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In this episode of Whole Again, Michael returns after a transformative and challenging summer—including a serious bike accident and caregiving responsibilities—to explore one of the most overlooked yet essential virtues for healing and resilience: prudence.

Whether you're recovering from physical trauma, navigating burnout, or simply feeling overwhelmed by the pressure to "finish the year strong," this episode offers a breath of fresh air. Michael invites us to slow down, get intentional, and explore:

🔸 What prudence really means—and why it's not just for the cautious or “boring”

🔸 Why you're not a constant self-improvement project (and what to do instead)

🔸 A deeply personal story of injury, caregiving, and finding strength in small steps

🔸 The difference between transactional change and soulful transformation

🔸 How to gently realign with your values as the seasons shift

🔸 Small, actionable ways to practice mindfulness and resilience today

Through the lens of Kintsugi—the Japanese art of golden repair—Michael reminds us that healing isn’t about fixing, but becoming. Let this episode be your invitation to embrace the slow, golden beauty of becoming whole again, one step at a time.

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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, resilience building, resilience and fitness, fitness and resilience, stress management, mindfulness practices, and digital wellness, the show offers practical tools like breathwork, micro-dose meditation, grounding techniques, visualization, and daily affirmations for anxiety relief and stress relief. Inspired by the art of kintsugi, the podcast embraces healing as a process of transformation, encouraging a shift in perspective from worry and being overwhelmed 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. And today I'm back with a pretty sexy topic all about prudence. I know, I know. You can't wait. But stick with me. This one is important, especially as we're going through all that we're going through and we're stepping into a brand new season.

But before we dive into all, that's awesome sauce. About prudence. I'd like to share what's been happening over the last several weeks with you because they have not unfolded in the way I imagined, and that is part of life. When I entered the month of July, I was pretty excited. We had July 4th, pretty cool holiday.

I get to celebrate my last bad day anniversary, which is like a second birthday for me. I get to celebrate the anniversary of my first date with my wife and I had a pretty cool bike trip planned, but since mid-July, things have been bonkers. A little bananas now, it started off relatively smoothly. I was recording six.

With the guy, also known as Jake, a complete mensch who does all the audio production for whole. Again, he was going to be away from the beginning of August, through mid-September to welcome his second child into his home with his partner. So he needed space to do that, which is totally awesome. Again, Jake Mazel.

So during that period of time, I wouldn't do any recordings, which actually worked out. Pretty well because one of my family members was going through a health challenge and I needed to travel up to Rochester, New York to be with them, to be the Sherpa through what they were going through. So my time was going to be focused in on their health.

I was gonna serve as a caregiver. But then something happened at the end of July. I had, as people would say, another bike accident. Indeed I did on a pretty typical morning bike ride, just days away from beginning my back and forth to Rochester, New York. I cycled into a low hanging black unmarked utility cable that was hanging low across the road.

I got clotheslined and it brought me down like I was a fighter jet trying to land on an aircraft carrier. I was going about 18 miles an hour, and I went from 18 to zero in less than two seconds, and unfortunately I broke my femur in five places and now I have even more Kintsugi scar lines to tell my story of strength and resilience.

Now, I say that with joy and laughter, but you. When you go through something, we can feel gratitude and joy and happiness and all that for those around us, those that are providing us care and support. And at the same time, the whole thing just totally sucks and we get frustrated and we hurt and we can't sleep and nothing works the way we want it to.

All that jazz, I've been feeling all those feelings. Now. Someone told me that I could go pro. As a rehab person, and I, I sort of understood the compliment, which is really nice. It was a funny thing to say, not what I want to go pro at, just to be transparent, but I get the spirit of his overall message that said, I am taking my rehab really seriously as I do, and I'm getting stronger, and then feeling closer to feeling whole again.

And stepping into now who I'm becoming in this next season of my life. And so today is the first day back recording a fresh episode of Whole Again, and it's right at the time where we're flipping into a new season. Of course in the southern hemisphere it's all about spring and up north of the equator where I live, it's all about autumn and pumpkin spice lattes, which by the way, have you ever had one of those?

I had one for the very first time last year, and I want to go on record to say not for me. If it's your jam, hey, totally dig your vibe, but not for me too sweet. Gross, never having one again. But people will sip on their pumpkin spice latte and do their navel gazing as school starts and the trees lose their leaves.

So you'll hear a whole bunch of messages around What do you wanna leave behind? Much like the trees, 'cause they lose their leaves as a way to grow. And we should let something go, like a belief or a habit, or a behavior. So as we flip into a new season, it can feel like there's a lot of pressure to change.

So in the season, which I think is the best season ever, 'cause I love September vibes. I was born in September. I got Virgo Energy. I'm married to a Libra, she's a Virgo Libra cusp. So I love Autumn, I love fall, but it can feel like a lot, a lot of energy to become better right away. As I go through my recovery and flip into a new season with you, there's a truth I'd like to share with you.

You're not a constant self-development project. You are simply a person becoming. So today I'd like to share a few minutes with you in a way we can create some space together. And I believe that mindfulness really is about creating space. Space where we can reflect on what it really means to grow and to change, and do it with kindness, with wisdom, with discernment, and with a little prudence, which is a virtue that's often underrated and not discussed, but it can be really powerful.

Helping us go through our seasons and simply how we can embrace and create the life that we truly want to create. When we get to this time of year, it's not uncommon to think where did all the time go? How is this already? October, you saw Halloween decorations in the month of September, and soon there'll be Thanksgiving and Christmas and Hanukkah.

The time flies by. And I think it's even more intense. At least for me, it was more intense when my kids were going through school. Now that they're on their own, it's eased just a bit, but still, I started the year thinking, this is gonna be a great year. I'm gonna accomplish so much. And then when I got into the summer, I was like, all right, we're finding another gear.

And as Robert Burns wrote, the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry, which. As I've already mentioned happened to me, so here we are. Same us just with a little bit more sun damage. It's easy to believe that, especially if you listen to all the gurus in the self-help space, that transformation, which is a word that I tend to stay away from because it's so overplayed, let's call it change, comes from optimizing and.

Finding the hack or the shortcut or pushing or hustling harder or buying the right supplement. Like it seems like every podcast out there is selling a supplement, doesn't it? Well, maybe it's just me, but here's the thing, the kind of deep soul level change that we thirst for, the kind of change that can help us stay resilient, that can help us endure when things fall apart or break apart.

Well, that kind of change, that's deep change. That's not transactional change. That does not come from a hack or a quick fix. It's a process that takes time and it requires the virtue of prudence. And if you have the Beatles, Hey, prudence in your head right now, I'm not sorry. Great song. Actually based on a true story all about stepping into life, really living life out in the open.

But prudence is one of those things that doesn't necessarily have the best vibe. You think of prude, perhaps someone who is a Debbie Downer at a party that can suck all the energy out of a room. But when you look at prudence through a different lens, it's pretty fantastic. It's that quiet wisdom that helps you choose the right next thing to do.

Not out of fear, not out of pressure, but out of alignment to your first principles and your values. And it's real. It fits into your life, the one that you're choosing to create. It doesn't come from some guru telling you what to do. What's great about Prudence, and I've had to tap into it a lot during this recent recovery.

It's not perfect here. Obviously, we celebrate all of us being perfectly imperfect. There's beauty in that. That's what Cons Sugi teaches us. It's all about becoming a person who sees clearly. That would be pretty cool, right? We need more of this in the world. Prudence is about living with intention. Acting with intention, so you can choose well, even when things are really hard.

And right now things are really hard from a global perspective and in most of our personal lives. So this is where we need to tap into the virtue of prudence. And the really cool thing about prudence, like most things that we talk about here on whole, again, like mindfulness, like resilience, it's a practice.

It's something that we grow into over time. It takes time. Again, this is not a microwave approach to life. It's a little bit more like a slow cooking crock pop, and it's done through small. Daily decisions that we make that again, tie back into our values and our intentionality and how we wish to approach life.

So instead of wondering what the self-help gurus often talk about, how can I be my best self? We have an opportunity to shift the perspective ever so slightly and wonder who am I becoming? Am I letting Grace, which I just love that term. I have an acronym called Grace. Do I Allow Grace to lead the way?

And the really cool thing about Prudence as a practice is it doesn't require big leaps. It's not super big change. It's in accordance to our overall philosophy here on whole. Again, it's what I teach. To corporations, to leaders, to other people, small steps over time. The ability to be consistent and realize that you can have growth through this process, growth that really sticks, that really matters.

So it can just be one little thing. It's what I'm doing today as I go through my recovery. Once I get done recording this, I'll take one small step in my rehab. I'll do it again tomorrow. So as you come into this new season, you can listen to your body. You can listen to your heart and decide maybe in autumn you do need to let go of something and it can be something small.

Or maybe you're not gonna do like the trees. Maybe you're gonna adopt something new. And again, it can be really small. As long as it speaks to who you are so you can live life in alignment. Because when we live life in alignment, life becomes easier. It's easier to feel whole again. So I encourage you to try on the virtue of prudence as we step into this new season and whatever you choose to do, be gentle.

Be graceful with your badass self. Let it be real. Allow the answer to speak to you and not have it. Try to impress people. Now, as humans, we do want to impress people. It's a natural tendency. It's not bad, but here, answer the prompts in a way that impresses you, that speaks to you.

In this episode, you discovered the power of prudence as a practice. You also discovered about my hijinks from this summer and how crazy it's been. But you know what? We're still here. We're still showing up. We're still putting a ripple into the world that matters to help people feel whole again, so people can feel.

Resilient and strong and be a practitioner of mindfulness because we need more of that in the world today. We need people willing to respond to what happens to them versus reacting because in life we can't choose what happens, but we can choose our response to it. And as always, thanks for being here.

Thank you for putting a beautiful ripple. Into the world,

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.