I was super excited when our new couch and ottoman arrived.

We had kept the same furniture in the family room for 10 years, even though it had worn well and given us lots of great butt support, it was time for a change.

The delivery guys were swift and thorough—they were like professional lightning putting the sectional couch together, and being oh-so-careful as to not hit any walls or tchotchkes on the way in. And when they were finished, the head of the crew looked around our house and said, “Are you an interior decorator?”

I giggled profusely before explaining that I am a yoga instructor.

I have not always had a way with decorating. Until my late 30s, I kept a huge framed movie poster of Bela Lugosi as “Dracula” as a focal point above my television. I painted many things purple. I have a framed headshot of Lamb Chop that I fake autographed myself. A headshot of Lamb Chop—not Shari Lewis and Lamb Chop—just Lamb Chop. I have a framed headshot of a sock with eyes.

Maybe it’s growing older and up. I like to think that when my husband and I bought our first house, I left some of  my (ahem) experimental decorating behind. The previous owners of our house had remodeled our not-that-old-house within an inch of its life, and I loved their taste. I was left with great bones to decorate our house, and it has been a joy. I actually felt that accessories threw themselves around the rooms until they landed exactly where they needed to be. Paint colors demanded to be placed on the walls. The two-story living room told me where everything should go.

The furniture delivery guy is not the first person to ask if I am an interior decorator—but he did break something open in me.

When I told him I’m a yoga instructor and not an interior decorator, a loud voice in my head said:

Yes, you are. You decorate your own interior with yoga. You help guide yogis back to their own interior decorator.”

Shut up, voice in my head—and shut up, Walls, with your bossy telling me what color you want to be!

Now, before you think you should contact authorities and have a welfare check performed on me—I don’t actually hear the walls telling me what color they want to be. My living room has never insisted on where something should be placed. And the voice in my head is more of a feeling than a pushy life-coach spewing positive testimonies to my abilities.

The truth is that we are all interior decorators.

I have decorated my interior with some weird sh*t, like a monster chalupa—but I’m talking about rearranging things in the interior and seeing where they land. I mean really taking the time to feel how things affect us from the inside out.

We are surely much more focused on our exterior decorating as visual beings. But our interior decorating is the most important designing we do, and it directly affects our exterior.

When I get up in the morning after not sleeping well, I can see a difference on my exterior. When things are good, and I feel healthy and strong, it shows up on my outsides.

It is curious to me that I see everyone else through eyes of love—and yet, I somehow put on Judge Mental’s glasses when looking at myself.

Two people from different parts of my life have recently told me that I am “glowing.” I’m not pregnant (unless three very intelligent men from the East are making their way to California with fairly crappy presents). But I do feel good. I have stopped kicking the sh*t out of myself, and my inner interior decorator has informed me that where things have landed in and on my body is perfect.

It has been (and continues to be) a difficult exercise for me to simply accept myself the way God made me. (Sorry, God.) But I am working on it.

Perhaps I have really embraced this quote from Rumi: “Put your thoughts to sleep, do not let them cast a shadow over the moon of your heart. Let go of thinking.”

It’s the micromanaging of the Interior Decorator that trips me up. When I allow my inner designer to go quietly about her business and paint one focal wall fuchsia if she wants to, I feel myself relax.

I am turning over the reins of my ongoing remodel to my “inner interior decorator.” I trust her, even though I have not seen any swatches. What’s the worst that can happen? We can always repaint.

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Author: Melissa Morgan

Image: Unsplash/Christelle BOURGEOIS

Editor: Yoli Ramazzina