What are the target stimuli to achieve?
Apart from the lack of pollution of all kind of course, here are other stimuli that were part of the environment:
- immersed in nature, with all the stimuli it entails, including visual and audio ones
- varying conditions of discomfort: exposed to the elements and other type of discomforts
- connection with other humans sharing the same values: we evolved to have our social needs met in groups of 110 to 300 tight-knit individuals
- a generally more varying and randomized environment: the set stimuli we ere exposed to was highly varying and with a high degree of randomness across most areas
Strategies & Principles to adopt
Get more connection with nature
Spending time in nature has demonstrated benefits, most of them on our mental health, with countless academic results available. What’s remarkable is that the time doesn’t have to be much, and the nature doesn’t have to be the wilds.
Spending 10 mins at the park is also highly beneficial and much more attainable. Of course, if you can go out for a day in nature where you get to disconnect more from our typically urban environment, all the better.
If you’re living in a rural area, you get more naturally but take advantage of your proximity to disconnect on a regular basis.
Relish some discomfort back in your life
Occasional discomfort plays a big role for our mental health. And it can be provided in many ways:
- cold showers or baths
- pushing yourself close to your limits physically and mentally
- walking barefoot in nature
- not stopping everything because it rains outside
- etc.
The list of possibilities is very long and what’s a discomfort will vary from person to person. But they all make you stronger mentally.
Next time it rains, go out without protection and enjoy a few mins (if cold) to a long moment (if hot) of sensory difference.
Adopt a minimalist and even nomadic lens on your lifestyle
We’re meant to be nomadic beings. We’re not these days but that doesn’t mean we don’t need some of those stimuli. Being nomadic was providing us with an ever changing set of stimuli as we travelled from places to places. This can be done easily in our environment and doesn’t have to mean far away travel by plane. Moving has never been that easy, so you can explore your local area very easily.
Another aspect of the nomadic lens is to be conscious on your properties. Imagine you have to move every few weeks and you carry by hand what you’ll take. Suddenly a lot of our possessions make little sense.
And if we buy less, we can afford to buy more from brands who are adopting ethical and sustainable practices.
Prioritize sustainable brands
If spending time in nature is part of the stimuli we need to be healthy, then we need to protect the natural spaces that still exist.
A way of doing that is to consume less but also to buy from brands that are demonstrating excellent practices from a sustainable and ethical standpoint. These brands are almost always more expensive as they use natural materials and generally produce at a small scale that lead to higher costs.
