Soul Food - Part 5.5 : Your Physical Environment

The space you are in right now is either working for you or against you. Most people have never stopped to think about which one it is.

That is what this post is about.

---

Your Space Is Shaping You Right Now

Before we get into specifics, here is the thing to understand: your physical environment is not passive. It is actively forming your habits, your rhythms, your defaults, and in ways you might not expect, your spiritual life.

The things you keep visible you do. The things you put away you forget. The things that are easy to reach you reach for. The things that require effort you skip. Your space is constantly running this algorithm on you whether you have designed it or not.

Proverbs 24:3–4 says:

“By wisdom a house is built, and by understanding it is established; and by knowledge the rooms are filled with all precious and pleasant riches.” — Proverbs 24:3–4 (NASB 1995)

A house built by wisdom. That is not just a metaphor for the family inside it. It is a real description of what intentional stewardship of a physical space produces. A home designed with wisdom becomes a place that serves the people living in it well. A home designed by default or neglect works against them.

The question is whether you are building yours with wisdom or just letting it happen.

---

What I Have Actually Done

Let me walk through the specific things I have set up and why.

My Bible is always visible and always with me. Not in a drawer, not on a shelf. On the table, on the counter, in my bag. Because I have ADHD, out of sight genuinely means out of mind. When my Bible is visible I pick it up in natural gaps throughout the day. When it is put away I have to remember to go get it, and I often do not. This single change has probably done more for my Bible reading consistency than any habit I have tried to build through discipline alone.

My laptop is always with me. Same principle. If I have a free moment and my laptop is nearby, I can sit down and do real work. If it is packed away somewhere I have to go retrieve it, the friction is just enough that I often do not. Keeping it with me makes productive work the path of least resistance.

My supplements are in view of where I eat. I take a lot of natural supplements for longevity, athletic performance, and general health. Fat soluble ones need to be taken with a meal. For a long time I kept them in a cabinet because it looked cleaner. I missed them constantly. Now they are out where I can see them when I sit down to eat. I take them almost every day. The cabinet looked better. The visible placement works better.

My red light therapy panel is set up and ready to use. I have a large, top of the line red light therapy panel in my office. It is not small and it is not beautiful. I have a blanket already laid out on the floor in front of it. Because if I have to drag the panel out, set it up, find a blanket, and get comfortable every time, I will skip it. The setup is always done. The friction is zero. So I use it.

My phone stays out of reach when I need to focus. Sometimes I delete social media apps entirely. Not permanently, just when I know I need to do deep work or be present. The apps come back when I want them. But removing them from the home screen or deleting them temporarily adds just enough friction to break the automatic reach for the phone.

Worship music plays in our home. Maddy and I keep worship music going in the background a lot. Bible verses on the walls. These things are easy to overlook as significant but they are priming the environment constantly. The ambient atmosphere of a space shapes what feels natural inside it. A home that sounds and looks like it belongs to people following God makes that the normal, not the exception.

I try to keep our home generally clean, as if we are always expecting company. God gave us this space and one of the best things we can do with it is use it to serve others. I am an extrovert — being around people genuinely energizes me — so having a home that is ready to welcome them at any time is something I really value. Being able to host a friend, have people over without stress, open our door without hesitation is one of my favorite things about our home. There is something about a space that is always ready to welcome people that changes how it feels to live in it. You are not scrambling when someone wants to come over. The hospitality is already built in, and that makes it something you actually do rather than something you have to prepare for.

---

The Junk Food Principle

This one has probably been the most impactful environmental change I have made, and it has nothing to do with discipline.

I track macros and try to eat well, but I do not restrict specific foods or make anything off limits. I just do not keep junk food in the house. Whatever I want I can go buy it, drive home with it, and eat it. Nothing is off limits.

But here is what actually happens: when a craving hits, I almost never want to get in the car, drive somewhere, spend money, and come back. So I just do not. Not because I am disciplined. Because the friction of getting the bad thing is higher than the friction of eating the good thing that is already here, or just not eating at all.

The reverse is also completely true. If Maddy picks something up or a friend leaves something at our house, I eat it. Not because I decided to treat myself. Because it is right there and the friction is basically zero.

Same behavior, different environment, completely different outcome.

This principle applies to everything. The question is never really about willpower. It is about what your environment makes easy.

---

Working With What You Have

I rent this house. There are things I cannot change. The layout I did not design. There are constraints that are just real and I have had to work within them rather than waiting until I have a space I can fully control.

What I have learned from that is that small things matter more than I expected. I have a robot vacuum that runs on a schedule — shoutout my Dad for giving me his old one because that thing is WAY out of my budget — I do not have to think about vacuuming, it just happens. Rags folded and visible in the kitchen means I wipe things down more. The micro-friction of having to get something out of a cabinet or closet is genuinely enough to stop a good behavior from happening consistently. Tools that serve you and remove friction from the things that matter free you up to focus on your actual priorities. That is part of environment design too.

You do not need a perfect space. You need a space that has been thought about. Even small, intentional changes compound over time into an environment that is working for you rather than against you.

You do not need to own the space to steward it well. God has placed you where you are right now. That space, whatever it looks like, is yours to be a faithful steward of.

“Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you have been bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body.”— 1 Corinthians 6:19–20 (NASB 1995)

If God cares about what we do with our bodies, He cares about the spaces we inhabit and how we steward them. Your physical environment is not separate from your spiritual life. It is one of the arenas where faithfulness plays out in the most practical, unglamorous, everyday way.

Design it with wisdom. Work with what you have. Make the good things easier to do than the bad things.

That is really all it takes.