Do you feel like no matter how hard you try, you can’t stay consistent — and that every setback drags you further into feeling stuck?

In this episode of Whole Again, Michael O’Brien shares the simple yet powerful “Gold, Silver, Bronze” framework he used during his recovery from injury and trauma. Whether you’re rebuilding your strength after a setback or simply trying to stay on track with daily habits, this approach helps you sidestep the exhausting all-or-nothing trap and finally create steady forward momentum.

• Discover how to redefine success so you win every single day
• Learn to replace perfectionism with possibility and self-compassion
• See how small, consistent actions build trust in yourself and spark lasting change

Press play now to learn the medal framework that will help you get unstuck, celebrate small wins, and create ripples of change in your life.

 In this episode, you'll discover how to achieve a win every day.

Hey there, it's Michael. Welcome to Whole again. A show about helping survivors of physical injury and trauma reclaim their strength and resilience through the wisdom of Kazuki. I'm glad you're here when we're going through recovery. Actually, when we're going through everyday life, it doesn't have to be.

About recovering from something, it's very possible to get stuck. We get off track, we go through the natural ebb and flow of life, and somehow we end up getting stuck. It might be in our body, our energy. That could even be in our mindset, and sometimes well actually often. It's related to the story we tell ourselves about our situation.

More on that to come and it can leave you with like a feeling of Ugg, which is a very technical feeling, right? But I think you know it like that, Ugg, I can't, I can't get out of my stuckness. You just don't feel like you have what it takes to move forward and it can leave us. Almost feeling too tired or overwhelmed or discouraged to even try to move forward.

Today. I wanna share with you in this episode ways that you can get a win every day, ways that you can be more consistent and you can leave that stuckness feeling in the rear view mirror. And we're not gonna do it with pressure. We are gonna shift the energy around it and the story we tell ourselves, but we're also not gonna do it through perfection, some ideal.

Instead, we'll use the power of possibility to help us get unstuck. But before we dive in, I wanna remind you how to get those really cool text messages that are the perfect message, just when you need it. I send them out a few times a week so I don't overwhelm your inbox. They're free and if you'd like to sign up to receive them, all you have to do is text whole again to 8 6 6 6 1 2 4 6 0 4.

I'll say that one more time. 8 6 6 6. 1 2 4 6 0 4 and I'll get you set up. Alright, let's dive in and get unstuck. I'd like to start with a question, question of curiosity. I'm a big believer in the power of curiosity. It can help us in so many ways as we go through our recovery, including helping us get unstuck.

So here's the question. What if getting unstuck isn't about doing more, but about doing less, but more consistently? I know that question may land in a weird way because we live in a culture that idolizes more, more hustle, go big or go home. We gotta be doing more. The story so many of us tell ourselves is that we're just not doing enough.

But after injury, after illness, or even trauma, again, this can be applied to just everyday life. That more mindset can actually create the conditions that we say we don't want. It sets up too high of a bar sometimes, so it's all or nothing. And we go through this ebb and flow, or maybe a better analogy is a rollercoaster.

The highs are great because we've just crushed it and we've done so much, but the lows can be a little scary. It can leave us feeling stuck and we don't necessarily know how to get back on track. I have a way of thinking, a framework, if you will, that helped me immensely in my recovery, and I'd like to share it with you.

I actually use it to this very day. In fact, every athletic endeavor I do or try to get after, if you will, I use it. When I did that big race a few months ago in Kansas called Unbound, I set up this framework and it helped me so much, especially around making sure the conversation I was having with myself, which drives everything, was as healthy as it could be.

I call it my gold, silver, and bronze metal approach. Here's how it works. Each day I spend a few minutes in the morning thinking about my values or first principles and how I can best honor them. Health is one of mine, so when I set up my day, I establish what a gold metal performance would look like, what silver would be, and what bronze would be.

It gives me three shots at winning a medal. Achieving a win as opposed to what many people do. They set up the all or nothing, and that can leave us again with that rollercoaster feeling. And if we have too many dips, it can leave us feeling stuck. Let me share more with you about how it looks or maybe how it sounds.

So a gold medal day for me in terms of health could be. Eating properly, eating good whole Foods, making sure I have the proper hydration throughout the day, and I wanna get in my movement. So I do this five minute arm exercise. Maybe it's 30 minutes of yoga, maybe it's a nice bike ride, and maybe I'll cap off the day with.

A nice walk with my wife, with our dogs. So that's a lot in one day, but that's a gold medal. That's the pinnacle. Now, a silver could be that five minute routine in the morning, maybe I don't do yoga, but I get a bike ride in and maybe it's not as long and I still do my dog walk with my wife because that also honors a different value that's greater than health, our connection.

A bronze could be. I'm gonna do my five minute dumbbell exercise, plus the dog walk, and I'm gonna try to eat as well as I can. I might be traveling, so I'm gonna do the best I can. So that's bronze, and so every day I'm set up to at least win a bronze medal. The cool thing is no matter what metal level I hit, at the end of the day when I'm practicing gratitude, which is something I've talked about in past episodes, it's also the G in our Grace model.

I've won. I have a victory. I have something to be grateful for. I showed up, I put in some work. I honored my capacity, and I've chosen consistency over all or nothing. Perfection. Let me share more about this with some real world examples. Somewhere along the way, we've come up with these standards, these ideals.

I'm not sure who made them up. There was a time when a podcast had to be 45 minutes long. That's what a good podcast was, or a meeting at work was 60 minutes long. Who made that decision with the meetings? It was probably Microsoft and Outlook, but. When it comes to working out, we determine it's gotta be 30 minutes all at once.

With meditation, it was like, it's gotta be 10 minutes or 20 minutes all at once, and I've flipped that on its head with pause, breathe, reflect. We do short practices, but we do them multiple times throughout the day. It adds up to that same 10 or 20 minutes, but it's not all in one shot because. We lead busy lives and throughout the day, our energy ebbs and flows naturally.

So all these ideals out there of how we should do it, and you don't have to follow that. You can create your own game plan. You can create your own gold, silver, and bronze. And the really cool thing about it is this framework will change the conversation you have with yourself. For example, you can now see yourself as a person that values consistency over the need for more motivation and even when you might not meddle.

On one particular day because of what's happening, or maybe it's two days in a row, you can change that conversation in your head from, it's so hard to get back at it to, no, I'm the type of person that can rebound when I've had a couple days off because I've been honoring my body during that period of time.

This framework helped me quiet that inner chatter, that inner critic that we all have, but we don't want to admit publicly. And it helped me feel like I was taking a step towards my recovery, a step towards feeling whole again. It kept me in the game, even on my hard days. Some days I was quite grateful just to get a bronze medal.

I celebrated some of my bronze medal days more than my gold medal days. 'cause those days were really hard. And over time, what I've discovered, and I think you'll discover this as well, those small wins every day they add up and they create new stories, new stories that you can tell yourself, and those small wins start to attract bigger wins.

It's like small ripples leading to bigger waves. Bigger waves of really valuable change, which helps us get unstuck. Not by force, but by choosing one step, then another, and then we start building trust in ourselves. So what about you? What's one area in your life where you feel stuck? And what would a bronze metal level action look like for you today?

What do you think you can do today to get a win? To get a bronze medal? It doesn't have to be huge. It doesn't have to be bold. It simply has to be realistic, doable, and hopefully repeatable, so you can build that consistency. Lose that all or nothing mindset that only creates a whole bunch of emotional whiplash.

Remember, you've got this, and here I've got you. We're gonna put together a beautiful ripple into the world.

As always, thanks for being here, and thank you for being a fellow survivor. In this episode, you discovered how to get a win every day with my gold, silver, and bronze medal framework, and also the value of consistency, small steps every day over time, and how that really leads to change and that change.

Builds trust, which then changes the conversation that we have with ourselves, which is everything. And before we wrap up, the text messages that I send, speak to topics like this. They're short little reminders. They come at the perfect time. So if you'd like to receive them, just send me a text 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.