203 | Ways Perfectionism Sabotages Trauma Recovery—And How Mindfulness Can Spark Resilience

Show Notes:

Do you ever feel like you’re falling behind in your healing because things aren’t going perfectly?

In a world that filters everything to look flawless, survivors of trauma and injury often feel pressure to “get better” without setbacks. In this episode, Michael challenges the perfection myth and shares a powerful mindset shift to help you stay consistent, make meaningful progress, and honor your journey—scars and all.

Takeaways:

• Discover the mindset that helped Michael move forward when recovery felt slow and messy
• Learn how the wisdom of Kintsugi and stoicism can help you embrace your imperfections
• Get a practical digital wellness tip to set boundaries, protect your energy, and reduce screen time

Take a full breath in and a release breath out and learn how to make real progress—without the pressure of perfection—so you can heal and grow with purpose.

Do you ever feel like you’re falling behind in your healing because things aren’t going perfectly?

In a world that filters everything to look flawless, survivors of trauma and injury often feel pressure to “get better” without setbacks. In this episode, Michael challenges the perfection myth and shares a powerful mindset shift to help you stay consistent, make meaningful progress, and honor your journey—scars and all.

Takeaways:

• Discover the mindset that helped Michael move forward when recovery felt slow and messy
• Learn how the wisdom of Kintsugi and stoicism can help you embrace your imperfections
• Get a practical digital wellness tip to set boundaries, protect your energy, and reduce screen time

Take a full breath in and a release breath out and learn how to make real progress—without the pressure of perfection—so you can heal and grow with purpose.

00:00 Introduction and Purpose

00:43 Understanding Perfectionism

01:29 Embracing Imperfections

01:58 Stoicism and Effort

02:36 Recovery and Progress

05:11 Digital Health Tips

07:24 Conclusion and Final Thoughts

If this episode sparked something within you, please download it and share it with a friend. 

Kintsugi is the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with gold, silver, or lacquer, highlighting the cracks rather than hiding them. It embodies the philosophy of wabi-sabi, which finds beauty in imperfection and teaches that breakage and repair are part of an object’s history, making it more valuable rather than less. Metaphorically, Kintsugi reminds us that our challenges, scars, and setbacks are not something to be ashamed of but can be embraced as a source of strength and transformation.

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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 imposter syndrome, self-doubt, and perfectionism with self-compassion, self-love, and self-worth. Through insightful discussions on 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.

Transcript:

 In this episode, I’ll share one mindset shift that can help you make progress as you heal, grow, and become more resilient. Hey there, it’s Michael. Welcome to Whole again, A show about helping survivors. A physical injury and trauma reclaim their strength and resilience through the wisdom of Kazuki on Fridays.

I love sharing a microdose of wisdom with you to help you become whole again and step into the person you’re becoming. And today, let’s talk about perfectionism. It’s something intellectually we. I’ll get that. Nothing’s truly perfect, but we live in a world that wants to filter everything to make it so, and who’s to say what’s perfect anyway?

It’s certainly not my definition. And if you asked a hundred people, you might get 13 different definitions of what is, and of course we have our own. Version of perfect, which I’m sorry to tell you. I need to break this to you, that your definition of perfect isn’t perfect. Rather, we’re all perfectly imperfect, much like the Katsuga art that we celebrate here on whole.

Again, the pottery breaks, it’s put back together, and instead of trying to hide the scars. The scars are highlighted in gold. We highlight the imperfections because those imperfections are symbols of our strength and resilience. As you might know, this month, we’re weaving in elements of stoicism to help us as we heal and grow and become more resilient to help us step into who we are becoming.

And the stoics didn’t demand flawlessness. They weren’t aiming for perfection. They were looking at the effort someone was making. Basically, are you doing your best to control what you can control? Which is something we shared in episode 1 99. And if you can answer yes to that question, that’s enough.

You’re making progress during my recovery. I had a mantra that I still use today. Work hard today. To create a better tomorrow. So the work hard today, obviously points to effort. Work hard today on the things that were in my control, and I had this belief of faith, if you will, that that would lead to a better tomorrow.

Perhaps not in every. Aspect of my recovery or every aspect of life. But I knew if I showed up with intentionality and I worked hard today, I put in the effort that would create at least a tiny ripple that could carry me into tomorrow. So as we go through recovery, our body doesn’t respond in a perfect way.

It’s still bouncing back. That’s the nature of recovery. It’s not going to be perfect. Recovery never goes fast enough, and some days our energy is inconsistent. One moment we got all the energy in the world. The next moment we need a power nap just to get through the day. Some days it’s like this, so give yourself grace.

Which is a topic I’ll talk about in future episodes, most likely in the month of May, because I created a whole acronym to guide me through my recovery that I call grace, but give yourself grace. You’re still progressing. This isn’t meant to be perfect. It’s meant to be perfectly imperfect, just like the Kasu art that we celebrate.

So continue to show up, continue to put in the effort. Know that when you focus in again intentionally on what you can control and put effort towards that, you, my friend, are making progress. So here’s the mindset shift that’s up for grabs and I hope you’ll take it. Don’t let perfection. Be the enemy of progress.

Keep showing up even if it’s messy. ’cause messy progress beats perfection every day of the week. Okay, here’s another thing that’s within all of our control. It’s our digital health. And so each Friday I also like to offer one digital health tip. Our digital health impacts, our physical health, our emotional and mental health, as well as our spiritual health.

And in a couple weeks I’m gonna share an amazing tool for you that’s on my app that’s helping people reduce their screen time by 30 to 40% as well as their pickups. But until we get there, here’s the tip for this week, tap. If you have an Android phone, digital wellbeing, or an iOS or an Apple phone screen time and very specifically, do not disturb and focus time, do not disturb and focus time through digital wellness or screen time can help you put up some healthy boundaries.

So when you wanna focus in on, say, your physical therapy or your rest. Or perhaps something at work. You can use all the tools on your phone to help you focus, to help you get things done so you don’t waste energy, energy that you could use to help you in your recovery. These tools are right there for you.

So we can take the mindset that we wanna use our smartphones, but we don’t want our smartphones to use us. We can reclaim our power. We can begin to scroll less and live more as we step into who we’re becoming. So the digital wellness tip of this week is tap into digital wellbeing. If you have Android or screen time on iOS or Apple and utilize, do not disturb and focus time and let me know how it goes.

So there you have it. As always, thank you for being here. Thank you for being the badass survivor that you are. The world needs your ripple, so keep showing up. Keep putting in the work. In this episode, I shared a mindset shift that can help you make progress and not get paralyzed by perfection. After all, we’re all perfectly imperfect.

Like that beautiful Kintsugi art that we celebrate. Our scars, whether they’re physical or emotional, are symbols of our strength and resilience. I also shared this week’s digital health tip. Utilize digital wellbeing on Android and screen time on Apple. Set up your focus time and do not disturb to put up healthy boundaries so you can preserve your energy and reclaim your power.

Have the mindset that you can use a smartphone, but your smartphone won’t.

Thanks for being here. I appreciate you

and if you wish to further enhance your digital health, I’ll invite you to take my smartphone wellness check and you can access it through the link in the show notes, or you can visit my website, which is Michael O’Brien shift.com, and it’s absolutely free. And it’ll help you scroll less and live more.

And of course, I hope you’ll join us here on whole again every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and discover how to 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.