#183 You Have More Power Than You Think

When we make the choice to wait and see what an external circumstance might create, we’re making the choice not to engage in our life.

In this scenario, we are the ones who step out of life, even if we fool ourselves into thinking the circumstance (i.e. cancer) is the cause.

In this episode, you’ll hear more about subtle ways in which we give up power over our lives.

How our brains offer us thoughts that we don’t have to accept.

And words we can become more aware of to help us see when we’re choosing to step back and let life roll on without us.

Referred to in this episode:

Better Than Before Breast Cancer Life Coaching Membership

Read the full transcript below:

Laura Lummer 0:00
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 so happy to be here with you today, we're gonna have got a great topic today. It's just amazing. I know I've said this before, but it's just amazing to me when you know, something just keeps coming up over and over the same issue over and over. And I see it in so many people. And I think this needs to be talked about. And today is one of those things. So I want to start off with reminding you that the enrollment for the better than before breast cancer life coaching membership is open, you can join now. And you can find all the details for that at the breast cancer recovery coach.com forward slash life coaching. It is our very special membership. We have live coaching calls, workshops, Zoom meetings, six times throughout the month, we have special challenges and everything you can ever imagine, to support you in reestablishing recreating a life that's even better than before breast cancer by learning to manage the way you think about things by learning that we don't have to go through life being bunking off the circumstances of life. And we have so much more power over our lives than we often think we do over our lives over our thoughts over our emotions. And that's actually what this podcast is about today. There are so many times where we give up our power. And we don't even realize we're doing that. When it comes to cancer, actually, it can be any kind of diseases, any kind of physical ailments and any kind of physical challenges that we deal with. It's very easy for us to slip into allowing that disease that's illness, that physical challenge, to have power over our lives, we actually give away our power to it. And I'm going to share a couple of stories with you that just have made this stand out to me so much more. Over the past couple of weeks. These are a couple of stories that personally happened in my life with people that are in my family. And because of them. I've seen this even more, I'm more aware of it's like when you buy a red car, and suddenly every car is red, right? When something like this comes up. And it's powerful to me and my personal situation. And then I just see it even more in my coaching. And I think oh my gosh, we're creating so much suffering. I think there's a beautiful thing about becoming a life coach about studying life coaching about studying thought work, is that you learn to replace judgment with curiosity, right? A lot of times before you'd see someone doing something, thinking something acting a certain way. And you think why does that person do that to themselves, like what the heck is going on there. Whereas now, when I see these thought patterns, I'm so curious and so fascinated, because our human brains are fascinating. And yet, we just don't have this resource or a lot of resources out there that teach us that we don't have to go along with all of the stuff our brain offers up. That doesn't give us the results we want in real life. We don't have to listen to our brain, we can say yeah, thanks for that thought brain. But that's not going to work for me today. And it's such an important thing to learn. So, personally, a couple of stories. One was someone in my family, and she was going to take a trip. And she was just having a lot. I mean, a lot of very severe apprehension about this trip anxiety. Very upset about it, actually. And as I talked to her one of the things she said is, what if I'm there and I get a UTI because two years ago I had that problem getting UTIs and it was miserable. And as I will and you haven't had one and how long oh it's been almost two years since I've had one. And I said so well then why are you Why is your brain going there? Like why what happening with that thought of, if I go on this vacation, I might get a UTI. And that will ruin it. I mean, seriously, if I go on this vacation, I get hit by a bus and my ruin it right? But the brain goes to I had this problem if this problem comes up again and I'm not at home, what will it look like and then a tremendous amount of fear and suffering followed another story, someone that I know was talking to me, and this person recently had cancer, and had some PET scans coming up. And you know how scans it goes, right. And we were talking about taking a trip. And this person said to me, I can't make any plans until after I have the scans. Now the scans were about six or eight weeks off at this point. And this person hasn't had cancer in some time. And she says I can't make any plans until after the PET scan. Well, why not? Well, because if the or the CT scan, if the CT scans show something, then who knows, I might have to change everything or need treatment again, I offer that to you to listen to. Because when it comes to our power and our control over life, we think we want to control circumstances, you know, we wish we could control the circumstances of whether or not we have cancer of whether or not my kids got ABCs, or ds of whether or not my husband leaves what towels on the floor. We want to control the circumstances and we can't. So then we tell ourselves we're helpless. But where we really give away our power is in the way we think. When we think I will not make a decision in my life, to do something, that's probably going to be enjoyable. Because something else might happen. And then things will be bad. When we do that, girl, we are giving away our power. But we are also giving up our life. We're not living, we are choosing in that moment to say, I'm giving up my power over living my life. Because some other circumstances may or may not come up in the future. And then it will change things will I can promise you, that circumstances will come up in the future that will change things, it will happen all the time, it will happen in life, it will always happen. And if you allow yourself to not live your life, to not do the things you want to do, to not enjoy the things you want to enjoy. Because you're letting your brain go off with these wild thoughts of this might happen. random thoughts, I should say not wild, because there's some basis for them, right? But they it goes off with these random thoughts. But then you get to choose to believe that or not, you get to choose to go with that story or not. Now, if that story is super powerful for you, so in the situation with someone who thought she might get a UTI, if that's really powerful, then you can ask yourself, gosh, what would I have to do to feel safe? If I make this choice to go on this vacation and I should get a UTI? What would I have to do to feel safe? Should I talk to my doctor ahead of time? Can I get something prophylactic? Can I check into medical resources where I'm going with that helped me feel safe in case something came up? When it comes to the story about the CT scan? Can I make plans and enjoy my life and say yes, I have a CT scan coming up several weeks from now. One, why go with the thought I can't do anything because something bad might come from the CT scan. And then I'm going to have to go into cancer treatment. One Why choose that thought rather than I have a CT scan, so I have to be home for that scan. But of course everything's going to be fine. So let's go to Hawaii, right? Even to say I'm going to put my life on hold till I get a result for something that's in the future. Whereas we could say wow, I'm going to do all this stuff, but I have to be home on that day for that scan. And then if something should go wrong in that scan, I'll figure it out from there because you know what, you can cancel plans. But you can't get back time that you just didn't engage in because you made a decision to wait to see if an external circumstance will control your life.

Laura Lummer 9:43
And for me when I see that oh, that's when a hug them on it. Take us a please make the plans, make the plans, make the decision and go all in, make the decision and say I'm going to do this. I'm going to love this, oh, you know what a thought came up. I'm a little afraid this might happen. So let me plan for it. Okay, plan for it. Got it. Amen. because that in itself that being in life and making the decisions to do what you want to do, to run the marathon to go out to dinner, or to take the vacation to see the people, that in itself creates this chemical cascade of happiness that supports your health and your healing. That getting out in the being active in your life, being engaged in your life, interacting with the people that you love in this way that feel safe and comfortable for you. Is something supporting your healing. Even when we're in treatment, like I'm in treatment for cancer right now, I'm not an IV chemo, thank God, but I'm in treatment for cancer, I have a compromised immune system. And I and I have cancer throughout my spine and hips and pelvis and a lot of places. And so do I have some concerns? Yeah. When people ask me to go places where there might be really big crowds, I really have to think about that. Because I have to think, in the situation in the way that it is set up. Is there potential for me getting knocked around accidentally, you know, like, nothing violent, not some kind of a riot, but just in a crowd. Because if that's the case, then that's probably something I'm not willing to accept the consequences, I'm not willing to get knocked around for an outdoor concert, you know, and hurt my back, not willing to do that, because I love being out of, I'm not willing to have any kind of impact, right? Because I know, impact could really harm my spine at this time. So when I was in Costa Rica, a friend of ours said, Hey, would you like to go surfing with me and I said, as much as I would love to, I will not go surfing. Because I know from having sort of before that the impact getting turned in a wave and we're all the rocks are in Costa Rica could potentially end up with some impact on my spine. And I'm not willing to take that risk. But I'm still willing to go to Costa Rica, I know it's not going to do the things that are going to hurt me, right? So it's so important that as we're going through our life, and we're making decisions to do or not do that we stop and ask ourselves, What am I making this decision on? Am I taking power over my life? Or am I just waiting for some external circumstance to decide which way my life is gonna go? To change my life for the better or the worse, to just decide for me, what my life will look like, and I'll just wait here for it until it happens. And then it might not happen. And I could say, Okay, now I can start living again. So we turn on and off our life. And say, it's something else that's doing it in, it's just not true. And I'm so passionate about that. Because, you know, people say time is money. But to me, time is so much more valuable than money. Because I can make more money, I can manage money, I can get money back. But I can't get time back. And I can't make more time. It's so important to realize that it is our thoughts that take us in or out of our life. I think I've shared this before on a podcast where I've said, you know, for the first year and a half in 2011 2012, when I was going through IV chemo. And I've heard this from so many other survivors that oh, yeah, cancer took that part of my life. But that just isn't true. Because we were alive, we are alive. And we may not be able to participate in life as fully as we want, because we're keeping ourselves safe during treatments or while managing disease. But to say I let this disease dictate what happens in my life, is completely stripping yourself of the power to be you have the power to enjoy your life. And it is just giving up your life to cancer before you have to. So what do you do? How do you know when you're in this position? And how do you get yourself out of it? You know, I think that a lot of times language can be a big buzz for us, right? Noticing specific words, noticing specific things, noticing that you just heard yourself, say, I'll have to wait till this happens. After this happens, I'll have time to engage after this. I'll be able to do that. And to look at that and ask yourself, Is that really true? Is it really true that I have to wait for something external to happen before I can do something else? Maybe it is. Maybe it is true? Looking at your thoughts, but I think I want to offer that a lot of times it is And so when it isn't true, what's behind that thought, sometimes in coaching sessions where I've had that around similar topics to this, it's that I don't want to let someone else down. I don't want to be disappointed. I'm just so afraid, I don't know what to do. And so it's so important to look at those thoughts. When you hear yourself saying, I have to wait, I can't now and ask, what is the truth behind that? And what are thoughts that feel very real to you, but are just thoughts that are creating fear, that are creating apprehension. And that you can choose differently, so that you can step back into your life and engage it, you know, getting thoughts out of your head? And really asking yourself that question, is what I said, True? Let me look at this. Could I change something about this? And then sometimes you might see, you know, I could change something about this. But actually, right now, I don't want to. And that is also different. Right? Saying, I don't want to make a decision. I don't want to participate in these things until a certain time. And here are my reasons. And I like my reasons. Even that is better than saying, I can't do things until after that thing happens. And then I'll see if I can live my life, because at least then you're owning your choice, you're owning your decision, you're owning your power. And, you know, I'm deciding this, you know, I even have these conversations with people, because so many women struggle with the anger and the resentment for the damage done to their body during cancer treatments. And I think that's something so important. That helps to shift that feeling of guilt is to know that we all made those decisions, right? People say I didn't have a choice, but we always have a choice. Sometimes we have sucky choices to sucky choices like choosing between chemotherapy and death, sucky choice. But if we know you know what, I weighed out my decisions, and I decided that choosing chemotherapy was the thing I felt safest with, you still bring back your power, you get to say, I'm the one that chose, I had a serious disease diagnosis, I made a choice. I'm empowered, I'm no longer a victim, no one gets to take that decision making power away from me. And that is a step I decided to take in my life. So when it comes to taking power over our life, it has nothing to do with external circumstances, and everything to do with us owning our decisions, looking our decisions, and knowing we have the power to choose at all times. And I'm telling you, that's a life changing thing. It's so empowering and so amazing. I would love to hear from you on this. So, you know, come to my Facebook page and post some thoughts on that or ask questions. And actually, in the month of April, which is a huge celebration month for me, it'll be a year that I opened the better than before breast cancer life coaching membership. And we're going to spend that whole month looking at decisions and the power we have to make decisions and to review decisions and to decide again, because knowing that and working through that. It just gives you so much power of your life, we say I like to be in control. Oftentimes when people say that I just like to be in control. That means we like to make other people do things we want them to do. But making decisions and taking back your power. That is where you have control over your life because you decide how you want to think you decide how you want to feel and you decide the result that's going to create in your life. So I hope you join me next month you can find all the details at the breast cancer recovery coach.com forward slash life coaching and I'd love to hear your thoughts and your questions on making decisions and taking back power in your life. All right, I will talk to you again next week and until then, be good to yourself. expect others to be good too as well.

Speaker 2 19:28
Use courage to the test laid all your doubts your mind is clearer than before your heart is full and wanting more your futures given all you know you've been waiting