Your Environment is Either Growing You or Draining You

In this episode of Just Call Jenna, Jenna Williams explores how the spaces around you—physical, digital, and even energetic—quietly shape your thoughts, emotions, and behavior.

She explains that environment is never neutral; it’s either pushing you forward or holding you back. From cluttered rooms triggering micro-stress responses in the brain to constant phone notifications disrupting focus for up to 23 minutes at a time, Jenna breaks down how everyday surroundings create cognitive overload and impact your ability to feel calm, clear, and in control. 

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Z8YuQVtqT4

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Rather than relying on motivation, Jenna emphasizes intentional design as the real driver of mindset. She walks through a practical framework: defining the identity you want to step into, removing friction and outdated elements from your space, and adding visible cues that encourage the behaviors you want to build. She also highlights the importance of decluttering your digital world—turning off unnecessary notifications, organizing your phone, and creating a sense of calm instead of chaos. 

The conversation expands beyond the physical, touching on breath as a powerful tool to regulate the nervous system and reconnect with the present moment. Jenna also introduces the idea of protecting your energetic space—being mindful of people and interactions that drain you, and setting boundaries to preserve your mental and emotional clarity. 

Ultimately, this episode is a reminder that transformation doesn’t always require changing who you are—it often starts by changing what surrounds you.

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Welcome back. Today I'm going to talk about creating your expansion environment.

So what does that really mean? An environment for you and how that environment will shape your mindset. Kind of the neuroscience on that, but it also gives your brain its favorite thing, a safety spot where you can grow and expand. So there will be some practices you can really put in place, but I want to talk a lot about kind of having a special environment. You know, like when you see meditations and things, they go to specific spots. You're gonna create that for yourself. Your environment might be your home. It might be your car. It might be your time alone in the shower. But every time you walk into a room, you're gonna be able to get to that safe place where you can expand. Think about it like your light shining. You don't need it to be dim. You can open that up and let yourself expand.

Environment is not neutral. It's either pulling you forward or pulling you back. When you walk into a room and it's full of unopened mail, the stack of laundry that's piled up three days, your phone is buzzing. Suddenly you feel heavy. It's overwhelming. There's too much to do. You can't focus on one thing. And you didn't decide your environment, but that environment creates those feelings. So when I think about that, it's like clear your clutter, sure that's like a feng shui thing too, is let the energy flow. But having a room that you walk into that feels safe and comfortable, that doesn't overwhelm your mind is hugely important to being able to expand yourself. You have to think about that as where where can I be the most successful. How can I create an environment for myself to be in the place that I want to be? What kind of environment does Future Me want? And how do I create that?

Your environment will activate your amygdala. Remember that's your alarm system. Your brain doesn't think, oh, this room is cluttered. It fires microstressors. What does that really mean? Unfinished tasks, all this stuff, those are all micro stressors. So an intentional space that's clear and takes that overload off your brain will instantly shift you to calm. I think every one of us can think of that experience where you've had a hard day, everything's going wrong, but somehow you come home and it's like I can be. But what if walking home, you walk in and your home is as cluttered as your day? When is your body going to have room to rest, recover, and expand. It's really not. It's going to set your mental baseline. I think your environment is a huge important thing.

For me, I always think about my environment. For example, picking things up and putting them away before bed. Just because I don't want to wake up in the morning and see things on the counter. My space that I read in, it's the exact same space. My space is set up so that I can thrive in it. I don't have to think about anything. I'm gonna sit down and read my book. Set the coffee on the coaster. Yes, put on the readers because I'm almost 50 years old. So yes, I read with readers. But put on the readers and just read my book. Phone's on the charger, turned away from me. I don't have to think about anything but what's in the book. That's my expansion environment. It is a safe place for me to read, take it all in.

Clutter is cognitive overload. Your space is cluttered, it equals a cluttered mind. Your brain cannot relax in a space where your eyes are overwhelmed.

So, like think about it, for example, like we've heard of overstimulation. That's a thing now. Growing up, that was not a thing we talked about. But if you're overstimulated, your brain can't focus. It's on an annoyed frequency, it's cluttered, whatever that may be. I think your environment has to be a space that's safe for you. What do you feel comfortable with? And I bet if you try to think about making your whole house or your whole life an expansion environment, hold on, you're gonna go into a room. The brain's gonna shock you. Don't do that. Just think about what's my chair, what's my space.

For example, when I started my five-minute practice a day, which is now like an hour. But I didn't get there overnight. I found a space outside in my backyard that I liked, a certain chair that had a certain view that felt a certain way. And I went back and I repeated that. Over time it became a little table next to it I could set my water on. There's a pillow in my chair now that I sit on. Those things expanded, but that is my environment. My brain, my body, my containers, everything knew. This is a safe place. And so that was my expansion environment. Just like my chair to read, my body, my brain, my nervous system, all my containers go. Huh, this is where we read and we expand our mind. But that is an expansive environment.

Environment is stronger than willpower. It kind of goes back to that same law of sustainment. You will do what you identify as. Decluttering is not about aesthetics. It's about energy. It's about letting go of things that don't give you room to expand. It's decluttering your mind. It's taking overwhelm down.

They've done studies in marketing that the brain gets overwhelmed if there's more than three choices. Some of the best salespeople out there will tell you they only give two choices. You know, go back to Dr. Seuss. Would you like green eggs and ham? Would you like them, Sam I am? In a box with a fox? Here or there, right? Only two choices. The brain goes into cognitive overload when there's too many choices. That's about decluttering in your environment.

I heard a story about Barack Obama and that if you ever notice he's looks like he's always wearing the same kind of suit, well by reducing the amount of suits he has to choose from and decide what he's gonna wear. He's creating that decluttering of the mind. I'm reducing the amount of choices. In marketing, they've done a ton of studies that if you give people too many choices, they will often buy nothing. But if you say it's this or this, most people can get that. Black or white, yin or yang, right? So I think when you think about your environment, how simple can you make it on your brain? If there's three or more things on your table, your brain will be overwhelmed.

That's probably why if you really think about what it feels like to walk into a model home or a home that's up for sale and there's not very much out on the counters. It's clean, it looks inviting, it's opening. Your brain can absorb that. You walk into somebody's home that's almost a hoarder, there's things everywhere. There's clutter everywhere. Your eyes are overwhelmed. Your brain is overwhelmed. Take these things into consideration when you think about your environment.

Decluttering. if you have to go to the container store and get a bunch of organizations. Hire a professional organizer. Donate half your world.

I really can't tell you what's gonna work for you, but if you start looking around your house and your surfaces have three or more things on them, you're probably overwhelmed.

I went through a process of decluttering in my home where I have these very long shelves and some smaller shelves. And I simply made a rule to myself, if it's a smaller shelf, no more than three things. If it's a longer shelf, no more than five. And even then it was hard to let go of enough stuff. You know, if you want to look into feng shui, it's letting energy move. Clutter clutters the mind. You don't need your mind cluttered.

So for you to expand and become your best, you're gonna have to make an environment that feels warm and inviting and doesn't force your brain to overthink. If your eyes are overwhelmed, I promise your brain is. Removing clutter, it's removing stimuli, your prefrontal cortex, your logic brain, immediately becomes more efficient. It doesn't have to process as much. The less decisions you have to make along the way, the more space you have for your brain to go in a different direction. You send a message to your brain when doing this. You say, I'm clearing out what's no longer serving me.

So if you're thinking about that environment, just think about your home. Think about your bed. Think about your spaces. And if it's too cluttered. Please don't overwhelm yourself with how am I going to clean it from start to finish? Yes, that's going to feel good. Yes, it's going to be amazing, but maybe just slowly reducing things. That's what I did in my house. I live in a neighborhood where we have a monthly pickup for donations. And so when I would get things off Amazon and yes, click click deliver, I'm a fan. Thank you, Jeff Bezos. As those boxes would come in, I would just take the box and fill whatever I didn't need in my house in there. It could have been clothes. It could have been out of the kitchen. Could have been whatever. I would just walk around and fill the box. Stick it out in the garage for the next pickup. And I didn't have to get rid of everything. I just started reducing things.

So now I'm going to take that to a place where we live in a very digital society.

Digital space is now an environment. Your phone apps, your pictures, your notifications, all of that is affecting you much like a cluttered house.

Like a closet that you open the door and things come pouring out. Your phone is now that closet. Your brain treats that digital clutter the same as it does a cluttered closet. It treats it the same as physical clutter. Digital clutter and physical clutter are the same to the brain. Remember, it's neutral. Stress is scattered thinking, emotional overstimulation. That digital stuff is affecting your brain in such a way.

I watched a speech the other day with a guy who was talking about the effect of digital on us. And you wake up to be on a six and a half inch screen to go to work and sit on a 17-inch screen. And then you go home and watch a 55-inch screen. To look at your six and a half inch screen before you go back to bed. So when did your brain ever get a break? Clean up your digital space. Turn off your notifications. There's a simple start.

It takes 23 minutes to fully regain focus after a distraction. Think about that. If you're talking to a friend and your phone buzzes, your brain, whether you realize it or not takes 23 minutes to basically come back to baseline. So those notifications, that clutter, it's hurting you. The more clutter there is, the longer that 23 minutes is going to become. Because your brain is, it's like a maze. It's got to tilt all the way down. Like Plinko, right? It's got to come all the way down and hit every peg. So a single notification can cost you about a half hour of clarity. Can you put your phone down for 30 minutes? Most of us cannot.

I definitely can tell you my teenagers cannot. It's like an appendage to them. It's like a new hand. I'm probably just as guilty, but I've learned how to turn the notifications off and clean up my digital space. For example, something I did to make my life easier is my emails related to the podcast and the speaking and my website, they're all on one laptop that I don't have on my phone or any other place. If I'm going to answer those, there is only one place they are stored. They are not in multiple places. I don't have to think about anything else. There is only one email box and only one thing I do. When I'm working on that, that's all I'm doing. My phone has my personal emails. My work has my work emails. They are compartmentalized.

There is so much digital noise out there, it's almost impossible to not have it affect you.

But I do understand that my brain needs that recovery time. I've had a brain injury. I know what it's like when my brain is not functioning. Brain fog is a real thing. It is a real thing. You need space for that energy, those frequencies to come in and get you to where you got.

Digital environment erodes your mindset way faster than your physical one. I grew up in a generation where the phones were on the walls. We did not have cell phones. I think the first ones we saw were those big brick car phones in the eighties. I remember what it was like to not have that. And I realize where I'm at now where my phone goes everywhere with me. I'm texting, I'm calling, everything is on that phone. You've heard of people saying my life would fall apart if I didn't have that phone. My life is in the phone. Yes, nowadays our lives are on the cloud. How much control do you want it to have? You can choose. Is that going to control you or are you going to control it?

I take my phone with me everywhere. I text all day long for my job. I usually know that I did a good day at work because my phone battery is low and needs a charge because I was running around crazy. So there is a place for them. I'm not saying give it up completely. I'm just saying control it before it controls you. You don't need every notification to take 30 minutes for your brain to recover. If your notifications are going off all day long, your brain is never recovering. So just like a clean table. Right? Your phone should be the same. Control those compartments.

And if you're not where you want to be. Think of future you. What does future use phone look like? How do you manage your data when you're future you? And it's okay if you don't have the answer today. You will understand what that feels like and it will help you with making your decisions going in that direction.

So when you're creating your expansion environment and helping your mindset, remember it's not just about your home, it's not just about your car, it's not just about your phone. You have to have that environment follow you where you go. Those vibes are a real thing. Don't have anything holding you back. Don't get your brain into cognitive overload. Just make a clean, simple space. Simple is best. Keep it simple.

So when you're thinking about your expansion environment, you have to think about an intentional design. Your mindset isn't going to come just from motivation. It comes from your conditions. Your environment should support you. Kind of like a silent coach. or a parent, right? You can change your mindset dramatically without changing anything inside. Mindset doesn't come from motivation. It comes from your conditions or your environment. You can change your mindset dramatically without changing anything inside of you by simply changing what is around you.

Again, if you put two people in different environments, they might react differently. If you put yourself in different environments, you're going to act differently. So why wouldn't you give yourself the best possible chance to succeed? If you go out to a cold, freezing, cold pool, do you want to jump in that and go swimming? No, but if it's 80 degrees outside and the pool is 70 degrees. You want to go to that pool party and hang out all day. Your environment is very simple, just like that. Some people are gonna do better in an environment like the desert with cactuses. Other people are going to do better in a Mediterranean fishing village. Your environment is going to help shape your mindset. You can change that just by changing what's around you.

Changing your expansion environment is about creating a safe place, a place you can thrive. It's not a background. You don't need to change your whole life. You only need to change what you see daily.

Mel Robbins has a book where she talks about giving herself a high five every day in the mirror. What changes in that idea is high-fiving yourself in the mirror. You're changing the environment. You're still in the same bathroom with the same mirror. High five in yourself. You're changing that environment. You're changing the habit of that environment. But what if you were in a beautiful bathroom, the bathroom of your dreams? Your environment would be different. What if the bathroom makes you feel unwelcome and unexpanded and you hate it? With giving yourself a high five in that mirror. Work? No. So maybe the mirror that you high-five yourself in is the hall one on your way out the door because that feels good.

I'm going to break it down into some basic steps that I think you can go through. So step one is to clarify the identity that you want to support. Who am I becoming? Am I becoming someone that high-fives myself in the mirror? Am I becoming someone that sits in the chair and reads? Am I becoming someone that runs to my backyard and breathes? Treat yourself the way you would one of your loved ones. If it was your child, if it was your mother, what environment would you be giving them? You can be more focused, more grounded, more creative. Your physical and digital space should support that.

Step two is to remove friction. Look around your space. Ask what's slowing me down. What is not aligned with who I want to become? What drains my energy? What feels heavy? What doesn't feel good? What lights me up? What represents a past version of me? And what represents the me I want to become.

Step three would be to add cues and behaviors for what you want. If you want to meditate, leave your cushion visible, leave it out in the middle of the floor so you see it and you sit down on it. Like me, I want to read. My book is always on the table. When I'm done reading in the morning, it goes right there. So the next time I sit in my chair, my book is already there for me. So those are adding cues to support the you that you want to be. And then it will of course become the habit loop. But if you want to work out, have your gym bag by the door. Have your workout shoes by the door. If you have a big meeting or something you want to do tomorrow and your outfits overwhelming you. Put it out the night before so the morning of you don't have to take that with you. These are cues to back it up. So remember clarifying the identity you want to become, removing any friction and setting up cues so that you can sustain that habit.

Number four would be to make your digital space intentional. I think that's really, really important, and I don't think we talk enough about it. Um, turn off 90% of your notifications. You don't need ring doorbell to tell you every time Amazon driver comes by. You can turn it on if you're waiting for an important package. You don't need that to tell you. You don't need every single marketing company you've ever bought something from to text you 50 times a day to tell you they're having a new sale. They're always having a sale. They are happy to take your money. Move distracting apps off your home screen. Nowadays you can push and hold them and slide them over. Create boxes on there so that they're not looking at you all day long. Unfollow accounts that don't feel like the person you're becoming. How many times have you followed somebody on social media and then you hate seeing their posts? Just unfollow them. That is creating a digital space. Your phone doesn't have to look like a casino slot machine. It doesn't. It can be as quiet and supportive as that quiet room in your home.

Lastly, do a weekly reset. Create a ritual every every week that puts those things back so that you can sustain them.

For me on Sundays I go around you know, after dinner and before bed, I go, okay, am I set, you know, these things for the week? I clear my clutter. At night before I go to bed, I do a little quick pass-through on the house. Did I leave something out on a counter? Those rituals will help. So for 10 minutes a day, I'm keeping my life clean. Now in the beginning, yes, it took more effort to set it up. But I've realigned my environment with myself.

So let's talk about those five steps again. This is really important for you to create your environment. So, clarify the identity you want to become, remove friction that doesn't align with said identity, add cues to support that identity. Clean up your digital space and have a weekly reset where you sort of repeat the steps. They will get easier and easier, but that is important to your environment.

That might be your home, that might be your car, it might be your desk at work, but wherever you need to expand yourself, those five steps are going to make every bit of difference for you.

So after those steps, I want you to think about breath. Breath is so important to your expansion environment. I don't think we talk about breath enough. It's more than oxygen. It's that place that makes connections. It's a space between chaos and calm. It's between illness and health. Does your environment support breathing? Big, full, deep breaths, or shallow breathing? Are you in a place where you can take time to just sit down and take three to five big breaths a day. Those calming breaths to reset your nervous system, reset you and your mind. So I don't think we talk about breath enough, but I think having a place to take proper breaths is important.

When I was healing, I think there was a I was working with a girl who taught me about yoga and pranayama, which is all about the breath regulation. And one of the things that I experienced was watching things on TV or a lot of movies where I started noticing people's breath. Like before, you know, when Archer would shoot an arrow, you'd watch the breath and the hair move or you'd watch people take a deep breath before they responded, and I started noticing that maybe I wasn't breathing properly. And so I started thinking a lot about breath. When something is stressful and chaotic, if you can take a breath and you can take a pause, that will help you reset. Breathe. As simple as that sounds, because your health is not just diet and exercise. And those are probably the weakest points for me, but it's also how you fully connect to life and those moments. Breath is that connections. It's the it's the gap. You know, it's navigating that gap.

Your energetic space, your aura, it can also be cluttered. Are you around energy vampires? Are you around people that suck your energy out of them? You know that friend. We all know them. We all have one, right? You leave spending time with them and you feel drained like you need a nap, like the life force was just sucked right out of you. We also have the other friend that every time you're with them, you're charged and can take up the world. Like you can take on the world. They've charged you up. They've filled you up. Declutter your energetic space. Put people where they belong. Allow them to be who they are. Allow them to do that. But that doesn't mean that they have to suck your energetic space.

So not just breathing in those environments where you've created that space, but you have to be able to take breath and take responsibility for your energetic aura. Like imagine a field around you. You've probably seen enough pictures of the meditating chakra person that looks like they have an aura around them. You have one of those around you. It is your aura. It is your energetic field. It is part of what shows up when you do. You can actually control that. To expand your aura and be the best version of you, your future self, you have to get rid of things in that energetic space that are cluttered. Sometimes that's relationships. It could be people, places, and things, but there are a lot of nouns that are affecting your home life, your energetic life, your digital space. You have to create an environment where you can expand.

Trying to do all that today may be very hard. Some of us are in situations where it seems impossible to get a chair to ourselves. Others of us have a whole house to ourselves, maybe a field, maybe a whole ocean. Those things may be different, but you creating a space to breathe will very much help you declutter your energetic space. You can reset yourself. Take that breath. You know you can just take a breath and let yourself expand with each breath. Every exhale, let the negative stuff go, and every inhale, breathe in more of future you.

The best boundary protection is to avoid energy vampires. But what about people or work or family members, people that you have to deal with? There are people that drain me all the time. I just imagine or feel, because I can't see a mental picture, I feel what it would be like to put a block between us. I mean, remember in COVID we all stood six feet apart. There are still many people I would like to stay six feet apart from me. But that's part of it is just understanding that that aura belongs to me. With my breath, I can fortify it. I can give myself permission to let those people go. I can give them permission even when they are not my favorite people. I can just say thank you for whatever it is. That gratitude lens is important. It just creates so that that conflict doesn't go any further. And yes, sometimes it's difficult, but I respect my energetic space. I realize there's people I have to deal with, but I don't have to take their bricks with me when I go places. I do not have to take on their mess.

No is a complete sentence. No, thank you, and don't take them with you. Let them take their energy somewhere else and hold on to your own because you don't need that energy vampire to suck you dry. There's a great book called The Energy Bus and it talks a lot about that. But it is letting people on and off your bus, letting them in and out of your space. I mean, yes, we live in a world that's crowded. It is going to be very hard for a lot of us to find a space where we don't have people around us. But you can get very comfortable with a thank you.

Remember that gratitude lens. You can find something to thank them for. Okay. Maybe it's as simple as you're thanking them to just leave. Thank you for leaving. Sometimes that's the only thank you I can give them. Thank you so much. Bye.

I think if you can find a way to thank them and just let them go, you can let that go. And that leaves your energetic field plenty of room to expand into the best version of you because you are not carrying somebody else's stuff with you. You can absolutely limit their access to you. You have full permission and you can give yourself permission.

Thank you, no thank you, and let them go. If you overthink that, it might make it hard for you, but your aura, your energetic field, your energetic body would like you to let a lot of things go so it can expand and treat you better. It is on a level that you don't see or hear or taste with your five senses. It exists on a level outside of you. And by giving it that expansion room to grow, it can take over and help you become future you a lot better.

So no thank you. Thank you for weaving. Hold the door open for him. Go ahead.

Thanks for joining. Until next time, remember karma is real, energy is contagious, check your vibes.