si dawson

I recently shuf­fled my entire office around. Why? Because it was time for seri­ous change.

Remem­ber that scene from Dead Poet's Soci­ety, where the teacher, played by Robin Williams, gets the kids to stand on their desks so they can see the world in a dif­fer­ent way?

Yeah, it's like that now. Only more so.

Now, it doesn't have to be as dras­tic an exer­cise as it was for me (it was a solid two day job, shift­ing every­thing in my office some­where new). Often just revers­ing a cou­ple of pieces of key fur­ni­ture, or turn­ing a sin­gle chair to face a dif­fer­ent direc­tion can give you a whole new per­spec­tive on life.

I had a friend who used to com­pletely rearrange his bed­room every six months. At the time I didn't really under­stand it, but now I see what a clear mes­sage it sends to our brains.

Every time you're in that envi­ron­ment, all the old famil­iar sig­nals you're used to are now gone. Your brain has to reassess. It makes it eas­ier to lose old habits, along with the old envi­ron­ment. It's easy to feel like you're start­ing a new life, because every­thing feels so dif­fer­ent. Not only that, but we get con­stant drum beat every sec­ond we're in that room:

• Don't take things for granted!
• You do have influ­ence in your environment!
• You can make things exactly how you want them!
• If you're unhappy, change it!
• Bet­ter things are afoot!

Even more essen­tially, it keeps things fresh, it makes you feel at a very deep level like you're mak­ing a new start — and some­times that's exactly what the doc­tor ordered.