How our Environment impacts our Behaviors.

Have you ever noticed how our behavior changes when things have been moved around or are not in their regular place?

Our behavior changes when our environment changes.

This can be as little as:

• Moving an item intentionally into a different spot

• Accidentally moving a frequently used item to a different place

• Purposely changing the place of an item

Big changes include for example:

• Moving into a new house/apartment

• Renovating a room

• Getting a new piece of furniture

In all these situations, our behavior changes with the environment.

Humans are creatures of habits.

When things are in its place or purposely put in place to trigger a certain response, most of the time it goes without thinking, to follow a certain behavior pattern.

Knowing how to use your environment to your benefit, to improve and support our healthy actions and habits, can have a big positive impact in your life.

How to change or implement a good action/habit by shaping your environment

First, understand how the flow of certain actions/habits show up in your environment.

• Think about your daily routine and identify something you want to change- ONE thing.

• In which environment does it show up?

• How can you make that one thing happen during your day, when and where?

• What happens prior to the thing you want to do, where are you? Make yourself aware of it.

• Ask yourself: How can I remember where and when I want to do my action?

• Change your environment, room, set up or place to support your action (see my little picture picture)

This is a process and it takes time. Don’t try to make changes to more than ONE thing at the time.

Observe, Identify, Adjust. Observe, Identify, Re-adjust, continue.

In short:

1. If you want to create or keep a good action/habit in your daily routine, make them easily available, accessible and routine friendly.

2. Your daily “path” and it’s actions is heavily relying on:

- your environment and the set up around you

- the automatic flow which requires no thinking

- easy accessibility to what you want to do/change

- no disruption of the flow

All of these factors help to keep or create a consistent routine/habit which can be easier implemented into your life.

In coaching we call this: “Shaping the path” which is an essential skill to learn to be consistent and successful.

Give it a try! :-)

If you want to learn more, you can reach out to me for a free chat on how this is part of my coaching methodology.