How Your Environment Shapes Your Life (And What to Change Today) | Leidy Klotz - EP 794

Leidy Klotz joins John R. Miles to reveal how the places we live, work, and spend time in quietly shape our happiness, relationships, creativity, and sense of belonging. Discover simple, research-backed ways to design environments that help you flourish instead of merely function.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01John R. Miles?

  Hey friends, what if your biggest problem isn't that you're not doing enough, but that you've spent too long proving that you are enough? You can be successful, needed, and surrounded by people and still feel completely unseen. That's the problem I explore in my new book, The Mattering Effect. I show you how we become hyper-visible for what we produce, while quietly becoming invisible to ourselves, and introduce the matter framework to help you reclaim meaning, autonomy, trust, time, energy, and reciprocity. Stop auditioning for your worth, start living from it. The Mattering Effect is available for preorder now at matteringeffect.com. Coming up next on Passion Struck.

• 0:39Speaker 01

  I don't think anyone would argue that, okay, we want people to be more engaged in the physical world, and the distraction is the phone, or the iPad, or whatever. And I think instead of fighting the distraction, just using the distraction as a cue, right? When I reach for my phone in the morning, I think space before a screen. I'm about to check my emails. And now, instead of doing that, first, I'm going to take in my physical surroundings. And I just think it's a practice that we can get in the habit of. You could also put a picture of the physical world on your screensaver. That would remind you when you looked at it. But I just use the screen as a cue to say, no, have I taken in this physical world around me?

• 1:17John R. Miles?

  Welcome to Passion Struck. I'm your host, John Miles. This is the show where we explore the art of human flourishing, and what it truly means to live like it matters. Each week, I sit down with changemakers, creators, scientists, and everyday heroes to decode the human experience, and uncover the tools that help us lead with meaning, heal what hurts, and pursue the fullest expression of who we're capable of becoming. Whether you're designing your future, developing as a leader, or seeking deeper alignment in your life, this show is your invitation to grow with purpose and act with intention. Because the secret to a life of deep purpose, connection, and impact is choosing to live like you matter.

• 2:05John R. Miles?

  Hey friends, and welcome back to episode 794 of Passion Struck. This month, we're exploring what it means to flourish. We began with awakening, learning to pay attention to ourselves, our bodies, and the practices that keep us grounded through uncertainty. Last week was about rewiring. Nick Ortner helped us understand how old experiences become lasting patterns. And John Gordon reminded us that the habits we practice each day shape the people that we're becoming. This week, we're focusing on cultivating. On Tuesday, Dr. Dana Susskind showed us that human beings are raised through connection, that curiosity, resilience, empathy, and belonging develop in relationship with other people, and through the environments that surround us. Today, we're taking that idea one step further. Because people shape us, but places shape us too.

• 2:51John R. Miles?

  Most of us spend a tremendous amount of energy trying to change ourselves. We download another app, start another habit, read another book. Yet, we rarely stop to ask whether the environments we're living and working in are helping us flourish or quietly working against us. My guest today is Leidy Klotz. Leidy is a professor at the University of Virginia, where he teaches courses on sustainability, design, and innovation, exploring how the environments we create shape the way we live, learn, and relate to one another. He's an engineer, a former professional soccer player, and the bestselling author of Subtract, a book that challenged our instinct to always add more when less might serve us better. His new book, In a Good Place, asks a different question.

• 3:35John R. Miles?

  How did the places where we live, work, and play help us thrive? In today's conversation, we talk about why proximity predicts friendship better than shared interests. While children notice things that adults gradually stop seeing, and how our homes, workplaces, and communities either support or undermine our basic need for agency, competence, and connection. We also discuss the simple practice of putting space before the screen, what beavers can teach us about human flourishing, and why creating something together often builds deeper relationships than merely consuming something together. And one of the most moving parts of our discussion centers on Leidy's daughter, Josie, whose life and spirit shaped this book in profound ways, and whose story reminds us that places don't just hold memories,

• 4:20John R. Miles?

  they carry love forward across generations. If you're enjoying this flourishing series, please share today's episode with someone who might appreciate it. Please follow and subscribe to Passion Struck on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can watch the full video version of today's conversation along with additional clips on our YouTube channels. And if you'd like to go deeper, you'll find today's companion workbook and reflection guide at my Substack at theunitedlife.net. Now, let's dive in with Leidy Klotz. Thank you for choosing Passion Struck, and choosing me to be your host and guide on your journey to creating an intentional life that matters. Now, let that journey begin.

• 5:01John R. Miles?

  I am absolutely thrilled today to welcome Leidy Klotz to Passion Struck. Leidy, how are you today?

• 5:07Speaker 01

  I'm terrific, John. It's great to be here.

• 5:10John R. Miles?

  Well, I'm so excited for you to be here. And just this week that we're doing this interview, I released an episode with Dr. John La Puma, who has this great book out called Indoor Epidemic. And he is arguing that many of our modern health problems come from spending so much time indoors, disconnected from the outdoor environments that humans involved in. And what's interesting is the book we're going to discuss today, your brand-new book that's about being in a good place. It's the title, "In a Good Place."

• 5:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:45John R. Miles?

  I think really picks up a different piece of that story. You're not just asking how environments affect our biology. You're asking, how do they affect who we become? Is that fair?

• 5:56Speaker 01

  That's amazing. I'm going to check that book out. The, I've been thinking about this too in terms of, I know Maslow's hierarchy of needs isn't necessarily, and there's more advanced versions of it. But if our basic needs are the biological, physiological needs, right? And the shelter needs, and then you come one level up to the psychological needs, right? So I love being able to map how different ideas fit in. And I think that that is accurate, that my book is taking on this idea of, okay, we're going to be surrounded by something, whether it's the outside or the inside, and how do you put yourself in places that are good for your kind of thriving and well-being?

• 6:37John R. Miles?

  I do a ton of interviews with authors who talk about how their book is focused on changing ourselves.

• 6:47Speaker 01

  Right.

• 6:48John R. Miles?

  Your book begins with a different proposition that one of the most powerful forces shaping all of our lives is the places around us. Why do you think we become so focused on changing ourselves while overlooking our environments?

• 7:03Speaker 01

  I think a lot of it is it seems easier to change yourself, right? It's, okay, this environment seems very static, and I don't know how to hang a piece of drywall, or whatever the, you think of changing the environment as this really hard thing, where changing yourself is manageable or feasible. And I think, but the reality, I think, is that there are a lot of things you can do to change your environment just by moving, for example, right? Not even moving houses, just, okay, I know that being outside is better for this activity, and there is access to outside somewhere around me, right? So just tuning in more to how we can move among the spaces to which we have access. But I think a lot of it is just viewing it as this static thing that we don't know how to change, that just gets handed down to us.

• 7:46Speaker 01

  And then, maybe a second piece of it is that it's just really easy to stop paying attention, right? To just assume that this is the background, and it's not something you're thinking about as a way to make yourself feel better. You'd rather go to the yoga or to the meditation apps for that, right?

• 8:05John R. Miles?

  Yes.

• 8:08John R. Miles?

  I remember, growing up as a boy, my grandparents lived in Glenview, Illinois. And I remember the back porch being one of my favorite places because my grandfather was a whiz on a Weber grill. And he would never use a grill outside of that barrel Weber. And his chicken and pork chops were just something that I can almost taste when I think about it. And as I was reading the book, you wrote that every screen porch reminds you of your grandmother. And I think many listeners probably have a place like the screen porch or the back porch that instantly brings someone back to life for them.

• 8:51John R. Miles?

  Why do you think places preserve people in a way photographs and stories often can't?

• 8:56Speaker 01

  That's a beautiful example of your grandfather. And I'm glad I, the book, got to bring it back a little bit for you. And I will say, I'm going to answer your question. I do this with the students in my classes. It gets my icebreaker the first day of school, or the first class. And I say, what's your favorite place in the whole world? And the dominant answer is a grandparents' house, like some random part of a grandparents' house. But what's happening in our brains is that when you remember something, the place is giving you extra hooks to hang it on, right? Your grandfather was there. You actually mentioned some other senses too, right? So you've got the physical place with the porch. You've got your grandfather, whatever he's telling you, whatever he's modeling to you by cooking. You've got the taste, the smell.

• 9:41Speaker 01

  And so, and all of these senses are like creating anchors in our brain that help us bring back the memory later. And the way that our brains work is it's not just filing a memory over here, and then the place over here. It's if the memory happens in a place, it's filing them both together, and it's giving you extra hooks to hang the memory on. And then it's super cool because it can work both ways, right? You could be on a porch like I described, and that brings back memories of my grandmother, or memories of your grandfather just brings back memories of that place. And I think There are two parts to this, right? One is, okay, this is now it's cool. I understand why I have these memories, but it's also when, how do you reverse engineer this going forward, right?

• 10:26Speaker 01

  So I just had a conversation with my son this morning and I had gotten frustrated with what he was doing. I didn't yell at him or anything, but I didn't explain why I was frustrated, right? And I just walked away and I was like, all right, I need to talk to him, explain to him what my frustration was, explain to him how I shouldn't have expressed it as frustration and should have just talked to him about it. And I'm like, all right, instead of talking to him where I always talk to him, I'm going to talk to him in this different spot. It's like we had just a little courtyard at our house and I'm like, okay, I'm gonna talk to him out there. It's a place we haven't talked before and hopefully the space is giving him another way to remember this. So yeah, great question.

• 11:06John R. Miles?

  I remember I was interviewing Bob Waldinger about his book.

• 11:10Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 11:11John R. Miles?

  The Good Life. And I asked him if a listener only understood one idea about what it means to live the good life, what it, what would it be? And he focused on relationships, but I wanted to ask you a similar question because you got a similar name book. If a listener understood only one idea from in a good place, what does it actually mean to be in a good place?

• 11:33Speaker 01

  If you force me to boil it down to one idea, I think it's like a place that you feel like you had a say in making, right? In some way. And I'm not saying you needed to build the house, but it's like you chose it and you, you are able to mold it as it goes on. So I think it really comes down to that. I did this, right? I made this. And again, whether it's you feel like you made it because you earned all the money to buy the house, or whether you feel like you made it because I went to my grandmother's house every summer and spent the time on that porch and I made it with the

• 12:15Speaker 01

  time and the effort that I put in, that is part of what makes it good. And I would also, you know, I know this, you asked for one thing, but I do think that the relationships are there, right? And this is like, relationships aren't independent of the space. If you think about who you're friends with, right? Everybody's friends with the random people that they got assigned to live with, like the first year of college, right? And 25 years later, they're still tailgating together and the places that you frequent throughout the day or like the people that you live with as family, that is totally tied together with relationships. And I think that a good place definitely has those relationships in it, right? Whatever the relationships are for you.

• 13:01John R. Miles?

  Leidy, you dedicate the book to your daughter Josie and throughout the book, Josie appears almost as a teacher. Before we get further into the science, what did watching Josie interact with the world teach you about the place that decades of research never could?

• 13:21Speaker 01

  Oh, that's beautiful. And she was a teacher, that's for sure. But the kids are just, they're seeing things for the first time, right? Things that you have just processed and moved on from and have your assumptions about. But when you're broken out of this, that mindset and you're able to hang out with a kid and move through the world like you do, you just notice so many new things, whether it's you notice that the countertop is sharp because now it's a hazard, but Josie was always exploring, right? And I've went so many places in my neighborhood that were amazing, that were always there

• 14:01Speaker 01

  that I never would have been to if it wasn't for her. And then the way that they marvel at a really small thing, right? Like looking at a brick and looking at the pores in the brick and understanding that there's this beauty all around us in the world and just the privilege of being able to to follow along with them and see it through their, their eyes and notice it. That was a tremendous gift that she gave me.

• 14:30John R. Miles?

  I've been fortunate enough over the past three or four months to be spending a ton of time with kids who are four, five, six and seven, because I released a children's book and going into these different schools, man, has really opened my eyes because my kids are now in their twenties to remembering how much wonder kids at that age are filled with and how differently they see the world than we do. I wish we could all at times take off the blinders we have as adults and see the worlds as kids do because it is so different how children experience places than adults do. It appears we get older, adults stop seeing.

• 15:14John R. Miles?

  And one thing that I loved about the different experiences that you bring up with Josie is that she seemed incapable of not seeing.

• 15:22Speaker 01

  Right. Yeah.

• 15:25John R. Miles?

  So it's so interesting that I saw this dichotomy of what children understand about places that adults gradually lose. And I happened to do an interview a number of years ago with Gretchen Rubin and she had this book called On the Five Senses. And I started this practice after interviewing her that when I'm on my early morning walk every day, I spend the first 20 to 25 minutes purposely not listening to anything, just trying to absorb the world through my five senses. And it really is an interesting way to, to experience it because you start sensing smells you probably would have ignored or hearing

• 16:06John R. Miles?

  insects or birds or just seeing stars or other things. So it really is a wonder for me and something I look forward to every single day. Do you think a lot of people are missing out?

• 16:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, 100%. And that book was very influential for me too. And I mean, especially for chapter two of my book was, is all about like, how do we engage with our surroundings? And one of the simplest ways is just to tap into all those senses because obviously one of the things that our physical spaces can do

• 16:38Speaker 01

  is speak to our smell, right? I haven't seen AI do that yet, right? And the sounds that are in the world, my, the sounds are, if people haven't done this, try sounds after this and you will hear things that have been there all along that are amazing that you have never noticed. And then, yeah, are the reason this happens is we just habituate to our environments, right? And it's a helpful evolved mechanism, right? I wouldn't want to, every time I walk through my house, have to scrutinize the rug and the baseboard and the doorknob. And you want to tune things out so that you can focus on what matters. But then what happens is you tune out important things. There's a classic study of fire extinguishers where you ask people, where's the closest fire extinguisher to your office? And this is literally like

• 17:22Speaker 01

  bright red thing that's designed to be noticeable, that's life-saving and people don't know where it is, right? And it's just because you've just tuned out these things. So the habituation helps us in some ways and not overloading us cognitively, but it also takes away our opportunities to notice things that are beautiful, also to notice things that are harmful, right? Sometimes people are working in an office all day and there's like some annoying ambient noise. And if they don't notice it, they're actually more stressed at the end of the day, even if you haven't noticed this, right? And same with smells, there could be off-gassing carpets or something that's kind of give you a headache at the end of the day. And if you don't consciously tune into it, you might just

• 18:04Speaker 01

  take it in and you'll still get the negative physiological effects. Yeah. I'm tuning into your senses though, and that's Gretchen Rubin is a very smart person. And I think is that's very good advice to, to start to engage with the world around you, but also with our physical environment, right? It doesn't, I love being out in nature, like the natural world. You can also do this in your bedroom when you wake up in the morning and it's not as good as being in nature probably, but it's better than going right to your phone.

• 18:37John R. Miles?

  Yes, I, I've had the opportunity now to interview Gretchen three times and, and one of those was in person. And I can see why she clerked for the Supreme Court because man, is she quick on her feet. Very intelligent woman.

• 18:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:54John R. Miles?

  Well, one of the most fascinating sections of the book to me was your discussion of beavers. And I understand your dad studied beavers, which I can't imagine many people grow up having a father who studies beavers. But you argue that humans like beavers are builders, but unlike beavers, we get to intentionally redesign our environments in real time. What, maybe you can talk more about the beavers? And what does our desire to shape our spaces reveal about our human nature?

• 19:29Speaker 01

  I'm laughing because it's funny to just think we always would make jokes about my dad studying beavers. And now it's funny to have it on a podcast that people are going to listen to the jokes about my dad. But the, so the reason they're super helpful for what I'm talking about in the book is, okay.

• 19:46Speaker 01

  You know, this goes back to what are the things that our environments give us, right? And so it's always helpful to look at evolution. And when you're looking at evolution, you can look at other mammals or other animals. And what does the building do for them? And obviously there are all these animals that build shelters. So what's building shelters basically trying to change your environment to make it better for you? And then the beavers are very good builders, very advanced builders. They can build the dams to protect themselves. When you think about it, they build the dams to create a whole new ecosystem that's advantageous to them. Right? Because now all of a sudden you've got this lake that their predators can't come into. And they can build a hut in the middle and then they, there's fish come to the lake and they built the whole world for themselves.

• 20:32Speaker 01

  But they don't do it deliberately the way that we do where we have this ability to say, okay, I'm going to move these things around over here. And it's going to create this outcome. And then, so we have that ability. But the other part is, okay, if we, there's this like physical instinctive need to create shelter or this instinct that to create shelter is going to be helpful. Then what's the kind of psychological pull that's going to help with that, right? What, what in our brain is going to make it feel good to build? And that's where you get to some of these basic needs that interacting with our surroundings meets, which is, okay, agency. So agency is basically, you probably had 50 guests who've talked about agency, right?

• 21:13Speaker 01

  And agency is a super important psychological need that we have that to feel like we are in control of what's happening. Right? We have the ability to change our situation. Well, where did that psychological need come from? Probably from this, if you feel like you need to control your situation or you feel like you can control your situation, you're more likely to move sticks around. You're more likely to have shelter, you're more likely to get out of the elements, you're more likely to be safe from predators. So now there are all these ways to feel agency, including completing tasks or doing things in the world. But probably the original way is to shape your environment, to do something about your physical situation that is going to make you better off.

• 21:57Speaker 01

  And so all of, and then all of these needs, the main needs of agency, and then the other one is competence, right? So if agency is, I feel like I can do this competence is I did it and now I feel good about it. Right? And so that this feeling of competence, you, this is why students give me an extra paragraph on their essay because they want to show that they did something. But again, that's probably coming from this basic psychological pull to change our surroundings and to do something about our environment. And so the beavers illustrate that this is something that animals are doing. And then it goes into like, why do we have these psychological needs in the first place?

• 22:35Speaker 01

  And then how do we continue to meet them in our environments, even though, even though it's not life-saving now to be able to change them? Does that make sense?

• 22:45John R. Miles?

  No.

• 22:45Speaker 01

  That's a lot.

• 22:46John R. Miles?

  No, it makes perfect sense.

• 22:48Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 22:49John R. Miles?

  Perfect.

• 22:51John R. Miles?

  Before we continue, thank you for supporting Passion Struck and for helping us bring these conversations to people around the world. One of the ideas that stayed with me from this discussion is that flourishing isn't only about changing ourselves. It's also about paying attention to the places where we spent our lives, our homes, our workplaces, our neighborhoods, and the small spaces that shape our habits and relationships every day. That's why we created a companion workbook for every episode in this series. Today's guide includes reflections on the environments that energize you, the places where you feel a sense of belonging, and a simple exercise to help you think about how your surroundings align with the life you're trying to build. You can download it for free at theignitedlife.net. And if you're enjoying these conversations, please follow Passion Struck on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

• 23:37John R. Miles?

  Subscribe if you haven't. Most importantly, if someone came to mind while you were listening, share this episode with them. Now a quick break for our sponsors. Thank you for supporting those who support the show.

• 23:59John R. Miles?

  You're listening to Passion Struck right here on the Passion Struck Network. Now let's get back to my conversation with Lighty Clots.

• 24:06John R. Miles?

  Lighty, when I was younger, one of my favorite portions of my career was having the opportunity to work at Lowe's Home Improvement. And a great experience of that is we did a lot of volunteer work with Habitat for Humanity. And I was a big advocate from it because being an Able Academy grad, Jimmy Carter was huge in Habitat for Humanity. I always loved supporting that cause. And outside of that, my wife and I occasionally build beds for kids in need. And where I'm going with this is in the book, you tell this story of helping build a preschool on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation. And something that I related to from have, whether it's Habitat or building beds,

• 24:52John R. Miles?

  is that when you're doing it, you end up meeting a whole bunch of people you don't know at the beginning of the project. And by the time you're done with it, you've created all these amazing bonds with people who you would otherwise have very little in common. And it was just this really, I'm glad you brought it up in the book because to me, it really shows how creating something together often generates deeper connection than simply consuming something together. And is that what your research has found as well?

• 25:24Speaker 01

  That's a beautiful way to put it. Creating something together generates deeper connection than consuming something together. And this is again, it ties back to the beginning of time, right? Like the original reason that people came together out of hunter gatherer bands was to build large structures, right? And then civilization came from that. So it's, okay, we're here, we need to work together to try to make this monolith that we're all gonna worship or whatever it is. And now we need to coordinate, we need to be able to communicate, we need to be able to live in this place for a long enough time to manage this thing. And they think that the first government came from managing irrigation canals, right?

• 26:08Speaker 01

  It's like, now we need to figure out a way to fairly use this system. And so this is the original way for people to come together. And there, there are this habitat-esque or volunteer building traditions in every culture. In Norway, there's one called dugnad, which is shared building. There's barn raisings on the American frontier. There are, there's one in Brazil called Miratau. And it's again, the bringing people together through shared effort. And 100% that builds stronger bonds than just bringing people together to talk about something or to watch a movie.

• 26:44John R. Miles?

  No, it absolutely does. And man, I cherish those builds that I worked on. And also we would spend a lot of time in the stores. You probably remember the little projects they would do, helping kids build.

• 26:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:58John R. Miles?

  Well, we had a whole facility, a whole store that was set up when they were doing merchandising. You would go there and nine months before Christmas, they already had all the Christmas displays out because they were trying to see how they would work. But one of the things they would also do in that facility was they would come up with these contraptions of projects they could give to kids. And I loved getting to participate in that in the local stores and seeing the wonder in the kids just working together on these projects.

• 27:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, the individual.

• 27:32John R. Miles?

  No, and it's just, it's something that I, I wish more kids would participate in because I'm just seeing this shift where instead of letting them experience creativity and doing stuff with their hands, on weekends when they could be doing that, they're playing video games instead. And I think it's going to create a gap as they get older of not getting to experience things like that.

• 27:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, and you put it the exact right way. It's not getting to experience. Some people frame it as, oh, these kids aren't going to know how to build stuff. And it's, yeah, that's part of it. But the bigger part of it is, I had this experience with my son this weekend. We went to the food pantry to volunteer. This isn't something we do regularly, so I'm not bragging about it. It was just, let's do this. He was just cutting peppers with a knife and he, but it was a super sharp knife. And he had the glove on and the guy was teaching him how to cut the peppers. And you could just see, you could see the sense of accomplishment in him, right? He's, I'm doing this thing that I've never done before. And when we're just in the virtual world, we're like taking away that opportunity and that cycles on itself, right?

• 28:42Speaker 01

  So I can cut the pepper, maybe now I can eat a pepper or maybe I can help in other ways in the kitchen. And so I think, yeah, just getting people into this world and the pepper isn't exactly building, but it is, you said, doing stuff with your hands and feeling like you can, again, make change in the world around you. I was in the middle of writing this book and I have another son example that's more building oriented. And so it's talking about agency and feeling like you can shape your surroundings. And we've got these steep stairs in our house that are slippery for older people especially. And so I'm like, oh, let's put some carpet, just carpet tile down on that so that there's traction. And I'm gonna let him pick the color and I'm, I'll have veto power, but I'll let him pick the color. And then all you have to do is stick them on, right?

• 29:26Speaker 01

  So it was a relatively easy home improvement project, but it's, okay, Andy's gonna help me stick them on. And he created the, the template so that you could get them on the right way on each stair. And he liked, he loved it. So you can look for these opportunities to help kids see that they can do something about the world around them.

• 29:45John R. Miles?

  And I'm just laughing because one of my neighbors down the street recently painted their house neon green and I wish I had veto power over that.

• 29:55Speaker 01

  That's chapter seven of the book, right? Your spaces reflecting your values.

• 29:59John R. Miles?

  Like, what are you thinking?

• 30:02Speaker 01

  Seriously, like, what exactly is the message you're sending about what's happening in this house?

• 30:08John R. Miles?

  Well, I wanted to return to this for just a second. I think when we talk about the kids making those objects at Lowe's or participating in things like that, what it brings up to me is just like kids who are not doing those things anymore and who aren't getting to play as much as we used to. I think as adults, we're becoming a society that's increasingly outsourcing the building, fixing and creating aspects of our lives. And I wanted to ask you, what do we lose psychologically when we stop participating in the making of the spaces around us?

• 30:49Speaker 01

  And again, this isn't something that I made up. These are like our basic psychological needs for agency competence and connection. And this is like self determination theory, and it's been studied robustly across cultures, over time, different contexts.

• 31:07Speaker 01

  And we're losing those, right? If you stop engaging with the physical world, it's not the only way to lose those basic needs that we have, but it is a surefire way to do. And so we're losing arguably the most important things that that we need after these basic biological needs. So

• 31:31Speaker 01

  that's what's happening.

• 31:32John R. Miles?

  I was hoping we could go from here to you introduced this idea of space before screen and maybe for the parents who are out there listening to this, what's this concept about and how could they help to apply it?

• 31:42Speaker 01

  So obviously, everything we've talked about so far, and I don't think anyone would argue that, okay, we want people to be more engaged in the physical world. And then the problem is the distraction is the phone or the iPad or whatever. And I think instead of fighting the distraction, just using the distraction as a cue, right? So it's like when I reach for my phone in the morning, I think space before screen, right? And so, okay, I'm about to check my emails or I'm about to see who texted. And now instead of doing that, first, I'm going to take in my physical surroundings. So that's like the most explicit meaning of it. And I just think it's a practice that we can get in the habit of. You could also put a picture of the physical world on your screensaver, right? And that would remind you when you looked at it. But I just

• 32:28Speaker 01

  use the screen as a cue to say, no, have I taken in this physical world around me?

• 32:35John R. Miles?

  In your chapter where you talk about decide and you go into agency and control, when I was at Dell, what was interesting is the only person at Dell who had an office was Michael Dell. Interestingly enough, everyone else was in a sea of little boxes. And we were doing this experiment in the IT group where we stopped even giving people boxes. And we went into this open floor plan that every day, if you chose to come into the office, you could just pick any random space that you wanted. And for me, it was the first time that I didn't have a dedicated

• 33:17John R. Miles?

  workspace. And I found it to be really psychologically challenging because I, there's something about having that familiarity of coming into your workspace and having pictures of your kids there and the common things that you're used to seeing. And I found it really psychologically harmful to me in some ways. I felt like I was just out of place and it was always difficult for me to get into that work groove. What do you think was going on? And do you think when environments like that are creating open work plans, that in some ways we're doing ourselves a disservice?

• 33:57Speaker 01

  I have an article that's coming out in the Wall Street Journal. It'll probably be out by the time this gets released. It'll, it comes out in June about how to use these ideas in the work environments. But one of the things is, I think, open versus closed is a good question. But before we ask that, it's how do we ask about agency competence and connection, right? And I think when you're constantly, first of all, there's just the pure adjustment that needs to happen to an unfamiliar place, right? So if your desk is always changing, every day, the first time you come in, it's just like, all right, where's the drawer? Where's the plug? And just getting used to it. It's small, but it's like a micro version of moving into a new house, right? And you don't know where the light switch is. And now all of a sudden, you're having to use

• 34:41Speaker 01

  your mental energy for that instead of just moving around and thinking about other things. So, you know, we need to, that needs to be a design criteria, right? Basically. But then also when the space, I think it's going to be disorienting if you don't feel like you have control over it, right? If you don't feel like, okay, well, if I put this private paper here and leave it, it might not be there tomorrow, right? Or I can't, like you said, hang the photos of my family. And again, I'm not here to decide how office design should work. I think it's different based on the different tasks that are happening in the office. But I am confident that we should think about, okay, like, how is this space meeting the basic needs of the people who are going to be

• 35:26Speaker 01

  in it? How is it aligned with the tasks that we want them to do? And then design to that?

• 35:34John R. Miles?

  Yeah, I know some people who are probably listening to this are saying, what do you mean? And open environment is the best thing that ever happened. But for me, it did the exact opposite. It made me much less productive than I would have been in an environment that I was comfortable being in and used to being in. And I just give it as an example, because I'm sure many people have a similar experience as I did.

• 35:58Speaker 01

  I'm an introvert too. And that's, you need a place to go and be able to recharge. And I love talking to people, but I can't just be constantly bombarded with it, or else I will just fatigue or not be my best self. So I think companies are doing better with giving flexible spaces and different spaces for different things. And I totally understand too, that this is one of those places where we started the conversation where I think people don't think of this as something they can do anything about, right? But the general employer isn't going to influence the actual renovation of the office. But I think oftentimes, the general employee has more leeway than they think to move among different spaces, right? If you're like, okay, I'm going to use my office for this, or you haven't given me a private space. So when I need

• 36:42Speaker 01

  to do my deep work, I'm going to go into this conference room and lock the door, whatever, or I'm gonna start to do my team meetings on a walking meeting because I want them to engage with their senses and break out of their regular mindset. I do think that there are a lot of cases where we aren't making full use of the spaces that we have access to. And that's something that is on us as employees, but also the leadership can help people see that, right? Can help model that behavior. It can help make explicit that, oh, this common area over here, it's not just for when we have the company party. If you guys want to use this for, you've got this new hard team project coming up, do you want to set up over there and make this space yours for

• 37:24Speaker 01

  a while? And so, starting to break out of our fixed mindset of the space is always used for this thing and this thing only.

• 37:32John R. Miles?

  Yeah. And since we're talking about these spaces, I thought one of the most touching stories in the book involved your daughter, Josie, learning to claim her own space at preschool. And that you connect physical batteries to emotional boundaries. Why are those two capacities so deeply linked?

• 37:50Speaker 01

  Again, this is, I'm sure you've had people on talking about boundaries, right? And this a very physical term that has been.

• 37:57John R. Miles?

  Liz Ossland.

• 37:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, now all the talk about it is about emotional and relationship boundaries. Yeah, so the story, my daughter, she was in our playroom, but the laundry is off the playroom. And I came walking through to do her laundry and she's sitting there playing and she's like, space! I'm like, what? She's like, space! And so she had learned this at school, that if you yell space, it means that people have to give you basically a 10 foot circle around what you're doing. And this keeps them protected from other rambunctious kids running them over when they're trying to play with blocks or something. And she was having a ton of fun yelling it at me because it's like forcing me to. And so we were negotiating and eventually we got to, yes, I can walk around her circle to get to the laundry, but I wasn't allowed to look at her. The reason

• 38:43Speaker 01

  they're learning this at school is because it's the first step in seeing themselves as an independent person, right? As this is Josie and this is dad, right? And they're like, we're connected in some ways, but I have my own little world that I can say something about. And it's like a tremendous gift that they're giving the kids to be able to do that spatially. And they know that by doing that spatially, that is eventually going to carry over to these skills of emotional boundaries and relationship boundaries. And no, that's not appropriate. I don't want to be talked to like that. So, yeah, there, there are a lot of ways in which, you know, if you, these concepts that have, are applied to other relationships in our lives

• 39:27Speaker 01

  have originated in our relationship with our physical surroundings, even in a good place, the title of the book, right? And that's typically used to be like, I'm good, right? But it's a physical term.

• 39:40John R. Miles?

  Lydie, I can't do an episode on passion struck without talking about mattering. And you made it easy in this book because you have a whole chapter on belonging. And so obviously, it was one of the first chapters I went to when I read the table of contents. And one of the most striking claims in the book is that you say proximity predicts friendship better than shared interest. And why are physical spaces still so important for belonging when we're in increasingly digital world?

• 40:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, probably gets back to that like multi experience, right? And the difference, I'm loving talking to you right now. This is amazing. It's an amazing connection that we wouldn't have been able to make a quarter century ago. But we're not able to shake hands or hug, or we can see each other's facial expression, but we can't see everything about the body language. And being in the same place with the same people, having similar experiences, doing similar things, there's just not really any substitute for that. And I see this with college students all the time, right? Yeah, you're, and then I look back at my own college experience. It's like you're friends with these people because you're in the same place at the same time with them.

• 40:55Speaker 01

  And it even zooms all the way into literally where you lived on campus, right? And it's almost like this perfectly controlled experiment. People are randomly assigned to dorm rooms and you end up being friends with the people who are on your hall freshman year. I've got a friend who's the biggest, in the nicest way, he's my friend. He's like me, super nerd, right? He makes jokes about logarithmic functions that you only get if there's like, if you have a deep understanding of logarithmic functions. And his tailgating crew is an art teacher, a retired NFL player and a finance guy, right? It's like the only thing that you guys are just friends because you were together freshman year. So, and that that proximity, it just matters. And we, we, it's something to think about.

• 41:40Speaker 01

  I think if people are asking me, oh, what house should I buy? You're like, well, where is it? Who, who's it going to make you interact with? And do you want to interact with those people? So I'm glad you brought that up.

• 41:51John R. Miles?

  Yeah, because one of my favorite things you wrote was we don't just belong to people, we belong to places. And for some reason, when I read that, it reminded me when I was at Lowe's, before they moved the headquarters to, to just north of Charlotte in a town called Mooresville. It had been in Wilkesboro. And for what they ended up doing is they took the town mall and converted it into the Lowe's headquarters. And so

• 42:18Speaker 01

  Interesting.

• 42:19John R. Miles?

  When I, oh man, it was phenomenal because think about the food court and being able to see everyone. But what was so interesting to me is you would talk to people who worked in that environment even today. And they were so proud of where they sat in that former mall. I ran a call center there that happened to reside where Sears used to be. And people in the call center were like, I used to be in sporting goods and I used to be in automotive.

• 42:49Speaker 01

  And I It was part of their identity.

• 42:51John R. Miles?

  My boss to his, his office used to be where Orange Julius used to be. And so they developed this identity based on where they used to shop in the mall. And that those stores brought them joy even in the new function that they were in. And I just thought it's an interesting parallel.

• 43:09Speaker 01

  I'm going to use that in a good place, too. That's a great story. It would have illustrated these ideas. And I think, yeah, you, I'm glad you brought up the point because we do think about belonging and connections with humans. And I do think that's the primary way, but you do feel some of that same belonging and connection and mattering with places that you've put a lot of time in. I talk in the book about this beach cottage that's been in my side of the family, my dad's side of the family for over a hundred years. And every time you go, every time you have an experience there, it's like kind of building this connection with a place, which again, isn't a substitute for human connection, but it is another connection that kind of keeps you grounded in the world and makes you realize that there are things that, things that can't be taken away from you, really.

• 43:53John R. Miles?

  You're absolutely right. And I'm going to use this example of the mall here to illustrate another chapter of your book, which is on how spaces influence. Where I'm going to take this is when we were at that headquarters facility in the mall, you would see the senior executives walking up and down the hall all the time. And they would stop and talk to people in cubes. You could approach them in the cafeteria environment. And I remember Lowe's was really big at talking about core values. And so I remember our president would talk about the core values all the time, almost every time you got to meet with them. And then when they moved to Mooresville, they ended up positioning the senior executives on their own floor.

• 44:37John R. Miles?

  They hired secret service agents and only the top executives were able to get in. And even though I could use my card to screen my way into it, I still had to be vetted before I could even go see my boss in that environment. And then they had their own chef. And so what ended up happening is they stopped frequenting the rest of the employee base. And I saw over time that this constant reinforcement of values stopped happening as much. And what I saw physically happen was that the culture started to change as the physical environment started to change.

• 45:20John R. Miles?

  And to me, when I look, when I was experiencing it, it was one thing. But now, when I look back upon it, I really think there was a profound change. And I think your book, and especially this chapter on influence, really goes into this. And I was hoping that you might be able to expand upon that illustration.

• 45:40Speaker 01

  That's a great one. I, yeah, the main idea of that chapter is that our spaces are advertising our values and they never turn off, right? And, and yet we have the same kind of habituation tendency that we talked about before to not notice it, right? So in the company example, where it's like, every company has these values that are like what you're describing at Lowe's, where, oh, we're inclusive, we want everybody's thing to be open. But if then your space is saying something totally different than what's being said on the mission statement, that's worse than if they were just aligned about, no, we have this hierarchy, right? You're actually contradicting what you're saying through your spaces.

• 46:21Speaker 01

  And that's a message that just gets reinforced every day, every time somebody walks into that space. And so I think it's, it doesn't require a whole renovation. And this Wall Street Journal article, I was talking about one of the tips, takeaways is like, when you go into your office, next time, look at, do a values audit, right? What is the office saying about what you care about? Are there things here that are counter to what you actually value? And can you remove those things? And this applies to our offices, it applies to our personal spaces, right? And you've got the house that painted itself neon. And I don't, probably says a lot of things, but one of those things is, I don't know, particularly care what my neighbor's view is. And all the way up to larger social things, right?

• 47:05Speaker 01

  I talk in the book about being in Sweden and Copenhagen, Denmark, and just the level of playground over there is so absurd compared to what we have here. And absurd in a good way, right? There's self-service zip lines, there are four-story high tree houses with slides that have been built out of massive timbers and look like they could last for 200 years. And it just sends a very clear signal about like how kids are valued in this society and how public space is valued in this society as opposed to me having to drive my son to a kind of indoor, you have to pay climbing gym, right? And so, again, this is a case where maybe it seems a little harder to change your space

• 47:48Speaker 01

  than it is to send a social media post about something you care about. But it's, when you put it into the environment, it's like, it's advertising and messaging that is always on, never turns off, and then can kind of propagate around the world.

• 48:03John R. Miles?

  Yeah, I love that mention of parks. My, my parents have lived in Chattanooga, Tennessee now for years. And they live on this mountain, Signal Mountain. It's actually called Walden Ridge, but everyone calls it Signal Mountain because it's the largest city on it. But they have this park there that was built by the community called the Pumpkin Patch. And my kids, all they could talk about was going to the Pumpkin Patch because it was one of those wooden type playgrounds, but it had these super long slides and the zip line, like you mentioned. And as my siblings and I got older, it was funny because even without the kids, we as adults would go to the Pumpkin Patch ourselves and run around and play.

• 48:46John R. Miles?

  So it was a space that became such an influence on us. So I love how you bring that up in the Nordic countries.

• 48:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:56John R. Miles?

  Well, Lydie, I want to talk about the final chapter because as I was reading it, it felt like to me, the book changed. Earlier chapters were exploring like how places shape behavior, learning, belonging, influence. And then you suddenly are writing about grief, memory and love. Did the circumstances with Josie change what you believed the book was about? Or what were you hoping to do with that final chapter?

• 49:27Speaker 01

  So Josie died on Christmas when she was four and a half and in 2020, she just got, she got sick and two days later she was dead. And so first and foremost, what I was trying to do with the chapter is just tell the truth. I think that the book was always, she was always in the book, right? You talk about all the way and I had drafted the book at that point and she was in there illustrating the stories and the last chapter of the book was always going to be about how spaces transcend, right? One of the reasons these are physical spaces are interesting is because they predate us and they outlast us in many cases. And the chapter was the same.

• 50:10Speaker 01

  And now I'm going to talk about what happened to Josie, but then also how to use spaces to keep her spirit alive, right? And I think one way that this is my first major experience with grief and loss. And one of the things that in my thinking about it is, well, people are still here in the stories and just in like the way that they've put themselves into the world, right? And so it's a privilege to be able to share her stories with you and with your listeners. And I think a little bit of the spirit gets into people that way. But then also the thing with spaces is, okay, how can you create the grandma's porch version of Josie, right? Where it's, okay,

• 50:53Speaker 01

  people experience this space and they have a little bit of how she moved through the world. So one of my favorite stories of Josie, which is just so perfectly encapsulated her character, and I tell in chapter eight was, we'd walk between our house and this pond that's on the university campus. And we go over and find frogs or like just throw stuff in and she'd always go a different way. And she'd always like traipse through people's yards or walk all the way around the block just to get 100 yards. But one day we were walking through a house that the university owns, but it's just an old house. And we walked up through the yard and up through the English Ivy. And then there was a path going from the porch to the street. And on the path, there was, the owner had etched their family name in marble. But of

• 51:34Speaker 01

  course Josie can't read, so she sees the path and she says, well, that says Josie's way. She like named the path after herself. And so after she died, I'm like, okay, it would be cool to create a Josie's way. And so next to the best playground in Charlottesville, we made a about a quarter mile path that like runs adjacent to it, but it also has paths that lead off of it. And so it gets kids down into the woods, but also more importantly, just gets them feel like they're on an adventure. And then other people have made Josie's way. I've had graduate students sending me, hey, here's the one in our backyard that my daughter's walking on,

• 52:13Speaker 01

  right? And so it's nice to see the spaces out there in the world and also like people using them for in a way that Josie would love and that that's helpful to me. And I think you don't know for sure what a four year old would want, but I do think that she would absolutely love that. I was out there at the original Josie's way. And there were these two little boys who probably were three or four and they had hiked to the bottom, but the moms had stayed up at the top. And the moms were like, all right, guys, it's time to go. And the kids just ignored them. And then the mom said it again, it's time to go. And the two, the one boy looked at the other boy, I'm like, what's going to happen here? And the kid just yells up, he's like,

• 52:58Speaker 01

  we're not coming. And I was like, Josie would have absolutely loved that. And they're like, we're just gonna do our thing down here and explore. And that's something that Josie would have totally appreciated. So.

• 53:10John R. Miles?

  Lighty, and finally, I wanted to ask, after everything you've learned as a researcher, designer, teacher and father, what does it mean for you to leave a good place behind?

• 53:24Speaker 01

  I think it's all in the people, right? It's are you giving, are you having the knowledge? Sure. But also the courage and agency to find the places that to put themselves in a place that is good for them, right? So it's like, the book has the ideas, here are the attributes or ingredients, but also the empowerment, right? That no, you can do it. You can do it. You can find those places. And I think that that's what it would be.

• 53:55John R. Miles?

  Well, thank you, Lighty. And where's the best place people can learn more about you?

• 53:59Speaker 01

  My parents gave me a good Google name, so L E I D Y K L O T Z dot com. And you can get information about the books on there and other stuff that I'm doing. But the best stuff's in the book.

• 54:11John R. Miles?

  Awesome. Well, Lighty, it was such an honor to have you today. Thank you so much for joining us on Passion Struck.

• 54:17Speaker 01

  Oh, it was my honor, John. Thank you.

• 54:19John R. Miles?

  That brings us to the end of today's conversation. What stayed with me is how rarely we stop to think about the environments that shape our lives. We pay attention to our goals, our habits, our mindset, but the places where we live, work, gather and raise our families are quietly influencing all of those things every single day. Lighty reminded us that flourishing isn't only an internal process. It's also about creating spaces that support, belong and curiosity, connection, in a sense that we have a hand in building the life we're living. I especially loved his observation that proximity predicts friendship better than shared interests. When you think about your closest relationships, many of them begin simply because you kept showing up in the same place at the same time. A neighborhood, a school, a workplace, team,

• 55:02John R. Miles?

  the environments we inhabit become part of our story. And then there was Josie. Lighty's reflections on grief, memory, and creating spaces that keep the people we love present in our lives were among the most moving moments we've had on the podcast this year. They remind us that places aren't just physical things, they become containers for meaning, memory, and love itself. Next week, we'll begin the fourth movement in our flourishing series, contributing. My guest next Tuesday is Jess Ekstrom. Jess is an entrepreneur, bestselling author, founder of Headbands of Hope, and someone who has spent her career helping people pursue

• 55:43John R. Miles?

  ambition without losing themselves in the process. Her new book, Making It Without Losing It, asks a question that resonates with so many people today. What does success look like if it costs you your health, your relationships, or your sense of who you are? In our conversation, we talk about identity beyond achievement, building a life that reflects your values, and why contribution is often the thing that gives ambition its deepest meaning. Because flourishing ultimately expands beyond ourselves. It grows when our gifts, our experiences and our work begin serving something larger than our own success.

• 56:18Speaker 02

  There was this interesting study at Vanderbilt that looked at dopamine. Dopamine is honestly the feeling that we're all chasing. It's the feel good hormone, that happiness chemical that we get when we call a friend or eat a good piece of cake or something. And we're looking for that feeling. And this, the study at Vanderbilt thought that we got that dopamine hit at the result, when we get the raise, when we hit a certain number promotion. But this study showed that we were wrong. We actually, it studied our brains and we get that hit of dopamine in anticipation of the results, not the result itself.

• 56:56John R. Miles?

  If today's conversation resonated with you, please share it with someone who helped create a place where you felt seen, safe and supported. And don't forget to download today's companion workbook and reflection guide at theignitedlife.net. I'm John Miles and you've been Passion Struck.