The Inner Practice
Honest reflections on what it means to feel off, get clear, and find our way forward..
Written by Anna Scott.
She Got on a Plane
This morning I spoke to a friend who is in Amsterdam.
After we hung up the phone, I noticed a strong feeling move through me. I checked in with my heart and stayed with what was there.
First came resentment. That she could travel. That she could get up and go while I feel stuck here. I recognized it immediately — that is a story, not a truth about my friend.
Underneath the resentment was jealousy. And the jealousy was useful — because it showed me what I actually wanted. To travel. That was real information.
But there was still no peace. Something else was underneath. So I stayed. Present with the feeling. Not following the story. Not making my friend wrong. Just staying.
Futile
I found myself inside an emotion I didn’t recognize. It wasn’t despair. It wasn’t fear. It was something new.
I wasn’t in touch with it. I had been avoiding it. My business has been in a season I didn’t expect — a long, humbling one. For a year and a half, I’ve been telling myself to stay open, stay trusting, stay generous. And still, nothing had shifted the way I thought it would.
The effort tasted thin in my mouth.
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?