The Inner Practice

Honest reflections on what it means to feel off, get clear, and find our way forward..

Written by Anna Scott.

The Hope Chest
Emotional Intelligence Anna Scott Emotional Intelligence Anna Scott

The Hope Chest

My mother taught me not to feel. It took a lifetime — and my daughter — to unlearn it.

My father died when I was two.

My mother was left with six children. Five boys and one girl. Me. The youngest.

She did what she had to do. She kept the house running. She kept us fed. She kept moving forward.

Her motto was simple.

No one likes a whiner.

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The Sound That Wouldn’t Stop (and the Wisdom It Woke Up)

The Sound That Wouldn’t Stop (and the Wisdom It Woke Up)

A couple of months ago, our dryer started making a terrible screeching sound. At first, I tried to ignore it. It was early summer—good drying weather. Besides, with just my partner and me at home now, we don’t go through that much laundry. I thought, why not use the sun?

So we did. We dried our towels outside. They came in stiff and scratchy—like sandpaper on skin. Not terrible, if that’s your thing. But I missed the soft warmth of a dryer.

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When the Dishwasher Leaked: A Mindset Experiment

When the Dishwasher Leaked: A Mindset Experiment

This week, water from my dishwasher started spilling out of the air gap and onto the kitchen counter instead of draining through the pipes.

Money’s been tight lately, so I decided to try fixing it myself. As I got started, I noticed my thoughts:
“Poor me. This is hard. Why does this always happen?”

That old, familiar victim story was running in the background.
And then I remembered—I teach mindset coaching.

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