205 | Why Going Negative Might Be the Most Positive Way To Heal and Build Resilience

Can preparing for the worst actually lead to healing, strength, and resilience?

In this episode, Michael explores a powerful mindset shift rooted in Stoic philosophy — Premeditatio Malorum, or the premeditation of evils — and why it’s a surprisingly effective tool for survivors of trauma and injury. Rather than falling into fear, this ancient practice helps you meet challenges head-on with clarity and calm.

Learnings:

• Learn how visualizing setbacks can train your nervous system to respond, not react
• Discover how “thinking negative” can give you more control, not less
• Use this tool to stay grounded at work, during recovery, and in everyday life

Press play to discover how a surprising mindset shift can help you handle life’s unexpected moments with strength and grace.

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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 why thinking negative might be the best thing for your healing and growth.

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 today, I’ll share why thinking negative is essential for your recovery and how you can use it at work and in other areas of your life.

And I’ll share how you can get really good at it. But before we get there, I would like to take a moment to thank you, to thank you for being here. As a fellow survivor, I know that showing up isn’t always easy and we have some days, days when we don’t want to show up. So the fact that you’re here, that you’ve shown up says a lot.

So again, thank you for being here and thank you for being a survivor. And I don’t know about you, but each time I say that. I always think of Destiny’s Child, the song pops into my head, so that song may be the earworm of the day for you, but I digress. Who’s ready to go negative, but not in the way that you might be thinking.

I’ve shared here on whole again, and I will probably continue to share because I do believe. All of this comes down to the conversation we have with ourselves about ourselves. We humans have a way of going negative, pretty easy. We get in our head, we worry, we catastrophize, we have anxiety. It’s all natural.

It’s all part of the experience, but we can go negative pretty quickly. What I’m talking about today is about. Going negative as a way to plan on purpose. Let me share more. As you might know, all this month, I’m sharing perspectives from stoicism that can help us heal, grow, and become more resilient, and that’s the case whether we’re trying to recover from a illness, an injury, or a significant trauma.

The concept I wanna share with you today is called Prema. Tocio. Malorum, or the premeditation of evils. Sounds like a pretty uplifting topic, right? Well, I coach to this. I coach executive leaders, and when I go into their companies to do talks, it’s also part of my presentation. Now you might be thinking, Michael, you must be the worst motivational speaker ever if you’re talking about something called the premeditation of evils.

If you are no judgment, no blame, but let me share further. We’ve all been there at work, we’re working on something. We’re part of a team. We’re about to put it into the world and we create a PowerPoint slide because that’s what we do in corporate America. And on this slide we say we are going to flawlessly execute.

It’s gonna go perfectly. And as you’re presenting your slides and all the executives are at the table thinking, oh yes, yes, yes. We’re gonna do this perfectly. You know damn well that things happen in life. Something comes out of left field. Kazuki teaches you this, that things break. It also teaches you that things can become whole again.

So things happen, but at work we never want to talk about those things because we don’t wanna be seen as the person that goes negative. But that’s what we should do. We should game plan, what could go wrong? Because if something does, and most likely something will, we’ve already planned for it. When I do my bike races, when I rode across the country, I did prima malorum before my trip.

I visualize because I’m a big believer in visualization and there are many visualization practices on our Pause, breathe, reflect app. So I visualized that my trip and my races are going to go awesome sauce, but I also leave space in that meditation, that visualization, if you will, for the unexpected to happen.

This allows me to lay down a memory in my mind. So then when it happens, I can calm the nervous system, breathe deeply, and handle it with grace. In fact, there’s a guy named Michael Phelps. You might know him. A pretty famous Olympian, the best ever. The goat, if you will, when he was swimming. He used to do this visualization.

He used to do prema, Tocio, malorum before all of his races. He would visualize what he would do if something went wrong. So again, it calms the nervous system and now he’s in a position to respond rather than react. This is super important at work. It helps us plan for the unexpected. So we can show up with more grace.

Clearly, it works in athletic endeavors and it will work in our recoveries. Let me share more. The thing is, when you’ve gone through something, as we all have, whether it be an illness, a surgery, an injury, or a trauma, we can start living with a quiet fear in the background. In essence, we wonder when’s the next shoe about to drop?

You might wonder, what if this comes back or what if I can’t handle another setback? Or perhaps maybe I’m not as strong as I thought I felt that way, and I’m sure you felt that way as well. And here’s the juice of prima malorum. This is what it teaches us. Instead of allowing the fear to seep in and control us, we turn to meet it eyes open with a strong back and a steady breath.

And we say, okay, I see you. Let’s imagine the hard thing happens. It comes like Rumi writes in the guest house. It’s one of those visitors, and we open the door and we greet them laughing. Then we work on what we would do if that visitor comes to our door. And when you do this, it takes away some of the power from that fear, and here’s how you can practice it.

As I mentioned, I love sharing this with companies because with all the uncertainty in the world, this is allowing them to handle their work with more grace and thoughtfulness, and they’re achieving better results because of it. And of course, I love sharing it with our community as we survive our injury, our trauma.

Here’s how you can practice it wherever you might be. It could be a quiet spot. Start with a few deep breaths. Ground yourself in the moment and begin to visualize that thing happening, that unexpected thing. And as you bring it to mind, you might sense the discomfort, which is perfectly natural. Continue to breathe.

Slowly breathe deeply and then remind yourself that you’ve got this. You’re a survivor, and this is just one moment and you can always come back to the breath. This first part is to help train the mind and body, which is part of one ecosystem. To calm things down. When the unexpected arrives, it creates some space and it helps us.

Remember the powerful lesson of Kintsugi. You’re not pretending that your cracks didn’t happen. You’re not denying that. You’re not numbing it away. What you’re saying is this. Even if I break again, even when the unexpected comes to my door as a visitor to my guest house, as Rumi writes, I can stand there and invite them in laughing.

Even if I break again, I know how to put the pieces back together so I can feel whole again. This is what Prema, Natasha Malorum helps us with. It’s not saying I have control over life, but rather it’s saying I have confidence to meet any moment that comes my way. It’s a strength that we have, that we have the power to handle every moment with grace and thoughtfulness.

So before the day rushes in, I’ll invite you for the next 30 seconds to reflect. On the day ahead, reflect on what challenges might come your way and how do you wish to meet them. Give yourself permission to set your intentions for how you meet the unexpected visitor. And as you do remember to breathe slowly and to breathe deeply and remember that you’ve got this, and here we’ve got you.

We do not become whole again by ourselves. We do it together here, and as you practice prima malorum more like any muscle, it gets stronger. So you can get really good at this. You can still be optimistic and hopeful, but you’re just planning and how you meet those moments as it relates to your recovery.

We’ll be profound, and as we talked about, you can use this practice at work and in other areas of your life. So I’ll invite you to give it a try over the next week and let me know what you experience. And as always, thanks for being here

today. We talked about Prema Malorum. The premeditation of evils as a way to plan for the unexpected, and it can help you prevent a bad moment from turning into a bad day. And I also shared how you can get really good at it. In essence, practice, practice, practice. Again, thanks for being here and thank you for being a survivor.

I said it again. That song’s back in my mind.

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.