Mammals, including us, become friendly, playful, curious, and creative when they feel safe, satisfied, and connected. You can still be strong and determined, asserting yourself, pursuing your goals with enthusiasm, standing up to injustice, living with passion, making love, creating art, cheering on your children, and howling happily at the moon on a good night with friends.
The Power of PlaceWhen the subjects responses to a stimulating, plant-filled, homey setting and a grim, institutional one were contrasted, the only reaction they all shared was a decline in vigorous activity and increased feelings of fatigue in the austere environment.
The Power of PlaceA good or bad environment promotes good or bad memories, which inspire a good or bad mood, which inclines us toward good or bad behavior. We needn’t even be consciously aware of a pleasant or unpleasant environmental stimulus for it to shape our states. On some level, states and places are internal and external versions of each other.
The Power of PlaceGetting over a habit, whether it’s a lost love or a drug, requires environmental reconditioning
The Power of PlaceYou can't recover if you sit around in your old haunts. To condition yourself to health, you have to break past associations and respond to the positive stimuli of new things and places, which will generate even more good stuff.
The Power of PlaceThe city simply provides too much stimulation of almost every kind, bombarding us so relentlessly that in self-protection, we tune out and turn off.
The Power of PlaceEskimo men lost 30% of their muscle strength, because of modern labor-saving devices. You have to be careful what you invent, because it also invents you.
The Power of PlaceHuman beings resonate with one another in the dimension of spirit, analogous to the way a vibrating turning fork induces another one near it to vibrate at the same rate. Whatever the mechanism, there is no question that the people you choose to associate with can raise or lower your spirits, make you happy or sad, calm or anxious, comfortable or uncomfortable.
The Power of PlacePeople whose lives are broken up into lots of short segments and appointments have higher rates of suicide and heart disease because they're overloaded with contacts. We can't even learn from our experiences unless we have refractory periods to digest them in. In general, the best approach is to try to live your life at any given moment as if you were part of a group of twelve.
The Power of Place