#111 Three Practices that Lead to a More Fulfilling Life

Oprah Winfrey once remarked that we are perpetually drawn either towards love or fear. In this episode, I urge you to shift your trajectory away from the looming dread of cancer and its recurrence, directing it instead towards profound self-love.

Join me as I shed light on several key insights and introduce you to three transformative practices. These will guide you in restoring trust within, embracing your body wholeheartedly, and earnestly assessing your habits and actions. Let's journey together towards crafting a vibrant, healthful life that resonates with your true desires.

Resources:
       

Read the full transcript below:

0:01
This is Laura Lummer, the breast cancer recovery coach. I'm a healthy lifestyle coach, a clinical Ayurveda specialist, a personal trainer, and I'm also a breast cancer survivor. In this podcast, we talk about healthy thinking and mindfulness practices, eating well, moving your body for health and longevity. And we'll also hear from other breast cancer survivors who have reengaged with life, and have incredible stories to share. This podcast is your go to resource for getting back to life after breast cancer. Hello, and welcome to another episode of the breast cancer recovery coach podcast. I am your host, Laura Lummer. I'm super happy to be here with you today, wrapping up this final episode for the month of October Breast Cancer Awareness Month. And this month has been all about inspiration forward thinking, listening to some amazing survivors that have great attitudes toward life. And I hope this episode is going to be just the same. I don't have an interview today. But I'm gonna wrap up this month with just some thoughts that I have for you some suggestions that I want to offer, based on the work that I've been doing this month some some insights that have come up in working with my different members and coaching different women. And here's the thing that stands out to me. There is so much fear after breast cancer. I know you know that right? It's overwhelming, this fear of having a recurrence. And this month, especially as I've been working with women and just seeing that fear, and the spins, that it causes, the anxiety that it causes, and how we just get stuck in this mindset of what can I do to avoid a recurrence? What did I do to get cancer in the first place. And we get very, very stuck on these external physical choices, decisions, and this obsessive thinking and fear of a recurrence. And I was thinking about this show and about the coaching that I do. And I thought, you know, I think that it, this is a really good time to clarify the message even more the message that I would love to be out in the world, for all of you survivors and for all the women that I work with. And to be very clear that this is not about not getting a recurrence, but coaching that I do this podcast, it's not about not getting a recurrence. It's about living your very best life. I've said this so many times in this show that none of us have a promise of tomorrow. And having had breast cancer does not make us exceptional. In that area. We're no different than every other human. The only difference is, as far as odds are concerned, we're no different. The differences that we're just more aware of it now. We've had our mortality stares in the face. And now you get to choose, does that mean you're going to live with fear of facing that mortality again? Or does that mean that you're going to look at this life, and you're going to embrace it and make it the most amazing life each and every day that it can be? And yeah, I know we're in quarantine, and who knows people are in shutdown again in Europe. And who knows what's coming. We don't know, we never have known. Just like we don't have a promise of tomorrow, we don't have an understanding of tomorrow. So let's talk about what we do know. And what I do know for sure is that there are things you can do now to be as fully engaged as possible in your life, to be as connected as possible to your body, and to get your head into a place to become more aware of your thoughts so that you can manage your mind and be more focused on living a fully engaged life and less focused on worrying about a cancer recurrence. So for this show, I want to talk about three different things that you can begin practicing for yourself in your own life to really help you feel more fulfilled and connected. So the first one we're going to start with is asking yourself this question, am I doing everything I can to support my health? Now I really want you to get a paper and pencil out to do this practice. And here's why. When you ask yourself a question like that, and you just think about it in your head. It's easy to come up with just a couple of ideas. But when you get out of pencil and paper, even set a timer for five to 10 minutes and write everything that comes to your mind about that question. When am I doing everything I can to support my health? And I want you to really think about more than exercise and food because that tends to be where our focus goes first, what are you eating? And are you exercising? And of course, those are important things. And I definitely want you to examine those things. Sometimes I'll get women who asked me, you know, what should I do? Or tell me that they're suffering from the inability to lose weight or joint pain, or insomnia and things of that nature? And when I ask, what are the steps you're taking, to support your health as far as diet and exercise to address these issues, oftentimes, I get well, I'm not doing any of those things. So what's important is that when you're asking yourself, What am I doing to support my health, you be really, really honest with yourself. And don't focus on what you don't like about your house, don't focus on what I can't do, because My knee hurts or anything like that. When you ask yourself this question, be open to the opportunities be open to the potential of what there is that you can do. And another reason why it's important to do this as a writing exercise is because if you only think about it in your head, if you listen to me ask that question right now. And you're listening to this podcast, and you're just thinking about it. Your mind, I guarantee is gonna go off on the tangent of either I already do everything I can, or I don't want to give up certain things. So it's really important that you set that intention of being open to the opportunities as you do this exercise. I recently listened to this amazing book, listen to it, because I listen to audio audiobooks, all the time, absolutely loved them. And it's called Dying to be me, by Anita Moorjani. And I love love, love this book. I've listened to it twice already, actually. But one of the things that I loved that she brought up is this point that just by having beliefs, we limit ourselves by saying I believe this, or I believe that. So by saying, well, if I'm doing everything for my health, I'll have to give up something I don't like, right there, you limit yourself. So when you ask yourself this question, I just want you to try to let go of beliefs or limiting thoughts around what you're doing, and just open your mind to any opportunity that comes to it. And definitely, we don't want to limit ourselves to just external factors like food. But take that deeper and ask yourself, what you're doing for yourself on a spiritual emotional level as well. Because this is so so so very important to think about. Living a fulfilled life means that you're emotionally connected to yourself to the people that you love, not just that you're nourishing your body and treating it well. But that you're loving it. And we're going to move on to the next step. And this is kind of a great lead into that next step. Because something that you can do for your house is to learn to love your body, learn to become aware of the way you speak about yourself, you speak to yourself, you criticize yourself, you judge yourself, and learn to stop.

8:20
And a great way to do this is to establish a practice of expressing gratitude to your body every day. Now, it took me a long time to get to that place of really feeling it when I wake up, and I write my entries in my journal, or I do my meditation or do my daily gratitudes. And I just say, how Thank you body for waking up today. I'm so grateful that you woke up today. And that I have my vision today that I can get up and see what I'm doing and enjoy this beautiful world. And so we get so stuck in this place, after breast cancer of judging ourselves and disliking our body. And there's so many valid reasons to do it. Right. We look at it with it, I'm scarred and I'm changed and I have hot flashes and whatever, whatever. All of the things that happen during cancer treatment, and if you put you into menopause, all of those things, but there's also so many other things, so many other things that are wonderful, and having a practice of expressing gratitude for your body, not just looking at your body and loving it in the way of like, Wow, what a great body. This body is so hot. It's not a Sports Illustrated kind of love, but a real and true love and gratitude for the wonderful things that your body does for you for the way that you can enjoy food for the way that it can feel hugs from the people that you love. So really ingraining this practice of gratitude for you Your body is a wonderful way to move forward to feel connected to your body and move forward feeling fulfilled and confident and trusting and loving in yourself. So I'll share another story with you this book, which I've talked about, I don't even know how many times radical remission if you haven't listened to it, I highly or read it, I always say listen to books, so or if you haven't read it, I highly, highly suggest it because it's just amazing. And one of the stories I recently read, listened to this book, and one of the stories in the book that just really touched me was the story of a Japanese man who had been diagnosed with stage four metastatic kidney cancer, and it and he's at any stage of his disease. And he begins to practice meditation, to really get in touch with his spiritual side. And he ended up having a complete remission, and has been cancer free for many, many years, and now teaches other people, some of the practices that he learned for himself. But when I first heard his story, ah, it was kind of tough, because he talked about how he expressed love for his cancer. And when I heard that, I thought, Oh, that's really hard. How do you do that? And he talks about how he realized that the cancer came up in his body for reason. It opened his eyes to different things about his life, like he was spending too much time at work, and not enough time with people he loved. And he was missing out on many, many things in life that as he was dealing with the cancer, and now working on healing, he began having a deeper appreciation for though his love of music and his ability to pet play the cello. And so he talks about how he would make a practice daily of sending love to his cancer, and saying, Thank you, because you're a part of my body. And because you've made me aware of these things in my life. And when I when I first heard it, when I first read that book, when I first listened to that book, I was like, Ooh, I don't know, if I could get to that place like that is I'm not sure how I feel about that. And as I've listened to it over, and over this most recent time, I thought, wow, you know, something really resonated with me about that. And I thought that suddenly makes sense. It makes sense to just let go of the fight. And I talked about this all the time, right, we have to let go, love put down that warrior shield stop being this brave person that everyone expects us to be in recovery, right? That, oh, wow, you are so brave, and such a warrior. And it's the whole pink war on cancer. But what about not fighting anymore, and surrendering, and just allowing yourself to get completely in touch with your body? That is not easy to do, ladies, that is, it's so much easier to shut down, it really is shut down, say I'm fighting this, and I'm not, I'm not even gonna pay attention to it. But when you start that practice of gratitude, and you start looking for the things in your body that you can love, and the way that it does serve you, you start to close that gap that we can create, while going through breast cancer. And going through the heinous treatments of breast cancer, that we create this gap that kind of distances us from our own body kind of puts us on opposite ends of the line in the sand, right? I want one thing and my body is doing another thing in this life. So how can you come together and be more connected to yourself and have a love and appreciation for it? At this point in my life, when I take that time each morning to write the five things that I'm grateful for about my body, it's really evolved to this point where, you know, I kind of get warm fuzzies. And I think, wow, I mean, I'm really, really fortunate right now. And my body has been through so much and it's healed and it's strong. And it serves me and it continues to heal and I still get up every day. And I get to move through this life. So practicing gratitude for your body, and learning to love it and value the way that it serves you and get connected to it. That's our second practice to connect to. And as I'm saying that it reminds me of the book I mentioned just a moment ago, dying to be me by Anita Moorjani. And she talks in this book about how through a near death experience as a result of cancer, she began to realize that what she needed to do to heal was to stop beating yourself up was to stop judging herself stop judging her body. Stop worrying about how other people judged her and stop living her life based on the expectations of other people. And that's going to bring us right into our third practice. And the third practice is really tuning into your intuition. And I don't mean intuition, again, just from the standpoint of what should I eat, what supplements should I take what people should I trust, who should I be around, but really tuning into your gut, you know, and listening to it. So many times, we tell ourselves that we have to stay in miserable situations in our life, whether that's a relationship, a friendship, a career, a work relationship, we convince ourselves that we can not change it, for whatever reason, I've known this person too long, or I need to make X amount of money. And this is where I matter, I need to have these benefits, I can't change. And again, we limit ourselves with those thoughts and those fears. And I'm so guilty of this too, not just for myself, but even for my children, I'll share a story with you. And this really taught me a lot I think about this story often, and I have for many years. But one of my sons, my second oldest son was working this job and he was so unhappy. And I could see how unhappy he was. But he lived on his own. He had a pretty expensive apartment, he had an expensive car. And he would just come to me and say he was so unhappy. He had an idea of what he wanted to do for his career and for his life. And he was making really good money at the job that he was at. And so he was just a mom, I'm just done. I'm just sick to my stomach every day when I go here. But when I think about going into this job, and now this is some years ago, this probably, gosh, seven or eight years ago. And I just remember saying, Well, you know, it's important that you find another job before you leave this job, and giving him the typical parental advice of safety and security. But the kid was so unhappy. And it was so hard for me to see him that unhappy. But yet, my mindset at that time was still stuck on security, you got to have security, you have benefits, you have money. And he called me up one day, and he said, I quit. And my first reaction was like, oh, what you quit, and he's like, I quit my job. I couldn't do it one more day, I couldn't stand it. I already have another job interview, he had everything else lined up. And just his spirit was so much lighter and had lifted so much, just in that day just to be because he took that action and said, I'm not doing this in my life anymore. And from that moment, honestly, my son has a completely different life now. And he made it happen. He left that job, he decided to pursue his dream. He worked hard. He suffered and struggles and went through college and started a new career. And it was just amazing the transformation he made. He knew in his gut that this was it for him. This was the right time for him. And I look back now and I think thank God, he was strong enough to do that decision to make that decision for himself. Thank God, he

18:15
didn't listen to me who's thinking I was giving him great parental advice. Because I know that when we get stuck in those places, and we feel feel physically miserable, that in itself creates illness. I mean, now I work with people and teach people not to live like that. So when I think back on that experience, I'm just so grateful that my son was strong enough to follow his own intuition. Realize that the situation that he was waking up to deal with every day was not serving him was not bringing him happiness was not serving his life. And he was brave enough to take a risk and change that. And that's just so important. So when I talk about tuning into your intuition, I mean, every sense of the word. So is it something as simple as food? And is your gut telling you, hey, you know what, you need to cut that out, or you need to make a change here. This isn't feeling good anymore. Is it relationships? Is it jobs? Is it just the way you talk to yourself and think about yourself and you realize, oh, this does not feel good. And your gut is telling you, Hey, knock that off. These are the things that you can focus on and put some energy into, to truly change the direction of your recovery. Because this is how you change your mindset from one that's locked into the problems and the worries and the fear to one that's open to the solutions and the changes and the opportunities. So as you are coming up on this final two months of the year 2020 And what a year that has been whatever it is that's coming our way And whether we ended up in quarantines or lock downs or anything like that, again, for the end of the year, these simple exercises will give you something that you can really work on, really focus on, and really work through these so that you're feeling even better, even more confident, even more inspired with yourself for the new year 2021. And let's hope my god that it's a different year than 2020 was. So let's talk about In summary, these three practices again, one is doing that thought down, and really writing down everything you're doing to support your health, the opportunities are endless, write them all down, get them all out of your head. And then starting that practice of expressing gratitude for your body, loving your body for everything it does to serve you, and just becoming more connected and being a partner to at a loving partner making peace with your body. And then finally, as you're doing these things, you won't help but be able to notice what your gut is telling you what your intuition is telling you is the right thing to do for your life and for your happiness at this time. So start listening to it. And you can notice, as fears come up, when you start listening to it, as I just explained to you, you know, my conditioned beliefs that I had, even when my child came to me and said, I'm suffering, this job is literally sucking the life out of me. And I was like, Oh, it's okay, stay there until you're secure, right? Instead of Whoa, life is short, you know what the universe is telling you to move on, go ahead, move, make the jump take the risk, there's no better time than now. And so I'll end the show with this final thought. And again, if this book was so powerful, I'm telling you, this is another take that I got from the book dying to be me. So as you're considering these practices, and starting these practices for yourself, and trying to keep your mind open to the opportunities and not limited to beliefs, or constricting thoughts or boundaries that you've been conditioned to believe you have to stay within. I love this thought that Anita Moorjani expressed in her book. And she said, allow things to happen. So think about the difference between making something happen, and allowing things to happen. So when you're tuning into your intuition, when you're expressing gratitude for your body, and you're just allowing that feeling of love and connection for yourself, and to the universe around you to just happen, to allow life to unfold without the need to control it, without the need to decide how it has to be how it's going to work. That learning to trust a little more and being open to allowing it to unfold. Have you ever found yourself in that place in your life, where everything just kind of falls into place, and you just start kind of noticing? Wow, look at the way all of that fell into place to get me here to the spot where I'm at right now. Yeah, that's the feeling I'm talking about when I say allow life to unfold, go with the flow, not resisting it. And that doesn't mean just sitting and waiting for things to happen. But living life intentionally, deliberately, but trusting in yourself, your body and your intuition to follow the path forward and not get stuck in the path that is keeping you clinging to the past with this insanely powerful desire to go back to what used to be. But imagine how amazing the future you can be. If you can just start allowing that to unfold. So thank you for sticking with me through the month of October, I hope that you've loved the shows throughout this month, and that you've found them inspirational. And that at least something in them has left you feeling more confident in yourself more secure in yourself, and maybe even give you some ideas or inspirations for moving forward in your own life. So thank you again for tuning in today. Thank you for downloading the show. And if you're a repeat listener, thank you so much for coming back again and again. And if you haven't had a chance to leave a review for the show yet, just scroll on down to the bottom of your smartphone and it'll let you do a rating or review right there. And if you're new to the show, welcome and I hope you do come back for more. Know that by the time this show comes out there will still be a day or two left that you can download my five day sugar challenge completely free. Just go to the breast cancer recovery coach.com forward slash sugar and you can get that wonderful program so many people have had it and love it. It's a really, really cool program to help support you in doing things that support your health. And I'll also post links to the books that I talked about in the show in the show notes which you can find at the breast cancer recovery coach.com forward slash 111. All right, my friends. So you get your work cut out for you get that paper and journal and pencil or whatever it is you like to write on and start your practices. And I will talk to you again next week. Until then, be good to yourself and expect other people to be good to you.

25:37
In your head, you've put your courage to the test laid all your doubts your mind is clearer than before your heart is full and wanting more your futures Give it all you know you've been waiting on

26:08
this