Influence Your Environment

"Don't adapt to the energy in the room; Influence the energy in the room."

The environment in which we find ourselves powerfully influences us.  All around us are triggers that can influence our emotions, feelings and perceptions.

This would suggest that a form of hypnotic influence is happening all the time.  That is to say that depending on the environment that we find ourselves in, it can be the cause of the state we find ourselves experiencing. We are all highly susceptible to environmental triggers and these triggers can powerfully plant responses in us.

I was reading in an article that a very subtle background aroma of cleaning products in the air influences people to be notably cleaner and tidier than they would otherwise be.   The same article spoke of an experiment where students were asked to hold a cup of coffee in their hands shortly before reading an information pack about a hypothetical person and then assessing this persons 'character'.   The article stated that the students who had held a hot cup of coffee were significantly more likely to describe the hypothetical individual as 'warm and friendly' than the students who had hadn’t.   Although they all read the same piece, their immediate environment had already touched their unconscious minds.

We have all heard many examples of subliminal messaging.  It is the basis of most marketing tactics.  I was reading an article where students were exposed to words and pictures around a teacher’s office of being old and weak, slow and tired.  With word and picture association, being found on the walls and scattered on posters and flyers left around. Those students were much more likely to walk out of the office slower than when they arrived.  Whereas when the messages in the teachers office were more positive and energetic using terms such as strength and youth and vitality, then the students were much more likely to leave at a faster pace. 

Environmental triggers fuel behaviour and response in us to a much greater extent than we might realise. A vital point to remember here is that words form a very important part of our environment.

Let’s think about this.  If you go out to tea with someone that is depressed and not doing very well and they use words like: down, depressed, pointless, hurt, painful, despair, stupid, bad, tired, fed up, sad, nauseous, sick, disappointed, etc.   You would more than likely start to feel a bit heavy, certainly not uplifted and would start to respond to it the same as a smell might trigger a response.  The words would have helped create a negative environment.  Whereas a friend that was happy and bright and using words such as:  excited, holiday, fun, experience would uplift and positively charge you. 

A good way to decide who to spend time with should be who will affect your attitude in a positive way and who you have a positive effect on.

Increase the time you spend with people who consistently improve your attitude, your self worth and confidence, your motivation to accomplish your goals, and spend less time with people who draw from you or wear you down and cut out completely those who have a fully negative effect on you. 

This may beg the question, "why are we all so susceptible to environmental suggestion"? Well, we need to be! Keeping us safe is a major part of the role of our unconscious mind. It needs to be able to do this very quickly in case we need to make quick decisions. This means it will take one small element of reality and generalise it, and from that it will determine what behavior to adopt. Appearances may be, and often are, deceptive, of course, so to be able to analyse this and make sure that we are not forming incorrect messages can be a good tool to learn.

Language shapes the environment as strongly as smell, taste, touch and sight.  So it's true to say we respond much more powerfully to our environment than we realise. The very words you yourself use, along with other aspects of your communication, help to create an environment for others.

It's very important for you to be aware of the triggers in your own environment and, as far as possible, ensure that you surround yourself with items that produce positive associations within you.

Our environment has an amazing influence on us, but we can make choices that equal the playing field and give us some control over our environment.

It's clear that our environment has a profound impact on our psychology and will even influence how quickly we heal. Fill your environment with things that make you feel good, photos of great times or wonderful places you've been to. If you like nature but don't live near it, then put up pictures of natural scenes or people that inspire you. Use scents that make you feel invigorated, or relaxed. One of the quickest ways to lift insomnia, for some people, is to move the bed to a different place in the bedroom and rearrange other parts of it so that it feels different for the person. So think about updating your environment, sometimes putting new things into it and perhaps removing some things that may have been acting as unnoticed negative triggers.

All this to say that the people we associate with, the music we listen too, movies we watch, the way we dress and the way in which we keep our personal surroundings will all have a great impact on us.  If we take note of these things and change them so that they are all things that give us energy and uplift us, then we will start to grow and be healthier individuals with the ability to cope with the other changes that we don’t have control over.

The movies you watch, the music you listen to, the friends you associate with — these are only a few of the elements of your environment you are capable of influencing. The list is a long one. What about the smell of your environment? What about how it looks? How clean it is? What is decorating the walls?  What about the screensaver on your computer? Keep looking and you'll find many areas of your environment that you can control that will influence you.

To some degree, you are the effect of your environment. But it goes both ways. Your environment can also, to some degree, be changed by your actions. So take actions that make your environment create a life-giving effect on you. Use what power you have (which is likely more than you know).