Change Your Environment! | Jack Canfield

Have you ever wondered why all of your good intentions to achieve a goal like increasing your income, completing a project like redesigning your website, or making a behavioral change, like getting up earlier, stopping spending hours, mindlessly surfing the Internet, or keeping a New Year's resolution, like no longer eating frozen pizzas late at night, or developing a new discipline like working out, say, doing yoga or meditating, you often simply can't make it happen, no matter how much you seem to want the desired outcome. Well, in my experience of working with hundreds of thousands of people over the last 50 years is that there are five major reasons for a lack of knowledge about what to do to succeed unconscious limiting beliefs that act like a set of psychological breaks, unacknowledged competing motivations, a lack of community support, including a system of accountability and the subtle but powerful impact of your environments. And today I'd like to look at the last one of these the power of your environments to either support you or to undermine you in your efforts to succeed. My friend Steve Pavlina, who wrote the book Personal Development for Smart People, has said your environment will eat your goals and plans for breakfast. And he's right. You live your life inside several environments, and these environments are always on 24 hours a day. And these environments are either supporting your intentions or thwarting your intentions. Now, as Jim Bunch, my other friend who's an expert on environments, likes to say, your environments are either inspiring you or expiring you. They're either giving you energy and supporting you and getting you what you want, or they're getting in the way of what you want. Let's look at an example of wanting to lose weight. Now, if your physical environment, called your kitchen, has foods in it like peanut butter and jelly and bread and ice cream and frozen pizza and pasta and chocolate bars in it, then that's what you're going to reach for when you're tired and hungry and your willpower is at a low ebb at 10 o' clock at night. Now if, on the other hand, those things are not part of that environment and you instead have fruit and vegetable juices and herbal teas in your kitchen, you can still eat something without the same weight gain outcome. And by the way, most of the latest research seems to be indicating you shouldn't be eating anything late at night anyway, you should be giving yourself a 12 to 14 hour period of time without food, engaging in intermittent fasting where you don't eat after 6 or 7pm and not again until 7 or 8 in the morning. Now that's A topic for another day, but if you want to delve into it now, you can get Dave Asprey's new book called Fast this Way. But let's take time now to look at some of the many environments you live in and look at how you can intentionally design them to support you in the achievement of your goals. Now, the most obvious one we're all aware of is our external physical environment. The places where you live and where you work, your home, your office, your kitchen, your furniture, your art, the colors on your walls and floors, your inside of your car, your television, your electronic equipment, your tools and so on, all these things are constantly affecting you. The way they look, the way they're organized or disorganized, the sounds they make, even the energy they're giving off like the toxic fumes of your cleaning supplies, the EMFs, which are those electromagnetic frequency of your WI fi and your cell phone, your Bluetooth devices, the cell phone towers near your house, and all that. Now, feng shui experts can help you go into all the energetic aspects of your home and office, but let's just focus for a moment on what you can see and what you can touch. Now, when you walk into your office, are you inspired or are you expired? Are your desk and conference table and other workspaces clear and ready to be used in a focused way, or is there clutter everywhere that makes it difficult to focus and to work? Are the things you need to do your work easy to find and easy to reach or not? Is your chair comfortable and ergonomically supportive? Is your computer at the right height? Would you be better off sitting on a ball or working at a standing desk? Are the distractions at a minimum? And you can go through your whole house, your condo, your apartment, asking these same questions as you walk through your home or your office. Look at everything with a careful eye and ask yourself, what are the things that I'm tolerating? Maybe the garage door doesn't go all the way down when you shut it. Or the cracked screen on your cell phone or the slow speed of your computer. My Internet service, which cuts out more than I want. The pillow on the couch that's torn. The shower drain that doesn't drain as.

Fast as it should.

Or the piles of paper that need filing. Make a list and then work to.

Repair, remove or replace everything.

That's a toleration that you're putting up with.

All your tolerations are draining your energy.

Now, when you open your closets, are.

There clothes you haven't worn for years? And never will in there. Is there room in there for new clothes?

I encourage you to walk through every.

Room of your house, your office, and.

Eventually your basement and then your garage, and begin to declutter and to organize.

And if you need help, there are tons of books and videos online that.

Can give you hundreds of tips on how to successfully declutter and how to organize your life.

There are also professional organizers that can.

Help if you have the money to.

Invest in their help. And even if you don't, many of you currently have the extra time to work on your physical environment due to the fact that you're spending more time at home because of COVID And getting.

Organized is better than binge watching one.

More season of a television series, I promise you. Now, one thing I found when I started to work on cleaning up my environment at home and in my office is that it was hard to get rid of things that were unnecessary and overwhelming me because of the emotional attachment I had to them due to some past event.

My wife, who didn't have the same.

Attachments, helped me clear out all kinds of things that were cluttering up our space. Books I was never going to read clothes I hadn't worn in years. The big issue there is that I had to confront. I made some stuff. Stupid purchases. If I was getting rid of some clothes, I had to admit that I bought them and it was a bad purchase. So having another set of eyes can be helpful. Now, the books were equally difficult. I eventually donated hundreds of books to the local correctional facilities in our area, which brings us to another environment. I'm going to call it your intellectual environment. The books, the magazines, the newspapers, the newsletters you read the radio shows you listen to, the television shows, including the networking cable news shows you watch, the podcasts you listen to, the people you follow on YouTube and Facebook and Instagram and LinkedIn and Twitter. What about the music lyrics you listen to over and over and so on? Ask yourself, is this book, this TV show, this podcast, this movie getting me closer to the life I want to live and the person I want to be? You see, so much of our behavior is habitual but not necessarily productive. And if you want to be more successful, it needs to become more intentional. One thing I found helpful in this area was to ask the people whom I admired and wanted to be more like what books are you reading? What magazines do you read? Where do you get your news? When I asked my early mentors, I got answers like read the classics like Think and Grow Rich, Psycho Cybernetics, the Science of Getting Rich, the wealthy barber, the richest man in Babylon, the One Minute manager. And later it was books like books on neuro, linguistic programming and EFT tapping, books on meditation and holistic health, Books on how to be a great speaker and a better salesperson, a better parent, be a better husband. Now, another environment, of course, is your relationships.

I'm sure you've heard it over and.

Over that you become like the five people you spend the most time with. So who are you spending the most time with? Are they inspiring you or expiring you? Are they uplifting you and encouraging you and supporting you and going for your goals? Or are they discouraging you and telling you you can't do it? Or worse yet, actually standing in your way? Now, this includes family members, friends, co workers. Do you need to spend less time or maybe no time with some of those people? Do you need to spend more time with others and maybe add some new people? Remember, there are only two ways to change an environment. Either adding something to it or subtracting something from it. So set aside some time to really take stock of your relationships and surround yourself with positive, goal oriented, encouraging, loving, supportive people. And remember, you always have the power to issue invitations and to set boundaries. Think of yourself as a doorman of the club. Who do you want to let in and who do you want to keep out of your life?

Now, another important environment is your financial environment. Now, obviously how much cash you have, savings, stocks, bonds, real estate and other investments you have are all important. But also think about how much debt you have.

Another part of your financial environment is.

The team of people you have supporting.

You in that area.

And when you're young and starting out, it's probably not that huge, but you can access all kinds of support online in apps and books and other ways. But eventually you want to have an accountant, a banker you can talk to, an investment advisor, or maybe an investment club you belong to, and maybe a business advisor and a tax attorney. You also want to consider your insurance, your will, your estate plan and other things like that as part of your financial environment. So pay attention to that. Now, one of the most important environments is your physical body. You spend all day in that environment and you take it with you wherever you go. And you can enhance that environment by being conscious of what you eat by adding whole organic foods and supplements, drinking enough water and eliminating things like white flour and sugar and cigarettes, and reducing things like alcohol, coffee and drugs. You can also add exercise supported by exercise equipment, a trainer, a gym membership, video programs like PX90 or DDP Yoga. Joining a yoga or Pilates class?

You can schedule regular massages, buy an.

Infrared sauna, or find someone to play tennis with every week. Add those things into your environment. Now, let's just look at one more environment, your spiritual environment. Have you consciously surrounded yourself with the spiritual support you need to achieve your goals? Do you have a meditation or a prayer practice that works for you? Do you belong to a church or a mosque or a temple or a.

Meditation group, a spiritual study group, A.

Satsang or a sangha that nurtures your soul? Do you have an altar at home or a quiet space set aside where you can meditate and pray or engage in deep contemplation?

Do you have a spiritual teacher or.

A counselor that you can contact when you need them? Do you attend any kind of spiritual retreat on any kind of regular basis?

Perhaps your spiritual place is in nature.

And if it is, do you get.

Out into it on a regular basis?

You see, there's a lot more we can look at in terms of your environments.

Your memetic environment, which includes your beliefs.

Your networks, and an environment we call yourself. But we'll delve into those more and do those more in depth in the future. But for now, I just want you to be aware that your environments are affecting you all day long. And fortunately, we as humans, unlike other animals, have the ability to purposely and intentionally create and recreate our environments. So begin by studying your environments and.

Asking, is this person, this place, or.

This thing something that uplifts me? Does it make me happy? Does it motivate me?

Does it bring me peace?

Or is it something that irritates me, upsets me, demotivates me, overwhelms me, and brings me down? And if it uplifts you, see how you can expand it. Spend more time with those people, with that music, with that author, in those physical places, and so on. And if it brings you down, see how you can change it or eliminate it. Remember, you are responsible for where you are, for what you bring in or allow to remain in your environment, and for whom you spend time with. Don't spend time ignoring or resenting your environments. Take the time to intentionally create or recreate them into what you want them.

And need them to be.

Some of that takes more time, over time to achieve. But you can start in lots of small and different ways today to get started, I want to invite you to make a commitment that before you go to bed tonight, that you'll make three changes in one of your environments. Doesn't matter how big or small. It can be as simple as putting something like a plant or a small sculpture or a crystal or a picture on your desk that uplifts you and makes you smile when you see it. Or it could be eliminating something like removing five post its from the side of your computer, or throwing away something that doesn't work or you're never going to wear again. Or put your gym shoes and your workout clothes in the hallway so that when you wake up tomorrow morning you have to trip over them. It'll remind you to work out for 20 minutes rather than just sit and read all your texts and emails first thing in the morning. Just make the commitment to do that today. Three simple things. And then keep that up every day for a week and notice what happens. Notice how you feel as a result of that. Now, if you found this video helpful, please make sure you like it, share it with a friend who may need it, and subscribe to my channel for more videos like this one and for additional success strategies and resources. Be sure to visit my website@jackcampfield.com and check out the links in the description below and let me know what you think in the comments. And thanks for watching.