what no one tells you about the most important interior you get to design
015 | Hue's Cues: your weekly dose of inspiration and insights for your brain, mind, body, and soul.
What was the last mind-shift that genuinely set you free?
The one that moved a permanent piece of furniture inside you, the one you can’t look back from now that you’ve seen through it. I’ve been thinking about the small interior reorganizations that change everything that follows it.
So much of life is lived in the intimate interior of our minds. We move through rooms, indulge in warm meals, share secrets and laughter with people we love but every moment is processed by an intimate inner voice that’s solely ours. This interior is arguably the most important room you design.
There’s a particular quality of light certain people seem to carry into a room. Not beauty. Not confidence, as confidence is often louder. Something more like a settledness with one’s self. The unmistakable signal of a person who has stopped negotiating with who they should be, who they are, and who they’re becoming; and it’s what I’ve been thinking about: that radiance is what a resolved interior looks like from the outside.
I’ve found nothing is worth defending more than this. It is the armor and the gold mine, the root system beneath every visible thing. The most seasoned operators are the ones who guard this interiority the way the rest of us guard our phones. They learned early that this is where flourishing begins—the intimate conversations they have with themselves and the stories they hold on to.
What are the small things you do to replenish your internal world?
If you’re new here, this newsletter is for those living in between who they were raised to be, who they want to be, and who they’re becoming. Start here.
Reconnecting with heritage. I’ve been thinking about how much of myself I left in a language I stopped speaking fluently. After I left home, my Bahasa has lived in a strange middle place. Fluent enough to speak to childhood friends, but hauntingly rigid when the conversations turn to anything that matters. I can order food. But I can’t quite explain the complexities of how I feel. For a long time I told myself it was fine. Then something shifted. The interviews I’ve been doing for HueVoices have been quietly retraining my ear. (Also, high-key promotion: have you read our latest?). Holding a conversation with a cab driver the other week, I noticed I was speaking much more smoothly. I felt relief in my heart that I hadn’t noticed I missed. This is apparently a thing. Studies in the Journal of Language, Identity, and Education consistently show that heritage language proficiency is tied to stronger family bonds, higher self-esteem, and a more secure sense of cultural belonging. The flip side is the part that stayed with me: when the language goes, something intangible goes with it. If you’ve felt that quiet ache, this is your gentle nudge. You haven’t lost it. The pathways are still in your brain. Unintentionally, the interviews has been re-training my brain to remember my home language. I feel grateful.
Indulge in inspiring women. I’ve been nourishing my mind intentionally on a diet of women at the top of their game, and I can feel I’m already better for it. The current obsession (friends, you’ve been warned) is Emma Grede. If you don’t know her yet, she’s the co-founder and CEO of Good American, founding partner of SKIMS, and one of the richest self-made women in the world. She built it all without the script most of us were handed. Her new book Start With Yourself (an instant New York Times bestseller, called by The Wall Street Journal Lean In for the post-girlboss era) is a rare business book that reads like a long dinner with a mentor who refuses to gatekeep what she knows. I’m nearly at the end and I’ve highlighted plenty. Her podcast Aspire with Emma Grede, is also a rare gem: a seasoned operator interviewing business leaders and thought-leaders with the wit to cover subjects most interviewers stray from: money, ambition, the cost, and the parts no one wants to announce. For the men reading this: make time for her. Some of the most expansive thinking I’ve done this year has come from her and the moments she’s sharing with other women who have done it. If you’re trying to build anything, these conversations are the altitude worth soaring to.
Sober dance parties are a win. I went to my first sober dance party recently, and friends I loved it. It was essentially everything we love about hitting the clubs: dancing, good music, vibes, and energy. Just without the slosh or the hangover. I can feel some of you cringing right now. I get it. I used to eye-roll at the idea too. All I can tell you is that it was fun and unexpectedly liberating. Trying to dance sober in a room of intoxication is one thing. Dancing sober in a room that chose sober is something else entirely. Of course, great music you actually vibe to is a must. A friend or group to groove with is a plus. But for all the nights I’ve walked out of a club stumbling and waking up hating myself the next morning, or the nights I’ve tried to stay sober around a crowd that wasn’t: I’m into sober partying. Who knows you may soon find me at one of those coffee raves too.
Rice, carbs, and shame. I once cried in the passenger seat of a friend car about a bowl of rice. I had eaten it. That was the only offense. I was in my early twenties, a university student in America, who gained 10kg (~22lbs) in their first twelve months. I was obsessed with skinny, so cutting carbs was my solution. Eating a bowl of rice and failing to resist the carbs became a symbol of failure in willpower and discipline. To many of you, my reaction might seem absolutely ridiculous. But I felt overwhelmed with guilt and shame about how I looked then. It’s the insidious reality of a girl navigating her self-worth, through a dysfunctional culture of beauty and body standards. What I didn’t know at the time was how the resistance was the problem. Daniel Wegner of Harvard University called this the ironic process of mental control: the theory explaining that by trying to suppress a thought tends to make it more present, not less. The harder I tried to resist eating carbs, the more space rice book up in my head. The deeper irony was cultural too. China is the world’s largest consumers of rice. Indonesia is one in the top three. I was simply also at war with a food a thousand years of grandmothers had built our bodies to thrive on. The rest and recovery I grant my soul now is how I now eat rice with pleasure and dignity. The simple absence of shame and being able to enjoy one of the oldest staple foods on earth is the dignity I returned to.
Wegner’s Ironic Process Theory (IPT), also known as the “white bear ” or “pink elephant,” paradox proposes that the harder you try to suppress a thought, the more frequently and intensely it returns. The irony is structural: to monitor a ‘forbidden’ thought or action, your mind has to keep circling around it, which is the same act as keeping it alive.
When we think about personal health, we might think of exercise and nutrition first. But rarely would soil (yes, that brown dirt on the ground) come to mind, especially what it has to do with us. Common Ground is the documentary that’ll make you rethink our health. The sequel to another must-watch: Kiss the Ground, it makes a quiet, urgent case for regenerative agriculture and why the health of soil is inseparable from considerations of our health. It is a reminder of how we are never separate from nature; how our even our bodies and our health is dependent on it. Eye-opening, deeply moving, and hopeful. I highly recommend watching both in sequence. Fyi it’s available on Amazon Prime globally.
