What if true strength isn’t something you wait to feel—but something you practice in the very moments life feels hardest?

When challenges strike, it’s easy to feel disconnected, overwhelmed, or like you’ve lost your footing. But strength doesn’t come from pretending you’re okay—it comes from grounding yourself in what matters most. This episode explores how your personal values can serve as a compass, guiding you through uncertainty and helping you stay resilient, even in the darkest moments.

• Learn why strength is not about “pushing through” but about aligning with your deepest values.
• Discover how to use your values as a lighthouse to steer through uncertainty with clarity and calm.
• Find out how small, intentional choices rooted in your principles can build resilience and lasting inner strength.

Listen now and uncover the key to staying strong in your toughest moments by living in alignment with what truly matters to you.

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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.

 In this episode, you'll discover the key to help you keep strong in your toughest moments.

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 today. I'd like to share something that will help keep you strong even during your toughest moments. Was a game changer for me.

As I went through my recovery and I hope what I share today also helps you to remember how strong you are. But before we dive in, again, I wanna say thank you for being here, and thank you for being a fellow survivor. And if you'd like to receive my free text messages that will help you feel whole again, send me a text, simply say hi, or you can text whole again.

Two. 8 6, 6 6. 1 2 4, 6 0 4, and I'll set you up. Now, let's dive in and talk about one thing that can help us stay strong even in our most challenging moments. Let's start with busting a myth. The myth is that strength is something that we need to wait for to feel as if one day. As we're going through all that we're going through, we'll finally feel strong enough to act.

But the truth is, strength isn't something we find or you find once things are stable again. It's something we practice just like we practice gratitude or we practice mindfulness. We practice being strong moment by moment. Especially when things feel so unstable as we go through something, it all feels unstable as we're living life today.

Wherever you happen to be, life feels unstable or uncertain. It calls for us to practice being strong, and I'll say this, the pathway to the strength, well. It's not perfect, that's for certain, and it's not about getting over whatever other people think we need to get over. It's found in our values, our first principles, if you will, what we care about, what matters most to us, what still matters, even in our most challenging moments when we're in a stressful moment, a crisis, if you will.

Maybe we're experiencing grief or just going through our healing process in general, our nervous system does what our nervous system does. It's built to protect us. Sometimes it runs away, sometimes it fights, sometimes it freezes. In this fight, flight state, things can feel a little fuzzy or foggy. We can feel disconnected.

Or unstable, we might even forget who we are. We might forget what we need, and that is where our values come in. Our values are like a lighthouse. My dad's favorite lighthouse, by the way, happens to be Noble Light in Maine. It's beautiful there. Lighthouses are amazing, but they don't make the storm disappear.

But. They give you something to steer towards. They guide you when you remember what matters most, what brings you joy. Things like connection and kindness and creativity and truth. You gain a thread of strength to hold onto our values. Do that for us. Again, it doesn't fix everything. I don't think there's anything out there that fixes everything, but all these different tools that we can tap into the tools in our toolbox, if you will, when we know how to use them, we can feel strength, we can practice it.

They help you navigate the stormy moments of life that everyone experiences with more grace. When I work with all my clients and when I gather with my pause, breathe, reflect community, which you can join. We talk about our values as I go through this moment in time, being a Sherpa to one of my family members as they go on their journey to feel whole again.

It was an easy decision to be there by their side because it spoke to what matters most. For me, it spoke to my values and my first principles. It still came at a difficult time, but the decision itself was easy, and it's good to know what your values are. I think it's good to revisit your values every year.

Periods of your life that are inflection points. Say you get married, say you have your first child, maybe your marriage breaks up, maybe you get a new job, maybe you get promoted. Perhaps you need to deal with an illness or an injury or physical trauma like we talk about here on whole again. These are all good moments to revisit your values, to make sure these are the things that truly matter to you.

There's an exercise in My Better Life workbook that helps you find your top five values and assess how well you're honoring them in life and at work. Each morning I wake up, I look at my top five values, or again, first principles. Those terms are interchangeable and I make a decision on how I can best honor each of these five.

So I live life with intention, and as I go through the day, I pay attention to these values, which is a key to happiness as Dr. Casey Holmes will share on Friday. Living an aligned life aligned to your values and your first principles will give you strength even in your darkest moments. So let's redefine what strength is right here, right now.

It's not unemotional. It's not pushing through or pretending that we're okay, that we're fine. It's not putting another rock in your backpack, as I like to say. Strength is saying, this hurts, but I'm still going to show up. I'm scared and I'll still take the next step. Your values are what let you take those steps.

They are the why. When everything else is unclear, they are your compass. They remind you that you still have agency, you still have a voice, and your voice matters. I wish this wasn't true, but it is. We will all go through challenging dark moments. We will all have bad moments, as I like to say. They don't have to turn into a bad day or longer, especially when we can ground our actions in our values or first principles.

So if you haven't already done so, reach out to me and I'll send you my Better Life workbook so you can identify these values for you and you can live in a aligned life. One of intention. One that pays attention, one that's strong. So you can be strong enough to get through even your most challenging moments.

And you know what? You have survived a hundred percent of your challenging days and you did so without a manual. That is badass. That is awesome sauce. And in many ways it's art. So you're doing it even though you might not have realized you're doing it. So we start small. Maybe it's one breath, maybe it's one choice.

Maybe it's simply just honoring one value and we act in alignment. That's how we become even more resilient than we are. That's how we heal. That's how we live mindfully.

And as always, thank you for being here and thank you for being a fellow survivor. And remember, if you'd like to receive my free text messages to help you feel whole again, say hi, and text me 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.