Strategies for Assessing and Adjusting Settings

Assessing and modifying our physical settings begins with recognizing what motivates and distracts us. Understanding our needs and aspirations allows us to make necessary changes. Small adjustments like tidying up, adding fresh flowers, or creating visual reminders of our dreams can make a substantial difference in aligning our surroundings with our goals.

The resources mentioned in this episode are:

• Take a moment to assess your current surroundings and identify any areas that are not aligned with your goals and aspirations.
• Choose one room in your house to start with, such as your bedroom, and think about three things that could be added or changed to better support your vision.
• Consider adding elements to your bedroom that align with your current aspirations, such as a mirror for self-reflection, a space for a potential partner, or a dark and calming environment for better sleep.
• Personalize your workspace to increase productivity by up to 32%, such as adding photos or items that bring you joy and motivation.
• Bring nature into your environment by adding plants or incorporating views of nature, as studies have shown that this can increase enthusiasm and focus.
• Don’t feel overwhelmed by making big changes all at once. Start with small, affordable additions or improvements that make you feel good, such as fresh flowers, branches, or tidying up.
• Consider adding elements to your surroundings that reflect specific goals or dreams, such as travel pictures, magazines, or boarding passes to inspire and motivate you daily.
• Display pictures of your loved ones or create a wall of memories to remind you of the importance of family.

Timestamped summary of this episode:

00:00:03 – Welcome to the Samantha Leith podcast. With me, Samantha Leith, I have a passion for exploring anything and everything that can help us to be extraordinary. Each week, I’m going to dive into a topic and explore it extensively. Because if there’s something that makes for a better life, I want to learn about it and more importantly, share it. And hey, you may just get the odd song thrown in.        

00:00:26 – There’ll be deep conversations, fun and frivolity helpful tools for you to add to your life straight away. Random musings about anything from coffee to sex and information that may just blow your mind. This is a podcast for dreamers, believers, action takers and achievers. It’s personal development, but not as you know it.        

00:00:50 – Hello and welcome to episode 30 of the Samantha Leith Podcast, where I want to talk about the importance of creating a surrounding that really supports your dreams or your goals or your vision, who you are in life. It’s not as heavy as the last couple of episodes, which I think is a good thing because we’ve done some deep stuff. So I want us to think about where you live, where you work, your car, the environment that you are in all the time. Like your bedroom is obviously, I think, one of the most important spaces. But why?        

00:01:34 – These things can really massively influence our mind, our soul, our ambitions, how we’re feeling. They can either fill our cup or they can be like a hole in my bucket. Dearly Delizer, if you’re in a place that’s not actually supporting who you want to be and what you’re kind of aiming for, okay, so one of the things with personal development is it’s that growth mindset thing that Carol Dwett talks about. We want to be going somewhere. There’s no point, I don’t think, in us just going, oh, well, that’s know, that’s who I am, and yeah, I’m done.        

00:02:17 – And that’ll do. Fred it’s about expanding our horizons and learning more and increasing our skills and doing those freaking things in life that we actually want to do. And if we’re in a surrounding that doesn’t support that, it’s a lot harder to actually achieve it. And I’m really sorry if you can hear that noise at the moment. That’s bad.        

00:02:42 – A truck just pulled up. I thought it was going to be really quiet. I’m sure that’s an example of my environment right now, not supporting my goals and my dreams. So I think this isn’t just not a luxury, I don’t think, to have a place that supports all of these things that we want to be, do and have, I think it’s actually a necessity. So, little story as you may or may not know, our Labrador, Charlie Charlote, if she’s in trouble and she’s never in trouble, had a spinal stroke a couple of months back and she was paralyzed for two months or something like that and can now walk.        

00:03:26 – She looks a little bit drunk. And she can kind of run around the park for about ten minutes and then she starts collapsing because she’s just exhausted because she’s got to build up all that muscle trying again. But one of the issues is she’s still urinary incontinent, so she pees. And although we have puppy pads and we special stuff to get rid of the smell and we take her outside lots and all that kind of thing, sometimes it is on the floor in the house and we have to clean it up and things like that. And I am finding it so depressing.        

00:03:59 – I’m finding it impacting my mood, the work that I’m getting done, it’s impacting whether I want to invite people to our house. It’s all sorts of things and it doesn’t seem like a big thing. My dog is getting better. It’s a really good thing that she’s getting better. But having this one issue I’m finding impacting me in lots of different ways, which I guess might be.        

00:04:28 – I always do want to talk about environment because I do think it’s important, much like how we dress and how we show up, et cetera. But I did change the plan this week to do this one because I noticed how much it was actually impacting me. Now go back years and years of my life. And when I was a little girl living on a boat with my parents, they used to call the forehead cabin on our yacht the Pigside because that’s where I lived. But I was a six year old, a seven year old, an eight year old, nine year old, ten year old.        

00:04:58 – We weren’t that focused on our environment at that point, but as an adult and as a teenager, that became so much more important to me. I had a lot of trauma and yuck and stuff going on in my childhood. And as a teenager, I would like clean out kitchen cupboards because I couldn’t stand a mess because it didn’t made me feel good having that mess. I like having fresh flowers around and candles and use the good glasses. People use the good glasses.        

00:05:33 – So that’s a little bit of personal stuff about me and environment. This is about you guys. So I want to talk about why it’s important for you to be doing this. Okay. Are your dreams and aspirations and the vision that you have for your life?        

00:05:52 – Is it one where the washing is still sitting on the couch a week later waiting to be folded up or there’s dishes in the sink or your car looks like your favorite thing to do is go through a drive through?        

00:06:10 – Have you been given 15 candles over the last five years and you don’t light them because you go, oh, I’m saving them for a good day? No, light the candle. You deserve the candle. What kind of accent was that? You deserve the candle.        

00:06:31 – Okay. You deserve to have an environment that makes you feel good. It’s not just about myself or my friends and what I’ve seen with my clients. Scientific studies actually show that our environment impacts our mental well being. Okay?        

00:06:49 – So a Journal of Environmental Psychology that’s a tongue twister that I wrote down there, found that personalizing, our workspace can increase productivity by up to 32%. That’s mad. Imagine if you made your workspace a little bit more personal, a little bit better, your productivity went up 32%. Okay? And people that view nature and I know I’m one of them, we can see nature from every single room in our house because we have an internal courtyard as opposed to big buildings and things like that.        

00:07:23 – We perform tasks with greater enthusiasm, greater focus, just because of that environment. One of the simplest things you can do is bring a plant inside, have more greenery in your house. So it’s not just about our mood. It’s about our creativity, our motivation, our efficiency. Just like everything we want to have positive in our lives, our environment can impact.        

00:07:54 – So if you’re sitting listening to this and thinking, the bed not look at my wardrobe at the moment.        

00:08:03 – Don’t get stressed not going to Marie Kondo you. This is up to you, because your definition of what a great physical environment and surrounding is will be different to mine. Okay? It will be different to mine. So you don’t have to go follow the latest trend on Instagram and go, that’s what my house has got to look like.        

00:08:26 – Do what makes you feel good. All right? There are things in my house that I freaking love, and people have come in and go, oh, this is a little bit too much. I don’t think I want feathers on my wall, but do something. Okay?        

00:08:40 – So I want to challenge you to just pick one room, just one room in your house. Okay? Let’s go to your bedroom, and I want you to think about it, and I want you to jot down or just think about if you’re driving, don’t obviously pull out a piece of paper and definitely don’t pull out your phone. And I want you to just jot down three things that you believe align with your current aspirations. And I think bedroom is a really good one with this because I’ve often worked with clients who wanted to have a partner in their life, and there’d been times in my life where I wanted to invite a partner back into my life.        

00:09:16 – And if you have a king size bed and both sides of the bed are covered in both beds or tables, either are covered in books you’re reading, and there’s no space in the wardrobe, and there is no room for a partner in that room. Okay. Simple things like that. Do you have a beautiful mirror in there that you can look at? Is it crowded?        

00:09:39 – Is there somewhere you can sit? Is it actually a space you want to go to? Is it just I’ve got to go room where I’ve got to go to sleep. Does it help you feel good when you go to sleep? Is it dark?        

00:09:51 – I need a really dark bedroom to get a really great sleep at night. I have light, I’m wide awake. Hence why I’m a morning person. Maybe it’s that simple thing about a plant. So just jot down three things that you guys don’t align with or do align with your current vision and do rather align with your current vision, your goals, your aspirations that be do have list.        

00:10:15 – Okay? Maybe you want to add something to that list about something you want to bring into your bedroom in the next little while. And it doesn’t have to be expensive. Really doesn’t. Number of times I turn on a turn on look at like a news site these days or even some of the home magazines and they talk about these great new collections in stores like Kmart and Target and things like that that are really affordable pieces for the it can be something really little and really simple.        

00:10:49 – Maybe you just need to tidy up. The magic of tidying up as Ms. Gondo said. But no, I’m not going to ask. I’m not going to tell you to make sure everything brings you joy.        

00:11:00 – I myself haven’t actually managed to do that. I know some things do bring me joy but haven’t done that. So don’t make this bigger than Ben Hurt because it doesn’t have to be. This is not about you redesigning your entire house and your life and going out and buying a new car and doing all those things in 5 seconds flat. Being there, done that.        

00:11:21 – I’ve tried to do that and it’s too hard to try and make those really big changes really really quickly. I want you to start with something really small. As I said, pick a room. I’d give you a bedroom because we spend a lot of time in there. Do something to make your bedroom feel good and think about the little things that are going to make your house or your office feel better.        

00:11:40 – Maybe it’s fresh flowers. And this doesn’t mean you have to go and buy a big fancy bunch of flowers. There are some really affordable flower subscriptions. You can go to flower markets. I haven’t done that for ages and I used to love doing that with my daughter.        

00:11:54 – Maybe we’ll do that this week. You can just take a walk around your neighborhood. Don’t take clippings from someone’s house. Okay? But if there’s like some flowers in the medium strip medium medium strip.        

00:12:10 – Maybe just a couple of branches. Do you know how good a couple of really big branches can look in a big bug on a table? Oh, freaking amazing. You walk into your house and it’s like it feels done. Now these are all just general things about your surroundings.        

00:12:28 – However, if there’s something really in particular that you are aiming for in that dream that you have of your life. Maybe you need to add some of that into your surroundings. So say you’ve got a goal of doing a whole lot of traveling. Maybe you want to have some pictures of where you want to go around your house. Maybe you want to have some magazines about travel on your coffee table.        

00:12:57 – Maybe there’s a poster you could stick up. Maybe you could go back and print out maybe one of those people that’s kept boarding passes, have them all stuck up somewhere to make you remind you how much you enjoy traveling. Little things like that can be a huge boost to what you’re doing now. You know, I believe in setting up your goals all around the place. This is not what I’m talking about.        

00:13:23 – Although you can 100% do that, and I encourage you to do that. It’s more about the everyday that’s always going to be motivating you and inspiring you, not just about the particular goal, but about that bigger vision. Okay, so we can do both? Absolutely. And you should do both.        

00:13:44 – But this is your everyday day to day stuff. If family is really important to you, why don’t you have lots and lots of pictures of your family up? Why do you only have that couple of special ones where you didn’t have a double chin? We’ve got a wall of photos in our kitchen and some of them I look at and I’m like, oh, what was I thinking wearing that? But they make me feel great looking at them because it’s all these memories of these fantastic experiences that I’ve had in particular with my daughter.        

00:14:18 – So that inspires me to have more experiences every time I walk into that kitchen. Okay, so everything in our should have had two coffees. Everything in our life, our world, our environment, including the bricks and mortar stuff, has an energy to it.        

00:14:44 – And that energy is yes, there are some absolutely true non negotiable things with energy, but sometimes the energy is just about how something makes you feel. For example, I really like black, and a lot of people say black is a negative energy, but to me, black gives me a kind of calmness and sophistication and simplicity. So if you ever came to my house or you see many of the videos that do, my house is like quite black and white with lots and lots of pops of color. There’s no one particular colorway. I love colored glass.        

00:15:20 – Colored glass lights my soul. Colored glass makes me remember that I first got this beautiful decanter from my mum and it was a beautiful teal color. I was like, oh my gosh, that colored glass is gorgeous. And it sent me on that way to collecting colored glass. One of the most magical things in my house that gives me energy every single day is a huge mirror that I got liquid chalk and I wrote the optimus creed on that mirror.        

00:15:51 – The mirror is probably, let’s say it’s probably four foot tall, like it’s probably about four. So a meter and a I don’t foot to meters. I’ve got absolutely no idea. It’s a really big mirror. It takes of half a wall.        

00:16:06 – And I wrote the optimus creed on it and I used to read it every single day. I don’t read it every single day now as a purposeful act, but I see it every single day and it makes me think of the words that are in there. Sometimes I think of them like at the top of mind kind of thought and other times I just kind of know it’s there. I just know it’s there. So I try and fill my house with things that give me a positive energy.        

00:16:35 – Sound of Water for example, we’ve got a creek that runs through a house and a pond and things like that. So I hear water all the time. And one day I’ll tell you the story about how I manifested this house. But one of the reasons was that sound of water gives me energy but it also makes me feel really tranquil. Like I love it.        

00:16:56 – I love that sound of water. For some people they’re like, oh my gosh, I’d want to pee all the time. Kitchen. I want to talk about your kitchen for 2 seconds. Regardless of whether you’re a cook or not a cook, I think kitchens are an important one to help us to look after ourselves better.        

00:17:16 – So do you have bowls of fruit? Do you have lots of cold water? Is your pantry organized now? My pantry does look a little home eddity, but that’s what makes me feel good. I like that organization.        

00:17:31 – It’s one of my ADHD traits is being that organized with things because it’s something I guess I could control when I was younger rather than the chaos and the hyperactivity that was in my mind was actually organizing things like that. So does your kitchen encourage you to cook or have you got two plates? So you’re always eating takeaway but you keep saying to your coach or keep saying in your head or writing in a journal that you want to be healthier but you’ve got one pot and two plates. Now again, you don’t have to go out and spend a fortune on these things. There are shops where stuff really affordable, but buy something for your kitchen that’s going to help you achieve those healthy goals.        

00:18:15 – If one of your goals is doing more exercise, do you have a space in your house where you could just do a little bit of stretching? It’s a great thing to add into your home. I meditate every day, as you know, and write in my journal. Do you have a space where you can do that now it’s not about having a whole room. Oh my gosh, if I could have a whole room where I could just do that.        

00:18:36 – I absolutely would, don’t get me wrong, but I don’t have that at this moment. But I have a chair that I have a candle next to that I like to sit in. That’s a loungey kind of couchy kind of chair, one of those old one of those psychiatrists leather chair reclinery chairs. And I often meditate in that or on a chair in my room. So it’s a nice place where I can actually go and do that.        

00:18:59 – None of those things cost me a fortune. And if you’ve got the money, gosh spend what you want. But add little things into your space that help reflect where you’re going. And I want you to do this for your home and your office and your car is your office space where you’re really trying to work on your side, hustle or build your business. You’ve got this vision for your business and you know that at some stage you’re going to sell that business for $20 million, but your desk is absolute chaos and you can’t find a pen.        

00:19:42 – Now prove me wrong, but I’m pretty sure if that’s what your desk looks like, you’re not going to be able to sell that business for $20 million. Okay? You need to have that clarity in your surroundings, in your business surroundings for where you want to go. If you want to bring on more coaching clients. For example, someone told me this years ago, and I guess it’s probably not as relevant now because we do everything online and I don’t keep physical files of any of my clients anymore.        

00:20:14 – I’ll take notes and then I’ll scan them and keep them digitally. But I remember someone saying to me years ago, like, if you want more clients, have you got space to put their files? Do you actually have a filing cabinet or a notebook or somewhere where you can put the information for them? See, you so silly. Like, really?        

00:20:33 – That’s not going to stop me from doing what I want to do. So that bar. Trust me, it does. Universe does not like that stuff. The universe wants to support your goals and dreams.        

00:20:45 – If you know me, you know what I’ve always said is I’m woo woo with an analytical rising or analytical with a woo woo rising depending on my mood. But I’m not that woo. I’m a little bit woo, but I do know that the universe wants to support your goals and dreams, but it can’t make things happen if you’re not allowing it. Okay? So take some time to look around your physical life.        

00:21:17 – Pick one room at a time or one dream at a time or one vision or one even your values. You can look at your space and whether it’s in alignment with your values. If one of your values is productivity, do your surroundings support that? If one of your values is simplicity or style or I don’t know, pick any word and you get in your car and you go, oh, my gosh, I can’t find my charger and it’s dirty.        

00:22:04 – Honestly, that is one thing you could do for yourself today, really quickly, that will help you feel better about where you’re going in life. Wash your car. Go get your car wash. You can take it to a car wash and get it done, or just pop it in the driveway, involve the kids if you want, and scrub that car. It will make you feel better.        

00:22:29 – And once you’ve done that, go and do one thing towards one of your goals, okay? And notice, just notice in life the more little things that you do in your environment to make you feel better, how much more are you achieving? And remember this. There is a reason real estate agents have fresh bread or flowers or coffee and a really, really beautifully laid out, staged house when they invite you in to look at that house, because it makes people feel great. And then they can envision themselves in that house.        

00:23:11 – They can think, yes, I can do this. I can make this happen. Then they put pen to paper and they buy the house. And all because of a loaf of bread. Not all because of a loaf of bread, but it does help.        

00:23:25 – Okay? So thank you very much for listening to this episode. Have fun with it this week. Just have some fun with your environment and do something to make yourself feel better about where you spend all your time. So until next week, stay extraordinary, my friends, and have some fun.        

00:23:50 – Thank you for listening to this week’s episode of the Samantha Leith podcast. If you enjoyed this episode and want to dive deeper into the world of personal development and what’s possible for you, then I’d love to invite you to join the club. It’s my monthly membership designed to guide and support you with the tools and the coaching you need to be extraordinary. Head on over to Samanthaleith.com theclub for more information. I’d love to see you on the inside.