The Company You Keep: Why Environment Shapes What You Believe Is Possible

Working at the Hoxton, Holborn, London, UK, 2025

Why Environment Shapes Belief

There’s a reason people say your environment shapes you, though it’s not usually in the way we imagine. It isn’t that sitting in a trendy lobby scouting out the CEOs by their Italian leather briefcases magically makes you more productive, or that surrounding yourself with ambitious people guarantees you’ll suddenly share their drive. The truth is subtler: environment shapes belief, and belief is the thing that tips you into action.

Immersed in the London Hustle

Take The Hoxton in Holborn, where I went recently to work for the afternoon. It’s not a coworking space by name, but it might as well be — a steady hum of phone calls, laptops, hushed conversations, entrepreneurs scribbling out plans, freelancers juggling deadlines. The lobby stretched with high ceilings and dangling lights surrounded by many spherical golden bulbs. Tall plants and an abstract pastel art wall embellished the large space, and there was a mix of tables and plush couches to sink into. I claimed a seat on one of the communal couches, the kind that puts you shoulder-to-shoulder with strangers whether you like it or not. At first, nothing happened. Then the two people beside me left, a new group filled their place.

Within this new group was a Black woman with long black hair, denim jeans, and a cropped pinstriped top. She sat on the couch next to my couch so we were perpendicular to one another. Soon we started talking and she shared how she was running a career coaching business for side-income on top of her full-time job. She generously shared her strategies — TikTok, LinkedIn, program design, side income streams, and I felt grateful to so casually connect with someone achieving so much. I was also taken aback by how normal she made it all sound, like she was completely unimpressed by herself, indicating the high standards in London. 

The Difference Between Advice and Impact

Everything she shared could probably be learned from an article, TikTok, or a YouTube tutorial. Yet, hearing it from her, sitting right there in real time, felt different. It had weight.

That’s the key to why being close to those you want to be like matters: the internet overflows with advice, but most of it stays abstract, distant, and stripped of urgency. When someone beside you is living it out, their presence alters the way you hear their words. For example, reading a Tony Robbins book at home is different to actually attending one of his live events. The content doesn’t change much, but the emotional impact transforms it.

Another Organic Networking Example

London has a way of amplifying that effect. Yesterday, at a writing club event , I met another young woman who had self-published her book, built an audience of twenty thousand on TikTok, and was single-handedly driving her sales. Encounters like that pile up into a picture of what’s normal here: achievement, hustle, creative ambition. And when you see it enough, it shifts your baseline. If she can, maybe I can too.

The Limitations of Environment

Of course, none of this means that simply existing in London makes you successful. You can just as easily drown in the pace, or mistake proximity for progress. You could also end up spending time in lobbies talking to endless people in their tailored suits with their oat milk matchas about their journeys, only to be distracted from actually sitting down and getting the work done. It's easy to learn everything and forget to implement anything.

But the environment raises your ceiling of possibility — it normalises ambition, supplies models a step ahead, and gives you living reminders that the gap between you and them isn’t as wide as you thought.

Cultivating Possibility Wherever You Are

That is why environment matters: it continually whispers to you what is possible. And while cities like London or New York make that whisper loud, it’s something you can cultivate anywhere, by finding and staying close to the people who make you believe more is possible. And if you can’t find them where you are, maybe the most powerful move is to place yourself where they already gather.