Ep 014 Time and Space: Shaping Your Physical Environment for Wellness Success
Discover the often overlooked key to achieving your health and wellness goals: your physical environment. In this episode of the Wholly Well Journey podcast, we dive into why the Duke Wheel of Health's segment on physical environment is a critical first step for many in their wellness journey.
Through the stories of three real life clients, we’ll illustrate how making intentional changes to our surroundings and routines can significantly impact our health habits. From tackling clutter to understanding the psychological impact of our spaces, this episode is a must-listen for anyone looking to make sustainable health changes.
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Show Transcript
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Ep 14: The Unexpected First Step - Physical Environment
When I get new health and wellness coaching clients, one of the first things we do is a personal health plan, which uses the duke wheel of health. And that's an eight part model for health and wellbeing. from a holistic standpoint. And after doing this assessment, they'll pick one area to focus on. You might be surprised by the area that most clients end up picking. It's physical environment. And physical environment. Isn't what they think coming in. It's usually a bigger picture goal, like losing weight or starting to work out or changing their eating habits. But after doing this assessment, it becomes really clear to them that before they can tackle those bigger goals, they need to get physical environment in order. And so in today's episode, I'm going to share exactly what this means, what I'm talking about.
When I say physical environment. Along with three clients' stories about how they needed to tackle physical environmental factors before they could move on in their wellness journey.
Thank you for listening in on today's episode. And I do want to start out by saying we offer 15 minute discovery calls. If you are interested in health and wellness coaching. And this is just a great opportunity for us to get to know each other, to decide if coaching might be a good fit for you, and if it could help you reach your health and wellness goals.
And I know health and wellness goals are really broad, but it's true if you're just not feeling well. If you're feeling sluggish, lacking energy, needing to lose weight, just wanting to give yourself some self care and attention to make sure that you're taking care of your body, soul, and spirit. Then I really encourage you head to the show notes, book, a discovery call from the link that you'll find there.
And we can talk more about it. Now let's move on to today's topic, which is the physical environment. In episode 12, we talked about the duke wheel of health, which has eight parts. And this is everything from sleep and rest and mental and emotional wellbeing. to mindful awareness. But this part of physical environment is something that I usually have to explain to people what it means, because it seems a little bit obvious, . But why would it be something that most people need to think about or need to consider?
What happens is that people realize how much their environment and the atmospheres that they find themselves in. Is influencing their behaviors, their triggers, their roadblocks, and just all of these automatic routines that all of us have. And that's good news too, because it doesn't mean that you just have to rely on your willpower to change your habits. By setting up a good healthy environment, you can actually take a lot of that mental guesswork out of things and just set yourself up for greater success. And so I want to start by talking about a client that I've had and we'll call him JJ. And JJ came really wanting to improve eating habits because he found himself always on this pendulum where there were certain times of year, especially in the beginning of the year where he would commit to a really healthy diet. And he would do this for about 30 days and feel great, have good energy and want to continue, but he would find it. Unsustainable to go to that degree year round, and then he would find himself coming back, swinging on the pendulum that so many people find themselves on when it comes to diet. And then a few weeks later, it's like eating a large pizza with a six pack of beer on Saturday night. And so what he really wanted to find was a happy medium, and one that was sustainable.
But right away in our session, there was one key area that seemed to be a big problem.
And this was the work break room. 'cause in this kitchen at work, they were stocking it with all kinds of really yummy treats and things that would remind him of his childhood and tasty snacks and candies. And those were things that he didn't buy and keeping his house, but he found himself so curious, walking through the break room to see what had they bought this week.
What new goodies were in there. , and then after eating lunch, it was too common to be going in there and getting a treat. And so then that would set off just kind of a cascade of afternoon snacking.
And unfortunately for so many people, there's that domino effect that once you eat one thing, you're not supposed to quote unquote, then you just find yourself grabbing the next thing.
And the next thing. And find yourself really out, feeling out of hand and out of control. And nobody likes that feeling. So with this work situation, it may seem like a small thing in the grand scheme of life, but it's something so many people deal with. It could be the bowl of candy on the receptionist desk.
It could be that your coworker brought in donuts. , and it can affect you five days a week and you have less control in your work environment than you do in your home. But recognizing where these environmental cues come into play. If it's that moment of walking through the break room and deciding if you're going to look or if you're not going to look. Or in this case, it was totally reframing his mindset around not snacking at work, like only allowing snacks that he brought himself from home.
He was able to totally change this habit. And from that it was a domino in the positive direction by getting control in this one area, it helped him overall to feel like he was having a healthier diet. So when it comes to environment, I'm talking about both your physical surroundings. And your time management and schedule.
And that's usually where the light bulb goes on for people, because it's not that they don't know that they should be eating healthier and they should be exercising regularly. It's that they don't have the time and energy for it. And so our environment has a huge impact on health.
And I'd like to read you the official definition from duke health and wellbeing for this slice of the wellness wheel. It says a clean and healthy physical environment is important for your overall health and wellbeing. It is important to reflect on how your physical environment can support your health, to maximize your understanding of how your physical environment impacts you.
Explore options for dealing with concerns, such as noise, safety, clutter, and other aspects of your environment. So we have this basic need for a healthy environment, right? Food and shelter. Those are very basic human needs. And this presents itself in a few obvious ways. Here's three big ones. The first one is that we need a safe environment. We need a safe structure to live in, and we need to also be free from violence, abuse, and danger, and even having their perception of not being safe is going to drastically affect our. mental and emotional health and wellbeing, it's going to increase our cortisol. With this constant level of chronic stress, which has takes a huge toll on our health. And so when it comes to the structure that we actually find ourselves in. And also the people who surround us, this is where we just need a basic safe environment.
And when I'm talking about our environment, that includes our home and our workplace or other places or buildings, rooms, environments, where we're spending the majority of our time. The second one is we need a clean environment. Yeah, I'm talking about dusting and vacuuming and that kind of thing, but even more so on a deeper level, if there are toxins, allergens, or pollutants in our environments, those can cause underlying chronic health conditions, which put us in a daily battle of not feeling well. And two obvious examples that might come to mind that got a lot of media coverage would have been like lead paint or asbestos. Those are things that affect people from a health standpoint, those are our more well-known issues. But according to the U.S. Department of health and human services environmental pollutants can cause health problems like respiratory diseases, heart disease, and some types of cancer. People with low incomes are more likely to live in polluted areas and have unsafe drinking water and children and pregnant women are at higher risk of health problems related to pollution. End quote. So, if you find yourself suffering from chronic fatigue, allergies, or other auto-immune conditions really consider the role, your environment may be playing and that's something to talk to your doctor about. Because that has to come first before you tackle a goal, like starting a new exercise plan, because maybe you're just constantly feeling fatigued or you're constantly having some respiratory issues that prevent you from exercising. We have to get that part cleared up first, before we can talk about whether you should run walk or cycle, or whether you need to lift weights. And then finally, this third point is that we need an orderly environment. And even the definition there alluded to clutter and we can't have perfect control over everything in our lives.
You know, you have a family or you might have only so much control over your workspace and your desk or your cubicle or wherever that is. But we do have some control over our environment and sometimes just in small ways, this can make a really big difference. And so beyond safety beyond the cleanliness and the health, this orderly environment is the next piece which might involve really decluttering. And then there's the aspect of creating an environment that's nurturing and positive.
And we could go a really long way with this one when it comes to creating environments that promote. Health or promote energy or promote productivity. You know, think about how you feel in different places. And one example would be, imagine yourself, walking down a hospital corridor, like stereotypical gray walls. Blue landscape paintings and fluorescent lighting. And then imagine yourself immediately exiting from there and walking into a spa. With low lighting, soothing music, essential oils. And just think about what you see, hear and smell in each of these environments.
And how does that make you feel? And so where you can really apply that is how do you feel walking into your work environment? How do you feel walking into your home environment or your bedroom? Did these spaces make you feel positively or negatively? Do they trigger any stress or anxiety or do they promote calm? And then on top of that, are they automatically triggering you towards healthier or unhealthier behaviors? Another example might be like, maybe when you get home, you don't exercise at home.
You have to make a trip to the park or the gym. But once you sit down on the couch, you don't feel like getting back up and going out again. So this is where environment and routine go hand in hand.
And Google says the space-time continuum is a mathematical model that describes the relationship between space and time as a single entity. And so that's all I'm going to say there, but just the thought of how intimately related our environments and our surroundings and our time and our schedule and our routines.
These are all very highly related. And so it matters a lot when it comes to changing your health and wellness habits. Another example would be to think about different types of restaurants in the atmosphere they create. And maybe you've heard this example given before, but fast food restaurants. I usually have bright colors like reds, yellows.
They have bright lighting, often fast paced music, and that's designed to get you to eat and get going because they're looking at having a lot of volume coming through. It's not a place you're supposed to necessarily stay and hang out. And it's cheap. Now a nice restaurant on the other hand might be really expensive, but they have dim lighting, slower music, muted colors, and it just promotes an atmosphere and an idea that you would linger over that meal and take your time. So when I first said physical environment, you may have initially thought about safety and pollution aspects and you might've even thought that doesn't really apply to me.
Why would I want to listen to this? but to be sure those things are very important and sometimes they can affect us and we don't even know it. But what the majority of people really need to dive into here is that last point, that point number three. And asking ourselves that question. What is it about our physical environment schedule and routines that needs to shift in order to make it easier for us to establish great habits?
James clear, wrote the book atomic habits, which became an international bestseller.
I love this book. I rereading it again. And he offers four laws for how to create a good habit. And how to break a bad habit, which are really inversions of the original laws. And so the four laws for creating a good habit are number one. Make it obvious. Number two, make it attractive. Number three, make it easy. And number four, make it satisfying.
So an example would be like starting an exercise habit. And in order to make sure that you stop at the gym after work, you're going to need to pack your bag, put it on the front seat of your car. And pick a workout location or gym that's on the way home from work. And so then it's obvious what you're supposed to do.
It's attractive. It's easy.
A positive reinforcement and even an immediate reward. When you do that habit. So maybe it's that you really like a Zumba class or a dance class at the gym, or you're going to meet a friend there. Or you're just setting a goal for yourself that is going to carry a reward when you meet a certain milestone.
Now the inverse of these four laws is how to break a bad habit.
And these four are to make it invisible. Make it unattractive. Make it difficult and make it unsatisfying. And so this is where environment really comes to play is if you can reduce the exposure and cues of your bad habits from your environment, that makes it invisible. Making it an attractive can often be about reframing your mindset.
And so when it's out of sight, it truly is out of mind. It's not something you're going to think about anymore. And then also removing things from your environment definitely helps with this third law in version, which is to make it difficult. If you have to go through extra steps to get that candy out of the top, most cupboard or go to the store to buy some candy. Then you're so much less likely to do it.
So those four laws are really important and truly they have a lot to do with environment and setting up your environment in the right way that you will be more likely to have success. So here's another client story for you. And this is a couple that I worked with and they had all kinds of health and wellness goals because they were on multiple medications. They really needed to lose significant amounts of weight. And that was really their overall goal was to lose the weight.
So therefore to put some habits in place that would allow them to do that. Well, there was one particular habit that we worked on for quite a few weeks. And that was meal planning because meal planning was really the key that was going to cause them to eat healthy lunches, eat healthy dinners. And without the meal plan in place, they would end up, you know, eating out, eating fast food a couple of nights a week, or having to go out to lunch versus having these nice packed, healthy lunches. And so it wasn't just about saying, oh, you should set a meal plan because people know that they need to do that.
But it was literally taking the time because it is time consuming. Right. Doing any of these things is not just automatic. It's not going to happen on its own. So working with this client to really make the time each week to sit down and make a meal plan. Then the next step beyond that too, was to take that meal plan and put it into the grocery store app because a lot of grocery stores, now they have curbside pickup or they have grocery delivery.
And so within those apps and within those grocery ordering systems, you can make lists. And so if you want to set up six weeks of meal plans, along with all of the ingredients that you need for those meals, you can do that. Now that feels like a big time commitment on the front end. And so we had to take it week by week, just doing one week at a time. But the big payoff is that after maybe spending an hour to collect all your recipes and make that meal plan and put all the ingredients on the list. Then the next time that it comes around to order that meal plan for that week, it's just a simple click of a button. To add to cart and then order. And so that's a tip I even use for my own family.
For myself. It's such a huge time saver. But again, it just goes back to that idea that before we can. Blame our willpower for us not making the right choices. We really need to set ourselves up for success with an organized environment and organized schedule and routines that make it easy, make it obvious, make it attractive to follow that habit.
So this may not be surprising, but I love information about productivity and goal setting and time management. It's another area that just really fascinates me. And so I've seen. A lot of tools in this area. Um, I've seen a lot of like little quadrant charts where they talk about setting up your activities and looking at ones that are important versus urgent ones that have to be done now versus ones that can be done later. And in a work setting, that type of quadrant is really helpful for helping a leader or manager to see. What types of things do I need to automate?
What types of things do I need to delegate and hand off to other people? But sometimes this can get a little different in the home. And so if you're especially a mom, if you have kids, if you have young kids, you can listen to a lot of advice, but then it's really difficult to apply. And that can happen, you know, for setting up like a perfect morning routine or something along those lines, because your kids might wake up early or you might need to be taking them to school.
And so you don't have total control over your morning. And it, when it comes to this idea of important versus urgent, there are sometimes really mundane things that we have to do as moms or wives and even husbands and dads too. It's not just a mom thing. It's also a dad thing. And so it may not feel super important to do the laundry every day, but it has to get done. And although you might be able to automate some things, you might be able to make some process more efficient.
You can't just delegate your life away. And especially if it's a priority to you to spend time with your kids And for the majority of people, even if they wanted to hire some more full-time help, they can't realistically afford that. It's like, there's all these little mundane things that have to get done. And we can't discount the importance those things have for helping us to maintain a healthy environment. And just when we're trying to plan our schedules, we often tend to overbook ourselves and not leave ourselves any margin because in our digital culture, It's more and more easy to assume that things will be done automatically and we can get on Amazon and order something and have it delivered even in the same day versus go in our car, drive to a store, spend a bunch of time doing it. But that doesn't apply to everything. So we just need to, again, with that example of making those meal plans and taking the time to plan, shop cook. Do things around the house, go through piles of papers and clear out some clutter. These things take time, but it's a good use of time because it sets you up for success.
And so I'm going to touch on the story of this last coaching client.
Now, this person we'll call her Marie. She was very knowledgeable about health and she was actually a certified yoga instructor and she knew what she needed to do to be healthier and exercise, but she also had a preschooler and a kindergartener and worked full time and a demanding job. And so as we were talking through her, Uh, initial health assessment, her current life situation, and just felt very overwhelming to her.
And maybe you felt in that place where it's like, I just don't know. Where I can get any more time and I know self care is important. I know I should be doing these healthy habits. But I just don't have the time and I have no margin. But the one thing that came up that was stressing her out was having a clean and organized home. And that was an area where she's just like mentally, I can't stop what I'm doing and go exercise or go to the gym.
If I know the house is a wreck and it needs to be cleaned up.
And so working together. She gets to decide, Hey, this is actually a huge priority for me. Nobody else can tell you what your priority is. Nobody can tell you, Hey, you have to be okay with exercising instead of keeping your home clean, because I think that's more important than the other stuff is just urgent.
No, for her, it was a big deal. And for her, it gave her immense peace of mind. To go through her house and we developed a little plan. This was her first goal that she tackled was to go through her house and get some key areas organized and then kind of put a system in place for that. And then we were able to move on to some other things like mindful awareness and exercising and healthy eating. So maybe this is ringing a bell for you, maybe you realize, yeah, it's not that I don't know.
I should be working out or I should be eating healthy. It's just that I feel so overwhelmed by the process of getting from here to there. And I feel like I'm supposed to immediately jump into my healthy eating meal plan or my exercise program. Well, if that's you. I'd love to chat with you more about this again, and you can go to Stephanie C. hodges.com/coaching. Where we can set up a discovery call and talk more about your goals and how you can get started. But the one big takeaway I would love for you to just apply and spend some time thinking about is first of all, going back to that question we asked earlier in the episode was how do my environments make me feel.
What about these environments is promoting good habits in my life. And what might be setting up some roadblocks and triggers for me, what might be promoting bad habits? And simply that awareness alone is going to help you so much to start to realize what's maybe not your fault. It's just this automatic reaction that's happening to you based on the environment you find yourself in. And then from there, with that awareness, you can start to make those little changes in those little mental adjustments.
To not only create healthier environments too, but to make better choices.
So I hope this explanation of physical environment was helpful for you. Please be sure to subscribe to the podcast. So you don't miss an episode and we'll see you next time.
Thank you for joining us for this episode of the Wholly Well Journey podcast. Please be sure to subscribe and you can also head over to whollywelljourney. com to check out the show notes and the whole podcast library. That's also where you'll find information about our health and wellness coaching, which you can participate in online from wherever you are in the world.
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