#339 | How to Stay Hopeful, Mindful, and Resilient during Heavy Times - Whole Again: Mindfulness and Resilience Through Kintsugi Wisdom

When the world feels heavy, how do you keep hope alive?

It’s easy to feel overwhelmed—by politics, workplace pressure, cultural division, or personal setbacks. Doom scrolling can shrink your vision. Burnout can drain your belief. In this episode, Michael explores the difference between hope and optimism, shares a deeply personal story about his dog Hope’s life-saving surgery, and reflects on how hope is something we strengthen through action—not passive wishing.

Understand the difference between hope and optimism—and why it matters
Learn how to “train” your hope muscle during difficult seasons
Discover small, intentional actions that help move from winter into spring

Press play to reconnect with the kind of hope that takes action—and helps you build a better tomorrow, one step at a time.

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Hey there, it's Michael. Welcome to Whole again, the show that can help you navigate today's uncertainty with more mindfulness, resilience, and grace. And today I wanna speak with you about hope. Let me share a story my wife has long told me that our dogs who are Springer spaniels are the perfect breed for me.

Because they're so hopeful. Hope is different than optimism. Hope says even when things are hard, something meaningful is still possible. Hope puts in the work optimism rather, which is also a really important virtue. Optimism says, well, things will probably work out. If you look at the weather, optimism will say.

Even if it's raining today as it is today, as I record this, it'll be sunny tomorrow. Hope says I'm gonna grab a raincoat and I'm gonna plant some seeds that could create a better tomorrow, one of our dogs, her name is Hope, and one of my top five values is also Hope On election day in 2024. I was hopeful and optimistic about the outcome in the election that afternoon.

Our dog hope, though, came down with a rare case of bloat. If you're not familiar with what bloat is, it basically involves the twisting of the stomach and the intestines. In a dog, it usually only impacts larger breeds. So for it to happen with hope, who is not a big dog, was rare given her symptoms, I was really worried, but I thought this couldn't be happening.

But I decided to take her to our vet about a half an hour away in rush hour traffic, and they confirmed that she had bloat and she needed a life-saving procedure right away. That's what happens with bloat. Bloat can kill a dog pretty easily, so I rushed her off to the Emergency Vet Clinic and I sat down with a veterinarian there who was going to perform the surgery.

She told me what she was going to do and she also told me what the cost would be. It was over five figures and she said, listen, hope is 14 years old. Do you still want to do the surgery? I said, yes, I'm getting choked up. Even as I shared this with you, I was like, tonight, hope does not die. We do the surgery and the really great thing about it is that hope performed really well in the surgery, but she did have a couple tough moments post-op.

My wife went up there to sleep with her during the night and Hope made a full recovery, and she's still with us. She's now approaching 16, which is pretty old for a Springer spaniel. So hope stayed strong. The election didn't turn out the way I had hoped it was going to turn out, and after 14 months of this administration.

I can feel it when I speak with other people. They feel hopeless. They wonder, how are we going to do this? How will we survive the next three years? And they usually put their hands in their face as they share this with me and as an executive coach and speaker. I can also feel this in corporate America.

What's true is that the health of corporate America and workplace culture is not good. There's so much pressure and when I talk to people in that space, they also feel hopeless. I often hear them say, I don't know how much longer I can do this. The thing about hope is that like any muscle. We need to work it.

We need to look for reasons to be hopeful. If we don't, if we just end up on our phones and doom scroll, that muscle of hope atrophies, and then we become hopeless. So we need to work at it to make sure that we're strengthening our ability to see hope. There's an old saying that hope is not a strategy.

Okay. They can have their point of view, but I believe hope is an essential pillar to live a full life because Hope asks us to step away from our devices and look up and look around and take action. Doesn't have to be huge. It can simply be one step forward. In March, I'll share an interview with you that I just completed with Jennifer Brown.

She, like You, is another amazing human. And she wrote a new book called The Shape of Change, and the last chapter is about hope as someone who cares deeply about social justice and is a thought leader on workplace culture and very specifically. Diversity, equity and inclusion efforts. Jennifer sees that we're in the season of winter when it comes to creating communities of belonging.

She was kind enough to endorse my current book that I co-authored with Dr. Sean Andrews on the five levels of male allyship, and I feel coming out with this book is a hopeful action. Even though there's tremendous backlash on de and I efforts, we can still stand strong and take action because workplace culture still matters regardless of what we call it.

As we discussed the last chapter in her book, I asked her, and I'll save her answer for later when the episode comes out, what she's looking for. To give her a sense of hope that we're moving from winter into spring, and my bet is that in your neighborhood there's a bush or a tree that will always blossom before any other one.

Those are your signs that spring is around the corner for you in your neck of the woods. And those signs from nature can help us feel hopeful and optimistic about the future ahead. And since we are nature. This analogy of moving from winter into spring is one that we can apply to many aspects of our lives throughout my recovery from my last horrific crash that happened last summer.

I was very intentional since Hope is one of my five values to lead with Hope. As I went through my rehab, even though at times it was really dark. I was overwhelmed. I still showed up every day and took action. It was almost like I was rehabbing my hope muscle. You see when we doom scroll and we only see what's wrong with the world, yeah, it's easy to feel overwhelmed.

It's natural for that feeling of hopelessness. And then we start to show up that way and that muscle of hope that's so essential starts to weaken. Hope is asking us to hit pause, step away from our devices, and look up and look around because it knows there are signs of hope, even when there's so much going on right now.

Take the ordinary people in Minnesota in Sub-Zero temperatures, how they were out there for their neighbors and they push back on the authoritarian practices of ice that wouldn't stand up or hold water in any place of worship. They showed up, stood strong. And became role models for hope that change is possible.

So I see hope in them, and I see hope in so many other aspects of our lives that even though we are at least here in the northern hemisphere in winter, I feel there are signs of spring, a spring to come. So when you look around, what do you see? I know you see many things to be concerned about, but what brings you hope together?

Let's look for signs of hope, but this doesn't mean we should deny or ignore the reality of this moment that we share. Having a mindfulness practice allows us to create some space, and in that space there is room for hope. That can create a better tomorrow for all of us, not just some of us that hope can help us feel whole Again.

As always, thank you for being here and thank you for being part of our community. If you haven't yet, join me over on Substack. I hope you will. My handle over there is milkshakes with Michael. If you join me, I'll explain why I'm going by that handle. Over there. Over there, I share my writing. I do a lesson each week, and I also host a few live meditations so you can practice your practice with other like-hearted humans.

So I hope you'll join us over there and until then, keep hope alive, keep pedaling. Putting your beautiful ripple into the world. I appreciate you

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.