Episode Overview
In this episode we’re going deep into the power of adopting a "future-focused" mindset. Listen in and learn how to balance living in the present moment with envisioning the version of yourself you want to become.
I’ll share actionable strategies for overcoming self-doubt, imposter syndrome, and conflict avoidance, helping you create a life that's better than before breast cancer™.
Key Takeaways:
Resources Mentioned:
Quotes from Laura:
Connect with Laura:
Tags/Keywords: breast cancer recovery, future focus, self-care, emotional transformation, personal growth, imposter syndrome, conflict resolution, life goals, healing, self-love
Read the full transcript:
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You're listening to better than before breast cancer with the breast cancer recovery coach, I'm your host, Laura Lemmer. I'm a certified life coach and I'm a breast cancer thriver. In this podcast, I will give you the skills on the insides and the tools to move past the emotional and physical trauma of a breast cancer diagnosis if you're looking for a way to create a life that's even better than before breast cancer, you've come to the right place. Let's get started.
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Hey there, friends. Welcome to episode 394, of better than before breast cancer. With me. Laura lummer, the breast cancer recovery coach, I'm so happy you're here today, because I've got some good stuff to talk about today. And before I do that, before I jump into it, I want to give you a little something. So it's the new year, many of us have a focus on just making things better, getting healthier, eating better, moving more, having more joy in our life, right? Getting more connected to the people that we love and the things we love to do just making life better. But how do you do that if you've never done it before? This is a very interesting thing to think about, because if you don't have what you want in your life, why is that? What has stopped you from manifesting that or creating that. So far, if you're not caring for yourself in the way you want to be caring for yourself, what is blocking you? Sometimes it's hard to understand that. It's hard to see that. And so I have something that's going to help you. I have a 30 day self care guide. It's free and everything in it one tiny little step that you can take every single day to support yourself, to love yourself more, to enjoy your life, more to invite joy into your life, more one tiny little thing every single day for 30 days, just click the link here where you're listening to this podcast, or you're watching on YouTube, or go to the show notes for this Episode, which you'll find at the breast cancer recovery coach, com forward slash 394, download the journal, make your notes in it. Circle the things that you love, they're tiny, they don't cost you anything, and they'll give you some of the skills and the tools to help you love on yourself more so you can create the change you want for yourself to live a healthier, happier, energetic life, because I want that for you. All right. So download it. It's a free guide. And the truth is, by the time we get to the end of January, so many people have already completely lost track of what they wanted to focus on for the new year. So this guide will help you keep that focus. All right, go to breast cancer recovery coach.com, forward, slash, 394, download it and tell me what you think of it. Music, come and find me on Facebook or Instagram. Send me a DM and let me know how it's working for you. All right, so let's get into our juicy topic for today. First of all, I want to start off with a little story. So I was having lunch with a dear friend of mine, super cool lady. She's a mind body oncology coach. I love and respect her. And we were having a conversation about a big personality in the self improvement field and how this person teaches or what they advise people to do, and one of the things is to really step into the future version of yourself, which I'm a big believer in. So I was having this conversation with my friend, and I love it when I get to have a conversation with people who have differing opinions from me, because we can learn from each other. And quite frankly, I think we need more of that in this world. So she says to me, I am not on board with that. I'm not on board with the whole future version thing. Because change happens now in this moment. Everything happens in the present moment. And if you're not living in the present moment, you can't change something in the future, right? You can't live in the future and be present at the same time. What an awesome discussion to have. Because, as I said, I am a huge fan of stepping into the future version of yourself, and I'm also a huge fan of living fully in the present moment. So how do you do both and why? What is the importance of it? Well, you know, a minute ago, when I told you about the self care journal, I said, How do you change things if you don't know how, if you've never done it before in your life, and all you have to go on is your past thoughts, your past experiences, your past traumas And and scar, I was gonna say samskaras in Ayurveda, in yoga, samskara would be like a trauma, right? An emotional thing that happened and left a little bit of a scar for you. So if you're thinking from that mindset, which is what we do, right? We, we human beings with our human brains, and those human brains are registering every. Thing we've been through in our life, and they're keeping score. These people do that, these people do this. Can't trust people can't trust myself. Never been able to achieve it. Whatever your stories are, they're all coming from the past. And isn't it interesting that we tell ourselves that what's in the past is real today, but what we could create in the future isn't real. I mean, is that true? Because I could look at the past. I could look at my thoughts of specific events that happened in the past, and I can decide to think of them differently. And that kind of changes my past. It changes my perspective of my past, so it changes the way I feel about my past. And so here's let me move into the future. Here's why I think stepping into future version of yourself is very important. So over the last few weeks, as I'm coaching clients who want to be really intentional about this upcoming year, who really are imagining and envisioning and excited about creating change for themselves. There are things they want to release and let go of that they've been carrying with them, whether it's relationships or, you know, self care habits, things they want to change. And when they start to talk with me about it, and we start to coach, and we start to question and and do that self exploration to say, what's the next? First step you can take something that comes up is, you know, I just that's going to be hard, right? I'm afraid of what so and so will think, or what they might say, or what their opinions might be. And what it comes down to is that oftentimes people think when they're going to create change, whether it's a dietary change, a lifestyle change, a job change, a career change, what one of their big fears is, is conflict, and they think the other person who is significant in my life, or a good friend or a family member, or whoever, I'm going to have to discuss this with somebody, and when I do, there's going to be conflict, and so I don't want to deal with that. So you know what? I'm just I think I'm okay where I'm at. I think I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna be okay for a little while longer. I'm gonna be okay for I'll just deal with it for the next three years, for the next six months, for the next eight months, and it's a little bit heartbreaking for me, and here's why. Because, first of all, life is short, and if you know you're unhappy, it's so important to start making those changes, because that unhappiness will manifest in something harmful to you. It's already harmful. It's emotionally harmful to live in unhappiness, but when we're living unhappy and unfulfilled, emotionally, for a lot of us, it's only a matter of time before that manifests physically. And that's what I'm here to do, support people in not letting it get that far. But when we're thinking from the past, we support this idea of conflict. You know, gosh, it's probably been a year, probably two years ago, that I did a month or lesson with my membership, and it was on reframing conflict and not thinking about it as conflict. Because, you know, here I shared with you, I'm having a discussion with my friend who says, Hey, I don't believe in thinking from the future, and I don't think that that's conflict because I have a different opinion than her. I think it's fascinating. I think it's interesting. I want to understand her opinion, and I'd love for to be able to discuss my opinion, right, or my belief around it. So why do we even choose to think about things as conflict. Why do we choose to think if I'm going to change my diet, my spouse is going to get upset because, fill in the blank, right? They won't support me. I've seen this before, or I'm going to run into these occasions socially, and I don't want people socially to think about me as some kind of weirdo, because I'm changing what I'm doing. These are all thoughts from the past. So the reason why I say and I coach my clients and I coach myself into envisioning and stepping into that future version of you is because that person thinks differently, right? If I'm a person who's healed from metastatic breast cancer, I think very differently than the person I was in 2011 or in 2020 when I was diagnosed both times with cancer, right? When I was learning to think differently in 2011 what were my thoughts? This is terrifying, and I have no control over it. I hope the medicine works in 2020. It was okay. People heal from cancer, and I'm going to figure out how right. And that was looking at that future version of myself, believing that could exist in my life, believing. Healing could exist. Healing could happen. Believing happiness can happen, believing you can do the work you love, and that you can earn the money you love, that you could be in a relationship that you love. If we don't decide that's what we want, the future version of our life to look at and then we don't ask ourselves, what would that version of me say, Think or Do? Then where are we thinking from? We're thinking from the past, and when we think from the past, we recreate the past. So one is we need to reframe the idea of conflict. If there's something you want to achieve in your life and you're not doing it. And I'll tell you, I have a lot of clients who are actually in treatment, and they're very afraid to say what they want, because of the reaction other people might have, because their loved ones might not agree with that approach to healing or serving themselves. It's super important to work on that, because
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we don't get well in the same life we got sick in. And if you realize that you not expressing yourself, not standing up for yourself in the hope of avoiding conflict, that's something that has to be dealt with. And it's the dealing with that that happens in the present moment, right? So if you're someone who has been conflict avoidant, because you you fear conflict, you think of it as conflict, instead of reframing that into something that says, you know, this is something important to me, and someone else may not agree with it, but I'm going to work on loving, believing and supporting myself and using my voice, because this is my life, and I'm going to, in a compassionate and loving way, stand up for what's right in my life, because the future version of me is someone who compassionately uses her voice to create what she wants in her life, Right? So when we have that future version of ourselves, the present piece of it is deciding if I'm going to become that person, what do I have to do today to step into that? That's why I think it's so important. So on the opposite side of that scenario would be here I am today. But I think if I express this and to this person who I believe will not agree that will become uncomfortable. They'll go into whatever the silent treatment, whatever it is that you expect from that person, all that thinking is from the past. Nothing will ever change. You'll just keep going around. It's like a washing machine. You're just stuck in it. Will it be easy in the present moment? No, no, that's why we call it work, right? That's our work. But if we want to transform, if we want to change, which, by the way, it is the lunar year of transformation, of spiritual renewal, the Lunar Year of the Snake. So no better energetic time in the universe than now to decide you can step into that transformation. But the way that I believe seeing that future version of yourself is important for your present is because you get to make different decisions in the present moment to step into that person. It is so critically important because my friend was 100% right. Change happens in the present moment. Life happens in the present moment. All we can do is what we can do in the present moment, because nothing else is a promise. So we've got two choices in this present moment. We can think about, will I act right now on what I believe because of past experiences, or will I act right now because of what I'm creating in my life and the person I'm becoming because I've decided this is what I want. So right now, how do I support that? So do you see how important it is to really think about the future version of yourself. You know, I have a program called Becoming you 2.0 and I created that program because of so many women that I coach and I watch them desperately wanting to become something else, someone else, they wanted a different life, and they were so stuck and so afraid. And I developed that program. It's an eight week program because it it gives these prompts to help people look at how they're benefiting from thinking from the past and staying stuck. Isn't that an interesting thing to think about? What do you mean? I'm benefiting from staying stuck. Staying stuck does not sound like a good place to be. But if you are a people pleaser, if you are conflict avoidant, and you believe that discussion. Are conflicts, then, how are you benefiting from not addressing what you want to and need to address in order to step into the future version of you? How are you benefiting? Well, there's story there somewhere you're telling yourself there's some kind of a benefit. Maybe the benefit is, I don't have to deal with their behavior, right? I don't have to deal with them losing their mind. I don't have to deal with the discomfort that I feel when I tell someone I want to change. And maybe it's a relationship that like I have people that say, you know, I just don't vibe with that friend anymore, right? Or I have people that say, I've been miserable in my marriage for years, but
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what am I supposed to do now? They'll never go to counseling. This will never get better or and I just heard this one recently. Well, I want to do the metabolic health coaching with you, but how much change am I going to have to make? Like, I don't really want to change drastically. Okay, do you want to feel better, healthier, more energetic in your life? Yes. What are you willing to change? Well, I'm not sure. I'm not sure I'm willing to change at all. Okay, so what's the benefit in staying stuck, avoiding the discomfort of change, avoiding the discomfort of loss, of grief, you know, all the things that we go through to change I think about as I think about the year of the snake, right? You think about a snake molting. You think about it growing out of its own skin and into a whole new skin, a whole new them. And they do it over and over again in their lives. You've done it over and over again in your life. I've done it over and over again in life, and it's never comfortable, right, challenging ourselves, stepping up, stepping in. It's never comfortable when we're staying stuck, when we're deciding that we won't think about the future version of ourselves, or we're not willing to go through the molting, taking off that jacket that doesn't fit to be start to begin to become that future version of ourselves. You're telling yourself you're benefiting in some way now, most of the time, that's not true, because, for example, if you say, I don't want to deal with that conflict, right? I don't, I just don't want to deal with how they're going to make me miserable, but you're living with a low level of misery every single day. You're just familiar with it, right? So we go back to that concept I've talked about so many times, familiar discomfort. Now to tell you, in the last couple of months, I have had discussions with my own children on areas of their lives that they really want change in. And when we talk about why that's not happening, it has come down to it's just easier not to deal with it. And you guys, it's not it's not easier to stay stuck. It's just a familiar pain, a familiar discomfort, and trust me to take that step forward into that future version of yourself and say, if I want to become that person, what do I have to do right now? And if that answer is, I've got to support myself in having a difficult conversation. I've got to support myself in doing the scary thing, whatever that is, it might be more intensely painful than what you're used to. But what's on the other side after you take off that skin, after you take off that jacket, is so much better, right? We don't want to change. If we're looking at our past and saying, Man, my past is amazing and awesome. And I'll tell you what I look back at 2024 I had an amazing year, a wonderful year, and there's so much more that I want to do and become. And so I know that I have to be committed to that, right? I know I have to do the work, put in the energy, do the difficult things. So one is, are you willing to look at who you want to become, that future version of you? Some people say to me, How do I know? How do I know? Because stop and listen to yourself. You're not going to lie to yourself. Well, I mean, you can consciously, when you let it go to your brain, you'll start lying to yourself. But if you sit and you tune into yourself and you listen and you make a practice of that, you know what you really want, then it goes to your brain and you start questioning it, judging it, but I shouldn't, but I can't, but I feel guilty, but that's that's so selfish, that's the work, right? You got to put the energy into training the brain so that you can live authentically into you. So do you need to have the perfect description of yourself for your future? No. But if you say, I want a future where I wake up feeling calm, I want a future where I see the people I love on a more regular basis, and we just sit enjoy each other. I want a future where my body doesn't feel bloated and exhausted all the time. Then you get to ask yourself, What's one thing I can do today to move closer to becoming that person versus I want this future. I don't want to be the person who's bloated and tired all the time, but I've never done that before, and I really don't want to give up croissants. And you know, that sounds like a lot of work. You're right. So then ask yourself, Well, how am I benefiting from this? Staying stuck and be honest with yourself, right? Self honesty is super important here. So many times we see things in ourselves that we don't like, and that's okay, you know, we can see it, and I like to say I don't like it, but not with judgment, does it? If I don't like something about myself or an action I've taken, or an action I haven't taken that doesn't define me or my worth as a person, it's just something that I want to put energy into changing so I feel better about it. Right? I like to approach things with curiosity, more so than judgment. So what if you could be honest with yourself with curiosity. For instance, when we sneak into the kitchen and silently open the wrapper with the chocolate in it, because we think that if no one hears the wrapper, we didn't really eat this chocolate. But if we're honest with ourselves and say, Why do I do that? Why do I do this in secrecy? Or why do I hold back on that? Or why don't I explain or express that? This is what I really want. And we get into it with curiosity. Then we can see, maybe I'm afraid of change, maybe I'm afraid of what I perceive as conflict, and then we can ask ourselves, why do I think of that as conflict? And this is how we begin to transform, right? So thinking about the future version of yourself, how does that person want to feel? Right? What does that person want to do on a regular basis? And that doesn't mean you have to title it or label it, but say they want to walk, they want to exercise, they want to sleep better. They don't want to spend so much more, so much time on TV or whatever, right? So we can think about as like generalities, and then we can start being really curious and asking ourselves, why am I not doing that already? What can I do right now, in this present moment, to step into that future version of me? And I love to tell my clients that when the resistance comes up, when the things come up and they're like, but that's scary. That's what we want to see. We're not going to say, step into the future version of yourself. And, yeah, that was easy. Everything was just easy. It was just like, so cool. How that worked out. We're going to think about stepping in the future version of ourself, and we're going to notice, oh, there's fear, Ooh, there's intimidation, Ooh, there's self doubt, Ooh, there's imposter syndrome. That's what we want. We want that to show up so that we can start to get curious about it. So I can say, Why is there imposter syndrome? I'll give you an example. Just pops into my head. When I started my coaching business in 2017
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was there imposter syndrome? Heck, yeah. Like, why would anybody listen to me, right? I had I'm not a big person on social media. Thank God I have a podcast so I can post things, because I'm terrible about posting on social media. And if I didn't have to use it for my business, I would probably never be on it, or if I didn't believe that it was benefiting my business, I would never be on it. But I didn't have any followers, I didn't have a business page. I didn't have anybody downloading my podcast, right? I started off with nothing. So if I gave in to that imposter syndrome, what would be the benefit if I gave into that, all the thoughts that came up that said, no one's gonna want to listen to you. No one gives a ding. What you have to say? Who are you? Right? If I gave into that, I wouldn't be here. Now. I want to be almost 400 episodes into a podcast. I wouldn't have coached the hundreds of women that I've coached over these years. There's so much that I've created. Because when that self doubt came up, I did it anyway, right? Because I knew with complete clarity, I knew who the future version of me was, right. I knew that she was a woman who supported other women who had had a breast cancer diagnosis. I knew I had the knowledge to share, and I knew it was on my heart that this is what I wanted. It was not easy, it was frustrating, it was scary, it was intimidating. And it still is. That stuff still comes up. I've got some plans for 2025, and when I look at them, I notice I'm procrastinating on some of them, because I still have some thoughts that come up that say, what if that doesn't work, right? So when we think of that future version of ourselves, we want the negative thoughts to come up so we can question them. So I can say, well, so what? What if it doesn't work, then I will have learned that that's not something I'm going to do again in the future, right? What if there's fear that comes up? What if there's self doubt that comes up? Don't look at it and believe it to be true. Look at it and question and. Say, Oh, that is interesting. What's the worst thing that could happen if that came up? What's the worst thing that could happen if I did that? You know, it's so funny, because our brains are so designed to protect us, and we believe them. We believe our brains are protecting us when they're stopping us from stepping into that future vision of yourself. So my friend and I agreed to disagree. I wasn't there to convince her. We just had a discussion. And I think to some extent she was like, Okay, that makes sense, but she's a very big believer, and don't think about anything but this moment, and that's okay. It works for her, for me, I just want to offer that to you, that that belief in the future version of you is something I believe is vital to choosing the things in the present moment that will help you get there. So I hope that helps you with whatever is on your mind, whatever you want to create for yourself. And you know, I just, I feel inspired in this moment to say something about those of us who are still in treatment. You know, I have a lot of listeners and a lot of clients who have no evidence of disease, who are out of cancer treatment and who are just really redesigning their lives. And I also have a lot of clients who are in active treatment at whatever stage, whether it's metastatic or early stage. And so often, we will get drawn into this thought process of saying, I can't do that until I know this. And I want to offer when you're thinking about that future version of you, it's okay to decide on who you want to be, even though you're in treatment, right? I was having a conversation with somebody the other day, and she was telling me what she wanted in the next three years, and she was very clear on what she wanted. When I said, That's awesome. What? What's the first step you're going to take to get there? And she said, Well, I'm not going to take any steps yet, until I see where this next thing falls, right until. And it was basically waiting on another person to see what decision that other person would make. And I thought that's so interesting, how our brain tells us that that's what has to happen, how we have to wait till this kid finishes that, or that person does this, or what the doctor says we need to do. Right if you're in active treatment, you can still look ahead and you can put those treatments on the calendar, because we all know where those appointments are, and, yeah, they take up time. I often have people say to me, I have so many appointments. I know me too, right? I'm in active treatment. But when you put them on the calendar, you're like, Okay, so those are things I'm going to do, and I choose to do because I believe they're keeping me alive and helping me to stay alive. And now here's the time I have around them, right? 168 hours in a week. We gotta sleep, eat, maybe go to work, drive to work, go to doctor's appointments. When we look at all those and we still have what's left, we get to decide how to become the future version ourselves, of ourselves, and create the life we love in those hours that are left, right? So let's give some thought to that. To really thinking about how that future version of you helps you make choices right now in the present moment, to asking yourself many questions about the blocks that come up for you when you think that, what is it that brings up fear? What is it that brings up self doubt? Is it benefiting you, and is that benefit a net negative benefit or a net positive benefit, to just stay where you are and avoid the thing that's going to be uncomfortable, and if you need more help with that, you can come find me at the breast cancer recovery coach.com you can do private coaching. Join my incredibly valuable life coaching membership, better than before breast cancer, where there is just a ton of fantastic information, and we have a wonderful group of ladies, and you get group coaching calls, you get access to private calls, and just so much more. There's so much value in there to support you. And I think it's another important thing that I know my my people, my community, are so bad at asking for help, and asking for help and getting support, and knowing you're worthy and deserving of support is huge. You deserve it. You are worth it, and getting the support you need is just like a launching pad for creating what you want in your life. So go to my website, check it out. Get the support you need. I've got standalone programs. I've got coaching programs. There's a lot out there that can help you to make this future you anything you want. All right, my friend, I'll talk to you again next week. Take care.
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