How Your Environment Shapes Your Life (And What to Change Today) | Leidy Klotz - EP 794

26:53Yeah, the individual. And it's just, it's something that I wish more kids would participate in because I'm just seeing this shift where instead of letting them experience creativity and doing stuff with their hands on weekends when they could be doing that, they're playing video games instead. And I think it's going to create a gap as they get older of not getting to experience things like that. Yeah. And you put it the exact right way. It's not getting to experience. Some people frame it as, oh, these kids aren't going to know how to build stuff. And it's, yeah, that's part of it. But the bigger part of it is I had this experience with my son this weekend.

27:34We went to the food pantry to volunteer. This isn't something we do regularly. So I'm not bragging about it. It was just, let's do this. He was just cutting peppers with a knife and he, but it was a super sharp knife and he had the glove on and the guy was teaching him how to cut the peppers. And you could just see, you could see the sense of accomplishment in him, right? He's, I'm doing this thing that I've never done before. And when we're just in the virtual world, we're like taking away that opportunity and that cycles on itself, right? So I can cut the pepper. Maybe now I can eat a pepper or maybe I can help in other ways in the kitchen.

28:11And so I think, yeah, just like getting people into this world and the pepper isn't exactly building, but you said doing stuff with your hands and feeling like you can, again, make change in the world around you. I was in the middle of writing this book and I'll have another son example that's more building oriented. And so it was talking about agency and feeling like you can shape your surroundings. And we've got these steep stairs in our house that are slippery for older people, especially. And so I'm like, oh, let's put some carpet, just carpet tile down on that so that there's traction. And I'm going to let him pick the color and I'll have veto power, but I'll let him pick the color.

28:47And then all you have to do is stick them on. Right. So it was a relatively easy home improvement project. Okay. And he's going to help me stick them on. And he created the template so that you could get them on the right way on each stair. And he loved it. So you can look for these opportunities to help kids see that they can do something about the world around them. And I'm just laughing because one of my neighbors down the street recently painted their house neon green. And I wish I had veto power over that. That's chapter seven of the book, right? Your space is reflecting your values. And I'm like, what are you thinking?

29:25Seriously, like what exactly is the message you're sending about what's happening in this house. Well, I wanted to return to this for just a second. I think when we talk about the kids making those objects at Lowe's or participating in things like that, what it brings up to me is just like kids who are not doing those things anymore and who aren't getting to play as much as we used to, I think as adults, we're becoming a society that's increasingly outsourcing the building, fixing and creating aspects of our lives. And I wanted to ask you, what do we lose psychologically when we stop participating in the making of the spaces around us?

30:12And again, this isn't something that I made up. These are like our basic psychological needs for agency, competence and connection. And this is like self-determination theory, and it's been studied robustly across cultures over time, different contexts. And we're losing those, right? If you stop engaging with the physical world, it's not the only way to lose those basic needs that we have, but it is a surefire way to do. And so we're losing arguably the most important things that, that we need after these basic biological needs. So that's what's happening. I was hoping we could go from here to you introduce this idea of space before screen and maybe for the parents who are out there listening to this.

31:02What's this concept about and how could they help to apply it? So obviously everything we've talked about so far, and I don't think anyone would argue that, okay, we want people to be more engaged in the physical world. And then the problem is the distraction is the phone or the iPad or whatever. And I think instead of fighting the distraction, just using the distraction as a cue, right? So it's like when I reach for my phone in the morning, I think space before screen, right? And it's okay. I'm about to check my emails or I'm about to see who texted. And now instead of doing that first, I'm going to take in my physical surroundings.

31:38So that's like the most explicit meaning of it. And I just think it's a practice that we can get in the habit of. You could also put a picture of the physical world on your screensaver, right? And that would remind you when you looked at it, but I just use the screen as a cue to say, no, have I taken in this physical world around me? In your chapter where you talk about decide and you go into agency and control. When I was at Dell, what was interesting is the only person at Dell who had an office was Michael Dell. Okay. Interestingly enough, everyone else was in a sea of little boxes. and we were doing this experiment in the IT group where we stopped even giving people boxes.

32:25And we went into this open floor plan that every day, if you chose to come into the office, you could just pick any random space that you wanted. And for me, it was the first time that I didn't have a dedicated workspace. And I found it to be really psychologically challenging because there's something about having that familiarity of coming into your workspace and having pictures of your kids there and the common things that you're used to seeing. And I found it really psychologically harmful to me in some ways. I felt like I was just out of place and it was always difficult for me to get into that work groove.

33:10What do you think was going on? And do you think when environments like that are creating open work plans, that in some ways we're doing ourselves a disservice? I have an article that's coming out in the Wall Street Journal. It'll probably be out by the time this gets released. It comes out in June about how to use these ideas in the work environments. But one of the things is, I think open versus closed is a good question. But before we ask that, it's how do we ask about agency competence and connection, right? And I think when you're constantly, first of all, there's just the pure adjustment that needs to happen to an unfamiliar place, right?

33:48So if your desk is always changing every day, the first time you come in, it's just like, all right, where's the drawer? Where's the plug? And just getting used to it. It's small, but it's like a micro version of moving into a new house, right? And you don't know where the light switch is. And now all of a sudden you're having to use your mental energy for that instead of just moving around and thinking about other things. So, you know, we need to, that needs to be a design criteria, right? Basically. But then also when the space, I think it's going to be disorienting if you don't feel like you have control over it, right?

34:21If you don't feel like, okay, well, if I put this private paper here and leave it, it might not be there tomorrow, right? Or I can't, like you said, hang the photos of my family. And again, I'm not here to decide how office design should work. I think it's different based on the different tasks that are happening in the office, but I am confident that we should think about, okay, like how is this space meeting the basic needs of the people who are going to be in it? How is it aligned with the tasks that we want them to do and then design to that? Yeah. And I know some people who are probably listening to this are saying, what do you mean?

35:01And open environment is the best thing that ever happened. But for me, it did the exact opposite. It made me much less productive than I would have been in an environment that I was comfortable being in and used to being in. And I just give it as an example, because I'm sure many people have a similar experience as I did. I'm an introvert too. And that's, you need a place to go and be able to recharge. And I love talking to people, but I can't just be constantly bombarded with it or else I will just fatigue or not be my best self. So I think companies are doing better with giving flexible spaces and different spaces for different things.

35:41And I totally understand too, that this is one of those places where we started the conversation where I think people don't think of this as something they can do anything about, right? But the general employer isn't going to influence the actual renovation of the office, But I think oftentimes the general employee has more leeway than they think to move among different spaces, right? If you're like, okay, I'm going to use my office for this, or you haven't given me a private space. So when I need to do my deep work, I'm going to go into this conference room and lock the door or whatever, or I'm going to start to do my team meetings on a walking meeting because I want them to engage with their senses and break out of their regular mindset.

36:20I do think that there are a lot of cases where we aren't making full use of the spaces that we have access to. And that's something that is on us as employees, but also the leadership can help people see that, right? Can help model that behavior. It can help make explicit that, oh, this common area over here, it's not just for when we have the company party. If you guys want to use this for, you've got this new hard team project coming up. Do you want to set up over there and make this space yours for a while? And so starting to break out of our fixed mindset of the space is always used for this thing and this thing only.

36:55Yeah. And since we're talking about these spaces, I thought one of the most touching stories in the book involved your daughter, Josie, learning to claim her own space at preschool and that you connect physical boundaries to emotional boundaries. Why are those two capacities so deeply linked? Again, this is, I'm sure you've had people on talking about boundaries, right? And this, a very physical term that has been. Liz Osland. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Now all the talk about it is about emotional and relationship boundaries. Yeah. So the story, my daughter, she was in our playroom, but the laundry is off the playroom.

37:31And I came walking through to do her laundry and she's sitting there playing and she's space. I'm like, what? She's like space. And so she had learned this at school, that if you yell space, it means that people have to give you basically a 10 foot circle around what you're doing. And this keeps them protected from other rambunctious kids running them over when they're trying to play with blocks or something. And she was having a ton of fun yelling it at me because it's forcing me. So we were negotiating and eventually we got to, yes, I can walk around her circle to get to the laundry, but I wasn't allowed to look at her.

38:06The reason they're learning this at school is because it's the first step in seeing themselves as a independent person, right? as this is Josie and this is dad, right? And they're like, we're connected in some ways, but I have my own little world that I can say something about. And it's like a tremendous gift that they're giving the kids to be able to do that spatially. And they know that by doing that spatially, that is eventually going to carry over to these skills of emotional boundaries and relationship boundaries. And no, that's not appropriate. I don't want to be talked to like that. So yeah, there are a lot of ways in which, you know, if you, these concepts that have, are applied to other relationships in our lives have originated in our relationship with our physical surroundings, even in a good place, the title of the book, right.

38:57And that's typically used to be like, I'm good. Right. But it's, it's a physical term. Lighty, I can't do an episode on Passion Struck without talking about mattering. And you made it easy in this book because you have a whole chapter on belonging. And so obviously it was one of the first chapters I went to when I read the table of contents and one of the most striking claims in the book is that you say proximity predicts friendship better than shared interest. And why are physical spaces still so important for belonging when we're in an increasingly digital world? Yeah, probably gets back to that like multi-century experience, right?

39:40And the difference, I'm loving talking to you right now. This is amazing. It's an amazing connection that we wouldn't have been able to make a quarter century ago, but we're not able to shake hands or hug or we can see each other's facial expression, but we can't see everything about the body language. And being in the same place with the same people, having similar experiences, doing similar things, there's just not really any substitute for that. And I see this with college students all the time, right? And I look back at my own college experience. It's like you're friends with these people because you're in the same place at the same time with them.

40:18And it even zooms all the way into literally where you lived on campus, right? And it's almost like this perfectly controlled experiment. People are randomly assigned to dorm rooms and you end up being friends with the people who are on your hall freshman year. I've got a friend who's the biggest, in the nicest way. He's my friend. He's like me, super nerd, right? He makes jokes about logarithmic functions that you only get if there's like, if you have a deep understanding of logarithmic functions and his tailgating crew is an art teacher, a retired NFL player, and a finance guy, right? It's like the only thing that you guys are just friends because you were together freshman year.

40:56So, and that, that proximity, it just matters. And we, we, it's something to think about. I think if people are asking me, oh, what house should I buy? You're like, well, where is it? Who is it going to make you interact with? And do you want to interact with those people? So I'm glad you brought that up. Yeah. Cause one of my favorite things you wrote was we don't just belong to people. We belong to places. And for some reason, when I read that, it reminded me when I was at Lowe's before they They moved the headquarters to just north of Charlotte in a town called Mooresville. It had been in Wilkesboro.

41:32And what they ended up doing is they took the town mall and converted it into the Lowe's headquarters. And so when I, oh man, it was phenomenal because think about the food court and being able to see everyone. But what was so interesting to me is you would talk to people who worked in that environment even today, and they were so proud of where they sat in that former mall. I ran a call center there that happened to reside where Sears used to be. And people in the call center were like, I used to be in sporting goods and I used to be in automotive. And I - It was part of their identity. Yeah.

42:14My boss to his office used to be where Orange Julius used to be. And so they developed this identity based on where they used to shop in the mall and that those stores brought them joy, even in the new function that they were in. And I just thought it's an interesting parallel. Wow. I'm going to use that in a good place too. That's a great story. I would have illustrated these ideas. And I think, yeah, I'm glad you brought up the point because we do think about belonging and connections with humans. And I do think that's the primary way, but you do feel some of that same belonging and connection and mattering with places that you've put a lot of time in.

42:51I talk in the book about this beach cottage that's been in my side of the family, my dad's side of the family for over a hundred years. And every time you go, So every time you have an experience there, it's like kind of building this connection with a place, which again, isn't a substitute for human connection, but it is another connection that kind of keeps you grounded in the world and makes you realize that there are things that things that can't be taken away from you really. You're absolutely right. And I'm going to use this example of them all here to illustrate another chapter of your book, which is on how space is influenced.

43:24Where I'm going to take this is when we were at that headquarters facility in the mall, you would see the senior executives walking up and down the hall all the time and they would stop and talk to people in cubes. You could approach them in the cafeteria environment. And I remember Lowe's was really big of talking about core values. And so I remember our president would talk about the core values all the time, almost every time you got to meet with them. And then when they moved to Mooresville, they ended up positioning the senior executives on their own floor. They hire secret service agents and only the top executives were able to get in.

44:07And even though I could use my card to screen my way into it, I still had to be vetted before I could even go see my boss in that environment. And then they had their own chef. And so what ended up happening is they stopped frequenting the rest of the employee base. And I saw over time that this constant reinforcement of values stopped happening in as much. And what I saw physically happen was that the culture started to change as the physical environment started to change. change and to me when I look when I was experiencing it it was one thing but now when I look back upon it I really think there was a profound change and I think your book and especially this chapter on influence really goes into this and I was hoping that you might be able to expand upon that illustration that's a great one I yeah the main idea of that chapter is that Our spaces are advertising our values and they never turn off.

45:13Right. And, and yet we have this same kind of habituation tendency that we talked about before to not notice it. Right. So in the company example, where it's like every company has these values that are like what you're describing at Lowe's where, Oh, we're inclusive. We want everybody to think to be open. But if then your space is saying something totally different than what's being said on the mission statement, that's worse than if they were just aligned about, no, we have this hierarchy, right? You're actually contradicting what you're saying through your spaces. And that's a message that just gets reinforced every day, every time somebody walks into that space.

45:51And so I think it doesn't require a whole renovation. And this Wall Street Journal article I was talking about, one of the tips, takeaways is like, when you go into your office next time, look at, do a values audit, right? What is the office saying about what you care about? Are there things here that are counter to what you actually value? And can you remove those things? And this applies to our offices, it applies to our personal spaces, right? And you've got the house that painted itself neon, and I don't probably says a lot of things. But one of those things is, I don't know, particularly care what my neighbor's view is, and all the way up to larger social things, right?

46:28I talk in the book about being in Sweden and Copenhagen, Denmark, and just the level of playground over there is so absurd compared to what we have here and absurd in a good way, right? There's self-service zip lines. There are four story high tree houses with slides that have been built out of massive timbers and look like they could last for 200 years. And it just sends a very clear signal about how kids are valued in this society and how public space is valued in this society, as opposed to me having to drive my son to a kind of indoor, you have to pay climbing gym, right? And so again, this is a case where maybe it seems a little harder to change your space than it is to send a social media post about something you care about.

47:15But it's when you put it into the environment, it's like it's advertising and messaging that is always on, never turns off, and then can kind of propagate around the world. Yeah, I love that mention of parks. My parents, have lived in Chattanooga, Tennessee now, 40 years. And they live on this mountain, Signal Mountain. It's actually called Walden Ridge, but everyone calls it Signal Mountain because it's the largest city on it. But they have this park there that was built by the community called the Pumpkin Patch. And my kids, all they could talk about was going to the Pumpkin Patch because it was one of those wooden type playgrounds, but it had these super long slides and the zip line, like you mentioned.

47:58And as my siblings and I got older, it was funny because even without the kids, we as adults would go to the pumpkin patch ourselves and run around and play. So it was a space that became such an influence on us. So I love how you bring that up in the Nordic countries. Yeah. Well, Lighty, I want to talk about the final chapter because as I was reading it, it felt like to me the book changed. Earlier chapters were exploring how places shape behavior, learning, belonging, influence. And then you suddenly are writing about grief, memory, and love. Did the circumstances with Josie change what you believe the book was about?

48:44Or what were you hoping to do with that final chapter? So Josie died on Christmas when she was four and a half. and in 2020 she just got uh she got sick and two days later she was dead and so first and foremost what I was trying to do with the chapter is just tell the truth I think that the book was always she was always in the book right you talk about all the way and I had drafted the book at that point and she was in there illustrating the stories and the last chapter of the book was always going to be about how spaces transcend, right? One of the reasons these, our physical spaces are interesting is because they predate us and they outlast us in many cases.

49:32And the chapter was the same. And now I'm going to talk about what happened to Josie, but then also how to use spaces to keep her spirit alive, right? And I think one way that this is my first major experience with grief and loss. And one of the things that in my thinking about it is, well, people are still here in the stories and just in like the way that they've put themselves into the world, right? And so it's a privilege to be able to share her stories with you and with your listeners. And I think a little bit of the spirit gets into people that way. But then also the thing with spaces is, okay, how can you create the grandma's porch version of Josie, right?

50:16Where it's okay people experience this space and they have a little bit of how she moved through the world so one of my favorite stories of Josie which just so perfectly encapsulated her character and I tell in chapter eight was we'd walk between our house and this pond that's on the university campus and we go over and find frogs or like just throw stuff in and she'd always go a different way she'd always like traipse through people's yards or walk all the way around the block just to get 100 yards. But one day we were walking through a house that the university owns, but it's just an old house.

50:47And we walked up through the yard and up through the English ivy. And then there's a path going from the porch to the street. And on the path, the owner had etched their family name in marble. But of course, Josie can't read. So she sees the path and she says, well, that says Josie's Way. She named the path after herself. And so after she died, I'm like, okay, it would be cool to create a Josie's Way. And so next to the best playground in Charlottesville, we made a about a quarter mile path that like runs adjacent to it, but it also has paths that lead off of it. And so it gets kids down into the woods, but also more importantly, just gets them feel like they're on an adventure.

51:29And then other people have made Josie's Way. I've had graduate students sending me, Hey, here's the one in our backyard that my daughter's walking on. Right. And so it's nice to see the spaces out there in the world and also like people using them for, in a way that Josie would love. And that that's helpful to me. And I think you don't know for sure what a four-year-old would want, but I do think that she would absolutely love that. I was out there at the original Josie's way. And there were these two little boys who probably were three or four and they had hiked to the bottom, but the moms had stayed up at the top.

52:08And the moms were like, all right guys, it's time to go. And the kids just ignored them. And then the mom said it again, it's time to go. And the two, the one boy looked at the other boy and I'm like, what's gonna happen here? And the kid just yells up, he's like, we're not coming. And I was like, Josie would have absolutely loved that. And they're like, we're just going to do our thing down here and explore. And that's something that Josie would have totally appreciated. Mighty. And finally, I wanted to ask after everything you've learned as a researcher, designer, teacher, and father, what does it mean for you to leave a good place behind?

52:47I think it's all in the people, right? It's are you giving, are you having the knowledge? Sure. But also the courage and agency to, to find the places that, to put themselves in a place that is good for them. Right. So it's like the book has the ideas here, the attributes or ingredients, but also the empowerment, right? That no, you can do it. You can do it. You can find those places. And I think that that's what it would be. Well, thank you, Lydie. And where's the best place people can learn more about you? My parents gave me a good Google name. So L-E-I-D-Y-K-L-O-T-Z.com. And you can get information about the books on there and other stuff that I'm doing.

53:32But the best stuff's in the book. Awesome. Well, Heidi, it was such an honor to have you today. Thank you so much for joining us on Passion Struck. Oh, it was my honor, John. Thank you. That brings us to the end of today's conversation. What stayed with me is how rarely we stop to think about the environments that shape our lives. We pay attention to our goals, our habits, our mindset, but the places where we live, work, gather, and raise our families are quietly influencing all of those things every single day. Leidy reminded us that flourishing isn't only an internal process. It's also about creating spaces that support belonging, curiosity, connection, and a sense that we have a hand in building the life we're living.

54:11I especially love his observation that proximity predicts friendship better than shared interests. When you think about your closest relationships, many of them began simply because you kept showing up in the same place at the same time. A neighborhood, a school, a workplace, team, the environments we inhabit become part of our story. And then there was Josie. Lighty's reflections, ungrief, memory, and creating spaces that keep the people we love present in our lives were among the most moving moments we've had on the podcast this year. They remind us that places aren't just physical things. They become containers for meaning, memory, and love itself.

54:49Next week, we'll begin the fourth movement in our flourishing series, Contributing. My guest next Tuesday is Jess Ekstrom. Jess is an entrepreneur, bestselling author, founder of Headbands of Hope, and someone who has spent her career helping people pursue ambition without losing themselves in the process. Her new book, Making It Without Losing It, asks a question that resonates with so many people today. What does success look like if it costs you your health, your relationships, or your sense of who you are? In our conversation, we talk about identity beyond achievement, building a life that reflects your values, and why contribution is often the thing that gives ambition its deepest meaning.

55:32Because flourishing ultimately expands beyond ourselves. It grows when our gifts, our experiences, and our work begin serving something larger than our own success. There was this interesting study at Vanderbilt that looked at dopamine. Dopamine is honestly the feeling that we're all chasing. It's the feel-good hormone, that happiness chemical that we get when we call a friend or eat a good piece of cake or something. And we're looking for that feeling. And this study at Vanderbilt thought that we got that dopamine hit at the result. when we get the raise, when we hit a certain number or promotion.

56:08But this study showed that we're wrong. We actually, it studied our brains and we get that hit of dopamine in anticipation of the results, not the result itself. If today's conversation resonated with you, please share it with someone who helped create a place where you felt seen, safe, and supported. And don't forget to download today's companion workbook and reflection guide at theignitedlife.net. I'm John Miles, and you've been PassionStruck. Thank you.