Changing Your Environment Can Change Your Life

Our everyday environment consists of many things.

Where we live, the people we surround ourselves with, the food we eat, what we watch, and are just a few examples.

We don’t often think about it, but these things directly impact our health, happiness, and overall well-being! One of the biggest lessons I’ve learned in 26 years is that changing your environment can change your life.

This is my story.

I was at my lowest point and didn’t realize how much my environment was a factor in this difficult time.

Once I was able to discover that I had the ability to make myself a priority and change my surroundings, I started to heal. Things got better, and it was through this challenge that I was able to learn so much about myself and what’s truly important to me!

Looking back at my life two years ago, I was in a completely different place physically, emotionally, and mentally.

• Physically, my body was covered in terribly itchy and sore eczema. This eczema would crack, bleed, and get infected on a regular basis. At the time I was trying everything externally to get rid of it from creams, to medication, and homemade remedies. Nothing seemed to work.
• Mentally, I was in a fog, filled with resentment, burnt-out, and frustrated.
• Emotionally, I would cry often, felt unstable, insecure, and hopeless.

Without realizing it at the time, I was dealing with lots of trauma from some hardships that occurred during the year prior, and I was also living in a toxic and negative environment. 

I didn’t see these huge contributing factors clearly at the time.

Sometimes when you’re in the thick of it all you can’t see what’s really in front of you. I was confused because I thought that I was doing everything I could to get better and heal. I was eating healthy, taking supplements, and working with a naturopathic doctor, but I still wasn’t seeing results in my skin, my mindset, or my overall wellbeing.

Sometimes we underestimate the power of our mindset and our daily surroundings as an underlying factor in how we feel and what’s going on inside of our bodies. I was so stressed at the time and didn’t recognize that my environment was one of the main reasons for that! I knew I needed to make a change, and I think for a while I didn’t have the courage to take that leap.

I was always so busy looking for answers on how to cure my eczema or “get better” without realizing that the answers were always inside of me. 

Ironically, things started to turn around for me as soon as the pandemic hit in March 2020.

I found myself temporarily laid-off from my job at the time and suddenly I was forced to SLOW down, reflect, and reevaluate.

In the midst of chaos and uncertainty, I decided to move out of the place that I was living at the time and move into my partner’s home with his family. This was only supposed to be temporary until things got “back to normal” and, as we know, that didn’t happen for a long time!

Little did I know, moving out was the beginning of a shift that would take place within me. Within two weeks of moving into my partner’s place, my skin started to clear up. My eczema was finally healing for the first time in what felt like forever!

It wasn’t just physical changes that I was seeing either, I started to feel happy again! I reached out to a therapist for the first time in my life and started seeing them consistently throughout lockdown. I was able to talk about things that I had bottled up inside of me for so long. Actual transformation started taking place in every aspect of my life!

Here’s a quick before and after of my skin clearing up within two weeks of moving out:

I never really realized that I had the power to make these changes and put myself first. I didn’t think that it really mattered that much or would make a difference.

Suddenly I started looking at things differently.

I became mindful of what I allowed myself to accept in my life and what I wasn’t okay with. I discovered that boundaries are healthy and that without boundaries, we can lose ourselves. I started to be more mindful of the people around me, keeping the good ones around and getting rid of those negatively affecting my mental health.

Overall, I started to make my peace a priority.

The truth is, I was used to living in chaos and instability – I didn’t even know what living in a peaceful environment meant. Although leaving behind a lot of things that were no longer serving me was hard to do, it was the best decision I ever made for myself. 

For me the path to healing was choosing myself and my needs above everything else, and believing that I am worth it. For you, healing might look different.

What I think it really boils down to is prioritizing your peace and knowing that you deserve to be happy. If you were able to get through this blog post – I want to thank you for reading this. Wherever you are on this journey we call life, I hope that you’re prioritizing peace and happiness, in whatever way that looks like for you.

Alexia Palmeri is a 26-year-old personal development enthusiast! She looks at life experiences as an opportunity to always learn and grow. Alexia is also a broadcast journalism graduate with a passion and knack for communications and media. She is always on the lookout for new trends on social media and keeps up to date with what’s happening in the world. In her free time, Alexia enjoys socializing with family and loved ones, being in nature, cooking plant-based meals, and discovering new places to dine and adventure!