Malcolm Gladwell’s book, Outliers, was written with the intention of explaining that environm-ent plays an enormous role in the life of the extremely successful. No, it is not the final predictor, but its influence cannot be denied. Of course he had to use the most successful of our spe-cies (i.e., celebrities, mega-CEOs, pro-athletes, etc.) to make his point, but what about the rest of us? Environment plays a huge role in our development as well.

We may have the ambition, drive, heart, skill and potential required to succeed but not the environmental settings that would make success a reality.

Long before Gladwell, psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi talked about the environment’s affect on success. In his book, Creativity, Mihaly interviewed over 90 people from famous musicians to obscure scientific Nobel Prize winners. He asserted that their success was a combination of many elements; “environment and culture” being two of them. — psychologytoday.com