Changing Your Environment

April 25th, 2010 By: Brittany

I often tell people that feel a sense of depression, procrastination, frustration, or lack of motivation to make a change to their environment. Your personal surroundings make up a large part of your life. Most people don’t take into consideration that how their room looks, how their kitchen smells, or how light or dark your office is affects them.

For example, a friend of mine had moved into a new apartment. She loved the surrounding location her apartment was in. She found however, over the course of time she spent their the more tired she felt. She would often tell me she doesn’t feel as good as she use to, or that she just doesn’t feel like doing the hobbies and activities she did before. I ask had anything changed in her life such as relationships, diet, job changes, etc. She said no to the above. The only thing that changed was her move.

Upon inspection I noticed about her apartment was its dark. Her old place had windows that never had any drapes or blinds over them. The windows at her new apartment had blinds that she never bothered to open completely. The walls where painted gray, her furniture was dark in color, and she had not bothered to  hang any of her pictures on the wall. Clearly, I could see why she felt depressed and unmotivated. So, I asked her to try working on her apartment in the next few weeks. I told her to clean the boxes out with her old pictures, and hang the ones that make her feel happy. I told her to open the blinds up completely. The next step was to ask the landlord if she could paint one wall of her apartment. He agreed to let her, so we painted one of her walls a light peachy color. She also picked up a few throw pillows and blankets that where light and cheerful. These things made a huge difference to her motivation; her personality bounced back.

I wanted to add a part of an article that inspired this post. You can read further on AOL Health, Effects of Environment and Geography on Mood and Personality.

A slew of recent studies that delve into mental health suggest that there’s more of an association between your setting and how you feel than you might expect. Plus, if you live in or visit Las Vegas, these stark statistics may startle you.

Las Vegas: Home of legalized gambling and perhaps something even darker than that. According to a study conducted by Temple University published in the December 2008 issue of “Social Science and Medicine,” residents of Las Vegas face a suicide risk that is significantly higher than other parts of the country, based on analysis of data from the National Center for Health Statistics. Even more startling: People who die while visiting Las Vegas are twice as likely to die by suicide versus those who die traveling someplace else.

The theory is that the environment that Las Vegas purveys may psychological effect the way we act and think.

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