What if the most productive thing you could do today… is nothing at all?

In a world that glorifies hustle, constant noise, and doing more, it’s easy to forget that rest and stillness aren’t signs of weakness—they’re powerful strategies for clarity, resilience, and recovery. In this episode, Michael explores the art of doing nothing as a radical act of mindfulness, showing how creating space in your day can help you calm your nervous system, restore focus, and reconnect with what truly matters.

• Discover why “doing nothing” is actually one of the most productive things you can do for your mind and body.
• Learn how small, intentional pauses throughout the day strengthen emotional resilience and sharpen focus.
• Understand how creating space allows you to make wiser, more thoughtful choices and live with greater grace and presence.

Take a deep breath, press play, and learn how the power of doing nothing can help you create space, recover energy, and move through life with more ease and intention.

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With Whole Again: A Fresh Approach to Healing, Growth & Resilience after Physical Trauma through Kintsugi Mindfulness, listeners explore resilience through personal stories of trauma, scars, and injury while learning to overcome PTSD, imposter syndrome, self-doubt, and perfectionism with self-compassion, self-love, and self-worth. Through insightful discussions on building resilience, fitness, and stress management, as well as mindfulness practices and digital wellness, the show offers practical tools such as breathwork, micro-dose meditation, grounding techniques, visualization, and daily affirmations for anxiety relief and stress reduction. Inspired by the art of kintsugi, the podcast embodies healing as a transformative process, encouraging a shift in perspective from worry and overwhelm to gratitude and personal growth. By exploring the mind-body connection, micro-dosing strategies for emotional well-being, and holistic approaches to self-care, this podcast empowers listeners to cultivate emotional resilience and live with greater balance and intention.

 Hey there, it's Michael. Welcome to Whole Again, A show about helping us embrace life with mindfulness and resilience through the wisdom of cons. Sugi, I am psyched that you're here because today we're gonna shift our perspective. We will make a case for doing. Absolutely nothing. Which is actually something, and I'll get to what that something is here in a sec.

Now, if you caught last week's episode where I spoke about Jane Goodall and Hope, or my blog post, which I talked about the same topics, I did reference one of my friends going to a semi silent retreat, and when she relayed her experience, I was left with a feeling of hopelessness that so many people. Had such anxiety, it made me feel somewhat hopeless.

Hence the reason for last week's episode. But what I didn't share in either the blog post or the episode was how excited I was that people were taking time to create space because I do believe mindfulness is about creating space. One could say they were doing nothing, which is actually something that something could be considered recovery.

I like to think that they're creating space. For me, mindfulness is about creating space. I know that there are plenty of definitions of what mindfulness is, but this is the one that speaks to my heart in this space. I. We can be thoughtful, we can make wise decisions, we can make right choices, if you will.

We can be very intentional with what kind of ripple effect we wish to put into the world. So I love hearing about people creating space, but the thing is we don't need to go off on a five or seven day silent or fully silent retreat. Going to a retreat like that, and I've been to many, is like running an ultra marathon.

It may not be everyone's cup of tea. Sometimes we can take simply a half day to unplug or a full day to unplug, or a few minutes every day to do nothing. Now, these retreats, as well as our practice of mindfulness is never truly silent because there's always sounds in our soundscape. We live in a pretty noisy world.

We are unders slept and over screened and there's a whole bunch of things to get focused on, to get worried about, to get anxious about, and that's before we have the big push of more this addiction to more of that we all feel or we all suffer from more meetings, more hustle, more goals, more stuff, more content.

More, more, more. There's not enough space in our container for anything more, is it? No wonder why so many people feel tired all the time. All this more is causing us a disruption in our sleep, but our minds never get a break, which means that our nervous system never gets a break. We're on constant high alert.

Breaking news. Watch out for that. No, watch out for this. Our attention goes everywhere because there's so many people wanting to grab a piece of it. Several years ago, I discovered that companies like Frito-Lay and Pepsi and Coca-Cola, all the big food companies look at us. Actually, they only look at our stomachs because they want.

A greater market share of our stomachs. And today that push for a share of your stomach is still there, but also the share of your mind or share of your attention. The companies out there, we must look like a big pie chart, and they all want their little slice of us. And here's the result. We keep on doing a lot, but we're not moving forward.

We're not getting the things that we wanna get done because we seem to be spinning our wheels in the mud of more. But the cool thing about it is that we can do something about it. I've discovered this in my own life and with the work I do with executive leaders, the biggest hack, which is really not a hack.

It's the most powerful thing you can do. To fuel your productivity, your resilience, your overall happiness is to do nothing. To give yourself permission to simply be, and I'm not saying you need to rush off 'cause that's not what we do, but to go off to a five day silent retreat. Now, if that's your jam, I hope you have a very meaningful retreat, but you don't have to do that.

You can find moments throughout the day where you're simply doing nothing, and it might not be completely silent 'cause you might be tuning into the soundscape around you, and it doesn't have to be entirely still. You can do this in a walking practice, a mindful movement practice. The cold hard truth is this, if we don't spend at least some time tending to our inner resources, filling up our cup.

We have nothing to give to the world. We're trying to ripple into the world, but we're pouring from a cup that's completely dry. When we continue down this path of doing more and more and more and more, sooner or later, our cup shatters and we have nothing to give. When I share the value of a mindfulness practice with those that have our pause, breathe, reflect app, or the leaders I partner with, I'll be the first one to say that meditation isn't everyone's cup of tea.

It's not for everyone, and I feel that meditation teachers out there should be more open about this fact that it's not for everyone, but it can help a vast majority of people in my experience, if we can. Let's take the retreats and place them off to the side. I usually start the conversation about doing nothing and we talk about taking 20 minutes a day and often I get the hand, they say, I can't even do 20 minutes in the morning, and I share, I bet you don't.

You lead a busy life. But I go on to share that. I bet they have 10 times throughout the day. Where they can take two minutes to create some space. And there you have it. You have your 20 minutes, and these two minutes can simply be a short walk without your phone. It could be sitting in your car for a few minutes before you come into the house.

It could be taking a couple minutes in between all your meetings that you have. These two minute intervals can add up to 20 minutes before you know it. And the cool thing about it isn't about how much time you take, it's what's happening in the body and mind. You have brief moments where you can reset your nervous system, you can bring everything down that creates space.

You can refocus because your attention might have gone somewhere else. You can also strengthen your emotional resilience, so you can navigate life with more agility and more grace. So contrary to a lot of the messages we see on the internet, the messages of more hustle, do more, be more, all that when you pause intentionally and create space, you come back to your life stronger with more clarity.

With less reaction and a greater ability to respond to what's happening in your life. Because as I've mentioned in the past here, we can't control what happens in the world, but we do have agency. We do have choice in how we respond to what does happen. This approach sets you up for success. Success that you can realize by being consistent.

I've seen people who take too big of a bite at the apple all the time, and they try it out for a few days and then they stop because it's too much. But taking these small micro doses of stillness of space allows you to be consistent and that sets you up for success. And when you show up this way, you begin to notice life differently.

You see? Those pleasant emotions or feelings, as well as the unpleasant emotions or feelings like clouds in the sky, you can watch them float by knowing that each moment two shall pass, or when you're feeling stress, you start to notice where you feel it in the body. That becomes a little bit like a canary in the coal mine.

So when you feel it, you can take steps to try to process whatever you're feeling. This will help you prevent a bad moment from turning into a bad day or even longer. Creating space and doing nothing or being comfortable in silence isn't about laziness. It's not about losing your ambition. This is a choice.

This is strategy in action, strategy that will help you play the game. Whatever game you happen to be playing better with more wisdom. More thoughtfulness. It's the type of stuff that allows you, or at least puts you in a position to make a greater impact in a world that's always on the go and seems to be moving faster year over year, over year.

This is the ultimate flex. Your ability to be still, to be silent and create space. It's a powerful choice. It's a choice that not many people will make. Unfortunately, most people will follow the more and more, more, and many of them will get burnt out. But you can take a different path, a path that values doing nothing because you ultimately see it as something, it's recovery.

Ultimately, it's about creating space to be thoughtful, to be intentional, and to be graceful. As you move forward in this world, it sets you up to create a very powerful ripple effect.

And as always, thank you for being here, and thank you for being part. Of our community. I hope this episode made you reflect on the value of stillness, of silence of space. I hope you can see that you don't have to follow the go, go, go, that you can slow things down and that might be the best way to go faster.

And if you haven't yet signed up. For my free text messages that I send out, you can simply send me a text, text me whole again to 8 6 6 6 1 2. 4 6 0 4 and I'll set you up.

And if you wish to learn more about creating beautiful ripples and how to prevent a bad moment from turning into a bad day, please visit my website, Michael O'Brien schiff.com. And sign up for my newsletter called The Ripple Effect, and join us each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday here at Whole Again, and discover how you can heal, grow, and become more resilient and celebrate our scars as golden symbols of strength and resilience.

Until then, remember, you can always come back to your breath. You've got this. And. We've got you.