{"id":239,"date":"2026-09-10T17:14:41","date_gmt":"2026-09-10T17:14:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/becomingher.ltd\/?p=239"},"modified":"2026-09-10T17:14:41","modified_gmt":"2026-09-10T17:14:41","slug":"what-we-surround-ourselves-with","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/becomingher.ltd\/?p=239","title":{"rendered":"What We Choose to Surround Ourselves With Matters"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I used to think the things around me were just, things.

The clothes hanging in my wardrobe. The places I went for coffee. The accounts I followed. The conversations I found myself having. The rooms I spent my time in.

I didn’t think of any of them as having much to do with who I was becoming. They were simply the backdrop to my life.

But lately, I’ve been wondering whether there really is such a thing as a backdrop. Because if the environments we repeatedly place ourselves in influence what feels normal, desirable and possible, then surely the smaller things we surround ourselves with are communicating something too.

Not because a candle can change your life, but because what we repeatedly give our attention to can.

The Backdrop Isn’t Really a Backdrop<\/strong>

Last week, I wrote about the rooms we choose<\/a>.

About the people, places and environments we spend our time within, and how they can quietly expand or contract our sense of what is possible.

But a room isn’t only made up of the people standing inside it.

There is the book on the table.
The magazine beside it.
The clothes we chose that morning.
The conversation playing through our headphones.
The account we opened on Instagram before we’d even got out of bed.
The hotel we saved because something about it made us imagine ourselves there.
The woman we follow whose life, work or way of thinking introduces us to something we hadn’t considered before.
The objects we bring into our homes.
The businesses we choose to give our money to.

Individually, these things can seem insignificant. Collectively, they form part of the world we’re living inside.

And that world isn’t neutral.

We cannot consciously process everything happening around us at once. Our attention is selective. We notice some things and filter out countless others.

Part of the system involved in regulating our attention and alertness is the reticular activating system (RAS). A network in the brainstem that helps determine which information is significant enough to reach our conscious awareness. It’s one reason you can become interested in something; a particular car, a new place, an idea, and suddenly seem to notice it everywhere.

It was likely there before. Your attention has just changed.

And I think that’s particularly interesting when we think about becoming.

Because as our identities, interests and priorities begin to shift, what captures our attention can shift too. Ideas become familiar, ways of living become normalised and possibilities that once felt distant can begin to feel less unusual.

We aren’t passive recipients of everything around us, we are human beings continually in relationship with our environments.

The world within us influences what we notice in the world around us, and the world around us continually gives the world within us something to respond to.

Maybe conscious living begins somewhere in that relationship.

What We Consume, Consumes Our Attention<\/strong>

We usually associate the word consume with buying, but we consume far more than products.

We consume conversations. Images, opinions, news, books, music, social media and environments. We consume ideas about what a successful woman looks like<\/a>. What a good mother should be. What kind of career we should want. What shape our bodies should be. What constitutes a beautiful home, an impressive life or a worthwhile use of our time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And our attention is finite. Every time we give something our attention, we’re allowing it a small place within our inner world.

Which makes me wonder whether one of the most overlooked forms of conscious choice is simply becoming more intentional about what we give that attention to.

Not because everything we consume needs to be educational or meaningful. Sometimes the beautiful dress can just be a beautiful dress. The hotel can simply make us feel good. The book can entertain us. The candle can smell lovely. Consciousness doesn’t require us to extract a profound lesson from everything we touch. But there is a difference between enjoying the world around us and moving through it without ever noticing what we’re repeatedly taking in.

Why Am I Drawn to This Now?<\/strong>

I’ve become increasingly interested in what women are drawn towards when their identities begin to change.
Because sometimes our choices shift before we have language for why.

We suddenly want to clear out a wardrobe we’ve tolerated for years. We stop following accounts that once held our attention. A book catches us at precisely the right moment. We want different conversations, different spaces, different clothes or different experiences. We become interested in places we’d never previously imagined ourselves visiting.

None of these things necessarily means anything profound. But sometimes they can be clues.

There is a concept in psychology, introduced by consumer researcher Russell Belk, known as the extended self: the idea that our sense of identity can extend beyond our physical selves into the things, places and possessions we consider part of our lives. What we own doesn’t make us who we are. But what we choose, value, keep, wear and surround ourselves with can become connected to how we experience and express our identities.

And I think there is an important distinction here.

I don’t want to ask:
What should I buy to become her?<\/em>

I’m much more interested in asking:
Why am I drawn to this now?<\/em>

The place we suddenly want to visit. The book we can’t stop thinking about. A different way of dressing. A conversation or experience we find ourselves seeking out. Even another woman’s work that seems to speak to something we haven’t yet been able to articulate.

Not as an instruction for who we should become, but as information about what might already be shifting within us.

Conscious Doesn’t Mean Perfect<\/strong>

There is an uncomfortable edge to conversations about conscious living because they can very quickly become another set of rules.

Buy this. Don’t buy that.
Shop here. Avoid there.
Own less. Choose better.

And suddenly conscious living becomes another identity we’re trying to perform correctly. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I’m not particularly interested in that. Becoming Her isn’t about constructing the perfectly curated life. I don’t believe every object we own needs a story, every purchase needs to be profound or every environment needs to be beautiful. Real life isn’t an editorial photoshoot. There are plastic toys in the living room, things we bought because they were cheap and convenient, or clothes we don’t particularly love but still wear. There are mornings when what we consume is simply whatever happens to appear on our phone first.

Consciousness isn’t perfection. It’s noticing.

It’s the small pause between moving automatically and recognising that there might be a choice available. Whether something still feels like us. Whether we actually want it in our world. Whether it expands something within us or simply occupies our attention.

Those small moments of noticing have become far more compelling to me than creating another set of rules about what a conscious woman should own.

What Holds Us While We Become<\/strong>

Because perhaps this is where our surroundings become particularly interesting. They quietly contribute to our sense of what is normal.

Spend enough time around one particular way of thinking and it can begin to feel obvious. But spend time in environments where women create, travel, build businesses, write books, change careers, dress differently, start again, rest without apologising or construct lives outside the templates we’ve inherited, and those possibilities begin to enter our field of reference too.

They don’t become guarantees. They become possibilities.

And I think this becomes particularly important when we’re in transition.

There is a word for the space between who we’ve been and who we’re becoming: liminality. It’s the threshold. The in-between. The period in which an old identity may no longer quite fit, while what comes next hasn’t fully formed.

Equanimity is something different. It’s the capacity to stay with ourselves in that space: to tolerate the uncertainty without rushing backwards towards what is familiar or forwards towards an answer simply because not knowing feels uncomfortable.

But I’ve started wondering whether strengthening that capacity is entirely an inside job. Because while equanimity is something we cultivate within ourselves, the environment around us can surely support, or challenge, our ability to stay there.

The accounts we follow can continually reinforce the life we think we should be living, or introduce us to possibilities we hadn’t considered. A book can give language to something beginning to shift. A conversation can rush us towards an answer, or give us permission not to have one yet. A room can reinforce who we’ve always been, or expand our sense of who we might become.

None of those things can do the internal work for us. But they can help create the conditions in which we’re able to stay with ourselves while something new is emerging.

And maybe that’s another reason what we choose to surround ourselves with matters.

Building a World Around the Woman Who Is Emerging<\/strong>

Maybe that’s what I’m becoming increasingly fascinated by.

Not simply: Who am I becoming?<\/em>

But: What kind of world am I building around the woman who is becoming?
<\/em>
Not because the books we read, clothes we wear, rooms we enter or experiences we choose will manufacture a new identity for us, but because they become part of the environment in which our becoming is taking place.

For a long time, much of my work, and much of Becoming Her, has looked at the world within us. At understanding the woman we’ve become and what has shaped her. That conversation isn’t disappearing, but I’m becoming equally interested in what happens when we look up.

At what captures our attention. What inspires us. What expands our sense of possibility. What feels increasingly like us… and what no longer does.

Because becoming isn’t happening separately from our lives. It’s happening through them. Through what we notice, what we experience, what we allow close and what we begin to choose differently.

We don’t have to know exactly who we’re becoming to begin creating conditions in which she has room to emerge.
And maybe that is the relationship between the world within us and the world around us that I’m most drawn to exploring.

Liminality may be the space we’re standing in. Equanimity may be our capacity to stay with ourselves there. And the world we choose to surround ourselves with, may help us hold that space long enough to discover what comes next.

So, what kind of world are you building around the woman who is becoming?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

With warmth,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Becky<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Founder & Editor, Becoming Her<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Continue the conversation<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you’re beginning to question what has shaped the woman you’ve become – the rules you’ve inherited, the voices you’ve carried and the versions of yourself you’ve learned to be – The Becoming Journal: Issue One creates space to explore that conversation more deeply.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Becoming Journal, Issue One: Understanding the woman you’ve become<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00a333 Digital journal, Instant access<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I used to think the things around me were just, things. The clothes hanging in my wardrobe. The places I went for coffee. The accounts I followed. The conversations I found myself having. The rooms I spent my time in. I didn’t think of any of them as having much to do with who I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":245,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-239","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-journal"],"yoast_head":"\nWhat We Surround Ourselves With Matters | Becoming Her<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"What we surround ourselves with matters. 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