opposite happens too. Maybe you've spent a weekend at a quiet cabin or visited your grandparents' house where conversations somehow come more naturally, or walked through a neighborhood where people are sitting on their front porches, talking while children play outside. Nothing about you has fundamentally changed, but somehow, you breathe differently. You slow down, you notice more, you become a slightly different version of yourself. That contrast stayed with me all week because it made me wonder whether those moments

• 5:26John R. Miles?

  had less to do with discipline than I had always believed. What if the environments that we move through every single day are quietly shaping the choices we think we're making on our own? That question was still sitting with me when I sat down on Tuesday with Dr. Dana Susskind. Dana has spent decades studying how early relationships shaped the developing brain. During our conversation, she described something remarkable. Children don't grow inside an environment, they grow because of it. Every conversation, every shared moment of attention, every experience of being comforted,

• 6:08John R. Miles?

  encouraged, challenged, or ignored becomes part of the physical architecture of the developing brain. Dana shared a metaphor I haven't been able to stop thinking about. She said those first years of life build the brain's foundational hardware. Everything that comes later, whether it's education, personal growth, or new habits, is like installing new software. But software can only do so much if the hardware underneath it was shaped differently from the beginning.

• 6:43John R. Miles?

  And she talked about how those early environments quietly answer questions that every child carries. Questions like, am I safe? Am I loved? Do I matter? And I found myself, after hearing those questions, writing one sentence in the margin of my notebook. When does that stop? Because if our earliest environments physically shape who we become, what makes us think our current environments have stopped doing the same thing? Before we continue, let's take a quick pause to hear from today's sponsors. Thank you for supporting those who support the show. You're listening to Passion Struck right here on the Passion Struck Network.

• 7:35John R. Miles?

  Welcome back. Before the break, we ended with a question that completely reframed this entire episode for me. If our earliest environments help shape the architecture of the developing brain, when does that shaping actually stop? That question stayed with me long after my conversation with Dana ended, and it became the lens through which I started looking at my own life.

• 8:01John R. Miles?

  I couldn't stop thinking about that question. When does the environment stop shaping us? The obvious answer is adulthood. We leave home, we make our own decisions, we build careers, we choose where we live, who we spend time with, and what kind of life we want to build. From that point forward, we assume our lives are shaped primarily by our choices. That's what I believed, but the more I thought about my conversation with Dana, the less convinced I became. On the drive home, I found myself replaying something she had said. If our earliest environments literally help wire the developing brain, why would we assume

• 8:46John R. Miles?

  the environments we spend the next decades in suddenly stop influencing us? That question stayed with me. So the next morning, I decided to try something.

• 8:59John R. Miles?

  Instead of walking into my office the way I always do, I walked in pretending I had never seen it before. And almost immediately, I noticed things I'd stopped noticing. The phone sitting beside my keyboard. Email already open. Three browser tabs waiting from yesterday.

• 9:24John R. Miles?

  WhatsApp quietly running in the background. Before I'd written a single sentence, my attention had already been pulled in four different directions. Now here's what struck me. None of those things looked like distractions. They looked normal. That's what hit me. I had designed an environment that rewarded interruption. Then I had been blaming myself for being interrupted. That realization was uncomfortable because I'd spent years trying to become more focused. I'd read the books, experimented with productivity systems, blocked time on my calendar, tried every trick I could find.

• 10:09John R. Miles?

  But I'd almost never stopped to ask whether the environment I'd built around myself was making focus easier or quietly training me not to.

• 10:21John R. Miles?

  Then I started thinking about the environments that had shaped me. The military taught me extraordinary lessons. So did leading inside Fortune 500 companies. Those environments demanded precision, accountability, responsiveness, and the ability to make decisions under pressure. I'm grateful for every one of those lessons. In many situations, they were exactly what was required. But somewhere along the way, I carried those environments with me. Urgency stopped being something I used when the situation called for it. It became the way I moved through life. I started equating urgency with importance,

• 11:06John R. Miles?

  productivity with value, constant motion with purpose. I felt most comfortable when there was one more problem to solve before I allowed myself to rest. Looking back, I can see those beliefs weren't formed in an instant. They were rehearsed day after day, meeting after meeting, year after year, until they no longer felt like behaviors. They simply felt like me. That's when Dana's question finally landed. Maybe adulthood isn't the moment our environment stopped shaping us. Maybe it's the moment we stop noticing they're still doing it. The realization followed me everywhere. Walk through an airport.

• 11:52John R. Miles?

  Without anyone saying a word, you speed up. Walk into a library, your voice automatically gets quieter. Step into a place of worship, your attention shifts almost immediately. Nobody has to explain how to behave. The environment already has. And maybe you've had an experience like this. Someone points out something that's been sitting right in front of you for years. And once you see it, you almost can't believe you missed it. That's what happened to me. I started looking at my office differently, my home differently, even my phone differently.

• 12:34John R. Miles?

  Then I realized there was another question that I needed answered.

• 12:40John R. Miles?

  If these environments were shaping me, why had I stopped noticing them? That's exactly what I asked Lighty Klotz. Lighty smiled because that's exactly the question he studies at the University of Virginia. He told me our brains are doing something remarkable all day long. They're constantly deciding what deserves our attention and what doesn't. Think about your own home. If your brain had to consciously process every picture on the wall, every chair, every light switch, every sound, you'd be mentally exhausted before breakfast. So it does something incredibly efficient. It pushes the familiar into the background.

• 13:25John R. Miles?

  And that's where the problem begins. Because the environments shaping us the most are often the environments we've stopped seeing. Lighty shared a study that made me laugh because it was so revealing.

• 13:41John R. Miles?

  Researchers asked professionals to identify the nearest fire extinguisher to their office. Most couldn't. Not because it was hidden, because they had walked past it so many times that their brains had simply edited it out.

• 14:03John R. Miles?

  As he described that study, I thought, that's my office, not the fire extinguisher, everything else. The phone beside my keyboard, the communication apps I'd left open all day, the browser tabs waiting from yesterday. None of those things demanded my attention. They simply made one choice easier than another. That's what I had missed. My office wasn't simply where I worked. It was quietly teaching me how to work. Then I looked at home. The laptop sitting open on the dining room table wasn't just clutter. It had changed the purpose of the room. Without even realizing it,

• 14:48John R. Miles?

  I'd allowed work to remain present during moments that were supposed to belong to my family. Then there was my phone, the notification badges, the placement of the apps, habits I'd repeated thousands of times. None of them forced me to do anything. They simply made one version of me easier to become. Then Lighty said something I wrote down immediately.

• 15:16John R. Miles?

  Environments are never neutral.

• 15:20John R. Miles?

  Every environment makes certain behaviors easier and others more difficult. I realized I'd been asking the wrong questions all along. I stopped asking whether my office was organized. I started asking what it was inviting me to become.

• 15:39John R. Miles?

  I stopped asking whether my phone was distracting. I started asking what relationship it was rehearsing with my attention. I stopped asking whether my calendar was full. I started asking instead, what kind of life it was quietly teaching me to value. That's when Dana's work and Lighty's work became one idea. Dana helped me understand that environments shape us from the very beginning of life. Lighty helped me understand why that shaping never really stops. Because over time, we become so familiar with our environments

• 16:21John R. Miles?

  that we mistake their influence for our personality.

• 16:27John R. Miles?

  That realization forced me to rethink the way I approached change itself. For years, whenever I wanted to change something in my life, I started with myself. I worked on my discipline, my habits, my mindset, my routines. I assumed that if I became different on the inside, my life would eventually look different on the outside. Now I think I had the order backwards. Behavior doesn't happen in isolation. It grows inside an environment.

• 17:03John R. Miles?

  The more I reflected on Dana's and Lighty's work, the more I realized that many of the struggles I treated as personal shortcomings weren't necessarily shortcomings at all. They were often signs that I was trying to flourish inside environments that were quietly working against me. That was a surprisingly freeing realization. Because it meant I didn't have to keep asking, what's wrong with me? I could start asking, what's happening around me? That's a very different place to begin. If your surroundings constantly reward distraction, focus becomes harder. If your calendar leaves no room to think, presence begins to feel irresponsible.

• 17:48John R. Miles?

  If your workplace celebrates urgency above everything else, slowing down starts to feel like falling behind. Those experiences don't necessarily tell you something is wrong with you. They may be telling you something important about the environment you've been adapting to. That doesn't mean your environment determines your future. It doesn't. But it does mean your environment is either helping you become the person you want to be or quietly rehearsing someone else. That's why I think the place to begin isn't always with another habit. Sometimes it's with a better question.

• 18:30John R. Miles?

  Before you try to change your behavior, look at the environment producing that behavior.

• 18:38John R. Miles?

  Tomorrow morning, don't begin your day by asking how you're going to become more disciplined. Begin by becoming curious. Walk into your kitchen. What does that room encourage? Connection? Russian? Calm?

• 18:58John R. Miles?

  Walk into your office. What behaviors does it make easy?

• 19:04John R. Miles?

  Deep work or constant reaction?

• 19:09John R. Miles?

  Then look at your dining room. What kind of conversations does it invite? Then ask yourself one final question. Is this environment around me making it easier or harder to become the person I'm trying to become? You don't have to redesign your entire life overnight. Sometimes moving your phone out of reach changes the quality of your attention. Sometimes protecting one evening changes the quality of your relationships. Sometimes removing one unnecessary source of friction creates room for the reductive struggles that actually help us grow.

• 19:50John R. Miles?

  Small environmental changes often produce behavioral changes that sheer willpower never could. Because flourishing isn't built through willpower alone. It's built when the life surrounding you begins supporting the life you're trying to create. And maybe that's the biggest lesson I've taken away from these conversations. We spend so much of our lives trying to become different people. Maybe the first step isn't becoming someone different. Maybe it's creating an environment where the best version of who you already are has the opportunity to show up more often.

• 20:34John R. Miles?

  This month, we've been exploring flourishing from the inside out. We started with presence because you can't flourish if you're never fully aware your life is happening. Then we explored the nervous system because lasting change doesn't happen when we fight ourselves. It happens when we teach ourselves that a very different way of living can actually feel safe. Today, we added another piece. We discovered that flourishing isn't just something we build inside ourselves. It's also something our environments quietly encourage or quietly erode every single day. That realization has stayed with me because once you begin designing environments that help you flourish, another question naturally emerges.

• 21:17John R. Miles?

  What happens when the very thing you've worked so hard to build began shaping you in ways you never intended? That's exactly where we're headed next week. I sit down with entrepreneur, bestselling author, and TED speaker Jess Ekstrom to talk about success, ambition, and the invisible ways achievement can begin rewriting our lives. Her new book is called Making It Without Losing It. And I think it's the perfect next conversation in this series. Because flourishing isn't only about creating an environment where you can thrive. It's about making sure ambition never becomes an environment that quietly pulls you away from the person you were becoming in the first place. I can't wait to share that conversation with you.

• 22:00Speaker 01

  There was this interesting study at Vanderbilt that looked at dopamine. Dopamine is honestly the feeling that we're all chasing. It's the feel-good hormone, that happiness chemical that we get when we call a friend or eat a good piece of cake or something. And we're looking for that feeling. And this study at Vanderbilt thought that we got that dopamine hit at the result. When we get the raise, when we hit a certain number promotion. But this study showed that we were wrong. We actually, it studied our brains and we get that hit of dopamine in anticipation of the results, not the result itself.

• 22:38John R. Miles?

  So here's the invitation I'd leave you with this week. Before you decide what you need to change about yourself, take a careful look at what's been quietly shaping you. Walk through your home, sit in your office, look at your calendar, pick up your phone. Ask yourself one simple question. What version of me is this environment inviting into existence? Because every environment is teaching you something. The only question is whether it's teaching you to become the person you're hoping to be. Thank you for spending this time with me today. And until next time, go out there, break through the ceiling, and live life passion struck.