Have you ever noticed that when you’re watch an action movie, your heart begins to race and your adrenaline goes up? Or when you’re listening to classical music, your mood starts to mellow? Or when you’re watching a mountain climbing documentary, you suddenly feel inspired?

The interesting part about each of the above scenarios (and more scenarios I’m sure you’re now able to identify for yourself) is that they’re not actually happening to you; yet, they’re eliciting a direct physiological response on you.

This is because the mind creates the reality which the body reacts to.

I once read a line in the book, Evolve Your Brain: The Science of Changing Your Mind, that goes something to the effect of, “the body can’t tell the difference between a cheetah chasing you in your mind and a cheetah chasing you in real life.”

Though the line relates more directly to the idea of anxiety and depression (getting mentally trapped in either the future or the past), what I’d like to highlight here is how external influences also take hold of the same psychophysiological response mechanism in order to shape how we feel; and, ultimately, how we think.

What each of the starting examples really demonstrates is the importance environmental stimuli has on both our physiology (elevated or decreased heart rate; perspiration; blood pressure; etc.) and our mood (our psychological response influenced by our physiology).

Why is it that when we walk into a traditional doctor’s office at one location, we become very nervous; while walking into a more spa-like setting for a doctor’s office at another location makes us feel more at ease? Or why is it that after watching a car chase movie, we find ourselves pushing just a little bit harder on the gas pedal during our drive home from the theatre? Environmental stimuli eliciting a psychophysiological response.

All things in life emit a type of energy—you might have heard of this being titled in more Eastern practices as Feng Shui—and those energies have such a profound, yet subtle, effect on our mental wellbeing that they should always be managed accordingly in order to set our mind on the correct course of action.

Whether it’s the type of music we listen to; the colour of paint on our walls; the movies we watch; the friends we talk to; the conversations we engage in; everything should be monitored and managed accordingly, allowing us to manicure our lives in order to manifest the behaviours and actions we want.

Utilizing this strategy more practically for a desired outcome, let’s say you wanted to start working out to get more in shape. Well, why not start by monitoring the types of media you consume and cut out anything that isn’t directly related to motivation, self-transformation or fitness. Or let’s say you want to be a kinder, more open-minded individual; perhaps it’s time to start reading more autobiographies, watching interviews from kindhearted people that you admire in order to better understand their outlook, or surround yourself with different cultures in order to build a greater world perspective.

The reality is, we don’t exist in a vacuum, and our minds are like an open, empty cup with our environment being the water that gets poured inside (with or without our consent). Hence, why it’s so vitally important to take inventory of what it is that we surround ourself with on a daily basis; the rooms, the spaces, the decor, the sounds, the images, the smells, and everything else we subject ourselves to, then take the necessary steps to start cutting out or adding in stimuli to help us get to where it is we want to go; actively influencing our desired thoughts, behaviours and actions.

Only by taking active ownership over our environment can we begin to build more agency in our lives and manifest the moods, energies and lifestyles that we truly desire. However, that all starts by first realizing that our environment has an influence, then taking the necessary steps to make a change in the direction that we desire for the better.

-manage your energies accordingly.