Why Changing Your Environment Changes Your Mind Faster

Summary

Emma shares insights on how changing your environment can accelerate personal transformation and habit change, based on neuroscientific and experiential evidence. She discusses practical strategies for organizing retreats and creating environments conducive to growth.


 
 Key  topics

The neuroscientific basis for environment affecting behavior
Habit stacking and environmental cues
The role of environment in slowing or accelerating change
Practical tips for organizing retreats for personal growth
The importance of intention and environment in habit change


Key takeaways

Changing environment accelerates brain change and habit formation.
Moving to a new environment can release old thought patterns and habits.
Retreats and intentional environments make habit change easier and more effortless.
Small environmental modifications can lead to significant behavioral shifts.
Preparation and community support are key for successful retreats.


Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Environment and Behavior Change
311:06:23 Neuroscientific Evidence for Environment Impact
636:06:23 Habit Stacking and Environmental Cues
1030:33:03 Personal Experience with Retreats and Environment
1344:26:25 How Environment Changes Brain Patterns
16944:26:27 Designing Retreats for Personal Growth
20194:26:29 Preparing for a Retreat and Setting Intentions
23416:39:50 Logistics and Communication During Retreats
26555:33:10 Small Changes Over Big Changes
28583:19:53 Encouragement to Start Small and Be Consistent

Get in touch with Emma

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Website https://www.emmajonesmd.com/

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Join Self Trust School Membership 

https://www.emmajonesmd.com/self-trust-school-enroll

Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:18

Welcome back to She Changed Her Mind, the podcast where we talk about how to change our minds, why we need to change our minds. On this episode, we are going to talk about the power of an intentional time away. I'm getting ready to take a small group of women on a retreat in Vermont that we're calling pause and present or the self-care retreat. It's all of those things. But we're getting ready to take this time. So I thought that in preparation for that, for anybody who's going on the retreat and anybody who's not, that I would tell you about the reasons that retreats are so impactful in our lives. Now, when I use the word retreat, I mean an intentional time away, not just a day off where you stay home and catch up on laundry, not just a vacation to somewhere fun that's kind of an escape from your life. This is a time in a different location with a specific purpose. So in this episode, I'm going to tell you why it's important, what the evidence behind it, how it changes your brain, and then I'll give you a few tips on how to actually accomplish it. And then I'll make another episode a little quickie when I get back about all the things that we did on this retreat so that you can kind of learn along with us and then hopefully join us for the next one.

SPEAKER_01 1:44

All right, so let's talk about why this works. What's the neuroscientific basis for why moving yourself into a different location is going to change your mind faster than trying to do that in the same environment? So there's plenty of data from various sectors. The addiction literature demonstrates this very, very clearly that removing people from the environment in which they have the addictive behavior is incredibly effective. And recognizing that the environment has sort of habit triggers. So that's kind of one piece of evidence. The other is in the quality literature. I worked in quality improvement for many, many years. And one of the things that we would do is something called a force function. So if you do not, you engineer the environment to where the desired behavior is the only one that is available to you. That's a way to improve for the performance of the desired behavior. So we can use those two techniques. We also use this philosophy, or this is this is a kind of part of the science behind why habit stacking works. If you already have something that you do automatically, and then you stack another habit that you want to build right behind it, you're much more likely to do it because you're already kind of in the environment, you're already receiving the cues that your body-mind knows is associated with something, and now you're just tying it to one more thing. So with those three kind of pieces of evidence, we know that, you know, our our brain gets good at what we practice. And so, and that what fires together wires together. So when we're in our home environment, when we're going to our workplace every day, when we're driving the same way, washing our body the same way, brushing our teeth the same way, all the things that we do habitually, we're also falling into some of those thought patterns or unhelpful behaviors that kind of come along with the package. When we move to a different location, all of a sudden our brain is like, I don't know what this is. I do not have a template for this. And so all of a sudden, those thought patterns, habit loops that were tied to the environment get released. You've probably noticed this, that, you know, you feel different when you're on vacation. Now, depending on what kind of vacation it is and what's going on, there may be new stressors. So you may not feel completely different. And that's why the tips that I'm going to give you that that allow this to be intentional are also important. This probably won't happen just by changing location, but the location change is an important piece. One thing I noticed, I went on a retreat over the summer with my yoga teacher of 10 years, Laura. We spent a weekend at a farm that works on contemplative ecology and really focuses on, you know, eating from the land, sustainable farming practices. And of course, we were practicing a lot of yoga. So I found it easy to do things that I would was relatively resistant to in my home life. For example, eating a plant-based diet, not eating very much food at all. We didn't snack, we didn't have dessert, you know, we didn't have a constant stream of like coffee and snacks like you do at most conferences. That's another real habit pattern. Have you noticed how you may have habits that probably developed from college or med school? But if you sit down to listen to something, you have to have like a drink or a snack with you. That's perfect example of how the environmental cues kind of drive some behaviors and habits. So this was the opposite of that, right? When I'm out on this farm around all of these people who kind of shared this philosophy, and I have it all kind of engineered to do that, waking up, practicing yoga for a couple of hours, going and eating a small plant-based breakfast, then doing some physical work for a period of time, eating a small lunch, again, resting my body, enjoying the nature, not really feeling the need to hustle or do. These were all effortless things. I'm practiced in slowing down. So the actually the slowing down and the not doing was something that has become much more familiar to me in my everyday life because I've been practicing it intentionally over the past 10 years. But the food was something that I really, really struggled with. I really struggle with not overeating. I struggle with snacking. I certainly love me some desserts. And I love drinks and coffees and kind of always having something to sip on. And I found that when I was at this setting, I didn't really care about all any of those things. And it was kind of almost effortless. Yes, it was only for a couple of days. Maybe if I'd stayed longer, some of those habits might have crept back in. But the environment change and the people change, right? So the people are part of the environment, who you're around definitely influences your behaviors and thoughts as well. But that it had a really huge shift. So that that was one thing that was really kind of a big aha for me about how much this could be. So the changing the environment will accelerate how quickly you can change your brain. Could you do it in your same environment? Yes, of course you can, but it will be slower and it will require more effort. So this is just a tool that you can use to make it easier on yourself. The beauty of it, let's use that example of me going on a retreat and realizing that I could eat plant-based and I could eat small amounts and not be starving and not be miserable. Did that magically change me into someone who could do that at home? No. But it showed me what was possible. I got to visit that reality for that couple of days and say, look at this. I can do this. So then I started asking different questions. Instead of asking the questions about what's wrong with me that I can't do this, I started saying, what about that environment was conducive to it? And what about this environment is working against it? And how can I start to modify some of those things? Some things are going to be easy to modify, some things are going to be really hard to modify. People's a big one. If the habits of the people around you are one of the things that's kind of keeping you in a specific pattern, then we have to start to work as a team. We got to get buy-in from everybody. And this is often why organizational change or change within teams, change within family systems is hard because it's not all within your control. But there may be things that were that are within your control. Like, oh, it was so simple that they just prepared a batch of sweet potatoes in the morning, right? And they baked the sweet potatoes while they were baking the morning muffin. And then we had the sweet potatoes for lunch. Like that was kind of a simple change that I was like, I could probably do that. So, but you start to ask different questions. You believe that it's possible, and you shift from thinking this is something that I can't do inherent, and you then see, oh, this actually had something to do with the environment. Sort of proves that to you. And this is how our brains make change. It looks for evidence. Our brains are pattern-making machines. So we're kind of breaking the pattern by going away and doing something different. All right. So that's why you want to do it. Now let's talk about how to do it, how to get the most out of it. Probably the first time you do this, this might go best as a solo mission, not something that you try to do with your spouse, with your kids, with your extended family. You yourself go on a retreat, allow yourself to be surrounded by other people who are intentionally doing this work, and allow yourself to be guided by somebody who knows what we're trying to accomplish here. So a structured kind of retreat activity. You can go on something kind of organized by individuals, like what I'm hosting. You could go to a retreat center. Kropalu is one that's here in the Massachusetts area that I love. They have retreats all the time. There are other retreat centers around the country. Or you could come up with something yourself, maybe do it remotely. If you have a teacher that you enjoy and wanted to kind of ask, I'd be happy to do it for you if you email me. Could you design me kind of a self-guided retreat that could also work if you, for timing reasons or whatever, couldn't get to one of these kind of guided retreats? So what about it? Like what are we looking for? An intention. Intention is everything. What is the point, right? What is my, I don't like to say goal, because that really implies kind of hustle attached to outcome, grind. We got to get the goal, ambition focused. But what are we aiming towards, right? Am I aiming towards visiting calmness? Am I aiming towards visiting celebrating my body and getting back in touch with the functionality that I do have? Am I aiming towards some self-discovery? Am I exploring my values today? Like, what am I doing with this time? What does what is its job? What is the job of this time? That's important intention. Changing the environment, we already talked about that. So physically just going somewhere else. Nature is always going to be a plus. So getting out into a natural environment, whether that's going on a hike, going out into the woods to go camping, going to the beach, just going to a nice park. Any, any, any of those things is going to be great and kind of turbocharge this, and then build in the natural element into what you're doing. I'm going to, you know, walk mindfully through the forest for an hour. I'm going to go sit on the beach without music and just listen to the waves, any of those kind of mindful activities, because you do want to have your intention, but then you don't want to like overplan and hold tight. So as I'm thinking about the weekend ahead for my people, we certainly have yoga practices and coaching exercises that are very intentionally chosen to work on the things that the retreat is about. But then we have lots of time where I'm encourage them to just kind of be with themselves, kind of practice the slowness. So that's definitely part of it. You do need to enlist your people. Again, I recommend for the first time doing this by yourself, but that doesn't mean that it's you're the only one involved. All of us have responsibilities in our lives that you have to step away from in order to give yourself this time and space. So you do have to partner with your co-parent, spouse, whoever it is, even if you just have pets, right? We have to find somebody to care for them. You need to make people feel secure that you're taking time away, but you are coming back, right? That's what you want to communicate. I'm taking a few days away, but I'm coming back. This, I always like to communicate that this is good practice, right? Of just for all of us. It's practice for me to go away and do something different, but it's also practice for you to practice living when I'm not standing right next to you. And that could be something you communicate to all the people in your life at a developmentally or relationship appropriate level. Sometimes we do do one of the habits that we can be kind of stuck in is some version of codependency, right? Where we just are falling into our patterns of being dependent on each other without even noticing it. And that sometimes giving people the opportunity to be independent is a huge gift to them. But I would discuss that and sort of communicate that in advance so that they have an opportunity to talk it through and can also see it as a gross opportunity for them. So, for example, for me, the first time that I went away, I have been going away from medical conferences and different things since before my children were born. But the first time that I went away where there was like no phones. So people knew they really weren't going to talk to me for the entire length of time that I was gone. We did a lot of kind of prep for that. Of course, there has to be some kind of emergency way. And most retreat centers have a house line or some kind of way that if there's truly an emergency and someone needs to get in touch with you, they can call that line and they'll go and find you. So people don't need to have anxiety that if some crisis happens, they really can't find you. You're not totally off the grid in that way. I would not go totally off-grid for your first time, for sure. The other option is just to have check-ins throughout the day. And my retreat, you know, I'm saying phone-free in public areas, but you can have your phone in your own room. So you could set up a situation in which you just said at X, Y, and Z time through the day, I'm gonna go to my room and text you just to check in so that you know I'm okay. I know that you're okay, just so that we don't have anxiety about anything. But we really want to minimize how much you're having to manage from afar. That's part of what we're practicing. We all kind of fall into this chief everything officer role in our lives where we're holding things together. This is sometimes an opportunity to reveal how much you were doing. And you may be surprised, and they may be surprised, at how much they can solve for themselves if mom isn't just right there to ask the question to solve the problem or take the problem away from them. So that is actually the beauty in it. I I actually love moms stepping away intentionally to give the people at home practice at independence. Um, but that that is part of the preparation as well. And then, of course, thinking through logistics. How are you gonna get there? Do you need to take days off? What's the weather? What's the sleeping arrangements? How are you gonna feed yourself? All of those things. Going to a retreat center that's full service obviously solves a lot of those problems. And that I, as a retreat host, try to solve as many of those problems for people as possible so that they can just show up and work on the inner work, which is really what they want to do. That's the hard job, but we can't forget about the logistics because if we're out in the middle of the woods with no food, we're really not gonna be able to meditate or self-reflect very well. So those are a couple of the ways that I think you can get the most out of it. Sometimes the biggest hurdle is just admitting that you want to try it, just admitting that you need it, and then saying, I'm gonna do it. Because and then try it, right? And see how it goes. Commit to the intention, commit to the change, right? And then loosen the specifics. So the other thing I don't want you to do if you listen to this episode and think to yourself, oh my gosh, Emma's right. I need to change my environment so that I can change my mind. I need to move to Fiji for a month. That's it. If I can't do that, I might as well not do anything. I did not say that. Nowhere in this episode did I say that you need to move to Fiji for a month. If you want to do that and you have the means to do that, more power to you, it'll probably be magical and wonderful. But that's perfectionism talking, right? When we say it has to be this one way, this kind of grandiose way, or else it's not even worth it, we're really working against ourselves. What is the smallest unit of change that could make a difference? Half a day out at a park in which you give yourself two or three journal prompts and commit to doing, you know, some walking and some meditation is fantastic. If you could do that, you would be well better than spending three years trying to figure out how you were gonna get to Fiji. So that's it. That is, in a nutshell, the reason to go on retreat, the power of it, and the way to accomplish it. You can do it. If you want help problem solving, if you want help planning, what you're gonna do if you're doing self-guided, or if you want tips on retreat centers, I've been to a lot of them, or I know people who have. So if you're curious about a specific one, just leave us a comment and I am happy to give you any tips on that. And I'll be sure I'll be back after I do the Vermont retreat to let you know how it goes and tell you about all the amazing results that our retreat participants had. That's all for now. See you next time.