233 | The Tiny Mindset Shift That Restores Hope and Resilience During a Medical Crisis

Show Notes:

Feel like you’re always bracing for the next bad thing? Here’s one powerful mental shift that can bring hope back into your healing journey.

As survivors, it’s easy to fall into patterns of worst-case thinking—especially when we or someone we love is struggling. In this episode, Michael shares a simple but powerful mindset reframe he recently used with a loved one recovering from surgery. It shifted the emotional energy in the moment—and it can do the same for you.

Takeaways:

• Learn the biology behind why we default to catastrophizing—and how to interrupt the cycle
• Discover a single question that can restore emotional energy and invite possibility into your day
• Explore how to use this prompt during moments of fear or fatigue to build more mental resilience

Take deep breath and discover how this mindset shift can help you reconnect with hope—right when you need it most.

Transcript:

 Today you’ll discover the mindset shift that can help you cultivate hope. 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. As I mentioned on Wednesday, the last episode, one of my family members is going through something’s trying to recover from surgery and some post-op complications, and it’s thrown him for a loop. Let me just say, in our family, there’s a lot of catastrophizing going on right now and not much hope so.

This mindset shift will help you cultivate some hope. I tried it out with him and it worked. When we feel broken and we’re on this path to feel whole again, it’s easy to go negative pretty quickly. We begin to wonder what’s gonna go wrong next? This is gonna lead to that, which will lead to another thing.

And as I mentioned that catastrophizing takes hold. So instead of thinking what will happen when things go wrong, you can make a shift and wonder what if something goes right. There’s actually some biology to this. We’re hardwired for survival, so we have this natural tendency to go negative. It can feel protective, and that’s how we generally show up in the world.

So this is normal. No shame, no blame. But this way of thinking, especially as we go through something that requires our full energy to recover, drains our energy. It can make hope, feel outta reach. So by gently doing a little shift, aoo, we can invite the mind and body into thinking about possibility rather than peril.

We can give hope a chance. And with this we’re not denying that the situation stinks. It’s. Healing is tough, especially when we’re in the hospital. I’ll have more on that to come in future episodes of whole again. But what we’re trying to do with this shift, with this different prompt is that we’re expanding our lens.

We’re making room for unexpected goodness to show up. So try this on for size, so when you feel like you have some doubt. That hope has left the building along with Elvis. Hit pause as we do breathe in deeply to slow things down and take that nice long, slow exhale so you can let your body know that you’re safe and you can ask yourself, what if the next step I take brings some ease?

Or what if today this is a good one to do in the morning? What if today holds one small surprise that’s in my favor? So we put it out there. So something good is gonna come today.

And there you have it. This week’s mindset shift to help cultivate some hope. By changing the prompt around when we try to look for all the right answers, sometimes it’s best to ask a more brilliant question. So instead of wondering what if everything goes wrong, you can wonder what if something goes right and I know something that is really right.

Sorry, this is a little cheesy is you. So thank you for being here and thank you for being a fellow survivor. I’m glad you’re here and I know together we’re gonna put a good ripple. Into the world,

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.