Asking for Help is Courageous - A Microdose Meditation for more Mindfulness and Resilience - Whole Again: Mindfulness and Resilience Through Kintsugi Wisdom

The Whole Again Podcast: Mindfulness and Resilience through Kinstugi Wisdom airs every Monday, Wednesday and Friday with Pause Breathe Reflect Microdose Meditations, Growth Mindset and Mindfulness Tips, to help us transform our scars into healing and resilience.

And between May and October, I'm sharing a new series I'm calling: A Perfectly Imperfect Union. It's about connecting with every day folks as they reflect on America at 250. Conversations will air every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday.

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What if asking for help was not a sign of weakness, but one of the most courageous things you could do?

Most of us have been taught, somewhere along the way, that needing help means falling short. So we carry more than we should, stay quieter than we need to, and quietly struggle through things we were never meant to handle alone.

In this Monday microdose meditation, Michael O'Brien draws on one of the most memorable scenes in cinema, Jerry Maguire's desperate, heartfelt plea to "help me help you" to explore what gets in the way of asking for support and what opens up when we finally do.

Asking for help, Michael reminds us, is not quitting. It is a declaration that we are still in the game. And it is one of the most genuine invitations to connection that we can offer another person.

The people around you want to show up for you. They just need to know when and how.

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With Whole Again: Mindfulness and Resilience through Kintsugi Wisdom, listeners explore mindfulness and 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 building resilience, fitness, and stress management, as well as mindfulness practices and digital wellness, the show offers practical tools such as breathwork, micro-dose meditation, grounding techniques, visualization, and daily affirmations for anxiety relief and stress reduction. Inspired by the art of kintsugi, the podcast embodies healing as a transformative process, encouraging a shift in perspective from worry and overwhelm to gratitude and personal growth. By exploring the mind-body connection, micro-dosing strategies for emotional well-being, and

Hey there, it's Michael. Welcome to Whole Again. On Mondays, I love sharing a microdose meditation with you to help you set your intentions and start the week off on the right foot. And today, our focus is around asking for help And we tap into a pretty famous movie to get us started. You can find this practice on my Pause, Breathe, Reflect app, which is totally free, and you can find it on Apple's App Store and on Google Play.

And I hope you like the practice, and I hope you share it with someone you know that could use a little help

In the movie Jerry Maguire, the title character, who was a sports agent, was pleading, begging his only client, a star football player, to help me help you. He wanted his receiver to ask for help. Often in life, we struggle with asking for help because we believe it's a sign of weakness, but it's not. When we ask for help, it's a statement that we're not quitting.

It's also an invitation to get closer to someone else. But here's the thing, those around us, well, we can't read each other's minds what help looks like to any of us. If we could use help, we need to say so, so we can help someone help us. In this practice, we'll reflect on where we could use some help and who can we ask in order to receive it.

When you're ready, settle into a comfortable position. You could be standing, be lying down, you could be seated. And as you get comfortable, you can close your eyes. Of course, you can always leave them open or have a soft gaze if you prefer And we'll drop in. Let's begin with a few generous inhales and releasing exhales Allow yourself to slow down and come into this moment

Nowadays, life can be pretty stressful So gift yourself this moment to relax the body

You don't have to do everything by yourself There are plenty of people around you that can offer you assistance

They just need to know when and how to best help you

When it feels natural to do so, settle into the normal cadence of the breath

Following your breath in from the very beginning

Through the middle and all the way to its very end

Appreciating the pause before you continue to follow the breath out from its beginning through its middle and all the way to its very end

When you think about all that's happening in your life, personally and professionally, where could you use more support?

And how would that support be of value to you?

How could it help you overcome an obstacle, lighten your load, or keep you in the game so you can continue to put out those beautiful ripples that you share with the world? Where could you use support?

Knowing that asking for help is not a sign of weakness, it's an opportunity to connect with someone else. So who could you ask for the support that you need?

How can you best let this person know?

We all need support. None of us do this thing called life by ourselves. Together we go far

And when you're ready, you can flutter your eyes open and wiggle your fingers and toes. And remember that you've got this, and here I've got you If you liked this microdose meditation, I hope you'll share it with a friend. You can find this one, as well as over 700 microdose meditations and a really cool feature to help improve your digital health on my app, and the name of it is called Pause, Breathe, Reflect.

It's free to download in Apple's App Store and on Google Play. And I hope you'll check out my new series I'm doing. I release conversations every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. The new series is called A Perfectly Imperfect Union. I'm talking to 102 everyday Americans about their reflections of America as she turns 250.

So I hope you'll join us