The Art of 'Radicalizing' Your Space

In 2016, I was in a rut. I had performed in opera houses and off-Broadway, created art, and lived the fast-paced, New York City life. I had the ambition, but by then, pushing through was no longer an option that my body would (or could) tolerate. It was time for healing. This realization led to my next dilemma, my environment felt like an anti-healing zone.

Oftentimes I notice that we all have the overwhelming desire to change. We announce to ourselves and others, "I'm going to lose the pounds...I'm going to switch careers...I will travel the world..." and all the other fairytales that dwell in Oneday Land. Then years go by and we're still talking about the same dreams but making no progress towards them.

I am still on my healing journey, but I am certain this one intuitive thought I'm about to share with you saved my life. Here it is: your environment is directly tied to your growth. If you want to get to the next level and don't know where to start, start with your environment.

Your dwelling space. Where you eat, sleep, pray, cry, dance. Where you are your most genuine self. It can be a room, an apartment, or an RV. But it's yours. It's the one space you have absolute control over. By taking the action steps to raise the vibration in your space, you have already committed to the change you are hoping for. This is radicalizing your space.

If I were to tell you that 'Nole Bradley' is likely to be inaugurated as our next president, then upon Googling the name you discovered that Nole Bradley is a fourteen-year-old, you're probably going to give me the side-eye. Rightfully so, because to run for president legally you have to be at least 35. Therefore, no matter how amazing Madam Bradley is, either I or the country have gone insane (heaven forbid after the year we've just had).

Yet there are many atrocities involving fourteen-year-olds that don't baffle us in the slightest bit. If I told you there have been millions of fourteen-year-old child soldiers and fourteen-year-olds who are forced to marry, you would solemnly nod in agreement. If this has been a centuries-long status-quo for an unfathomable amount of fourteen-year-olds, why can't one, just one, be president? Why do we normalize radical evil and hinder radical good?

The world needs people who have come alive. Until we live in a time when children can become presidents (just like they can become soldiers and brides), the world needs you to get radical about achieving your wildest dreams, one goal at a time.

To attack goals, you need to feel energized enough to stay committed. This is why your environment matters. Being able to thrive in your intimate setting is powerful. Your home should be a safe space, a protective cocoon to create, develop, and thrive.

Now there is a reason I call it "radical." This is not just about cutting out some magazine pictures and putting up a vision board. Those around you should begin to plan interventions. As Dave Ramsey puts it, "normal sucks! It's time to be weird." Below are the four steps that I took, and that you can take to prime your space for healing and leveling up. Remember—it's a marathon, not a sprint. You might find it difficult, like I did, to have a sense of urgency while realizing you can only do so much in a day. This is divine discontent. Take your time and modify the steps in a way that works for you, so long as you stay out of your comfort zone and make daily progress towards your goals.

We abide by the law of energy which states, "energy can neither be created nor destroyed." This means that the already paid-off parking ticket pinned to your fridge and your ex's sweater that's buried in your closet are hosts of unpleasant energy adding to the weight you feel every day. Now, look around your space. Clothes that can no longer fit, bill statements, trinkets, and junk. It all accumulates. Cue the coffee and SAD lamps. Still tired. Vicious cycle. This was me!

Dump everything that you don't need. Scan essential documents to a cloud...any cloud. Get rid of all the papers, give away clothes, and literally throw all unnecessary items away. Then, give your space a good clean. Scrub the walls and shampoo the floors. Clean it like you are moving out and you want your deposit back. Because you are getting ready to reap a harvest for all those nights you paced the floor feeling helpless over your destiny and you need to make room. Get fresh sheets. Organize your closet. Polish the floors.

Once you've sanitized your space, try to get in as much natural light as possible. If you work from home, reorient your desk so that you're facing a window. Keep the blinds open during the day. I noticed a huge difference in my quality of rest after doing this step alone. A clear space helps to clear the mind.

What do you want? Who do you want to be? How do you want to exist in this world? A lot of us don't know, and we're sitting in the passenger seat of our own lives. In this phase, I printed out images of my wildest dreams and made a vision collage. You need to be as specific as possible. Some examples were pictures of the tiles and floors that I wanted in my new apartment, how I wanted to eat, the time I wanted to wake up in the morning, the instrument I wanted to play, the award I wanted to win, and best friends jumping in the ocean together. Among these, my wildest dream was healing.

What is your wildest dream? Find photos that look like what you see in your mind. You can place these on a poster board, or directly on the wall. Your vision collage should be perpendicular to your bed. That way it's the first thing you see when you wake up in the morning and the last thing you see before you fall asleep at night.

Then I made another collage, a No Excuses collage. I made a collage of women that looked like me and came from similar circumstances that I'd come from. These women had achieved massive success and showed up in the world as their authentic selves. With hundreds of women staring back at me, women including Zora Neale Hurston, Maya Angelou, Lynn Nottage, Toni Morrison, Lisa Nichols, Oprah, Solange, Venus & Serena Williams, Ava Duverney, Angela Basset, Uzo Aduba, Nina Simone, and Shonda Rhimes, I was constantly reminded that my wildest dreams were possible. Your No Excuses collage should include pictures of:

• Your ancestors or what they may have looked like.
• Successful people that came from your hometown.
• Successful people that look like you.
• People with a sense of style that you like.
• People who overcame something you've been through.
• People who inspire you.

The one caveat is that they should all resemble you in some form or fashion, this can mean body shape, skin color, or a trait of any kind. For me, this entailed Black, cis-gendered women—many of them being full-figured. Determine what this means for you. Once you've gathered the images, hang them above your headboard. You will feel their presence. As Maya Angelou said, "I come as one, but I stand as ten-thousand."

Think of a classroom you spent time in. It was probably vibrant, motivating, and filled with information you needed to know like the alphabet, list of presidents, or a world map. Now it's time to turn your living space into a classroom. By wisdomizing your space, you are helping your brain create shortcuts (your brain's favorite thing!) for the information you want to retain.

There are books I've read that were complete game-changers for me. Yet I would read through the book once, put it down, and then forget all about it. Then I realized, there are gems in these books that need to become so ingrained in me, I no longer have to consciously apply them. 

The first part of this is motivation, which we all struggle with. To turbocharge my space I revisited all the books, TED talks, speeches, commencement addresses, and sermons that resonated within me, and I put them on post-its all over my space. My headboard, my mirror, my nightstand, all over! I think I put up over 250 post-its. So many people have come before me and figured something out about how to keep going despite all odds, and I wanted to bathe in their wisdom. Here are a few quotes from my radical space:

"The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don't have any." -Alice Walker

"Life is full of obstacle illusions." -Grant Frazier

"Some of the world's greatest feats were accomplished by people not smart enough to know they were impossible."-Doug Larson

"If you hear a voice within you say 'you cannot paint,' then by all means paint and that voice will be silenced." -Vincent Van Gogh

Find quotes that resonate with you and do the same. Put them all over your space.

The second step to this is shortcutting the knowledge you want to retain. Want to be an excellent speaker? Put up SAT word and fundamentals of public speaking posters. Want to learn French? Put up 200-word posters and verb conjugation references. You can buy pretty posters or make them on your own using any Microsoft Office or design application. It doesn't have to be a time-consuming DIY project and this can be applied to any learning goal.

It's the classroom approach. A radical space for learning to help you pass the state exam. School is over but the exams never stopped, they are the little tests that come our way. By preparing for the unforeseen test (the pop quiz that gives you extra credit), you are creating your own luck.

Imagine, you're firm is on a Zoom call with a potential client who happens to be from France, and because you've wisdomized your space you're able to hold a basic conversation with him...in French! The meeting includes your boss, your boss' boss, and your teammates—including the coworker who is always one-upping you. You even flawlessly execute a joke in French and the client laughs! Score. No, it's not the movies and it's not likely your job will relocate you to Paris just because you said comment allez-vous. But you charmed the client's socks off and everyone is majorly impressed, which is a small win. And success is a series of small wins.

There are little magical moments like these that happen all the time, usually, we're just not prepared for them. In this same scenario with your current non-radical space, you'd probably say, "oh you're from Paris? I want to learn French one day." Nice conversation fodder, but nothing provoking.

And yes, you can take classes or practice on Duolingo in addition to decorating your walls with content, but the radical classroom approach helps your brain absorb the information, consciously and subconsciously. Your space was once a place designated just for takeout and Prime packages, and now it's helping you learn! The key is to keep challenging yourself. In our language example, once you find that you've learned all 200 words, put new ones up. This is what leveling up looks like. It's not training intensely for a week like you're in a montage from the movie Rocky. Leveling up is about consistently taking steps forward.

There are no sofas in the classroom. There are no wine racks at the gym. There are no ping pong tables at church. I wanted to achieve my wildest dreams, yet when I looked around my space, I saw a large bed, a large tv, and a large sofa. Mind you, my apartment wasn't that large. I wanted to be radically powerful. However, my apartment was set up to make me radically average. Your space reflects your priorities. The smaller the space, the more we are forced to prioritize. The average consumer considers a bed, a couch, and a TV as "must-haves." Then we accumulate more. We purchase a second sofa, second TV, nightstands, dressers, dining tables, and on and on.

Pretend you were a dentist. There should be a dentist's chair, dental tools, and an x-ray machine in your office so that you can do your job. Instead, you thought it would be cool to order a fondue fountain, gaming system, and a massage table for the office. At first, this makes for some fun Instagram stories. But eventually, you will need to get some work done to keep the lights on. Now you're trying to clean teeth, but the massage table is in the way! The smell of Colgate and cheese don't mix! This sounds absolutely ridiculous, right? That's you and me, living in spaces that get in our own way every day, wondering why we're so demotivated.

Right now, your home is your ancestor's wildest dream. They were fighting for comfort, warmth, and protection from the elements. Like sugar in the modern age, we have all of these things in abundance to the point of excess. Now it's time to raise the bar for our living spaces so that we can achieve our wildest dreams. If you want to be a ballerina, make room for your ballet bar. If you want to be an artist, make room for your studio. Your space should not just be a comfortable haven, it needs to help you thrive. Who says you need to have a bed, a dresser, a tv, etc.? These are lies!

Willpower is very easily depleted. Taking the daily micro-steps that are needed to achieve big goals and outcomes doesn't have to be a Herculean effort if your living space isn't filled to the brim with vices and tools of comfort. You can turn your space into a healing sanctuary, a training zone, like literally anything you want.

I got this idea from living in Brooklyn. Growing up, I saw many people conducting business in their own homes. Daycares, empanada stands, homemade skincare bars, hair salons...you name it, I saw it. My high school prom dress was designed by my best friend's aunt. She lived in a one-bedroom apartment. In her living room, she had a gallery of sketches and photos of her previous work pinned to the walls. The sewing machine was in the center of the room. She had all sorts of racks and tools for measuring or cutting. There was a large dresser filled with hundreds of neatly organized fabrics.

This is the radical approach, keeping the tools you need to achieve your goals at arms' length, accessible anytime. And keeping your anti-tools (tools of destruction) far away so that going against your values is no longer a choice you have to make in your own home. And since most of us don't live in mansions, there are probably some furniture items that we either need to get rid of or convert into a dream tool.

It can be as minimal or drastic as you want it to be. Lisa Nichols, one of my favorite speakers, started her enterprise in her apartment as a single mom. Her closet was her office and she hung manilla folders on hangers. In my case, I got a bunk bed to reduce my comfort so that I could only go to bed for sleep like a Navy Seal. If it wasn't bedtime I wanted to be up creating and working on my healing. I got a desk for writing, brainstorming tools, and workout equipment. Below is a chart with a few examples and here is a blank one that you can fill out on your own.

The Results

A few months after radicalizing my space, I was on a plane flying to another coast, where I would begin the next chapter of my life. If I had not prepared mentally and spiritually, I would not have been equipped to take on this challenge. 2016 was one of my favorite years because I had nothing to lose. Oftentimes, we test the boundaries of our lives in radically bad ways, trying to see what we can get away with. I tested the boundaries of my life in all the good ways. I tested my limits, and I qualified my wants and desires. Once I got to my new apartment, I radicalized my space again.

My radical goal was healing, today I am fully functioning, sane, healthy, rested, and ready to thrive. It took a lot of work, but there were many days when I looked up and saw Nina Simone staring at me, and said, "alright fine, I'm getting up now."

After radicalizing your space, you may realize your lifelong dream is actually a "nice to have." Because if you don't want to put up some post-its and a few collages to help get you there, you certainly won't make the real sacrifices. Or you might actually go through with it all and think to yourself, I don't want this. And that's okay! Learning what you don't want is powerful. It takes courage. Sometimes we procrastinate on our dreams because we can't face the fact that we don't actually want to put the work in. By bravely facing the work, you are bravely facing your inner wisdom.

It's up to you how much you want to share this process with those around you, but I opted not to. The cocoon is a quiet, protected place. A wilderness. A universe of its own.

Remember, this is not an overnight process, it takes time. Enjoy the journey and stay present. You will have beautiful moments in your radical space and you will have ugly moments. You will want to go back to comfort, that's okay too. You have primed your environment for achieving your wildest dreams, and that's badass. No matter what, don't stop leveling up. The world desperately needs you to become your best self, a radical effort in a sea of averages.