150: How Our Surroundings Shape Our Lives with Author/Engineer, Leidy Klotz

Salkku X tapaa me jälleen. Viisi numeroa. Viisi vihjette. Arvauksia pätelyä. Poveria. Palkintona X-PENG-6 Säköauto. Täysin omaksi. Kymmellän viikkoa aika ratkaista kodi osoitteessa poverpistefi. Kautta X. Älä jää kyydistä. Moikka. Mitäs menee? Ytankoilla maahan täydeltä? Nukerro kaikki. Tuli vedetö oikea urakalla olin limppariin. Muistikko söedä kumminkin? Muistin toki. Nokke ei ole jätki. Ja sit jälkädeksi lisää jatski. No hyvä. Ot kunno palmarjöivrit tuntuvet edelleen. Annamen Arvahal. Ot ollut kuutti pautilla. Seillä pasilla. Respect. Harjat ja varamaan koko perheen riemuristeen kuutti pautille. Tullinksi iljapistefi. Koko on pitää koko perheen riemuristeen kuutti pautille. Päin riemuristeen kuutti pautille, koko perheen riemuristeen kuutti pautille. Sitten on koko perheen riemuristeen kuutti pautille. Ja, joten se on tullut. have been helpful, right? And so maybe it's, hey, I didn't actually need to, you know, take in more information in that moment. What I needed to do is spend the hour and kind of think about all this stuff I'd already taken in and distilled down to what's important in this situation, same with the Lego block, right? It's like, oh, I could also solve this by removing a block. And so that's something that we then did, you know, years of research with some very talented colleagues and found that that is in fact what our brain is doing. We're thinking about when we're presented with something that we want to make better, our first thought is what can we add to it? And then we subsequently, which results in us using subtraction less than we could. It's the classic case of saying, I want to reorganize my closet. So I'm going to get reorganizing product, you know, like these bins. When it's like, we could just take away a bunch of stuff and you won't need the bins, you know, one of the pieces of the study that I found was super interesting was when you guys talked about the itinerary or you were having people set up an itinerary, I think to go to DC was the idea. Can you share that and what the results were? Yeah. And so I mean, we were giving people all these examples inspired by the Legos and we give them Lego things and people were adding to everything. And so we eventually tried to create something where people would, it's just logical to subtract from this situation. And so we gave them a day trip itinerary to Washington DC and asked how they would make it better. And it was like a drag and drop interface with the activities already pre-populated into their itinerary and they could drag in more, but they could also free things up. And the itinerary was absurd. I mean, there I think there were 14 separate things that were happening between 10 in the morning and 8 at night. And these are big things like visit the Lincoln Memorial, visit the Smithsonian, eat lunch at a five-star bistro. I calculated, I just put the time travel in between the places in DC and it was like two and a half hours just of getting to the spots in between the spots. So it's almost this impossible day, which it definitely wouldn't have been enjoyable because you would have been rushing around. And people to make it better ended up like more often than not adding even more things to this impossible schedule. It's so funny. How do we make this better? And then we think, oh, let's add more. And it's fascinating. I'm so glad you did the research to know that, you know, because a lot of times with psychology, it can feel obvious to us after we get that information. But to have the real kind of controlled setting that allows for us to grapple with, does this actually happen or is just kind of what I think would happen is really valuable. And I love it. I'm super fascinated. My undergrad is in psychology. And so I just think anything like that is is amazing work. So how can then people train themselves to notice subtraction opportunities in their own life if we're so used to adding? Yeah. And well, and that's where like there's a use to knowing the psychology, right? If you know that, okay, the reason we're not doing this is because we're not even thinking of it in the first place, then the solution is to like, how do we help ourselves think of it? So obviously listening to this podcast is the first step because now you're like, okay, I know I know about this thing and I'm going to try to be more aware of it. But that's that's hard, right? Every single situation you encounter, you you're not necessarily going to remember this. And so trying to figure out how to build in cues to to remind yourself to do this. So if you have a to do list that you do weekly, can I also force myself to think of stop doings this week? So like now I've got the cue to subtract in here to remember that subtracting is an option in this situation. And you can think about that, you know, some of the classic like decluttering advice, right? If you bring in one thing to your house, you've got to think of two things to get rid of and just build in those rules so that you're reminding yourself of subtraction in the moment. Does that make sense? Totally. And and two, I think since reading your book, anytime I'm facing a challenge, whether it's my kids are struggling with friendships at school or it's my I can't decide what to do for dinner. I always now think in my head, what could I take away that could make this better? Yeah, because but your first my first instinct is, well, I need to create more play dates for him or I need to, you know, write a note to his teacher and let her know what's going on. And there's nothing wrong with these things, but it's also like, what could we scale back that could potentially help him? You know, I can't think necessarily off the top of my head, but there's always those little opportunities there that are really powerful. So it's the heart that this is, I'm again, I'm like, this is not easy to do cognitively and it's also not easy to do emotionally. The more you care about, I think find it the hardest to do the more you care about something, right? Like I really care about teaching and it's really hard to be like, oh, well, if I just take away this, this learning objective, they'll learn the other one better and I really care about parenting and it's, it's super hard to be like, well, I technically could do this thing for my kid, but I'm not going to do it. But I think that's one thing that makes me feel better about it is like, okay, I thought of the option. I thought of the option that I could schedule that play date and now I'm deliberately deciding that it's not in my kid's best interest for reason x, y and z to schedule that play date. I mean, maybe I just want them to have more free time or maybe I don't, you know, I value like two hours of not being in the car or something, but if you've thought about it and then like made a decision that subtracting is better, I think that you are actually putting in putting in the effort. That makes me feel better at least, but it is, it is hard, especially with the things you care the most about. Yeah, you said that perfectly and that leads actually really nicely into where I really want to sit in this conversation about in a good place your new book. I said this to you off air, it's fantastic. Once again, just like subtract, it will make me look at the world differently. It makes me look at my past differently. There's so many things that hopefully I will share with you as we continue to talk about the book, but thank you for writing it. I would love actually let's start there. Instead of me telling the world why you wrote this book, which I found out by reading it, would you share with the world why you wrote this book? Yeah, I mean, I think I wanted to, any book I write, I'm like, I think I have new information that hasn't been said before that also could be helpful to people in some way. And so in a good place is about how the the spaces where we live work and play can help us thrive. And basically, it's trying to look at this intersection, this relationship between us and our physical surroundings, which we know is obviously important and we know that our surroundings matter, but it's like how do they matter in knowing that what should we do about them and what what how should we be to like kind of get the most out of that relationship? So that's why I wrote the book and then like in the process of writing and researching and writing and researching and writing. You get to like, okay, there are these like core emotional needs or psychological needs that we have as humans basically for for agency, for growth and for belonging and our physical surroundings either feed or starve them. And so the wanting to get the message of this book out there and and show people that like, okay, these are this is what we should be looking for in our relationship with our surroundings. And here are some ways to to start to to get more of those things out of this relationship. You make such a good point in the book that we we focus a lot on how to improve our lives with our mindsets and with our relationships and these different aspects of life that of course are wildly important when it comes to self growth and well-being, but often our spaces get lost in that conversation, which is ironic because that's where we are at all times we're somewhere. You know, and so it's so interesting and I'm so excited when you brought up self-determination theory. I talk about it in my own book too specifically competency and agency. So great minds think alike here. Would you maybe give us a little rundown of those three components to psychological well-being, which you know is called the self-determination theory, competence, agency and connection. Would you give a high level of how each of those is intertwined with our environments? Hey guys, it's time for your ad break. Each week I like to say a huge thank you for your graciousness that these are part of the podcast. Here we go. Well, it happened folks and I am not surprised, but I have a new pair of born shoes and I was already asked where are those from when wearing them because they are so cute. I've said this before, but I really am trying to curate a wardrobe that is not clutter-filled and has things that will last a long time. That includes my shoes and I couldn't be more thrilled to tell you that born shoes really fits the bill for something that is top quality, super comfortable and complement-worthy because they're so cute. The leather is the softest thing I've ever put on my foot. I have the meela sandal in navy blue. I love that there's a functional zipper up the back so they're super sturdy. They're lightweight, but they're really supportive. I can wear these around town. My little piggies can feel the fresh air, but I don't feel like my arches want to die. Born shoes really does offer stunning sandals that will last you season after season. 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It has reduced my husband's allergy symptoms, gives me so much peace of mind when it comes to my children's health and I can just feel the lightness, the smells are different inside of our house. It's really amazing because all of the chemicals, you know, when you're cooking, those go into the air and it captures these airborne contaminants that you just don't want to be breathing in like dust, pollen, mold spores, pet dander, wildfire smoke, bacteria, viruses, odors, ozone and more. Head to airdoctorpro.com and use promo code pairing that's P-A-R-I-N-G. Remember, there's no "I" in pair to get up to $300 off today. Airdoctor comes with a 30-day money back guarantee plus a three-year warranty and $84 value for free. Get this exclusive podcast only offer now at airdoctorpro.com, a-i-r-d-o-c-t-o-r-p-r-o.com, use promo code pairing. Would you give a high level of how each of those is intertwined with our environments? Yeah, I'll give two examples. One is like kids playing on the beach and/or grown-ups. Anyone who has a soul playing on the beach, they go to the beach. They're eventually going to start playing with the sand, right, and building sandcastles. And so my daughter Josephine, when we went to the beach, she would go and they have this ability to like, "Okay, I can decide where to build and then they can decide how big they want to build the sandcastle. They can decide the design of the sandcastle." And so this ability to shape the world around you, that's agency, right? And so when she's doing that, one of the reasons that it's enjoyable is because it's making her feel agency. Then growth also is like fundamentally tied to like how we interact with our surroundings. And if you think about the stuff that a kid is learning when they're like playing with sandcastle, I mean, they're learning like college level fluid dynamics with the water moving around. They're learning about, you know, material properties of sand and what happens when it gets combined with water, they're learning about themselves, right? They're learning that if, okay, this falls down, I get frustrated and but then if I build it back up, I feel like I've overcome something. And so just like this engaging with our world is how we grow and learn. And so that is growth and then connection or belonging. Every sandcastle project that I've seen eventually becomes like the kid trying to recruit more helpers so that they can make it bigger, right? It's like the other kids get to help pile on the sand. And then I get enlisted to make the endless trips down to the ocean and like get a bucket of water and come back and dump it and then it filters into the sand and I have to go get another one. I'm just like continuously doing that. But that's that's connection and the connection comes like from the spaces, but also like the original way that we connected as humans is in some ways is this is through interacting with our environment, right? It's like, okay, we need more people to be able to erect the shelter or we want to build something bigger than a single band of hunter-gatherers can build. So we need to have the bands come together and now we've got civilization and it's like being built because we are working together and connecting through the act, you know, doing something to our surroundings. So that's agency, confidence and connection. That's on the beach. And again, like if you go even further back, I mean self-determination theory applies to a lot of things, right? I mean, we can get agency from doing a task at work that has no no interaction with our surroundings, but like it seems like the original reason we have these needs is because it kind of helps us interact with our surroundings, which is an advantageous behavior for surviving. Right? So the people are ancestors that were pulled to show competence or to be to have agency in their surroundings for more likely those modify those surroundings to suit their needs and then we're more likely to survive and pass on their genes to become us. So those are the three and that's how they tie to the surroundings. Yeah, you talk about it a little in your book and I wish I remember where I had read originally quite a bit about how civilization came to be because they would start building these shrines, but then they'd have to move on. And so then the next group of hunter-gatherers would see it and kind of build upon it and then they finally realized like we should stay here or they, you know, it all started with working together to build something. Yeah, I mean, there was like, there was a prevailing idea that like, okay, the roaming bands came together and then they did agriculture and then they realized that they could build big things, but the, then that theory got kind of flipped around based on the dates of some of the big things that they found. They're like, oh, wait, the people, the people actually came together to build these big things and then to, because they realized they needed to build them and be there a long time to build them and then stay and maintain and worship them, then that's when they figured out like, okay, well, we should do agriculture. And so it's just, it's right there at the beginning of civilization and of course, like the shared building is still in every culture. I mean, the most successful charities have a tap for humanity, right? There's so much shared building, but this is, you know, there's, in all of these cultures, there's like, there's Harambee and I think it's in Kenya, but that's like on their coat of arms and it basically means like working together to build something. And so we know that like working together towards a shared goal kind of brings groups together and the original way to do that was physical things. And beyond the connection with others, there's this ability for that agency to provide such well-being for ourselves. An example you give in the book, you share about how I'm just going to read a quote I wrote down here, programs that give displaced families choices about where to build, how to arrange their space, which materials to use, restore not just housing, but dignity as well. Regaining agency over their physical space puts them on the path to psychological recovery. Would you speak on that a little bit? I think that's really powerful. Yeah, one of my professor friends here, Kirsten Gell'sdorf, she done a ton with like humanitarian aid and when I was talking to her about this book, she's like, oh, you have to talk about this because I guess it's like a pretty well-known thing in humanitarian aid that if you just give the house, it's like, it's one more thing that these people who've had like everything taken away from them. Like any kind of way of like having an agency in their world, taking away from them and it's one more thing where they don't have agency. As opposed to like, okay, can you give them the basics and you know, obviously they have shelter, but making it so that they can modify it in some way and making it so they have, like, this is a thing that they have agency over and that's how they like kind of rebuild. Start to rebuild their lives, right? Because the agency in one area can increase your agency in other areas, right? So it's like, okay, now I have control over my surroundings, finally, I can do this that and the other thing and I'm also going to see that I can maybe go out into this new society that I'm in and you know, make a life for myself. So that's something that they've seen over and over in the humanitarian field. And I know that's an extreme example and hopefully most of us aren't facing it, but it's you know, the same basic principle applies to the rest of us. It's like if we have some agency in our surroundings, it's going to make us feel more agency in the rest of our lives. And it's also like, you know, I'm not a like a practicing psychologist, but the people who, but there are some instances where they will prescribe somebody's depressed, right? And we'll be like, okay, like rearrange your kitchen. And it's not because the rearranged kitchen is going to make them better. It's because the act of rearranging has a chance to help them feel like they have more control over their world. So that relationships there, certainly. Yes. Yes, I've shared, I think on the podcast, it might have been on a social media reel, I don't know, but I've talked about the corny for competency, which is part of the self-determination theory. And of course, that's the piece about learning. But competency also in psychology, there's been a lot of research about how it's this innate drive for us to affect our environment. Like that is an innate drive within all of us to learn how to do something that makes our environment different and better us. And I can't think of a better example than decluttering and organizing and maintaining your home, which is where you are all the time. And like you said, it goes, it takes us out of decluttering. I always say decluttering is a catalyst for intentional living in the rest of your life. Because if you're, yeah, because if you're intentional about your space, then like you said, that gives you this feeling of power that I can be intentional about any other aspect of your life. And that's when you see that life-changing aspect come into play here. This is so helpful for me because I have to think about the best ways to say these things too. And like that's such a great answer. The point of like, this is a, that intentionality is the key thing, right? Because you'll get, oh, well, is decluttering always the answer? It's like, no, if somebody wants to clutter the heck out of the house and they like to have like all these ornate things and just want to have it. and they want that and then they do it. They're gonna get the feeling of competence, right? And that's the important thing. And so that's like, people wanna know like what are these unifying principles that everybody wants? And it's not decluttered or cluttered. It's competence, right? - Yes. - Yeah. - Yeah, I did a whole episode recently about how like, you can be a maximalist and still have an intentional home. The idea is that if you're shoving things beneath the counter, shoving things onto your shelves, that's not intentional. You can say all you like, oh, I love all my stuff, but that's not intentional. But people, you know, you've seen the cool homes that are like really cool displays of stuff and like it's obvious that this is a very intentional thing. I follow those social media accounts, you know? Because that's intentionality, it's really cool. And another piece of in a good place that has stuck with me that is so important is about how our environments reflect our values. So what are some subtle ways our homes, our workplaces, really anything that is a reflection of us? How does that reveal what we actually prioritize or what the values are that we claim? - There's this classic study of solar panels and it's like, it's not really about the built environment. It's used to talk about social norms and how powerful they are. But so basically the finding of the study is that people who could see solar panels from their house were more likely to have solar panels on their own house and they controlled for all the other stuff. And so that means that like, okay, the reason these things are spreading is because people see other people doing it and then like get the idea to do it and know that it's like okay to do. And that's like a classic social norm is like, you see it, there's a behavior, but then the behavior is visible. And the people who like do social norms spend all this time trying to make behaviors visible, right? It's like, this is why we get a sticker for, I voted and here's your sticker. We're trying to make the voting visible. But when it's our physical environment, the behavior is already visible. It's like a huge advantage the physical environment has. So like whether it's, you know, solar panels is a pretty overt statement about like, okay, renewable energy and you know, how maybe disposable income. But the, but the every decision you make about your physical environment is sending those signals whether you like it or not. And so you can think about a fence that you put up in your neighborhood and like, what is that signaling? And sometimes, you know, I know good fences make good neighbors and sometimes that's appropriate. And or just what is the, what is the paving material in your in your driveway? There's one, I didn't know this before I read the book and before I did my renovation. But the, I guess the in like world post-World War II housing, which there's a lot of in the US, like the traditional design for the kitchen was to just like have the kitchen kind of sealed off, right? And that was reinforcing and, and a result of like very, you know, old gender roles where it's like, okay, the woman is supposed to be in the kitchen, bring the food out so that nobody else has to experience the mess and then go back into the kitchen while the everybody else is talking and so on and so forth. And so that's like this norm that gets reflected in the built environment and you might not even, you know, you might have that layout in your house, you might not be using it that way, but it's still like kind of reflecting. That's an example of the way the space is reflecting that this is how our life should be organized. So when I opened up my kitchen, like everybody does now because it's trendy, it's like it's also like smashing the patriarchy a little bit. Yes, I love it. I love to see it. Yeah, no, as you were talking, I was thinking about the book in "Fectious Generosity" by Chris Anderson. He's the head of Ted or he used to be. And he talks about making generosity obvious. You know, I think of a good example actually of this recently was it went kind of viral that Taylor Swift had this documentary come out and this is a six part docu-series on, I don't know, Disney plus. And in it, you see her giving this wildly big bonus to her dancers and they bleep out the amount but you know the internet sleuths have kind of figured it out. And it looks like it was like $750,000. And that was just for one leg of the bonus or of the tour to her dancers. And she also went very viral for sending $100,000 to all of her truck drivers as a bonus. So there's this big display. And the critics are saying that should have never been in the documentary because that's padding her back saying, look what I'm doing. But she even says in her speech, the reason I'm doing this is that I want this to become a norm. If other artists see me doing this, they will feel pressured to do the same thing for their dancers. You know, to show up and give benefits like, you know, health benefits and health care to their team like she does and stuff. And I thought, well, I actually agree with her. And it speaks to the infectious generosity that Chris Anderson talks about in his book that we need to make things more obvious that are our values because then it becomes a norm, whether it's generosity or it can be something in our environment like the kitchen and who belongs there. You know, it's so, yeah, so our spaces are an opportunity for us to do that. Would you share though that how sometimes we don't even realize because maybe it's something we didn't purposefully or personally choose in our space, how that can reflect something with the story of your S shaped fence, not fence brick wall in your backyard. Yeah, I mean, so these are, had you heard of those before? No. Virginia. It's like, apparently it's like one of these innovations that Thomas Jefferson like saw in Europe and then he brought back and everybody gets him credit for. But the, so in our backyard, we have this S shaped brick wall. And the reason it works from an engineering standpoint, it's cool because the, because it's curved, it provides some structural strength that a straight wall wouldn't and therefore you can make it use less bricks wide. Right. So it can be narrower and it's like creates a really neat aesthetic in it, you know, the, it's curved and you've got people always ask questions about it and you've got places you can plant things on either side and it's just, you know, there's not very much curved stuff in the built environment. So it's interesting. But it took me a while to realize that there was like a negative association with those curved walls because those were, that was the same shape of the walls that were used on campus to separate the slaves from the professors in the, in the houses on the, on the UVA campus. And those are still there. So that was like the, the most famous serpentine walls in Charlottesville were actually originally used to separate slaves from professors. And so having that in my backyard and like once I knew about it, you know, the wall's still there, but at least then when you have the students over for pizza, you can kind of explain to them the history and make sure they know that, you know, this is the, the practical history of it. This is what they've been used for. I certainly don't, you know, I think that's a poor in, obviously, but and, you know, you can kind of like head off that conversation and then if you've got somebody in your class who doesn't know what you mean by that, you can just explain what, how it evolved. And again, like I bought the house with the wall there. It's, it's actually my neighbors, it's on the neighbor's side, but it is, it is in the backyard. So I think that's like just knowing, knowing is it, and then you can like kind of control the narrative with how you talk about it, but also knowing that the things that you do are going, you do do in your, in the built environment are going to be there for a long time and spread, spread this message for a long time. And you think about like the comparison again, between just like, you know, tell your slip to talking about it, it's relatively straightforward to talk about it. And that's a way to spread the norm. And it's more complicated to like put the norm into the physical environment, but like once you put it there, it's going to be there for a really long time. And so it's a way to, I just like to think of it as a lever for our influence, like all of us are trying to make the world better, not all of us, but a lot, anybody listening is trying to make the better world better in some way. And this is another means we have for doing that. Yeah, yeah, it speaks to the importance of just knowing, just finding our surroundings interesting enough to do a little digging about the origins of them. I think we overlook that. We've seen some controversies with people having weddings on plantations, right? And it's like, well, we know that that's not what it's currently used for. But when we do some digging and really try and sit with what does this represent, what does our surroundings represent? We can come to different conclusions in our lives and what we want to express with our values. And I think that like this whole conversation is getting at, is oftentimes we overlook the influence of our environment, whether we mean to have that influence there or not. There's so many good examples from your book. I'm like, oh, tell us about airports. I never even thought about airports before. And then you're right. The whole time you're in the airport, you're like a little lemming, just going where it tells you to go. Sorry about that. Yeah. I know. I know. OK. So gosh, I have so many questions here. There's so many good things I want people to learn about, like, bike shedding and all of that. But I'm going to jump to nostalgia. Another quick word from our amazing sponsors. Thank you to you and them for supporting this show. Here we go. X-PENG-G-GUS SAC Auto. Omaaksi. Kymmenen viikkoa aikaan ratkaista kodi osoitteessa Powerpiste fi kautta X. Älä jää kyydistä. Salkku X. Tapaamme jälleen. Visi numeroa. Visi vihjettä. Armauksia pätelyä. Poveria. Valkintona X. Pengekuu sähköauto. Täysin Omaaksi. Älä jää kyydistä. -You talk a lot about how nostalgia requires repeated exposure to something. We cannot buy nostalgia with distress. We cannot buy nostalgia with distress wood or faux brick, but we can build it deliberately by creating rituals and traditions that turn ordinary spaces into vessels for future nostalgia and future memories. How does overconsumption speak to a larger issue with how we appreciate our spaces and the stuff inside of them? -Yes, if you think nostalgia and novelty are working against each other often times. There is, you do feel this dopamine hit from novelty. You buy the new countertop or you get the whatever. All the overconsumption things is trying to give us this feeling of novelty, which feels good for a little while, but then you realize that now you want more novelty, and the only way to get that is to over consume. Whereas nostalgia, the positive part of nostalgia comes from the repeated exposure. The longer something is there, the more times you see it. That's what the nostalgia comes from. I talk in the book about a vacation home that's in my family side of the family, that's been there for over 100 years. So many generations have gone there. I've gone there with my dad, and now my dad gets to go there with another generation. There's just like, "No, you can't buy that at Home Depot." That's nostalgia. I think it's like, again, being aware of where you're getting that in the spaces and what's giving that to you. It's not to say you should never renovate. Using that vacation home as an example, it didn't have indoor plumbing. It's like, "That was good to add. That was a good addition." There's an outdoor shower, for example, and that will always be there. Then you can also transport the nostalgia, right? It's like, "Okay, a screen porch makes me nostalgic for my grandmother." She had a lake house in New Hampshire, and I remember sitting on the screen porch with her, and she'd bring out cookies that tell us stories about the red socks and her life, or whatever. Every screen porch I go on makes me think of my grandmother. That's nostalgia. That's an amazing thing that our physical surroundings can give us. It's not something that can be sold at the store, but if we're thinking about it, we can think about how we want to design it into our spaces. Yes. It ties into this. I teach 120 students this semester and their architecture and engineering students. The first day of class, I've started doing this icebreaker where I ask students to tell them about themselves, but then I ask them, "What's their favorite place they've ever been?" The dominant favorite place in the class is grandmother's house, like some part of grandmother's house. It's not like the "it's nothing fancy." It's like the kitchen table or the screen porch. These are kids who have been everywhere, collectively. They've been all over the world. They've been on fancy vacations. They've been on cruises. But the places that are their favorite places in the world are quite ordinary places that are imbued with some meaning because of what's happened there. It's grandmother's house. It's the corner booth at the diner that they and their high school friends went to. It's a little simple dock on a pond somewhere. These are very basic spaces that are their favorite places that they've ever been. It goes all the way back to what we talked about at the beginning, at that connection. It's that point of connection. You're connected with other people there. It is interwoven. It is part of their environment. I was going to ask about this really fascinating piece of our environments where you can actually foster learning based on where you are. Part of the reasons we remember grandma's talking about the red socks is because you are able to anchor it to a place. Let's actually, you know what, we're going to do it. Let's talk about that too. Then I want to get to my final question. Can you share about that idea about how where we have important conversations matters just as much as what's being said or even the act of creating is as important as where you are when you're creating it? That was one of the things that I learned again in researching for the book just how connected our memories and the places are. In fact, what happened in the wiring of our brain is the networks that help us deal with spaces and navigate spaces when we needed to navigate relationships with people. Those were the networks that got adapted. It's very close in the wiring and you can see it in all kinds of even just in our language. I need to have boundaries with that person. I feel close to that person or distant from that person. It's just true. Memory champions will use Velt to remember a lot of stuff. They will anchor the stuff they need to remember two places because it's easier to remember the places. Anyway, we can reverse engineer that. Think about, "Okay, if I want to see your memory in my brain, then do something, have it in a place that is going to give me a lot of sensory input." One of the stories in the book is me sitting on the boardwalk with my daughter and I'm one of those same beach vacations. She made me sit on the boardwalk. She sat down in my lap with her ice cream. We were back to the stores looking out at all the people going by and the ocean. Then you've got the salt air and the fried dough. Then you've got the reason we were sitting there, I think, was because there was a miniature golf course that had a speaker blaring that had music that she wanted to listen to. There are all these sensory inputs. Now I remember that moment and the moment with my daughter, which is super special. Now with my son, if I need to tell him something, I'll tell him to have an important conversation that I want him to remember something from. I'll try to do it in a unique place. I'll just try to move him somewhere else. I'll do it with my students where it's like, "Okay, just every now and then I just get out of the classroom and then I'll just tell them something." I hope that just because we're in a different place, that that is going to then make that a more special memory. I think that's something we all can use is trying to line this space with the memories, knowing that it's going to make a huge difference. It's such a cool way of being intentional. I love that so much. Sorry, like one, I was, it's like you remember where your parents had the birds and the bees talk with you, right? Correct. It's like the Lego room was forever changed in my life. And so it's like, I don't think my parents were thinking about what the meaning of the room, but just be aware. Be aware. I will never think of my family sitting room in Virginia Beach the same way either. That's so funny. So these last little pieces we talked about, actually, lead perfectly into my final question. We were talking about nostalgia and you've even shared how we can take that with us, whether it's, you know, we're not in the same house as the plate as the first one that had the screened in porch that became a memory for us, we can add that to our new house or how the conversations we have with people are so connected to our environments. And it spoke really deeply to me because it reminded me of my mom. So my mom passed away when I was 24. And whenever I see a wide sidewalk, my mom was a runner. I think of my mom because she was always running on the wide sidewalks. Or if I were to go to my childhood home and I see that mailbox, the first thing I think of is my mom at the mailbox, you know, getting the mail out because we have this really long winding driveway. And so, you know, if I drove home as a teenager and she was there after her run, you know, she would walk down the driveway. I think about any time I see a glass table, like especially the one that has these little waves in it or has an umbrella, I think of my mom because we would have dinner outside in our back porch in the summertime. And so, as you talk so beautifully in your last chapter about legacy, our environments can be a reflection of our legacy. And I was thinking, wow, like my mom's legacy to me. I mean, there's a lot of pieces of it, but one of it is her love for outdoors. That's a huge piece of her legacy. And so many of these pieces of this environment that reminds me of her or outside. It's the sidewalks. It's the tables outside with the umbrella. It's nature trails. It's canoes or kayaks. You know, whenever I see someone kayaking, right, there are pieces of this environment that reflect her legacy that she passed on to me. And, you know, thank you for sharing your personal story in the book because it is a very powerful reminder of how our spaces are entwined with our legacies. And we don't have to get into it by any means, but I just wanted to share with you my daughter is about six months. younger than yours also named Josephine. And yeah. And so obviously that was a very emotional read. I ended up at the end of the book, the whole meaning of the title changes. I went to my husband and just had a good cry. And it's, but it's powerful. And I even told my Josephine about your Josephine and she wants to create a Josie's way here in Kodiak, Alaska. So I wanted to tell you that's happening here. And she's like thinking, oh, this could be Josie's way. It was really cool. And you absolutely don't have to speak on that example. But can you share in whatever capacity you'd like about the important role our environment has on our legacy? Yeah. Well, I mean, first I'm sorry about your mom. And that's a tough time to-- I mean, just too early. You're only 24 and didn't get to see a lot of cool things. But I think it's really beautiful what you said about the spaces. And one of the things that I talk about in the legacy chapter is all people who have billionaires will buy a building and put their name on it and as a way to pass down their legacy. But I hadn't thought about it this way. But it's like, I bet your mom is happier that you're thinking about her when you see the big sidewalks. And so it's cool to think about. We all can do that. You don't need to be a billionaire to be like, this is the space that I want to anchor my memories in. And I want my kids to think about me because it's also, at least when I think about my kids thinking about me, I don't want them to be sad. I want them to just be inspired or remember the same lessons that you were trying to teach them in life. And if it seems like she's doing that still, which is amazing. So yeah, Josephine, my daughter died unexpectedly on Christmas in 2023. She just got sick and then died. And I was done with the first draft of this book. And I had all these stories about her in it because I was seeing the world through her eyes at that time when you have a four-year-old who's as percocious as she was. That's a pretty dominant force in your life. And so I mean, I never-- and then in terms of keeping it in there and being willing to talk about it on these things, on shows like this or to audiences like this, I just felt as I thought about it, one of the only things that helped me keep going through that time was some stories that I remembered of other people who had boss kids. And we're still somehow functioning in the world. So I knew, OK, something must be possible after this. And it's just true. And there was also, then thinking about it from her perspective of what would she have wanted. And she loved people knowing about her. And she wouldn't want you to cry for very long. But she would be OK with you crying to your husband for a little and then inspired by her. And so I mean, so it was great. And then-- so I started thinking about like, OK, there's obviously this connection between space and memory. And one of the people who I knew, who had lost his daughter, Kelly Leonard, who works for Second City in Chicago and his daughter Nora died when she was 17. And so I knew that story. And then I knew that he had done something for Nora afterwards. And they made like a-- they being the community, like a sun in Moon Park at her school. And the idea was like, these were things that Nora liked. It was a playground that she would have enjoyed. But it was also kind of like making it so that, you know, death wasn't hidden away. It was part of the environment. And so I thought that was a cool idea and something that was the initial inspiration. But then there was another-- Josie was like a little more mobile. And so one of my favorite stories of her was we would always walk between my house and pond on the UVA campus. And she would always want to take a different way to get there, just like exploring. And one of the times we went through-- like it's an old house in the neighborhood, but the university has bought it. So you can walk through. And so she was walking through the yard and through the English Ivy. And then there's a path that goes basically back to the street. And on the path, whoever owned the house before had like etched the family name in Marble. It says like, Voleno, Lambeth, or something. And so Josie sees it in like one benefit of being for is that letters can say whatever you want. And so Josie looks at it. She's like, this says Josie's way named the path for herself. And I think she also knew the double meaning of, that was her way of being in the world. But also, I'm going to name this path for myself. And so we built the Josie's way next to the best playground in Charlottesville. And it's kind of a cool idea that her cousins have made Josie's ways in their backyards or longer ones in public areas and people who have access to paths will name some of them Josie's way. And my graduate students will be like, hey, my daughter made a Josie's way. And I think that makes me super happy. But I also think that more importantly, it's a way to remember the lessons that Josie taught in the time that she was here. And also to kind of just spread something that she would be really happy to do spreading, which is like being free outside and being able to like have some agency in the world. So I appreciate you're allowing me to share that. - Thank you for sharing that. Yeah, it is such a, I hate that it's an example. I want to put that out there that it's not like, you know, like thank you so much for creating this great example of how our environments can be a legacy. It's like, well, that's not really worth it. But thank you for sharing it in the way you have and using her legacy so powerfully so that, you know, we can all be so aware of how the people we love and how we can show up in our environments and create environments that reflect the things that are important to us, how we can honor the people that we love. It's absolutely amazing. The whole book, both of your books, subtract in a good place, Lidy, I think you have a tremendous skill to take scientific writing, to turn it into narrative that's interesting and writing that feels personal and vulnerable and funny, you're funny. I just, I could go on and on as a writer myself. It is, I know it is a skill and I just thank you for using that skill because you're very busy. You're also a professor and you're also a researcher and you're all these things and you take the time to say, I'm going to use what I've learned to help other people better their lives. And I just want to say thank you for that and thank you for being here today. - Oh, you're welcome Shannon. I appreciate you're saying that. And it was a pleasure to be here and I mean, I think of myself as somebody, I mean, first and foremost, I'm happy to be able to share Josie's stories but then when it comes to sharing the ideas, that's, there's nothing more important and you're a key cog in that ecosystem of getting the ideas out there. So I appreciate it. - Absolutely. And I don't wanna forget, where can people go buy your book and find more about your work, all of that good stuff? - So the books available, bookbooks are available like anywhere you get books and my parents gave me a good Google name, Lidyclots.com. (laughs) Try to keep my website up to date and I post things on LinkedIn. That's like the one social media place where I'm somewhat active but I would say the books first, then the website, then LinkedIn. - Perfect. I will have all of that in the show notes. Thanks again, Clity and Clots. There it goes, put together. Oh, anyways, thank you for being here. - You're welcome, Shannon. Thanks for having me. - You just listened to an episode of "Pairing Down" with me, Shannon Lakeo. Please don't forget to hit follow or subscribe and I will love you forever and ever if you leave a five star review because those reviews are so helpful on the back end of things. And for more resources about decluttering and intentional living, sign up for my short weekly newsletter, The Less Express, which you can find in the show notes and follow along on social media. Just look me up, I'm Shannon Lakeo, L-E-Y-K-O. Thank you so much for listening.