As you likely know, I supremely enjoy thinking about how we shape our environments and subsequently how they shape our behavior—that it’s this ongoing feedback loop that spills over into how we think and how we feel in everyday living.

To illustrate in a basic way, picture a room with adjoining rooms in the periphery. There is an orange plaid recliner chair in the middle of the obvious walking pathway between the room you’re in and one of the adjoining rooms. You are the one who put it there. In order to get to the other room, you have to walk around the chair. You often stub your toes on the chair. You hate the look of the chair. You complain that your home’s architecture is really inefficient to live with because you have to walk around the chair. You are grumpy because it takes so much more energy to walk around the chair as well as be afraid that it’s going to catch your toes. You have a high podiatrist bill. And then you’re like, “I think we should move—it’s too stupid of a house.”

What actually happened is that you created a traffic pattern that was inefficient as well as visually and emotionally off-putting, and it shaped your behavior and your feelings about the space. And now you want to blow up the whole shebang, all because of the chair—the fulcrum ‘round which the whole room is accidentally pivoting.

Whether or not we’re conscious of it, we’re always in a back-and-forth relationship with our environments. Person makes environment —> Environment makes person. What would happen if you got conscious about it? What would you WANT to do/feel/experience/enable in your space? And how can your space support those activities and consequent feelings? HOW CAN YOU BE A POSTIVE ENABLER FOR YOURSELF?

Here are some examples of what this could look like:

I want to encourage my kids’ creativity, so I create a space for them to make things that has supplies at their level and is in a bright space, proximal to others for company. FEELING ACHIEVED: AGENCY AS A MAKER.
I want to develop a meditation practice, so I create a corner for myself that is beautiful and physically comfortable for me to sit for a period of time. FEELING ACHIEVED: UPLIFTMENT/REDUCED STRESS.
I want to have my family sitting together at dinner X number of nights per week, so I make sure the eating table is clear of home office trappings on those nights. FEELING ACHIEVED: TOGETHERNESS.
I want to cut down on my and/or my kids’ screen time, so I have an electronics storage basket that everyone puts their devices in at a certain time. FEELING ACHIEVED: ELECTRONICS ARE NOT THE BOSS OF ME.

Want to live your best life? Encourage/coax out the potentialities latent within? Phase out less desirable habits? Ask your environment how it can help. And get rid of that orange recliner.

Be an enabler--in a good way