Our Perception is Shaped by Our Spaces

Hi, guys!

Today, I want to talk to you guys about how our environment dramatically affects how we function in life.

 

For those of you who don’t know me, my name is Naomi Findlay.

I work really hard with entrepreneurs and businesswomen in working out how their spaces affect them.

Today, I want to share with you some amazing research that I’ve just found.

I am a bit of a research monger. I think that’s a direct result of being an academic and in medical science for a really, really long time.

What I wanted to talk to you about was how we perceive the world around us is dramatically affected by the environment we’re in.

It’s a little of the hand that draws the hand.

Does anybody remember the picture of the hand that draws the hand? It’s pieced together from the basis of ontological design and environmental psychology.

One thing that I’ve been pondering about a lot lately is about how my environment affects me.

I’ve really noticed that if I’m wanting, for example, to do a task like writing or some full on planning, I really need to be in a place with very little white noise at all.

But, if I’m in a position where I’m wanting to do some rudimentary routine tasks, I actually need white noise and activity around me.

I will actually find it and bring it in to make me more productive.

You know what? This isn’t new. There are some really longstanding research.

There’s guys like Egan Brunswick and Roger Barker. They’re pioneers and foundational researchers around environmental psychology and around, what I like to call, space medicine.

It’s really intriguing about how our environment affects, not only the way we work and the way we function and the way we are productive, but it effects the way we perceive every day and every interaction.

For example, there was an amazing study done by Roger Barker…

One of the things he found was that two children in the same environment behave more similarly, they behave more like each other; more identical in behavior, than one child behaves in two different environments.

This was a huge impact  study that basically showed that the environment that we are in actually can impact on our behavior more than some of the core traits within our body.

This, obviously, is complex and there’s obviously lots of different things that come into play with research of this type, but it was just mind blowing to imagine that in a true empirical study based on power and data and hard-driven results, that this could be the outcome.

You know what? You guys know that I’m a huge believer in space medicine.

You guys know that I believe that the spaces around us can affect the way we thrive, the way we produce, the way we interact.

They can affect whether we live in an abundant life or we lead a scarce life.

I guess the thing that I want to talk about today is I want us to look at the spaces we’re inhabiting for different tasks that we undertake.

For example, I want you to look at where you work.

It might be at the kitchen bench. It may be at an office space. It may be at a communal space. It may be in a co-working space or it may be in a home office or at the dining table.

I want you to look at the space you work in and I want you to note what tasks you do in these spaces.

This is really, really important.

There isn’t one space medicine script that is perfect for everybody and there’s not one space medicine prescription that’s perfect for all tasks or all environments.

What I want you to do is take the first two steps into starting to write your own space medicine prescriptions.

• I want you to identify where it is that you work and the tasks that you do in those space.
• Then, we can then move forward to work out what your needs are in those spaces and what your ideal space medicine script is.

I have seen space medicine in my world turn my business from a startup to a six figure plus business. I now want to help share that with everybody.

I want to help share and make tangible the principle of ontological design and the principles of environmental psychology, put in a big dash of design and styling and I want to see it make your business more fluid, more in flow, more creative, more nurtured and more prosperous.

I will be back next week with a next installment.

Have a great weekend!

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