Of course, we shape our surroundings too — we project everything that lives deep inside us, and space becomes our extension. But this relationship works both ways. We spend most of our lives at home. Which is why it’s impossible to ignore the imprint this place leaves on our personality.

Let me give you an example. The space we live in can directly affect the freedom of our thinking — our sense of openness, creativity, and the breadth of our perspective. Those who think on a large scale require space of the same magnitude. Rulers — kings and queens — have always lived in grand palaces, castles, châteaux, surrounded by vast gardens and forests. At the same time, history offers countless examples of spaces deliberately designed to suppress the human spirit — to confine the body, the voice, and even thought itself within narrow, coffin-like rooms.

You can easily imagine these radically different environments and feel the contrast they create. One gives you wings. The other cuts them off. And the longer we remain within a certain space, the more we unconsciously adapt — quite literally learning to think only as freely as our walls allow.