How To Create A Personal Environment That Guarantees Overall Success In Life

A personal environment is everything that affects the individual except his genes. There are many potential environmental influences that help to shape personality, including the place we live, our surroundings, and the people around us. If you long for success in all aspects of your life well good news- we can actually create our own personal environment.

Personality is unique to an individual person. Our experiences in our day-to-day life, our physical surroundings, and the people whom we associate with all contribute to influencing our personality.

We may know the importance of cocooning ourselves in a good, clean and healthy environment but sometimes that’s not what’s available, and we just accept what is because we underestimate the influence our environment might have over our thoughts and opinions. Our personal environment shapes us unconsciously in more ways than we dare to admit.

3 Personal Environment — Influencers

1. Space

Our everyday surroundings have a powerful impact on our moods and emotions. A dark, cluttered room evokes different feelings than an open, airy, light-filled space. But it doesn’t stop there, when we spend a lot of time in a certain environment, we no longer really notice what’s around us.

Habituation- is the reduction of a behavioral response to a stimulus after repeated presentations of that stimulus (Rankin et al., 2009). It’s a phenomenon sometimes called “attentional blindness.” So just because you’re not consciously focusing on your surroundings doesn’t mean they’re not taking a toll on your mental health.

The way your room smells, the junk cluttered on the floor, the garbage that has yet to be thrown, how warm or cold it feels, your mind actually reflects your surroundings.

Two Ways Space Can Impact a Person

• Clutter leads to laziness, poor hygiene, and unhealthy eating. Research shows that clutter increases our likelihood of making poor food choices. Disorganized spaces also tend to make us more vulnerable to distractions like binge-watching TV and it even discourages self-care.
• A messy room can influence your feelings. Our senses are affected not just by the cleanliness or orderliness of our space — features such as lighting, colors, furniture layout, and even living elements have the ability to impact how people feel. We can sense whether a space is warm, safe, comfortable, or cold, hard, and uninviting which zaps energy if you stay in it for a long time.

“Our spaces should not only look good; they should also make us feel good.”

How To Optimize Your Space for Health and Wellbeing

1. Declutter And Organize Your Home
2. Create A Separate Working Space
3. Let In Bright, Natural Light
4. Surround Yourself With Greenery
5. Face Your Desk Toward A Nice View
6. Pay Attention To Air Quality And Temperature

2. Your Surroundings

Every day, we face tons of options bombarding us to make choices from the moment we open our eyes — A choice to get out of bed and start a morning routine or to indulge in more sleep and daydreaming.

For some, this can be a constant struggle especially when our energy and mood swings come into play. But like any other cautionary tale, we end up falling prey to certain choices because of the environmental cues around us. Environmental cues are the objects in our surroundings that trigger certain thoughts and desires, causing us to behave in certain ways.

Your Decisions Are Largely Influenced By What’s Around You:

• Your phone is right beside you, prompting you to browse on social media or check on a website which leads to other interests that then make you forget time and other tasks.
• Thinking about the work that you need to do in the office, you decide to postpone tidying your bedroom. This makes you lose interest in coming home because you’re thinking about the cleaning up you still need to do. It’s an endless cycle.
• The kitchen is a mess- prompting you to order unhealthy takeout food.

How Environment Affects Our Mental Health And Wellbeing

1. Influences your mood. Research studies reveal that rooms with bright light, both natural and artificial, can improve depression and anxiety.
2. Impacts your behavior and motivation to act. A messy hall with shoes, toys, and other stuff may invite you to drop what you are carrying right there, whereas a clean entry hall will encourage you to take the time to put your belongings in their designated space.
3. Facilitate or discourage interactions. An inviting space with comfortable chairs can encourage people to sit and chat.
4. Invokes feelings of fear and loss of hope This happens if you live in an unsafe, polluted, unsanitary environment — something to think about.

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3. People

“Surround yourself with only people who are going to lift you higher” Oprah Winfrey

You need to understand that the closest people in your life have the most impact on you. This includes your parents, spouse, best friend, colleagues, children, etc. But the 5 people that you spend the most time with are the ones who can influence you the most.

Unlike friends or outside influences, you can’t choose your family members. So if you find that they affect your mental health and peace of mind the best thing you can do is set parameters, and limit interactions and boundaries.

It’s the same with mass media influences, especially social media. Be careful of the information that you feed your mind. There’s a lot of filtered fakeness that can get you into that negative headspace.

The point here is that you can choose your influences- good mentors, positive inspiring friends or books and other positive outlets can bring you more success in life. The reality is you cannot change others, you can only change yourself. And if you live a successful life (whatever your definition of success may be) you can be a force for good and a positive influence on others.

Who’s Got The Bigger Influence — Environment Or Genetics?

Genes play a large role in determining your behavior; in other situations, the environment plays a larger role in influencing your behavior.

Genes are instructions that dictate how a person’s body is made. Information from genes lets the body know what characteristics a person will have. On the other hand, our environment and life experiences can influence our genes.

For example, you were raised by wealthy parents who have access to the best, healthiest foods as compared to if you were raised by low-income parents who live in an area where fresh, healthy food is scarce and expensive. This experience and upbringing will dictate your preference for food and value for health.

Overall, I would say the probability of environmental influences covers about 90% of our overall success in life. Because our genes are influenced by external stimuli and although genetics influences us a great deal it is more of a tendency, whereas the environment is more of a direction.

You Have A Choice

You are who you choose to be. The Success you have in all aspects of your life is a result of your character, mindset, emotional stability, and the choices you make. You may reinforce your decisions with every action based on those choices.

Indeed the environment you live in can influence but not dictate those choices or the actions that follow. At worst, your environment can make it very hard to choose anything else, or act any other way especially when it involves finances or people but very hard is not impossible.

Let’s get you started: LIFE BY DESIGN: 9 SECRETS TO LIVING YOUR BEST LIFE