First we shape our social graph; then it shapes us — LessWrong
It is by changing your milieu that you change yourself.
To write what I was meant to write, I had to find another audience, which—because I didn’t know how to curate a milieu yet—meant I had to spend the better part of a decade isolated. It was bleak but necessary. Even now, having found you, I need to return to that solitude from time to time. Or else I lose myself.
The instinct to fit ourselves to our milieu is tricky. It often leads us astray. If not deliberate, we end up internalizing behaviors and values that do not serve us. But it can also, in this way, be a strength: by actively curating your “audience”, as well as what you let into your senses, you can leverage the instinct to conform in your favor. You can create an environment that pulls you in the direction you want to go.