The Invisible Everything
The Invisible Everything
A guide to reshaping your environment.
🎧 You can listen to this post using the Substack app. Here's a 15-second tutorial.It is very hard to show up as the person you want to be when you are surrounded by an environment that makes you feel like a person you aren't.
— Brianna Wiest
This is what a Viburnum Summer Snowflake is supposed to look like.
And this is what ours looks like.
Aside from dropping a wooden lawn chair on it (it's a long story), I've taken extremely good care of this plant. Regular watering, plenty of sunlight, fresh weed-free soil. I even bought a shade to help it survive the desert summer we've had in Ohio.
Now, compare that to our Sedum Autumn Joys.
What’s funny, is that I haven’t done much at all for these guys. Most of the time I forgot to water them, and we’ve even caught deer snacking on these (multiple times!). But they’re beautiful, flourishing.
For all intents and purposes, these plants are growing up in exactly the same environment. But one is limping along while the other is thriving.
You Cannot Change What You Cannot See
When we talk about environment, we’re talking about the physical world we inhabit. The neighborhood, city, climate. The building we live in. The rooms we work in.
This world exists all around us, yet we rarely see it because it sits in the background of our lives.
But this background, this invisible everything, shapes us. It influences how much money we earn, how healthy our bodies are, whether we're depressed or hopeful, anxious or confident.1
Where you are shapes who you are, for better or worse. You are a product of your space.
I'm going to use another nature example because that's where my head has been lately. When you think about the roots of a plant, you can picture a spidery group of tendrils reaching out and down toward water. The deeper the root, the stronger the plant. But not all roots grow like this.
For example, a cactus’s roots grow out.
They spread shallow and wide because they rely on rainwater to survive, not groundwater like most plants. Put a tree in the desert and it’ll starve. Put a cactus in the forest, and it’ll drown.
You are your own little special plant. A one-of-a-kind flora sent here for a particular time for a particular reason. And your job is to learn how to build, and sometimes find, the environment you need (not only for your well-being but for everyone else’s in your ecosystem too).
The way you start is by making the invisible visible.
Start with Awareness
The first step – as it is with almost every single element in this series – is to practice awareness.
Pay attention to what your world really looks like and how it actually functions. What is physically helping you become the person you want to be? What’s physically stopping you?
For my summer snowflake plant, I had to notice that it was getting too much sun before I could respond accordingly. For fitness, awareness means identifying my triggers (i.e., keeping chocolate in the house) and making a different choice if I want a different outcome.
For you, awareness means getting honest about what you want and shaping a life that aligns with who you want to be – not who you’ve let yourself become.
The moment we notice our world is the moment we can begin reshaping it.
Add with Intention
Your environment is a partnership you make with the physical world. And that alliance should be intentional.
If step one is building awareness, step two is applying intention.
For me, I find that a lot of awareness boils down to noticing and removing. I want to use the least amount of willpower possible to build the life I want. That means the fewer temptations I have to conquer, the better. Also, the fewer difficult people I have to deal with, or roadblocks to overcome, or decisions I need to make. The less my environment drains my mental battery, the more energy I have to build a better life.
With intention, I find that this usually means adding things back in. Most often, that looks like bringing the items that exist only in my mind into the real world.
First, I follow the advice of writer Tara Schuster and make physical space for my dreams. Before she was a celebrated writer and producer, she bought a small desk (for her very small apartment) and reconfigured all the furniture so she could have a dedicated writing corner (it actually sounded really lovely, like with flowers and candles and notebooks – the whole nine yards). Then, every day, she’d sit down to write at it as a deposit on the life she was building towards.
“I take my dreams so seriously that I carved out ACTUAL SPACE in my life so I had room for my aspirations.”
— Tara Schuster in Buy Yourself the F*cking Lillies
Get your dreams out of your head and into your physical space. Buy a desk or a toolbox or a map. The point is to bring your desired world into the here and now. Even if it’s just a small bit of it.
Second, we have to “make our daily achievements visible.”2
Most life change is slow. Like really fucking slow. So slow, it’s invisible (I just can’t let go of this theme today).
The gym has taught you this much. You eat clean. Lift heavy. And a couple days in you notice…absolutely nothing. That might even be true after a month. Or 3 months!
The secret to not losing your mind during this time (as it is with any long-term goal) is to create exterior progress markers. I use a wall calendar and write down every article I publish – along with the date, word count, and topic. That way, on any given day (especially writer's block ones), I can look up and see evidence that I'm a writer. That I've solved this problem before and, today, I can do it again.
What evidence do you need to see on a regular basis?
Note, this needs to be something you control. This is an input, not a result, because that’s all we can control. And the key to molding an empowering environment is to make it an echo chamber of your wins.
Evolve with Reason
Step three is activation.
I didn't even know what I meant by this until I reached this point in the article, but I see it now. An environment evolves as you use it, because it grows/changes/shifts as you do.
My home office looks completely different than it did 3 years ago. I understand how I work better. I removed distractions. Bought new art for my walls. Donated 200 books and replaced most of them with new titles that better represent who I want to be.
Your environment is a flexible, bendable thing. Just like your brain. The more you move in it, the more it will reshape itself to make what you believe to be true appear to be reality. I know we're edging on a bit of woo-woo-ness, which is a far cry from the last half dozen sciencey articles. But both things can be true.
Your world is a reflection of who you are — but not an objective reflection. Instead, it's a storied one, meaning it shows you what you've asked to see, which is just a fancy way of saying confirmation bias exists. If you are stubbornly stuck in life, your environment will prove that you are. If you're excited for change, you'll see opportunities.
Activation is the art of fully using your space without being limited by it. Way easier to say than do, but if you’re practicing the first two steps (awareness and intention), this part mostly takes care of itself.
Making Room for What’s Possible
We talked a lot less about the brain in this one because you needed to hear something meatier than an organized room leads to an organized mind.
The world is your workshop. One where the life you desire – a wild, untempered, surprising existence – can come true. But only if you make room for it.
Your dreams need space. Your wins need to be seen. Your mind will fit any box you put it in, so build a bigger box. And when what you want keeps bumping against the walls of what already exists – knock ‘em down.
Because you can do that.
This Body Body Body series is mostly about how you can use the outside world to remake your inside world (thoughts, feelings, beliefs, etc.). But the power flows both ways. And the more you understand how to bend your mind, the more you’ll discover how to bend the world itself.
How To Know When It’s Time To Leave
My summer snowflake might not make it. Only time will tell.
Whenever I look at it, I think about Einstein’s quote…
“Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.”
The snowflake plant is gorgeous. But it can’t be that right now because it’s in the wrong place. And maybe you feel like that. Like you’re a fish flopping around on the ground at the foot of a tree you know is not your home.
Let me tell you two small truths.
First, every environment always, always, always has what you need to take the very next step. Yes – it might lack 99% of what you need for a fulfilled life, but it will always have the 1% you need to get started in the right direction. Where you are is exactly where you need to be; at least for this chapter in your story.
Second, a pull to leave your environment will present itself in one of two volumes: calm & freaking-the-fuck-out ecstatic. That latter one is mostly anxiety and will eventually drive you crazy, no matter where you are (but we’ll talk about that more another time). That calm one is the one you really want to listen to, because that’s usually a nudge from your best self saying it’s time to grow again.
I think an environment is 60% place and 40% person. Meaning you have a pretty significant say in the world around you. But not quite the final word.
So, build what you can before you try to find what’s missing. And when it’s time to go, move with both eyes open.
There are so many good resources on these, but the two I’m linking to are this Harvard study on why zip codes determine health outcomes more than genetics (wild, right?) and this TED talk on neuro-architecture.
From Manage Your Day-to-Day by 99U.