How does your environment nurture and relax you?

Our environment can be the most potent nurturing force in our lives, or it can be a pressurized prison that triggers unhealthy habits.

It all depends on the degree of intention we bring to that space.

From a very young age, my rooms, desks, lockers, cars, homes and other physical environments have essentially served as the user interfaces for my mind, body and spirit. They were never spotless, but all the spots mattered.

And that made a positive impact on my life. Here’s how those user interfaces work today.

In the very early morning, I put a pillow in the window sill to prevent that abrasive street light from shining into my barely awakened eyes.

During my yoga class before work, I spend a few extra minutes in final meditation to soak up the benefits of the practice.

On the train ride into the city, I wear sunglasses on the subway to give me privacy in an otherwise claustrophobic environment.

While walking from the subway station to my office, I sing karaoke from my favorite playlist to process my feelings through music.

While doing my job at the office, I have installed the high contrast and dark mode themes on my screens to make text easier to read.

During my daily bathroom constitutional, I play soothing music and read books to put my body at ease.

Around my desk, I have almost no paper and allow objects that are charged with specific and powerful meaning to me.

On my phone, I disable all push notifications, mute all system sounds and adjust my screen brightness to the lowest possible setting.

In my safe and cozy man cave, I have covered the walls and surfaces with pictures of friends and family, love notes from my wife and other power objects that elevate my psychic effectiveness and rejuvenate me spiritually.

What can you do to your physical environment to have it nurture and relax you?

People might give you strange looks and call you obsessive compulsive or anal retentive, and that’s fine. Hell, my coworkers give me shit about my desk all the time.

What is all this stuff? Do you even use all those markers? How many nametags do you really need any given time?

Not the point. Look, we all do what we have to do to create a life that supports calmness and fulfillment.

People can say whatever they want, but it’s more important that we are thoughtfully and intentionally creating a diversity of environments that are framed to support our individual pursuit of meaning.

How could you modify your surroundings so that your life produce less stress and more joy?