What 28 years in one city taught me about staying stuck
Hey Reader,
Seattle is a big city. But when you’ve lived somewhere your whole life, it starts to feel like a small town.
I’d been there for 28 years. Did all my schooling there, elementary through college. And everywhere I went, I was reminded of who I used to be.
There’s the QFC where my punk 13-year-old self got caught shoplifting and my mom cussed me out in the back of the Toyota Sienna.
The bar where I got too drunk and embarrassed myself in front of people I still had to see around town.
The restaurant where I took my prom date and stressed the whole dinner about the bill (nothing says romance like doing math in your head while pretending to listen).
I was trying to build a new life, but my environment wouldn’t let me forget my old one.
I’d been grinding on my business for almost ten years at this point.
My YouTube channel was all over the place. I was putting in 40+ hours a week and going nowhere. I was paying $600 a month for an apartment next to Section 8 housing, and I had a bank account so low I was afraid to check it.
I was starting to have this thought I couldn’t shake: Maybe this whole business was a mistake.
You’ve probably had your version of this moment. The goal you’ve been chasing for years still feels out of reach. And there’s a voice that won’t shut up telling you maybe you’re not cut out for this.
That November, I visited a friend in Arizona for a work trip.
The first morning, I sat down at a coffee shop to write. Three hours disappeared. There was zero resistance, no brain fog, and no voice telling me it was pointless.
I got up and thought: What the hell just happened?
I’d been trying to do this exact thing in Seattle for years. But in Seattle, I’d stare at the screen for 20 minutes, check my phone, spiral into self-doubt, and maybe get an hour of real work done. Here, everything just flowed.
That’s when it hit me.
Maybe I wasn’t broken, maybe my environment was.
Two months later, I packed up my life, shipped what I couldn’t carry, and bought a one-way ticket to Arizona.
I told myself I wasn’t leaving AZ until I’d built the business I’d failed building for a decade.
What happened next surprised me.
Because it wasn’t just my business that changed, it was everything.
I quit drinking alcohol completely. My sleep got near-perfect scores every night. I woke up with excitement to build instead of dread.
Ideas that felt impossible in Seattle came easily. People started reaching out, asking me how I was doing it. I made new friends who were building things too.
Fast forward eighteen months:
I’d 10Xed my business and gotten more done than in my previous ten years combined.
And best of all, I felt calm again. Like I wasn’t fighting my own self all day.
At the time I genuinely thought Arizona fixed me.
Years later, after reading more psychology, I realized what actually happened. It was something most self-improvement advice completely misses.
And it’s what the rest of this newsletter is all about.
Why This Works
Here’s where it gets interesting.
Researchers have found that roughly 45% of what we do each day is habitual. Estimates vary, but the point is the same: a huge chunk of your life isn’t a conscious choice, it’s autopilot. And your environment is the steering wheel.
That’s why walking into your childhood bedroom makes you feel 15 again. Why you grab your phone the second you sit on the couch. Why you open the fridge when you’re not even hungry just because you walked into the kitchen.
Your brain basically learns, this place = this behavior.
And this is what most content misses:
When you try to change yourself, you’re fighting years of environmental triggers that keep calling up the same version of you.
You can see this clearly in research on addiction.
NIDA says somewhere between 40-60% of people will relapse after rehab. Addiction is complicated, but one big reason this happens is simple: people leave a controlled environment where everything is different, then they go right back home to the same people, places, and stress that caused them to use in the first place.
But then there’s the flip side of this.
During the Vietnam War, a huge percentage of soldiers were using heroin overseas. The government was terrified, and they expected a full-blown addiction crisis when troops came home.
But it never happened.
Only about 5% of them stayed addicted once they were back in the States. Exposed to the same drug, same addiction, but in a completely different environment. And for most of them, the compulsion just… disappeared.
It wasn’t willpower or rehab. It was the fact that every trigger and environmental pattern tied to their use was 7,000 miles away.
That’s exactly what happened to me.
I didn’t become a different person in Arizona because I tried harder. I became a different person because Seattle wasn’t there to remind me who I used to be.
New environment. New me.
So here’s what I want you to consider:
Maybe you don’t have a discipline problem… maybe you have an environmental problem.
And I’m willing to bet you’re not lazy, broken, or whatever the story you’ve been telling yourself is. If you feel stuck, it’s because you’re trying to become someone new in a place that won’t let you forget who you used to be.
What You Can Do
I know ‘just move cities’ sounds like advice only 20-year-olds have the freedom to follow. Nor am I saying you need to move cities like I did. But if you’re stuck, something in your environment needs to change. The size of the shift depends on how stuck you feel.
Here are ways to experiment with that’s worked for me and people I know:
Small shifts (for when you need a reset)
- Work from a different room.
- Rearrange your desk to face a window.
- Take your calls outside while walking.
- Get RGB lights and change the color in your house.
- Wear real clothes instead of sweats, even if you work from home.
I know this sounds like “have you tried turning it off and on again” advice.
But I’ve solved problems I’d been stuck on for weeks just by moving to a park table with my laptop. Try it before you dismiss it.
Medium shifts (for when small isn’t cutting it)
- Start going to a different grocery store.
- Join a coworking space (even if you work from home).
- Gut your apartment and rearrange the whole thing.
- Sell any furniture you’re not attached to on facebook marketplace and buy different stuff.
- Get out of town for the weekend.
The goal here is interrupting the loop and to break free from autopilot mode. Most of these cost nothing. They just require you to do something different for long enough that “different” becomes the new normal.
Large shifts (for when you’re really stuck)
- Move apartments
- Join a new gym.
- Start volunteering somewhere on a set schedule.
- Join a sports league or rec team.
- Train for an event that scares you (marathon, triathlon, competition).
- Sign up for something that you’ve always wanted to try (jiu-jitsu, improv, run club, whatever).
Every time I’ve moved, a massive creative leap followed over the next six months. I don’t think that’s a coincidence.
The key is committing for 90 days minimum. Most people try something for a week, feel awkward, and quit. Push through the awkward phase. It’s where change lives.
Massive shifts (for when you need a hard reset)
- Move cities.
- Get a dog.
- Quit the job you’ve been complaining about for years.
- Live out of an Airbnb somewhere new for a month.
- Go on a silent meditation retreat.
- Solo trip to another country.
This is the nuclear option. Most people don’t need it, nor can everyone swing it, depending on your lifestyle. But if you’ve tried everything else and you’re still stuck, sometimes you need to blow up the board and start over.
And if you’re reading this and something in your gut says “I need to do something drastic,” maybe trust that instinct.
I chose massive. You might only need small, but do something.
And whatever you choose, the goal is the same: get yourself out of the environment that keeps reminding you of who you were, so you can start becoming who you want to be.
I lived in Seattle for 28 years and thought I knew who I was. Turns out I mostly knew who my environment kept training me to be.
Sometimes the fastest way to find yourself is to go somewhere you’ve never been.
See you saturday,
CK
