This week’s Tiny Act of Freedom explores a core question: What is Deep Resilience?

In this episode, we explore the difference between the thinking mind (with it's survival based operating system) and awareness (with it's wisdom based operating system), and how shifting from survival mode into inner leadership allows us to meet life with more steadiness, clarity, courage, and peace.

You’ll learn:

• Why we lose access to our inner ground under pressure

• The difference between the thinking mind and awareness

• What it means to live wisdom-led instead of fear-led

• A simple “Drop Anchor” practice you can use in real time to step out of reactivity

With this simple practice of dropping anchor you can find a strong inner ground through more of daily life. Small shifts, repeated, create big lasting changes.

Want to dive deeper? Learn more in Melli’s book Deep Resilience: melliobrien.com/deep-resilience-book

In this guided meditation, you’ll be gently guided to reconnect with a deeper truth that is easy to forget in modern life:

You are not separate from life… you are part of it.

When stress, anxiety, or overwhelm arise, the mind can shrink our sense of self into something small, isolated, and under threat. But beneath that survival pattern, there is a deeper reality. A living sense of connection, belonging, and wholeness that has always been here.

This meditation is an invitation to soften out of survival mode and remember your interconnectedness with life itself.

Through gentle awareness and embodied presence, you’ll be guided to:

• Reconnect with a sense of belonging and support within life

• Settle the nervous system and unwind stress

• Experience the deeper ground of peace and steadiness beneath the thinking mind

• Strengthen your capacity to live from your Wisdom OS

This is a practice you can return to anytime you feel disconnected, overwhelmed, or simply want to reconnect with what is deepest and truest within you.

Welcome to The Deep Resilience Project.

This is Episode 1, and your first Tiny Act of Freedom: Taming the Mind.

The mind is brilliant, but it’s also wired with an ancient Survival Operating System that can pull us into worry, self-criticism, comparison, and stress. In this episode, we explore why that happens, and how to shift from Survival OS into what I call your Wisdom OS: the deeper intelligence in you that meets life with steadiness, clarity, compassion, and quiet strength.

You’ll learn:

Why the mind gets so threat-focused (even when life is OK)

How survival patterns shape anxiety, stress, and “not enough” thinking

A simple practice you can use immediately to unhook from unhelpful thoughts

How small moments of discernment create real freedom in daily life

Learn more in Melli's book Deep Resilience: melliobrien.com/deep-resilience-book

The Wisdom Contemplations (Part 4 of 4) A Letter from Your Deep Self (A New Years Ritual)

This month, in place of the usual Deep Resilience episodes, I’m sharing The Wisdom Contemplations. Four guided reflections to help you reconnect with deeper wisdom as the year comes to a close.

In this fourth and final contemplation, we explore a simple but powerful practice to step beyond the usual noise of the thinking mind and connect with the quieter intelligence beneath it – the calm, wise, loving awareness at the core of your being.

You’ll be guided through a short inner journey to your access the core of consciousness, listen to it's wisdom, and have a space to write or simply sit with, the message this deeper wisdom has for you as you move into the next year of your life.

This contemplation is an invitation to remember that you carry a source of guidance within you that doesn’t depend on circumstances, and to leave this year holding that wisdom a little closer to your heart.

Resources & Links

Free Meditations: https://melliobrien.com/free-meditations

My book Deep Resilience: https://melliobrien.com/deep-resilience-book

The Wisdom Contemplations (Part 3 of 4)

The Mindset Shift for a Meaningful Life

This month, in place of the usual Deep Resilience episodes, I’m sharing The Wisdom Contemplations. Four guided reflections to help you reconnect with deeper wisdom as the year comes to a close.

In this third contemplation, we explore a powerful inner shift: moving from a life built only around résumé virtues (achievements, status, success) to a life guided by what researchers call “eulogy virtues” – the deeper qualities of character and heart that make a life truly meaningful.

Drawing on David Brooks’ distinction between résumé and eulogy virtues, we look at the research on what actually leads to fulfilment, and then move into a guided reflection with four simple questions to help you reconnect with what truly matters to you: who you want to be, how you want to love and contribute, and the kind of life you’ll be glad you lived.

You’ll also be guided through a short meditative process to let this wisdom land in your body and heart, so it doesn’t stay as an idea in your head but becomes a living orientation you can carry with you into the new year and beyond.

Resources & Links

Free Meditations: https://melliobrien.com/free-meditations

My book Deep Resilience: https://melliobrien.com/deep-resilience-book

The Wisdom Contemplations (Part 2 of 4) Who Loved You Into Being?

This month, in place of the usual Deep Resilience episodes, I’m sharing The Wisdom Contemplations . Four guided reflections to help you reconnect with that deeper intelligence as the year comes to a close.

In this second contemplation, we explore the question: Who loved you into being?

Drawing on an endearing story about Fred Rogers, this episode guides you into a deeper awareness of the support that helped form who you are today you.

You’ll also be guided through a short meditative process to integrate the implications of this reflection, opening the heart and reconnecting with the quiet truth that none of us walk this life alone.

This contemplation is a gentle reminder of your belonging, your interconnectedness, and the love that has shaped your path in ways seen and unseen.

Resources & Links

Free Meditations: https://melliobrien.com/free-meditations

My book Deep Resilience: https://melliobrien.com/deep-resilience-book

This is the first episode in a short end-of-year reflection series called The Wisdom Contemplations: four guided contemplations designed to help you reconnect with deeper wisdom and clarity.

At this time of year, many of us become focused on goals, improvements, and next steps. While reflection can be helpful, this constant push to optimise life and improve ourselves can also pull us away from our deeper intelligence the quiet wisdom that helps us sense what truly matters, what’s no longer aligned, and how we want to live.

In this first reflection, Seeing from a Higher Perspective, you’re guided through a simple contemplative practice to help you step out of being caught in plans, problems, and fears, and reconnect with a more spacious, grounded, and wise perspective within you.

From this higher view, your life can be seen more clearly. Emotional charge softens. Perspective widens. And instead of effortfully trying to figure everything out, a deeper knowing can begin to guide how you move forward.

This episode is an invitation to pause, step back, and let clarity emerge naturally.

Key Links and Notes:

Melli O’Brien:

https://melliobrien.com

Free Deep Resilience Resources:

https://melliobrien.com/#deep-resilience-care-package

Reflection Questions from this Episode:

You may like to sit with one or two of these questions after listening, either quietly, or with a journal.

• From a higher perspective, what no longer needs to be carried forward into the next chapter of my life?

• What patterns, habits, or attitudes am I ready to let go of?

• From this wider view, what truly matters to me now?

• What qualities do I want to live from more consistently, such as kindness, courage, presence, or care?

The Choice Mindset

For years, I lived inside the “I have to” mindset.

I have to work harder.

I have to stay on top of everything.

I have to get it all done.

And like most people, I didn’t question it. I just carried the quiet weight of pressure, resentment, and inner tension that came with it.

But then something shifted.

In this episode, I share a simple but life-changing mindset shift. One that dissolves stress, restores a sense of agency, and reconnects you with what truly matters.

Such a small change in language…but it has the power to transform your mood, your clarity, your relationships, and your entire internal world.

If you’re longing for more wisdom, more intention, and more alignment in your daily life, this episode is for you.

Resources & Links

Deep Resilience Book: https://melliobrien.com/deep-resilience-book/

The Five Givens of Life: The Realisation That Brings Deep Inner Peace

For years, I believed peace meant getting everything just right. calm mornings, a steady mind, and a life that finally stayed still.

But life had other plans.

In this episode, I share a story from my early meditation training. A lesson that began with a thundering roof full of possums and ended with one of the most liberating realisations of my life.

We’ll also explore a profound insight from psychologist David Richo on the five givens of life, and how embracing them can transform the way we meet change, pain, and imperfection.

If you’ve ever longed for peace that lasts, even when the roof is shaking, this episode is for you.

Resources & Links

Join Becoming Love: https://melliobrien.com/becoming-love/

The Five Givens Book: https://www.amazon.com.au/Five-Things-We-Cannot-Change/dp/1590303083

My Book Deep Resilience: https://melliobrien.com/deep-resilience-book/

Why I’m Still Healing...And What I Wish Someone Told Me Sooner

For a long time, I believed that healing meant fixing myself.

If I could just do enough inner work, clear enough trauma, become calm, kind, and wise all the time, then I’d finally be whole, awake, complete.

But over time, I came to see that all that effort to “heal” was actually coming from a subtle self‑rejection.

In this episode of Deep Resilience, I share my personal journey of letting go of spiritual perfectionism (still working on it, still practicing it), and finally embracing the path of true spiritual and psychological healing. How it changed my whole paradigm of what spirituality is, and how I now practice it in daily life.

I also share a simple practice you can use to bring this more effective, compassionate approach to healing into your own life - even with your most difficult patterns, thoughts and parts of yourself.

Resources & Links

Join Becoming Love: https://melliobrien.com/becoming-love/

Free meditations: https://melliobrien.com/free-meditations/

My book Deep Resilience: https://melliobrien.com/deep-resilience-book/