To change yourself you MUST change your environment.
I am copacetic with this statement, I just frame it a little bit different to fit with my brains waves. "To change myself I MUST change my thinking." Same thing, only different. But not really, the concept is same,a word is different. By changing my thinking, my environment changes.
For me change comes when I go within and do the work of inner transformation. To examine myself openly, honestly, vulnerably and to purge selfishness, depravity and insecurity. Needless to say I am a work in progress.
Nowhere near a completed project! 
We but mirror the world. All the tendencies present in the outer world are to be found in the world of our body. If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. – Mahatma Gandhi