Outsourcing Will Power to Your Environement

 This is the last Podcast episode in this format for a while. I hope you like it. We do some house keeping up front followed by a quick word of grieving thanks to recent unfortunate circumstances.

Speak Plainly Podcast will be on a temporary hold in this format. I am headed on an adventure! I'm setting off to explore the wonders of Nepal, Ladakh, Taiwan, Japan, and Thailand. Because of that I hope you will follow my Instagram account OwlCMedicine linked in the description, as that is where Ill be sharing my travel adventures and insights.

All episodes of this podcast are available on YouTube now. I will continue to post longer form Podcast Style videos there using just my ear buds and phone. I will miss the sound of my mic but I wont miss the weight as I hike the Himalayas.


In this Episode I share a transformative insight: Environments hold the key to sustaining our willpower.

if will power worked youd have accomplished your dreams by now.  So instead of relying on will power to help us do hard things maybe we ought to outsource those decisions to our environment!?


Join me as I unveil the notion of "environmental prosthetics," illustrating how intentional design of our spaces—like the simple view from a hospital window—can have a profound impact on our recovery and well-being. 

Chapters

• 0:35 Navigating Grief and Cultural Traditions
• 9:01 Outsourcing Willpower to Your Environment
• 22:29 Maximizing Willpower Through Environment Manipulation
• 32:19 Mastering Environment for Improved Habits

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:35

Hey everybody and welcome back to another episode of the Speak Plainly podcast, where we speak plainly about things that matter. I'm your host, al Medicine, and right up today I'd like to do a little house cleaning. I have failed y'all. I have not put out a podcast in a number of weeks. Things have been wild around here.

Speaker 1: 0:59

I spent a week in Indiana. I went and visited my family and saw the total eclipse in person and that was amazing. It was really cool to see and I mean just like what an incredible, like once in a lifetime experience. That was really awesome Then, and it was also awesome spending time with my mom and my sister and my grandma. And what was really cool is we didn't even have to go anywhere. I mean, I did. I had to fly 28 hours in each direction to get there and back, so I didn't have to pay $1,400 for a direct flight, because who has that? Not this guy. So I made it back after watching the eclipse in my sister's front yard for like three and a half minutes. It was really, really cool and I was back for, I think, less than 48, maybe 72 hours and one of my closest friends in the world, one of my bestest friends in the world lost her spouse. She found him dead and I went to acupuncture school with both my friend and her spouse and he was a really incredible guy and so when I found that out, I bought tickets and left the next day and was down there in less than 24 hours from notice, got down and spent like I don't know 10 days or something in San Jose with my friend.

Speaker 1: 2:34

Which brings me to what I almost did this podcast on and I will touch on it briefly. I want to touch on grief briefly again, for the billionth time. I know that we talk about that a lot on this podcast, but it is a very real thing that I think most people don't know how to do, and I just want to tell you a story about what happened in this. So my friend Tony is who passed, and Tony was a just an impressive human being, and I choose those words very purposefully because he was impressive as a human more than anything else. He wasn't impressive as a writer or a like anything else besides just being the best human man. He was incredible and everybody he met like he lit up the room. You know, he was such a wonderful giving goofy, goony ass motherfucker and we're we all miss him. We're going to continue to miss him.

Speaker 1: 3:48

But my friend, her mother, is Taiwanese and flew in all the way from Taiwan and she had just been back for like five months or something and left and was only back for a couple of weeks and then heard about Tony's passing and immediately turned around and flew back. What was so cool about this for me, coming from the West, is she's Taiwanese and she's old school Taiwanese and they have culture that's different. And I don't mean they have a culture that is different, I mean they have a culture period that's different period, because we don't have any culture in the Western white, imperialized, colonized world. We destroyed it all. Outside of destruction, destruction and acquisition is pretty much all that we have as in form of culture. But they have more and she and this is the point, I'll get to it quickly the importance of having practical things to do not even practical, let me say, tangible things to do. The importance of having physical, tangible things to do to help you move through and process big emotions, especially grief, especially, my God, the grief of losing a spouse. I've lost a brother, I've lost friends, I've lost people close to me, but I've never lost the person closest to me. I lost Ki, who was the being that was closest to me, and it was earth shattering. I can't even imagine what that's like. But in Taiwan they have their own heaven and hell, and the heaven was really cool because the Taiwanese or Chinese heaven is. They have everything that we have here on earth, except in black and white, and you have these really cool ceremonies. We had a beautiful ceremony out at the beach where we burned, exactly at seven days from his passing, where we burned stuff that was his. That way the smoke could carry it to heaven and then he could have it in heaven. And I love this because, yeah, you hear about stuff like that, but when there is actual culture, there is a reason and a purpose behind it, and that intent changes everything. And so we were able to.

Speaker 1: 6:11

As much as having your mother, who can be very triggering, and her mother is for her, whose mom isn't, but her mom is especially triggering for her, even though having her around was difficult in some ways, there was an amazing beauty in her bringing this tradition and this cultural tradition to the family and to Tony, who was not Taiwanese, and moving through this process where there were physical things that had to be done, like as soon as she found out that he died, she, in like an hour, immediately dropped everything and went to the death temple. They have death temples there and she made an offering at the death temple. Then she went to these funeral shops that sell things for these funerals, where they I guess it's not for the funeral, it's for some sort of releasing ceremony I don't know what the name was, but there was like paper, like she brought a, like a three foot paper car and like they have all the fancy cars because, again, it's just like earth except black and white. And so their belief system says this is the way things work. And so these are the things that you do to foster the stuff that you want, although, like I said, mom can be triggering. Having something physical and real and tangible that you move through as a way to process your grief is really profound, and I just wanted to leave that out there, and I want to apologize for not putting out a podcast consistently, but that's why I was in Indiana.

Speaker 1: 7:47

I was visiting family, there was all kinds of weird, interesting things that happened there, and then I had to turn around and immediately went down to California, spent a little over a week there and flew back with 15 days before I leave for Nepal. So things have been wild and I have a show this Friday. So I normally record these on Thursdays now and put them out on Friday, but I'm recording early, I'm recording on a Tuesday because things have been wild. So I have a show on Friday where I'm playing music because, as most of you who listen know, I made a promise to myself when I wrote the book and realized that it was good and it was going to be good and it was going to make an impact and I might carve the way for me to do some more things in the same vein. I promised myself that I wouldn't allow trauma to run my life, even the recovery of trauma. I wouldn't allow it to run my life, and so I decided I would play music, like I'd always wanted to. But I had a bunch of trauma around. So I started playing shows and this is my last one before I leave for a very long trip.

Speaker 1: 9:01

I'm doing Nepal, and then Ladakh in the northern part of India, up on the beautiful plateau, and then I am doing Taiwan and then I am I'm really, really stuck on trying to find this textile shop that I visited when I was in Japan, and it's right there. It's a hundred bucks to fly to Japan. So I'm thinking I'll probably fly to Japan too before I hit Thailand, and then I'll fly back from Thailand and I'll be back come the end of July. So that's my layout. So this brings me to the next piece of housekeeping.

Speaker 1: 9:36

The first was that this little bit on grief and how different cultures handle things differently. Different cultures handle things differently, but each of them have physical practices, tangible practices that help us move through grief. And finding one of those just pick one, Like in the West, it would be much easier for us to get things inherited, but most of what we inherit is oppression and repression. We're either oppressing other people or we're repressing something, and that's kind of it. So find a grief ritual that works for you and maybe have it in the back of your head when something comes around. So that's point number one.

Speaker 1: 10:21

Point number two is I'm about to be gone for a really long time. So that's point number one. Point number two is I'm about to be gone for a really long time, which means this is the last podcast, most likely, that I'm going to be doing in this form. I'm just going to do it a little bit differently and I recently have moved all of these episodes onto YouTube. If you didn't know that, now you do. They're all on YouTube. There's no video to go along with them, because I'm lazy and I don't want to become presentable to do these things. It's too much work, which actually brings me to the original topic of the podcast. But we'll get there.

Speaker 1: 11:10

It's about me being lazy, but I will be posting everything on YouTube. So, and I will be putting a lot of little short videos and stuff on Instagram. So you can follow me on Instagram, owlseamedicine. I have other pages, but they're like, focused on weird things, so just follow me on OwlSeaMedicine on Instagram. I probably should do a TikTok and all that BookTok and all this stuff is supposed to be great, but again I'm lazy. So follow me on Instagram, because that's probably the only place I'm going to be great. But again I'm lazy. So follow me on Instagram because that's probably the only place I'm going to be posting everything. And then I will be posting more podcast-y stuff on YouTube, but it will be with a video. I will be using just a pair of headphones instead of my fancy microphone, because my fancy microphone takes up space and weight and I am going to be backpacking the Himalayas, so carrying around already my giant laptop and my camera and two lenses is enough weight. I don't think I need to add a microphone to it, especially with how much? Yeah, just cut the. Everything after the especially All right.

Speaker 1: 12:26

So here we are. Now. We've gotten the housekeeping out of the way. Grief is wild. Two is I hope that you will find me on YouTube and I hope that you will follow me on Instagram so you can get the updates of what I'm doing. Because, again, nepal. And then, if you don't know what Ladakh is, I didn't I literally just googled most beautiful places and coolest places in the world to visit in June and all of them were kind of in the same area. It was like Mongolia, ladakh, and it's a little late to visit Nepal and do like the Annapurna circuit, which was my plan, but it's still gonna be beautiful and I'm going to do it, and all of these places are stunning and I really like to get very immersed in everything when I travel. I'm not a travel vlogger or anything like that. Again, too much work, but follow me there and you'll get all of the updates and see where I'm going and all that kind of cool shit. So, all right, we're leaving that behind. It's been 14 minutes almost of me blabbing about housekeeping.

Speaker 1: 13:28

So today's actual podcast is Outsourcing Willpower to your Environment. Why? Because I'm lazy, so I have a real bone to pick with willpower in general, which almost makes me want to like recant all my stuff about Dr Sapolsky's new book on the absence of free will. But it's not that I think we have zero free will. It's that I think we have extremely little like so effing little. And but I do think that tiny bit is very important. I mean, that's sensitive dependence upon initial conditions, and I think having even the tiniest amount of free will is very important.

Speaker 1: 14:15

But this isn't a philosophical episode. What this episode is about is how to outsource your willpower to your environment. What I mean by that is how do you get things done the easy way instead of using your willpower? Because, again, most of us our willpower is shit. If you had willpower, you could have done the things that you wanted to do by now, right, so why are you still counting on willpower? That's kind of the whole thought that brought me here In the book.

Speaker 1: 14:50

I call this concept environmental prosthetics and that was introduced to me by a friend who could not remember where she learned it from. I googled it and I couldn't find it to give proper credit. But environmental prosthetics it's a fantastic concept and really all it is is outsourcing your willpower to your environment. What, all right. So what you should be asking yourself is what am I doing? The hard way that my environment can do for me? The easy way for me? The easy way? How can I use the space around me to make my life easier?

Speaker 1: 15:36

So just to talk about the importance of environment here, there was a study done in 1984 on gallbladder surgery and in the study they had people in rooms with a brick wall. In the study they had people in rooms with a brick wall and people in rooms with a window to a tree. There was a window that showed a brick wall, not just a brick wall. Sorry, there was a window that only showed the view of a brick wall and a window that showed a view of a tree, and the results of this study showed that there were less painkillers being taken by the people with the tree in sight. They were also reported to be much more pleasant to be around, they were more pleasant and they took less pain pills because there was a tree outside their window Like, which is kind of crazy. It makes sense, but literally just a tree outside the window. That's how impactful our environment is. It literally makes people take less painkillers. So if the environment can heal your body, imagine what it can do for your mind.

Speaker 1: 16:40

People on average spend 90, in our modern day, 90% of our time inside. We don't have that much control over the outside. Weather happens, rain happens, tornadoes and thunderstorms and wind and all kinds of things that are uncomfortable and chaotic and out of our control. But inside we control everything. We even control the climate. We call it climate control. It's AC and central heat. So if we have that much control over our inside, like over the environments that we stay in because we're inside, inside of buildings all of the time, then why shouldn't we try to help ourselves out by manipulating our environment to serve us better? By manipulating our environment to serve us better. What I mean by this is why don't we use our environment to automate our own decisions? What can we use our environment to like? How can we leverage our environment rather to create good habits and make good decisions.

Speaker 1: 17:43

The easy decision there was like, there's the whole thing of like I can have one, I can have a bag of chips, or I can have no chips. It is almost impossible for me to have one chip right, like, if I have one Dorito, it's game over. If I have one cookie, it's game over. I will eat the entire box, right? Well, I will. I don't know if you know me, but I fucking will. So the way that I get around this and I don't exhaust any willpower is I don't have them in my van, don't have them in your house. It's that simple. Don't have cookies in your house. That is a very simple way that you can use your environment to automate good decisions. So another example of how environment shapes us is there was a study where there was a German airport where they transplanted the airport. It was in one area and it was about to be moved to another, and some social scientists went oh, this is a great chance to do a little study here. So they did a study where they surveyed the people in the area where the airport was and in the area where the airport was going to be, and then, after they moved the airport, they did that same survey again and it turns out that wherever the airport was, those children had negative psychological and physiological and behavioral effects.

Speaker 1: 19:12

Your home environment should be tailored to you. It should make you feel loved, it should make you feel at home, it should make you feel comfortable. I'm a very growth-oriented person. I'm a very expansion-oriented person. I'm a very like make it better until it's wondrous kind of person. But my home, my van, really is about making come home. It should be a sanctuary where you can rest and that means not wasting your willpower.

Speaker 1: 19:56

There are so many ways to do what we want by not wasting willpower and I think the best way to not waste willpower is to leverage your environment. So for me it can be hard to regulate, especially in my past. It can be very hard to regulate around groups like large groups of people, especially if it's large groups of people from different walks of my life, because I've had such a weird one and I'm not really sure how to integrate people. Now I don't care quite as much, but early on my van was really really important because I needed to be able to recluse and go hide in my van and be comfortable and have it be my sanctuary. And my van acted as a environmental prosthetic, because, rather than being overwhelmed and freaking out, I could just come to my van and chill, calm down and go back at it, and things worked really well for me. Another way that you can outsource your willpower to your environment is any habit that you have that you want to get rid of. The usual way is I got to stop drinking.

Speaker 1: 21:12

Actually, just yesterday I was on the phone with a great buddy of mine I love him to death and he's a sad sack right now broke up with his girlfriend and we were talking about like how much it sucks and that sort of thing. And and I asked like what he was doing. Or I was like what do you do when you go, when you feel sad, and you go get a beer? And I was like, well, I drank it. And I'm like, well, of course, you fucking drink it. Do you do anything else? And he was like Nope and just drank it. I was like cool, so instead of just drinking your beer cause you've been trying to quit, but there's like you're back with your ex, that's the way you put it. He was like I'm back with my ex and he held up a hurry, a hurricane if you don't know what that is. And if you don't know what that is, google it or don't whatever. But he held up his little hurry and was like, back with my ex, I'm like okay, cool, but you don't want to be. That was what he told me earlier. Of course I don't give a fuck, I'm not judging, like do your thing, boo. But he's like I'm back with my ex and I keep trying to quit drinking and I just I can't bring myself to. And I was like, well then, stop trying to quit drinking, try crowding it out. That's the best way. Like if you have a habit you want to break, crowd it out.

Speaker 1: 22:29

So what that looks like in this case is this dude is a badass musician, a incredible mandolin player, and I love him to death and he writes damn good music. And he actually just showed me yesterday a new song. It was new to me. I guess he wrote it a little while ago now, but not that long ago, but anyway it was new to me. It's fucking dope. I love songs that sound like they've always existed. I think those are some of the coolest. He wrote it a little while ago now, but not that long ago, but anyway, it was new to me. It was fucking dope. I love songs that sound like they've always existed. I think those are some of the coolest things in the world to write. And he wrote another one. So I was like, oh yeah, that's awesome.

Speaker 1: 22:57

Do that. Instead of wasting your willpower trying to extend your not drinking for maximum, win another 45 minutes, or whatever, why don't you just do something while you're not drinking for maximum win another 45 minutes, or whatever? Why don't you just do something while you're drinking instead, like write some music? So make a rule for yourself that, rather than saying I'm going to quit drinking because that's the root of all of my problems, why don't you say that just drinking and being a sad sack thinking about how much of a piece of shit I am is actually the root of all of my problems? Why don't I, since I'm going to drink, since it seems like I'm going to drink no matter what, why don't you just play some fucking music while you get drunk and then you can be a sad sack playing some music, writing some beautiful, sad music. Make the end, and I think that's a great way to go about it. And maybe he will, maybe he won't, but I love you. If you're listening nudes, I love you, you're awesome and it's okay to be a sad sack, so that's another way. That's another way to get rid of wasting your willpower, because I really think willpower is a giant pile of horseshit. I do think that we have free will, but I think it's very weak and I think it can be grown, but most of the time, even the people who have developed it very strongly have developed it strongly by doing exactly this process.

Speaker 1: 24:25

What we're talking about is like these people who seem like they have incredible willpower. They have incredibly regulated and regimented environments. That's how they maintain willpower. You see those people who measure everything that they eat. They go to the gym, like for two hours a day. They're super onto it. They eat super clean and healthy. They're doing all the right things. You go to their house and everything is spotless. They've got to have everything in order and everything has to be just so. You know why? Because they don't have any fucking willpower. If they had willpower, they wouldn't need to have everything just so they would be able to live a totally chaotic life and still measure their proteins and measure their macros and do all that crap. But they don't, and the reason is because they've outsourced willpower to their environment. I hope this is making sense.

Speaker 1: 25:26

Let me think of another example, another way that we can outsource our willpower to our environment Ah, even acupuncture. So in the Air Force. The first introduction I had to acupuncture was in the Air Force and we did. Nada, the National Acupuncture Detoxification Association, is the group and that also happens to be the name of these five points that they put in both ears and it's used by acupuncturists without borders and it's used in the military. We used it a lot for smoking cessation. Anytime people came in they would for like, hey, I want to quit, I want to quit smoking. The certified acupuncturist had the option of being like hey, would you like to try this acupuncture? And that's great.

Speaker 1: 26:17

You go to the acupuncturist, they put some needles in your ears and then that's an environmental thing that makes your cravings less. Environmental thing that makes your cravings less. So when you get sent off, you have less cravings that you have to like, waste your willpower, less on right, wonderful. The way to make that even better is to get put in ASPs, or acupuncture semi-permanent needles, and they're these cute little pieces of glitter needle that get shoved in your ear hole and they go in the same place that the NADA points do and they stay in for three days to a week. So now, suddenly, you've created a piece of environment that you carry in your ears that help to reduce your cravings and help you feel more balanced and less dysregulated. That way you want to use less or to smoke less, depending on what you got your NADA for and then you've now carried your environment with you for three days or a week to make your whole nervous system well-regulated and to reduce your cravings and to make those cravings less extreme.

Speaker 1: 27:21

That is actually a way of manipulating your environment, because your body is your environment. I don't know if you know this, but you live inside of a body because your body is your environment. I don't know if you know this, but you live inside of a body and that body is important when stuff happens to that body. Stuff happens to you, whether we like it or not, whether that's grief, or whether that's a car accident, or whether that's inheriting some kind of genetic anomaly that makes us have this, that or the other problem All right. So another thing about willpower is we often need willpower when we feel dysregulated and we're using willpower to not freak out. Sometimes those of us like me, of us like me. And so, since that is a form of, like, our consumption of willpower, another way that we can kind of get around that to some degree is I mentioned that your home should be a sanctuary.

Speaker 1: 28:17

But specifically, like, whatever decorations that you have in your house, don't just put shit from TJ Maxx up there. I mean you can if you want, it's better than nothing. I suppose Definitely it's better than nothing. But if you take the time to decorate your environment with things that are genuinely meaningful to you, not things that necessarily look the best or the most expensive or whatever, but things that are meaningful to you. And I mean, hey, when I first got like, when I first got enough money to buy nice things, I was in the military.

Speaker 1: 28:56

When I was in the military and setting up my apartment and things, I got nice. I got nice things and I got things exclusively because they looked good, because I came from a family where we had we never had matching. There was never. There wasn't a matching plate set in the house, or cups or silverware or anything. And it drove me crazy. I'm not even OCD that way, I'm pretty chaotic, but that drove me nuts and it reminded me that we were poor and I didn't want that. So it did help me to do those things and that was great and wonderful.

Speaker 1: 29:28

But over time I have found things that are both beautiful in the way that I wanted them to be beautiful, in a way that didn't make me feel like white trash, but also had stories. So let me grab a friend and go to TJ Maxx and wander the store and have a good time and laugh and joke and cut up and get iced lattes on the way and make an event of it, and then I can go buy my little laying Buddha like glyce or whatever that everybody winds up getting from TJ Maxx or Kirkland's Kirkland's. Because what happens when you do that is every time that you look at your lying Buddha or your Kirkland's frame you are reminded of the story and narrative is so healing. It is so healing and it is so powerful in regulation. Our narrative is what determines whether or not our body is well regulated 90% of the time, because 90% of the time, whatever we're getting dysregulated over is not going to happen and it's not real, literally.

Speaker 1: 30:46

Just the other day I something there was like a piece of bad news or stressful news? I don't even remember what it was at this point. I've had a few of those recently and I started. My brain took me down this random road of what could happen, like what might happen, and it went far enough that it was just a thought. And obviously I know that my body reacts and I see it happen all the time. But it had been a while since my mind went on such a trail that I got so mad that I was just kind of spaced out with my phone in my hand thinking about what? This scenario that would never happen, and I literally cursed at the invisible person in my brain who I was creating. Like I out loud, not like, oh, fuck them in my head. No, no, like out loud I was. I started going off about and I only got a few words out before I realized how insane I was. But I literally made up this whole story to where I wound up so mad at somebody in my head who didn't exist, over a scenario that would probably never happen, that I, out loud, was like fuck this bitch, or whatever it is. I said I can't even remember now, but I immediately laughed. I immediately was like oh my God, girl, get your shit together. It was insane and that's that's the power of narrative.

Speaker 1: 32:19

And so, to combat moments like that, I think it's great, speaking of your house being a sanctuary, to have things around your environment that remind you of a beautiful story, that are that because that beautiful story can be regulating or a story can be dysregulating. And like right in front of me, I have the most beautiful coach bag that was ever made. I got it from the coach outlet, of course, because I'm a broke bitch and it was a waste of, like money in my head and all of that. But I was messaging Michael about it and I love this bag and I'd seen it at multiple places and I was like it's stunning and it's super duper cheap because it's Christmas and I had never really spent money on something just because it was beautiful, since I was in the military and that was really just for like, for decorations and stuff.

Speaker 1: 33:10

This, I was like, has zero utility other than it's just a little purse, but it's stunning and it matches everything that I wear and I absolutely love it and it makes me so happy and every time I look at it it makes me happy, it makes me feel like a boozy bitch and I got it at the same place that I got that. I went and got my matching bag with my sister. So every time I look at this thing, I think of being in Indiana with my sister and I feel warm and loved and like, and I laugh and I remember that time and I think about hanging out with her and her husband and how much fun we have and it's just it's. It reminds me of the ease of of that relationship with me and my sister and her husband. They're wonderful. And this little thing reminds me of that narrative and that narrative is soothing and when I am soothed and well-regulated I don't have to waste willpower.

Speaker 1: 34:02

And that's what this whole podcast today is about is how to not waste willpower. So a few tips. A few is how to not waste willpower. So a few tips, a few other tips for not wasting willpower. So solving environmental problems should be your like a top priority for you, because it allows you to save your willpower and you can use it for things that really matter. But what that means by solving environmental problems first is things in your environment that cause you frustration should be the first thing to go, because they've actually done studies on what's more important chasing happiness or removing annoyances and it turns out that removing annoyances is better than chasing happy or doing the things that would normally make you happy. Doing the things that would normally make you happy while there is an annoyance around you is less rewarding biologically than just removing the annoyances. So instead of trying to overhaul an entire room or wing of the house or your whole fucking life because so many of us do that why don't we deal with one environmental problem?

Speaker 1: 35:15

Find one thing like right now, if you're at home or in your car or whatever. Look around or think about your space at home and think of one annoying thing about it. Think about one annoying thing in your environment and know your spouse or your children don't count because you can't just hire a plumber and fix them. But think of an environmental thing in your house that is an annoyance and then think of a way to make it less annoying, one thing at a time. That's the Heizen principle the Heizen being a Japanese thing for small incremental steps, the smallest incremental step that you can possibly make, and make one every day. That's that incremental growth thing. Do that. Think of your environment that you spend the most amount. Think of the environment that you spend the most amount of time in. Think of the number one most annoying thing in that environment and try to come up with a way to make it less annoying.

Speaker 1: 36:24

So a catchphrase that I got from Strufless, which I love that channel on YouTube. He's so cute too. Oh my God, I love him. Um, but I love um, and I, I stole this. I stole this phrase from him. It says it says uh, surface is not storage. He's another crusty punky like kid like me who has gotten his life together. He's a dad now. Seriously, go watch him. Oh my God, he's so cute. I can't stand it. He's awesome. He's so cute, he's so sweet. He's such a neat little artist I really like. I really like his channel, but I love what he goes. Surface is not storage. Um, this was first introduced to me by Kaya, by my friend Adrian, and she told me about just flat surfaces. She's like flat surfaces they just become catch-alls. But he says surface is not storage.

Speaker 1: 37:17

So, instead of putting things down, put them away. That's another great way that we can make our environment really nice, especially for those of us with ADHD. Instead of putting things down, put them away Anytime something is about to leave your hand, just say that phrase put it away, not down. Put it away, not down, don't put it down, put it away. Whichever way works for you, don't put it down. Put it away and put things away. It's a really great little hack for those of us with ADHD brain.

Speaker 1: 37:47

I don't know if you know this, but I quit drinking many years ago and when I did, I could not have any alcohol in the house. It was just that simple. So if you are struggling with your weight or whatever, then just export your hard decisions to your environment. Just don't have those things in the house and instead of like limiting yourself and saying I can't have any of these one things, except for the stuff that you know, if you have one, like a whole bag of chips or a whole box of Oreos, make those be hard no's and just don't put them in your house at all and replace them with things that kind of hit the same spot. If you want a dessert thing, my new dessert thing recently has been pineapple. I've also been eating a lot of meat lately and it helps break down proteins and so it's been good for my digestion as well, but it hits that sweet spot that the desserts want. So, rather than just cutting myself out of all desserts because they're unhealthy and I'm gaining weight, instead I am replacing my desserts with pineapple, because it's awesome and it helps my digestion, and all of that kind of stuff. That's how we can replace our willpower with environmental prosthetics or prostheses.

Speaker 1: 39:13

So, before I let you go, I want you to remember that the space that you live in, the space that you occupy, reinforces your identity, and your identity creates habits. I'm going to say that again the space that you occupy reinforces your identity, and your identity is what creates habits. So if you want to change your habits, then you need to change your identity. And if you need to change your identity, then you need to change your space. Become the master of your environment and you will become the master of your identity and you will become the master of your actions. Thank you very much for joining me.

Speaker 1: 40:07

I really hope that you enjoyed this podcast. Again, this is going to be the last one in this form for a couple of months. I'm sorry I was gone, but I'm glad that you're with me now. I hope that you will follow me on Instagram at OwlSeaMedicine Listen. I hope that you will also follow LLC Medicine on YouTube. I have my music and stuff up there.

Speaker 1: 40:33

But soon and the whole podcast soon I'm going to start having more live stream video things. I might even do a thing on my packing and what I'm bringing with me and that sort of stuff. But I'm definitely going to be doing podcast-like informational stuff there, because I can't help but take neat experiences and kind of extrapolate a theoretical basis for it. So I hope that you'll join me on these other platforms. Thank you for being with me this whole time. Thank you for your continued listening. I hope that you have a marvelous week. Wish me luck as I blast through this next week of craziness before I head off to the other side of the world and go hike the Himalayas. If you like the podcast, consider buying me a coffee. The link is in the description and remember stay curious and stay uncomfortable. Thank you you.