Confessions from a recovering recluse.
You know how the world seems brighter after leaving a theatre?
Imagine living in that theatre for 250 days in a row. That was me.
Being a hermit totally changed my relationship with my surroundings. These were my 5 biggest mindset shifts:
Dark dining restaurants claim that eating food in the dark heightens our other senses. Savouring smells and tastes becomes easier. And ordinary dishes take on a culinary flare.
Stepping out of the world triggered a sensitivity to wonder.
We can use the subliminal influences of our spaces to our advantage.
By designing with psychology in mind, we can design spaces to:
- skew our sense of time
- strengthen love
- live longer
- prevent stir craziness in hermits
Environmental psychology is the study of how we shape our spaces and how they shape us.
Noticing that our spaces include our inner, outer, social, digital, and contextual environments adds breadth to the depth of our mind-space bond.
Our spaces are constantly manipulating our minds.
Put a person in a white room for days. No clock. No windows. No light dimmer. And their sense of reality will dissolve.
The traits of our spaces determine the way we interpret the world.
The inner world of a recluse becomes the world itself.
I often wonder: what if this world is an elaborate lucid dream I'm having?
Planting that seed compels us to reflect on how our surroundings affect us.
https://lamarelimbo.substack.com
Every post is a brainstorm on ways we can design and use spaces as tools to augment our mental fitness.