Before the holiday rush takes over, have you paused to check in with yourself?

The end-of-year busyness can be overwhelming—full of pressure, noise, and nonstop motion. In this short yet meaningful Thanksgiving reflection, Michael invites you to hit pause, breathe deeply, and reflect on your emotional, physical, and relational well-being before heading into the final stretch of the year.

• Receive a heartfelt reminder of your strength and resilience throughout a challenging year.
• Explore three thoughtful reflection prompts to help you reconnect with what truly matters.
• Learn how a few minutes of stillness can reveal joy, compassion, and purpose amid the chaos.

Take a breath, press play, and give yourself the gift of reflection before the year races to a close.

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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, on Wednesdays, I share a little bit of a longer episode, not too terribly long. Not two, two and a half hours, but more like 15 minutes. But today. We will make it a bit shorter.

Because here in the States, it's our Thanksgiving holiday weekend. It's also the start of the holiday shopping season, so Black Friday, cyber Monday. So we're gonna keep this episode short because I'm willing to bet you probably don't have two and a half hours to listen to a podcast this weekend, and you probably don't even have 15 minutes because things are gonna get busy.

So we'll keep it short.

Back in my corporate days before holiday weekends, like Thanksgiving, I would send a voicemail, which makes me sound really, really old 'cause I don't think anyone actually sends voicemails out to the whole company anymore. But I did it. I had a team of a thousand across the US and in the message I would always thank them for all their work that they did throughout the year.

An expression of gratitude, but I also invited them to find some time to hit pause, take a few deep breaths and reflect about where they are in life and across some very specific areas like their mental and emotional health, their physical health, their financial and career health, as well as their relationship health.

And as you carry concern for others, you're still carrying a lot for yourself and your family. And you might have experienced job loss. Or the economic pressure so many people are facing today, and I bet some days you were simply trying to figure out how you were going to make it through. As I mentioned, this year has been a lot.

Our central nervous systems are crying out for some relief. And with all this, with all the crazy and the chaos. You're still here, you're still standing. You might be healing. Truth be told, we all are because we're all going through something whether people realize it or not. But again, you're still here.

You found a way to keep showing up and you put your energy, your ripple effect, as I would say, into the world. You used your voice, you spoke up, you reached out, you pulled people up. You were that hand on their back. Sometimes you were maybe the kick in the behind that they needed, and I hope others did the same for you because ultimately we need all of us.

We humans, we need other humans. Life Indeed is not some solo project. We need each other to go far. So thank you for all that you did so far this year to show up, to make things a little bit better than they were yesterday for showing up and. Creating the conditions that can lead to a better tomorrow. So this holiday weekend, I'll invite you to take a moment to pause, to take a few deep breaths and reflect after Thanksgiving is over in between all the rushing around to get all the good deals, find some space.

For you to simply be without scrolling your phone or listening to something or watching something, just a moment to settle in and reflect on where you are in life and how you feel about your mental and emotional wellbeing, your physical wellbeing, where you happen to be with your finances and career and your relationships.

I also wanna share three prompts with you that you can use to generate more thought. You can also use them if you happen to be someone who likes to journal, whatever the case may be. I hope these prompts are helpful to you. The first one is, what strength did I show this year that I might have overlooked?

The second is what part of myself needs more compassion right now? And the third one is, what small amount of joy we love joy here, connection or peace am I grateful for from this year? Think about those as well as just how you feel about where you happen to be in life. Take this moment for yourself.

Before rushing back in to a new month and the end of the year, and again, thank you for showing up. Thank you for weathering all the storms that you have weathered. Thank you for getting through 100% of your bad moments together. We're here. Together we can create a better tomorrow, not just for some of us, but for all of us.

So I wish you and your family and your friends a very meaningful, happy Thanksgiving. And before you rush off to start working on your side dishes, let's take a nice, generous breath in together. Breathe. Up fully through your nose and deeply down into the belly, noticing your lungs expanding. And now release the breath slowly through your mouth, inviting your body to relax.

All right, I hope that felt good.

As always, thanks for being here. Thank you for being part of our community. If you haven't yet signed up for the free text messages I send throughout the week, you can do so by texting. Hold again to 8 6 6 6 1 2 4 6 0 4. And I will 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.