215 | What Your Future Self Knows About Resilience, Mindfulness, and Surviving Injury and Trauma

Show Notes

What if one of the wisest, most compassionate mentors for your trauma recovery is… your future self?

In this episode, Michael guides you through a reflective mindfulness practice to connect with your future self — the version of you who has already moved through trauma and found grounded resilience. This mentor is always within reach and can offer the clarity and strength you need now.

Takeaways:

• Learn how future-focused mindfulness builds lasting emotional resilience
• Discover how self-compassion and intention shape trauma recovery in powerful ways
• Try a simple digital health tip to help you pause, reflect, and reconnect with your values

When you’re ready, take a full breath in and slow releasing breath out and meet the future you who already believes in your strength—and let them guide your healing through resilience, mindfulness, and self-trust.

Transcript:

 In this episode, you’ll discover your second mentor who is compassionate, grounded, and wise. 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 today, you’ll discover the second mentor you always have access to. You discovered the first one last Friday, and in this episode you’ll discover another digital health tip so you can reclaim your power over your phone and gain time for things that bring you more joy.

But first, I do wanna take a moment to thank you for being here, and thank you for being a fellow survivor. Together, we’re gonna go far, so if you’re ready to drop into this week’s episode, I’ll invite you to take a big breath in and a releasing breath out, and let’s get into it.

In last Friday’s episode, you discovered one mentor that you always have access to your inner child or the younger version of yourself, the version of yourself that’s innocent, that’s curious, that dreams big. We can always tap into the younger version of who we are today. I wanna share with you. Another mentor that you always have access to and it’s your future self.

The older version of who you are today, this version of you has already moved through the season that you’re currently in. They’ve weathered uncertainty, grief, worry, overwhelm, what brought them, happiness and joy. This version of you. Has felt all the feels as the kids would say, and they’re rooted in meaning, not perfection.

This version

exists in potential and in practice. This version is wise,

it is whole, and they know what matters. And guess what? This older version of you, they wanna help you. They wanna share their wisdom with you. So let’s do a short practice together. It’s built on appreciative inquiry, which is a coaching methodology I use with my corporate clients.

So wherever you happen to be. You can close your eyes if it feels safe to do so. If you’re driving eyes wide open, please. We preach safety here at Whole again, and you can take a nice big breath in and a releasing breath out to help you settle into this moment and begin to imagine a future version of you.

It can be. Of any age of your liking and start to picture yourself three years away from this current moment, three years in the future, you feel safe, rooted, grounded. You feel joyful,

especially going through all you’re currently going through, but you’re still human. But this version of you has wisdom.

Now with this image of your future self in mind, ask this future self. What did you stop doing to help you feel peaceful? You can also ask them what

small decision changed everything for us? You can also ask, what would you like for me to know right now? And then finally, and this is part of a practice I have on our pause, breathe, reflect app,

ask your future self if they love you just as you are today.

That last question is pretty powerful. I’ll encourage you to be with it.

When we think about healing, we often think about the past, making peace with what happened. You’ve heard me say sometimes we have to empty the rocks from our backpack. It’s a process that looks back and it can be quite powerful. No doubt about it.

There’s also healing in looking forward, tapping into the older, wiser version of ourselves because our future self helps us make decisions not from fear, but rather from a vision. Our values, our first principles, if you will, and most importantly, from Love Your Future Self. Doesn’t look to you to be perfect.

They know better. Your future self knows that we’re all Kintsugi. All of our scars are symbols of our strength and resilience. We highlight them. We don’t try to walk away from them or filter them out of the picture. They know that there are hard days. There may not be bad days, but there’ll be hard days.

They’ll remind you. Your future self will remind you of what’s possible, even when you have doubt. Your future self will also hold onto your worth to your value, especially when the circumstances that you face current day are shaky. So here’s a little practice that you can do on the daily. Think of it as a moment to pause, breathe, reflect.

You can get curious on this question, what would my future self thank me for today? Maybe it’s resting. Maybe it’s plowing forward and working harder. Maybe it’s simply making that appointment. Or maybe it’s really pushing through any limiting beliefs. It’s a simple question, but the answer may help guide you as you begin each day.

You’re lucky to begin, so I invite you to try it out. There’s also something else that I wish for you to try out, and that’s our digital health tip for this week. And this one I got from Catherine Price. She’s the author of How to Break Up With Your Phone, and I had her as a guest author for my leadership academy before the Pandemic.

And her tip is this, tie something around your phone. Maybe it’s a rubber band, maybe it’s a friendship bracelet. Since we have a relationship with our phone, even though we don’t want to OMI that. So this symbol, this image, this rubber band, if you will, as a reminder to hit pause, to take a breath and be intentional or reflect before we tap into or dive into any of our apps.

Now, next week I’m gonna share a really cool update with our app That will help. Get you to this point as well. But I love this whole idea of wrapping a rubber band around your phone just as a visual cue because visual cues, like the stickers I hand out, can be highly effective in helping us to remember our intentions, to help us remember how we wanna show up.

And I wanna thank you for showing up this week. Thank you as always for being part of our community, and thank you for being a fellow survivor.

In this episode, you discovered the second mentor, that older version of you that you always have access to and a really cool but simple digital health tip.

Thanks for being here, and thank you for being a fellow survivor

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.