Is your environment inspiring you and creating a positive impact in your life or are you constantly going round in circles from one negative situation to another? Your environment can either support you or sabotage your efforts to succeed. When we don’t feel comfortable at home or at work, we are able to recognise these negative emotions as a familiar pattern in our body that can lead to exhaustion and unhappiness. Learn to recognise the negative emotions; do these emotions arise when you are at home, at the office or spending time with negative people? The environment can affect our lives, it can increase or decrease our energy, humans have the ability to adjust to any environment but we don’t have to tolerate it forever. The good news is that there are many ways to change our environments and set the intention to create a new positive environment that will help us achieve our goals. A new environment starts with changing our thoughts and energy. I share some ideas that have helped me improve my own life as I have learned that our inner world creates our external experiences. When we start to understand that our thoughts create our reality and when we think positive thoughts we become a magnet to attract positive people and situations into our life. The first step is to create a positive environment in your body and your external environment will start to change.
MIND BODY ENVIRONMENT
We create our world from the inside out, if you are creating a negative environment in your body, your experience of life will be negative. Learn to trust your body as it is constantly providing you with information. What are you feeling, are you allowing fear to control your life? Thinking positive thoughts creates a positive environment in your body and increases the flow of energy in your life. For many years, I looked outside myself for happiness, but through my research and constant personal development my world started to change when I fell in love with myself. I realised my body is my permanent home, my temple. It all starts by choosing positive vibrations and trusting yourself, that is your freedom and power. A healthy connection with all things will flourish from a loving and kind environment. Look after your body, become conscious of the foods that you eat. Avoid alcohol, sugar, coffee, and replace junk food with nutritious healthy food and beverages. Exercise is important to feel good and increase your energy, start an exercise like running, yoga or any type of exercise that makes you feel good. Meditation, visualisation are good techniques to help clear negative thoughts and nurture your soul. Schedule a regular self-care routine and love and support your body as it is the most important house you live in. I found that decluttering my mind and body led to decluttering my external physical environment, all areas of my life.
EXTERNAL PHYSICAL ENVIRONMENT
Our external physical environment is the place we live and work, our surroundings can increase or decrease our energy. For example, if you don’t like the colours in your house or apartment and you feel that your energy decreases when you are at home, you can redecorate with new colours that are calming and relaxing. Electronic devices such as our computers or slow internet and using these devices for many hours can drain our energy and make us feel exhausted. If something is not working properly in your environment, try and repair or replace it as soon as possible. Are you tolerating things that can easily be repaired or replaced, if you need a new light bulb, replace it with a new one, these are simple things but can cause frustration and negative feelings. Don’t delay in fixing or replacing anything that is making you feel uncomfortable. Look around your apartment or house and make a list of things to improve and declutter your environment one room at a time. Is your workspace comfortable and clean or is it filled with clutter? The questions to ask yourself when you are decluttering is: Do I really need this and is it going to help me move closer to creating a lifestyle I love? I have found that a good place to start decluttering is paperwork, books and clothes that we don’t need and that are just occupying space. I love to declutter and make space for new things, but there was one area that was a challenge for me and that was reducing my precious book collection. It was really easy once I changed my thought process and asked myself the question: Do I really need all these books to help me achieve my goals in the future? I decided to keep all my books on psychology, research and health and donate the novels to the charity store and released each one with love for someone else to enjoy reading them. Get rid of clothes that you haven’t worn in the last few years to create space for new energy. If you need to move to another house or apartment one day, you will thank yourself for starting the decluttering process sooner. Start creating a supportive and comfortable environment, get rid of anything that is stagnant energy in your home to create space for abundance to start flowing in all areas of your life.
NEGATIVE PEOPLE
Are you working in a negative environment with energy vampires? This could be negative managers, colleagues that are constantly criticising or monitoring everything you do. If you are surrounded by colleagues who gossip about others and are constant complainers this can create negative feelings at work. Simply walk away if you don’t enjoy the conversation. You don’t need to spend time with energy drainers. People spend many hours in an office working on the computer and without movement the body thinks the stillness is sleep time. This can make you feel tired and drain your energy. Ask yourself the question: Why are you tolerating this? You don’t have to put up with these situations, you can use your time and talents in other ways to be successful. If you think that your work environment is affecting your energy and life, perhaps it’s time to start creating a plan to move away from the toxic environment and do something that you love to create a new space and positive energy in your life.
Are you spending time with negative family members or friends that are constantly draining your energy with their negative conversations? Spending time with negative family members, and friends can drain your energy. Notice how you feel after speaking with negative people. Do you feel good, exhausted or upset after spending time in their presence. Sometimes it is a challenge to avoid negative family members, but If possible limit your time with negative people. You can still love them and send them love, but you are not obligated to spend your precious time with people that drain your energy. You are responsible for the people that you allow into your life as you have the power to intentionally create your environment to what you want it to be.
ACTION
You already have the greatest tools to help you make the changes in your life and these are your thoughts. Think about the areas of your life that you want to change. For example, are you happy with your life, what areas do you want to change? Are you happy with your body, what do you want to improve to be healthy? Since we create our world from the inside out, we need to love our body, exercise and practice self-care. If you are in a negative environment surrounded by negative people at work or at home start creating a plan to make changes for your future. If you live in fear and struggle this will manifest and you will experience this in your external world. The author Earl Nightingale said: “We become what we think about.” We want to transform our environment hoping that this will create the necessary change in our life but if we don’t change our thoughts we go back to where we started repeating the pattern and cycle of unhappiness. As you continue thinking the same thoughts, your life won’t change until you decide to take action and control your thoughts. Imagine that your mind is a garden and your thoughts are the seeds. If you start planting good seeds they will grow into beautiful flowers, and if you continue the process they will start to multiply and create new environments. Therefore, whichever thoughts you focus on will grow, you can grow beautiful flowers or weeds. Be conscious of how powerful your thoughts are and what thoughts you give your attention to. Change won’t happen overnight but with constant awareness on positive thought patterns you will start to create a new experience in your external environment.
“If you get the inside right, the outside will fall into place.”
– Eckhart Tolle