From your workplace to your home to anywhere else you spend a significant amount of time; the living environment will always impact your psyche. Various elements within the environment interact with your body, whether you are conscious of it or not. Let us take a look at how this happens.
1. Lighting
Sunrays bring a feeling of optimism to a room while bright lighting schemes tend to heighten emotions. Avoid spending time in badly-lit environments. Badly lit does not necessarily mean under-lit but also over-lit areas. Natural light is also scientifically proven to improve people’s moods and should, therefore, be let into your living environment. When designing a living space, give the lighting aspect a huge consideration since it will play what is perhaps the largest part in affecting your overall psyche.
2. Curves vs Hard Edges
You might never have thought that the tables or chairs in your living room affect your moods. Hard-edged furniture activates a fear of sharp objects and in general, appearance seems less friendly. Always aim to have objects with more rounded edges and curves. These instill a sense of comfort and safety in our minds. For existing hard-edged furniture such as living room sofas, make them more soft-edged by adding fur pillows.
3. Color
After light, color probably plays the second most important role in the way a living space impacts our moods. The paint applied to walls in your living environment will always brighten or dull your moods. Some colors depict warmth while others are cold and serious. Spaces such as bedrooms and bathrooms should have these warm colors to help your mind relax.
4. Making it Personal
We always associate places with what we can see that is close to us. It is the sole reason why pretty much every household has family photos, pet photos and so on. Personalize your living environment with items closely associated with you. Get a piece of art and let it hang on that wall, mount an A1 photo and let it sit on that boring mantle, make the space yours. Try to imagine spending days, weeks or months in an empty room that only had your bed, not very appealing, is it?
5. Sounds
Sounds exists in many varieties: soft, loud, pleasant and unpleasant. Music is a pleasant sound as opposed to noise which is unpleasant. While there’s different kind of sounds, there’s different kind of people. Different kind of sounds differently affect a person’s psyche. While one might prefer a noisy environment, another one might prefer a less or no noise environment. Am sure no one would want to get pissed every time they get close to their environment. Hence, as an individual, get to know and understand the environment that fits you best and work on perfecting it.
6. People around You
Humans form a bigger percentage of how your living environment affects you. Naturally, we all want to stay around people who make us feel loved, happy and appreciated. People who accept us as we are. Humans can impact your living environment either positively or negatively. Example, living around a couple that constantly fight can be so stressful than living around a couple that encourages love and peace, additionally living in an environment that has well mannered people is favorable in terms of wanting to have your own kids since you’ll be sure they will be well mannered.
7. Climate
Most people are easily affected by change of climate. A slight rise or fall of temperature, a rise in sea levels and changes in precipitation, positively and negatively affect the changes in our moods. Some climate changes are extreme in that they affect the air we breathe, food we eat and the water we drink. Further climate changes can cause natural disasters such as floods, which in turn can leave us with serious damages in mental health. Examples include depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress even worse chronic psychological dysfunction.
8. Ease of Accessing Facilities
How nice is it to be able to access everything you want at your doorstep? Imagine living in an environment where you have to cover long distances just to be able to purchase what you require. For a fact, this will surely affect your psyche. It is for this reason, real estate agents thoroughly survey their locations before they construct apartments, which otherwise will remain unoccupied. This is also why most people prefer to live in urban areas where there is easy accessibility of facilities such as Schools and Hospitals.
9. Space
Living in a spacious environment is a lot of fun. The way your space is planned can either appeal or offend your moods. When your space does not seem to fit you anymore, you tend to make adjustments and even try to get rid of items that you no longer need. Every time you turn around then accidently hit or collide with another person or something, you’re sure to feel a bit of pain. I bet this really spoils your psyche. At the same time, living in an extra spacious environment can be very lonely. As an individual, it is best to find an environment that fits you best as per your needs.
10. Natural Resources
Natural Resources are God given. They come with advantages and disadvantages. One of their advantages is that they come in plenty, whereas a disadvantage is that once they are depleted, there’s nothing that can be done because they come naturally. Living in an environment with scarcity of these resources like water can spoil one’s psyche. Picture yourself staying without water or even food, how will you take a bath? how will you cook? What will you drink? For sure this is going to be hard. This is why you find most people migrating in search of these natural resources.
Conclusion
Every person wants the best for themselves. It is a major requirement that you strive to find the living environment that makes you sane. After all, happiness is key and essential in a person’s life. As the saying goes “A happy person is a happy home”.