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Thoughts, reflections, and letters for people at a crossroads in work and life.
Where is your attention?
We were two minutes into our session in the Oakland Redwoods when he said it.
A city inspector had come to his restaurant. He was telling me about the visit, the stress, what she had checked, and what she had flagged.
And then, almost in passing: "They sent the most difficult person."
He kept talking, but my attention shifted.
I had heard everything I needed to hear.
When I Stopped Fixing My Mindset and Started Listening
We often discuss mindset—how to shift it, improve it, or upgrade it.
But recently, in a circle of interior designers and creative women, we tried something else:
We stopped trying to fix our thoughts and started listening to them instead.
Before the session, I had a panic attack.
It came out of nowhere—just a typical morning, walking my dog, and suddenly I couldn’t breathe. My heart was racing. A wave of dread moved through me, and I didn’t even know why. I had just read an email.
My first instinct was to push it away, to figure it out, to get out of it. But instead, I remembered what I would soon be guiding others to do.
So I stopped.
And I stayed with it.
Not to analyze it. Not to fix it. To be with the sensation.
And slowly… it shifted. Not because I changed my thoughts.
But because I was willing to feel what was there, without judgment.
That’s the space we created in the session.
We asked:
What thought do you wish would go away?
What emotion do you avoid?
What if you stopped the battle with it, and just let it be?