What if the most important forecast isn’t on your weather app — but inside your own body?

In this thoughtful episode of Whole Again, Michael shares a firsthand story of driving through a sudden snowstorm despite clear weather app predictions — and uses it as a metaphor for life’s internal weather: the thoughts, sensations, and emotions we rarely check but that shape our experience more than anything external.

By listening, you’ll learn:

1. Why we obsess over external forecasts and neglect the internal one
2. How resisting internal weather adds to our suffering
3. A simple way to check in with your body and mind before reacting
4. Why ease — not tension — helps you navigate life’s changing conditions

This episode invites you to relate to your internal world — without judgment, fixing, or forcing — just as you would notice rain or snow outside.

Press play to discover how tuning into your internal weather can bring more calm, clarity, and resilience — and learn why “this weather too shall pass.”

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 Hey there, it's Michael. Welcome to Whole again, the show that can help you navigate today's uncertainty with more mindfulness, resilience, and grace. I'm recording this the day after the big storm that hit a good part of America on Sunday. So today, for millions of people, it's about working from home and shoveling.

And it's about the weather, and I want to share a story with you. Several days ago, actually last week, I drove to Rochester, that's my hometown, to visit with my dad. He had some medical appointments that I was the Sherpa too, along with my sister. The good news is that his medical appointments. We're the best in over two years, so it was a super bright spot.

But before I drove up, he was a little nervous about me going up to Rochester, driving up through the New York State throughway because through that section of the state, they can get pretty wicked lake effect snow. The last time I went up, which was early January, that happened to me. I couldn't see a thing between Utica and Syracuse.

He was like, listen, you don't need to come up. We got this. But I really wanted to come up and I think he really wanted me to come up. So I was like, I'm gonna find a way to make this happen. So I did what most of us do. I checked the weather apps. I say apps because I was checking more than one to see what the weather was going to be like on my drive up, and all the apps said I had clear sailing that there wouldn't be any weather, which makes the drive certainly more pleasurable and indeed safer.

As the drive was going along and I stopped for the first time to charge up my car because I have an electric car and I can't make it there on one charge. I actually sent a text to my wife saying, no weather drive's going great. Thumbs up hearts, you name it. But once I got west of Syracuse, near the area of Montezuma, which is a wildlife refuge there that you can see on the throughway on your way to Rochester, the snow came.

It was that type of hypnotic snow, the snow that's falling at you, and it's shining brightly in my headlights, and the sky was pitch dark in a matter of minutes. We were down to one lane, and I'm being generous. When I say one lane, I could see some tire tracks, but that was about it. The only indicator that I was still on the throughway.

Actually, I was scared, and I might add a little pissed off at the weather apps for getting the forecast completely wrong. I could feel my grip on the steering wheel tightening. I was starting to white knuckle it, but I knew that wasn't the best thing. When we tend to grip too tightly to things, we can overcorrect and steer away from the slide if we do slide, and that just makes the drive that much more dangerous.

I share this story because we live in a time where we're obsessed about tracking things, forecasting and prediction, and I get it. We wanna know what's happening. We want a sense of control. In a world that seems so uncertain, with so much coming at us around the clock, it feels like we just wanna feel knowledgeable.

We wanna feel grounded. I'm probably dating myself. Certainly I'm looking at the past through the lens of a child, but when I was growing up, we didn't have this 24 7 weather coverage, and we certainly didn't have apps that we could check multiple times an hour. We had to learn to meet the weather as the weather was instead of fighting it or perhaps.

Clinging to that really nice spring day, we accepted that the weather as it's always been and always will be, it's temporary. The weather is always changing as is our internal weather, which is the weather that we don't check nearly enough, or quite frankly, not at all, but the weather that's within us.

That's the weather that actually shapes our days. It's not about what's happening out there, it's really about what's happening in here. You might have caught my Substack post about this, or listen to a earlier episode in the month of January here on whole, again, around silent retreats. You know that I started the year with a seven day silent retreat, which I know for most people that sounds pretty extreme.

And yes, it's a bit extreme compared to what most people do. It's seven days with no phone, no music, no reading, no journaling, no nothing. You turn off all the noise. It's just you thoughts, the breath. The body, the heart, and what I love about retreats is that something magical can happen. I don't say will happen because everyone's retreat experience is different, but this can happen when you shut off all the noise, you start to notice your internal weather more clearly, you notice the thoughts that might bring forward some anxiety.

Or joy and where you feel that in the body, or you might notice when irritation or fear or happiness comes to your guest house as Rumi writes. And again, where do you feel it in the body? In the heart? Do you notice it in the mind? All of this is the weather that's within us, and none of it is permanent.

As we live in these times, we're often too busy to check in because we're checking our email or our TikTok feed or the weather app. We wanna know what's happening, what will the weather be like, and we fail to check in with ourselves. We ignore our inner forecast, and when a storm. Eventually bubbles up within us because that's what will happen.

That is part of being human. We resist it, we grip it tightly. We try to push it away, and that just adds to our suffering. The same could be said when we feel happiness or joy within like a great sunny day. We want that feeling to last forever and we clinging to it. But when we clinging to it. It's just another way to white knuckle our experience and that too adds to our suffering.

On last week's drive, I did make it to my final destination safely, but the weather didn't change. Actually, it got a little worse all the way from that point west of Syracuse until I got to my hotel. Instead of allowing my fear to grab the steering wheel more tightly, I took a few deep breaths and eased my grip.

I didn't let go. That would be foolish, but I just had a softer grip on the steering wheel and that made it easier to steer and navigate the changing weather conditions, and I think you'll find that to be the case. As we go through any aspect of life, when we ease our grip just a bit and we check in with the weather that's within us, then we begin to have greater awareness and we can get to a point of accepting the weather and then taking thoughtful action on how we wanna meet it.

So this week I'll encourage you to take 60 seconds, maybe two minutes. There's actually a meditation on my pause. Breathe, reflect app, which is free to download, and it'll give you a moment to check in and see what the weather is within you as you begin to weave this into your life. I do believe we would all be better off if we check the weather that's within us more frequently than we checked the weather apps on our phone.

And as you do, you can ask yourself what sensations are present? What's the weather like within you? What do you sense in the body? What do you notice in the mind? Those thoughts, almost like clouds traveling across the horizon. What emotions do you notice? All you're doing is naming the weather that you sense.

There's no fixing. There's no forcing, no judgment. It's just like noticing the snow falling or maybe the rain on the roof of your house or apartment or breeze that hits you just in the right way when summer comes. It's all here. All the weather, external and internal, and it's all temporary. This weather too shall pass, as I say.

As always, thanks for being here. Thanks for being a member. Our community. I hope you'll join us over on Substack. You'll see my writing over there as well as our live meditations that we do throughout the week, and a little microdose of wisdom that I like to share throughout the week. All in an effort to help you weave our practice into your life so you can navigate today's uncertainty with a bit more mindfulness resilience.

Grace,

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.