206 | 5 Empowering Mindset-Shift Affirmations for More Gratitude, Resilience, and Digital Health

What if the first thing you say in the morning could shape every conversation you have for the rest of your day?

For survivors of physical injury or trauma, our inner dialogue can either become a source of empowerment—or deepen our wounds. In this episode, Michael shares 5 morning affirmations and one powerful sentence to say before you open your next app that can completely reframe your day and support your digital wellness.

Learning:

• Learn 5 honest, healing statements to start your day with clarity and compassion
• Discover the single most important conversation you have each day—and how to improve it
• Get a powerful digital health tip that helps reduce mindless scrolling and increase intention

Press play to discover how a few spoken words can help you take control of your day—and your healing journey.

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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 the one thing you should say aloud before opening your next app to help you heal, grow, and step into the person you’re becoming. 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 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 I’ll share five things you should say to yourself every morning and that one thing you should say. Before opening your next app. But before we get there, I would like to share a big thank you for being here because I know it’s not always easy.

So as one survivor to another, thank you for showing up. Thank you for being here. And most importantly, thank you for being a survivor.

Okay, let’s get into it. I believe it all comes down to the conversation you’re having with yourself. It’s a conversation that we have all day long and we have a habit of beating ourselves up. We would never talk to a friend or a stranger the way that we sometimes speak to ourselves. So I’m a big believer in getting this conversation off on the right foot, which means.

This is part of my morning ritual, and I started this when I was in the hospital. I took some time to meditate, and then I worked on the conversation I was having with myself because I knew it would shape or influence every other conversation I was having with other people during the day. And it would also impact the kind of ripple I would put into the world.

Here are some disclaimers before I share what I say to myself each morning. One, make these your own. This is what I say to myself, and that doesn’t mean you have to say the same thing. So rift away. Make these your own. You’re always a choice. And try to say them aloud and only when you truly believe what you’re saying.

Because we have a bullshit detector, so we know when we’re lying to ourselves. So I’d rather you not lie to yourself than trying to fake it until you make it. So if you believe it, be loud and proud as you say it aloud in the morning. Okay, here’s the first one. I’m grateful I’m still here. And that means I can create the type of ripple.

I wish to. Here’s the thing, not everyone makes it throughout the night. Some people pass away in their sleep. I’m sorry to bum you out, but that’s true. The fact that we get to wake up each day means that we have a choice. We can choose gratitude, we can choose what kind of ripple we put into the world. So let’s own it.

Let’s live it. This is the first step. A little gratitude as soon as we wake up. All right, on to number two. I will treat myself with the same kindness and compassion I extend to others. As I mentioned just a minute ago, we can beat ourselves up pretty fierce. We are a horrible boss to ourselves. We extend.

Kindness and love and compassion and empathy and sympathy and all that to other people, but we don’t extend it to ourselves. So this is why I start each morning off with a statement about extending grace to myself, knowing that I will need it throughout the day because like we all are, I am perfectly imperfect.

Okay. Onto the magic number. Here’s number three. I will not waste time and energy on the things I cannot control, which ties back into the Serenity Prayer, which happens to be one of the micro meditations I recently shared here on whole. Again, in every day things will happen, and in the words of John Cabot Zinn, the founder of MBSR.

A place where I did some of my meditative study at. We can’t stop the waves, but we can learn how to surf. So let’s remember that we can learn how to surf. Okay, let’s move on to number four, which happens to be my favorite number today. I will focus on who I can be and what I can do. This one was a big one.

In the early phases of my recovery, because I was fixated on all the things I couldn’t do anymore, this little shift helped me focus in on all the things I could do and all the different ways I could be. So instead of being bitter, I could work on being better. Here’s the last one. We started with gratitude and now we’ll end with gratitude.

Today I will find something or someone I’m grateful for. It could be a close friend, a family member, or a complete stranger. It could be a wonderful event that happens, or it could just be something simple like the sunset or sunrise or the birds chirping or. A moment of silence. Silence. Like that one, one thing, one is always greater than zero.

So these are the five things I say to myself to start my day, and I’ll encourage you. To use these or make up five of your own, because this will help frame the conversation you’ll have with yourself. And as I mentioned upfront, this is the most important conversation you have every day. Now there’s one last thing.

I’ll recommend that you say aloud before you open every one of your apps, and this will help improve your digital health. Your digital wellness, which has an impact on your physical, mental, spiritual, and social wellness. This is why we focus in on this topic every Friday as a way to improve our digital health and how we use our phone.

So if you’re ready, here it is. It’s so simple, but it can have a real impact. On your phone health, here it is. Before you open any app, call it out. Call out why you’re opening the app, whether that happens to be Facebook or Insta, or your mail, or Google. You name it. Call it out. This will prevent you going into the app without a purpose.

It sets the intention. So in a way, this can help prevent mindless scrolling or even worse doom scrolling. And if we can be real, sometimes we wanna go into our phone because we wish to escape. We just want some mind candy. We wanna break from all the hustle and bustle. I’ve been there. I’m sure you’ve been there as well.

Sometimes we just need a little scrolling cupcake or twine. That’s normal. But when we call it out, at least we can be intentional. At least we know why we’re doing it. We want a little treat, and who doesn’t like a little treat? The problem comes when we’re having Twinkies all day long, and every meal is a cupcake that can be problematic.

So try this out and then let me know how it works for you before you open your apps to yourself or. Call out why you’re opening it and see how that improves your phone health.

As always, thanks for being here. As I mentioned upfront, thanks for being a survivor. In this episode, I shared five things to say to yourself as you begin each day to frame out a healthy conversation with yourself, because it all comes down to the conversation you have with yourself because that one will influence every other conversation you have throughout the day.

And I just shared that one digital health tip. That will make an impact on your phone health.

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.