Friday, January 23, 2015

Environment Can Affect New Years Resolutions

Land imprints, Samskaras Shape Us                      

Many of us made a resolution to change some habit or pattern of behavior this New Year. What you need to realize is that your environment shapes your behavior; so  if you don’t change your environment your chances of altering your behavior are greatly reduced.

This may sound odd, but science says this a fact.

NPR did a segment on the influence of space on changing behavior, What Heroin Addiction Tells Us About Changing Bad Habits http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2015/01/05/371894919/what-heroin-addiction-tells-us-about-changing-bad-habits and noted how Viet Nam vets addicted to heroin kicked their habit at very high rates and with very low relapses.  Psychologists eventually came to learn that the incredible success rate was because coming back home meant changing the environment and the changed environment was behind the succes.

As psychologist David Neal notes, "People, when they perform a behavior a lot — especially in the same environment, same sort of physical setting — outsource the control of the behavior to the environment.

We are intimately connected to Mother Earth and location matters because our thoughts and behavior remain where they are generated. I call these thoughts and actions land imprints or geographic samskaras http://www.jubileeinitiative.org/samskaras.html and they have a powerful influence upon us. So unless you clear up your space where the behavior you are looking to change occurs the space will continue to beckon you to repeat the behavior.

Space matter. Honor Mother Earth!