#323 | Reclaim Your Power One First Line at a Time: The Path to Mindfulness and Resilience - Whole Again: Mindfulness and Resilience Through Kintsugi Wisdom

Have your New Year’s resolutions already lost steam? You’re not alone — and that might be okay.

In this episode, Michael gently challenges the “New Year, New You” hype and offers a more human, grounded way of approaching beginnings. Drawing on the natural rhythm of January, the creative struggle writers and musicians face with first lines, and his own cycling rituals, he invites you to begin where you are — not where social media says you should be.

From this conversation you’ll:

Understand why January naturally feels slow, not sprint‑ready
Learn why resistance is part of starting anything new
Discover how to let intuition and body awareness guide your beginnings
Realize that starting again — even imperfectly — is both wise and human

Press play to reframe your January and start your year with curiosity, self‑compassion, and the courage to begin — again and again.

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Hey there, it's Michael. Welcome to Whole again, your place to help you navigate today's uncertainty with a bit more grace. And now we've made it to the midpoint in January in, I think the gurus tell us, or the researchers that this is the point when we start to stop all those New Year's resolutions that we started.

A few weeks ago, and it makes sense because starting something new is not easy. It's challenging, especially when you consider January's real authentic vibe. The vibe it has when it looks itself in the mirror and it's not what the influencers want January to be. 'cause they want January to be. Something.

It isn't. If you just listen to the influencers out there, it's all about New Year, new you, let's fucking go. Gotta do this, you gotta do that, all that. But January doesn't have that vibe. If we listen to our body, if we listen to nature, January is more of putting on a comfy pair of socks and staying in bed just a bit longer.

It has a grab a big mug of hot cocoa and sit by the fire vibe. Not a blast off the starting gates into the new year kind of vibe. That's too much energy, too quickly, given the natural vibe of January. The thing is, back in the day, January wasn't the first month of the year. It was March and spring. The time we think of new things blossoming.

Starting something new. So if you're struggling a bit with the thing you started a few weeks ago, congratulations my friend. You are officially human. So let's talk a little bit more about starting something new. Writers and songwriters know how challenging it is to start something. Writers know this far too well.

There's a resistance before we start anything, before they write anything, before they sit in front of their typewriter, which I don't think many people do anymore, but the sound of a typewriter there. That is a beautiful sound, at least in my opinion. Let me know if you agree or disagree, but let's take the computer.

They wanna write something and they can feel the resistance. And that resistance is that blank screen and the blinking cursor. And they sit with that, sitting with that desire to come up with the first line, the first sentence, and they know it doesn't explain the whole story or the whole book. It simply opens the door.

If you're into music, you probably know that singer songwriters also struggle with this. The opening lyrics will not tell you how the song will end. That line simply breaks the silence. It gets us into the song, and when we're drafting something, when we're starting something new, that line doesn't have to be perfect.

We just need something to start with. As they say in writing a crummy first draft, or they really say a shitty first draft, we just need something on paper and then we can start with it. So the idea that you might be struggling with what you wanted to do this year, what you wanted to start again, that makes you pretty human.

It's natural because my guess is that most of the days so far have not been perfect. Whatever perfect happens to look like, which I still don't know. So they're rough. It's bumpy. When we start something new, some of our moments are like crummy first drafts, but the cool thing that mindfulness teaches us, we can simply begin where our feet are at, and if it goes offline, if you will, we can simply begin again.

Over the last several months as I've thought about starting something new, especially as I was going through my rehab and I continued to go through my rehab from my bike crash last summer, I played around with first lines in particular. I've played around with them on this app called Strava. If you're a fitness enthusiast, you might know Strava as a cyclist.

It's my go-to app. It's where I post my rides and my workouts. Runners are there, walkers are there. You name it. People like to post what kind of activity they're doing, and most people post with a generic title of their workout. Could be Morning, walk, afternoon, bike Ride. So forth and so on. But what I've done over the last several months is labeled my rides using first lines of songs.

Sometimes the song is something I listen to on my ride. Sometimes it just matches my mood. Most people on the platform, they'll follow me, have no idea what I'm doing. It doesn't make sense to them, but those who know, know it's a little. I guess inside joke that I'm having with myself and those that get what I'm trying to do for me, these lines are reminders that every ride is a new beginning, just like every day is a new beginning.

Every time I clip in and ride, it's like asking a question, what am I willing to start? Some rides will be slow and gentle. There'll be recovery rides. Others might have a bit more energy to them, and some may change tempos in the middle of the ride, and some songs change tempo too. Just like our days. Just like our lives, we're not going at one speed.

We don't know how things will unfold when we start something new, like a new day or a new ride, or as we begin to read a new book or listen to a new piece of music. Ultimately, labeling my rides this way using first lines of songs that I love. Is a reminder that starting something new is challenging.

It's humbling. So if you're struggling with whatever you're starting, that's natural. Again, January doesn't have the vibe of starting new things, even though it feels like your whole social feed is telling you that's what you should do. I'm here to share that. It's probably wiser to listen to your intuition, listen to your body.

Yes, we wanna be ambitious, we wanna get after things, but those things do fall into the seasons that we travel through during the year. So listen to your intuition and body more so than your social media feed. That might be the flex for 2026. So here we are a few weeks into the start of 2026, and we have no idea what will unfold this year.

I do feel that it will remain uncertain. It will be C, it might be even crazier and more bananas than last year, given that. In the United States, there'll be an election, and that always brings out a little bit more of the cocoa for Cocoa Puff's vibe. But here's what I do know, quoting one of my favorite teachers, John Cabot Zinn.

We can't stop the waves in the ocean, but we can learn how to surf. We together can learn how to surf the waves. Yes, they might be bigger this year. They might be more intense, they may be more frequent. Those wave won't just bring unpleasant things. They'll bring a lot of joy and happiness and compassion and excitement.

We'll live another full life this year and we'll begin a lot of new things, and with each thing that you wish to begin, there'll be a little resistance or maybe a lot of resistance. My encouragement to you. Is tap into the courage that's within you, that courage that can help you begin. Maybe you start with the first line of your song.

Maybe you start with a chorus. Maybe you know how it's going to end, and you work backwards From there. Simply start where you are and know that some of your starts will feel clumsy. They won't feel right. So listen to that intuition. Listen to your body. You'll know which ones to keep going with. And as I like to say, it's not, winners never quit.

Winners know what to quit when. So listen, and you'll know what doesn't speak to you. It doesn't speak to your real, true, authentic self and will continue to pedal forward. Together this year. 'cause together we go far. We'll take it one day at a time and allow the stories that we wish to write or the songs that we wish to sing, the days that we wish to live, to unfold at their pace.

We won't rush through them because the best stories, the best music. Well, we don't rush through those. We keep coming back to them. Because they speak to us in a different way. Maybe we don't rush through them because we know how challenging it is to start something new. So as we wrap up, my encouragement to you is lean into that challenge and listen to your intuition.

Listen to your body rather than your social media feed. Intuition and body will tell you if you should keep going if this is the time, and know that you can't win the year in the first two weeks because the stories that we return to, the ones that stay with us, well, they're the ones that we don't rush through.

They unfolded with grace. So allow yourself a moment to take a breath and start where you are, or simply begin again and let the rest reveal itself as it will.

As always, thanks for being here. Thanks for being part of our community. If you found this episode valuable, I hope you'll share it with someone you know and if you haven't yet joined us over on Substack, I hope you will. You'll see my weekly blog there and it's where I'll post announcements on new episodes.

Plus, when you become a paid subscriber, you get access to the live meditations I teach each week, as well as one webinar I do to help you take all this information and weave it into your lives. So I hope you'll join us and until our next episode, have fun. Storm in the castle,

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.