The environment, the context, all have a profound effect on people. When I played a certain sport competitively, towards the end of their career they would come and play with us former high-level professionals. Almost invariably, and it was the same for other people on other teams, they would start playing the way they used to play (well), but very soon they were seen approaching the average performance of their team members. The athletic director thought that their presence might "pull up" the attitude, performance and skills of their teammates, but the opposite always happened: the gravitational pull of lazy, unskilled and less professional teammates was too strong to resist.
The same happens in many other contexts. I used to work in a dynamic company full of brilliant innovators (FAANG). Now I work in a legacy technology company full of lazy, semi-incompetent, ball-dropping, half-asleep colleagues, and I am delivering 20 percent of what I could and used to deliver. There is no tide lifting all boats. "But if you really wanted to...," says those who believe in the inevitability of the affirmation of spirit. But this is a myopic view of life; we are largely shaped by the context in which we live, in which we work, by the people we spend time with, at least as much as by our personality.