Self-image, self-care, and the pursuit of a meaningful life are intertwined challenges faced by many. Yet, self-image stands out, especially for women and notably for breast cancer survivors, as a pivotal component in this equation.

This episode delves deep into self-image, offering a transformative practice to transmute negative self-talk into affirmations that bolster confidence and foster self-love—essentials for a gratifying life.

It's time to break free from societal molds and image expectations set by fleeting trends. Embrace and champion your intrinsic worth, ensuring that not only you recognize it, but that others acknowledge it too.

Read the full transcript:

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 episode 43 of the breast cancer recovery coach. I am Laura Lummer. And today we're going to be talking about knowing your worth, and how self image and self care are critical to living a fulfilling life. So I'm really fortunate in the fact that when I decided to grow an online business, I knew that I needed to have accountability. And I knew I needed to have direction, I wanted to find somebody who'd already gone down and blaze this trail so that I didn't have to figure it all out on my own. And because it is so much work to put together an online business, I wanted to make sure that I had some accountability. So I started off with a wonderful Coach Trish Blackwell. And you may even listen to her show the Confidence Code, she has an awesome podcast. And Trish just really helped me to get off the ground and get things moving. After about a year I moved on, and I became a part of this group called the visionary planner. And I have been so lucky to spend three and a half days over this past weekend with this fantastic group of people who are all coaches in some way and all have a vision of the way that they want to change the world and the people that they want to impact. And something that I found really remarkable was that as we each talked about our own personal brands about the programs we developed and about the strength we wanted to bring out in our specific audiences. There was a striking similarity across every presentation. Whether the person presenting was an obstacle course race trainer, a yoga teacher, a fitness professional, or a business coach, the three biggest challenges they were all trying to help their audience overcome were self image, practicing self care, and understanding the value that they bring to this world in order to live passionately in connecting to that value, and having a fully engaged life. When I heard this message in some form or another come from 17 other professionals who spend their days and nights coaching people to live their best lives. I thought a lot about how it related to us as breast cancer survivors. And how these areas if we don't embrace them, and value ourselves, can really leave us stuck in our lives, frozen with insecurity, and missing out on the opportunity to move forward and live our best lives. So as we work through a lot of these issues during the day, I also spent the evenings with a very dear friend of mine, who lives close to the spot I was at for the retreat. She is an amazing human being. And she is more kind and more tolerant than I can even begin to understand. And yet there's one person in her life that she never makes room for. Or rarely, I would say she doesn't make time for and she doesn't value enough to give this person, everything that that person needs. And I'm sure you can probably guess that I'm talking about her and the way she treats herself. Why do we do that? As women as survivors? Why don't we put ourselves first in our lives? This is your life. It's it's yours. It belongs to you. You're the only one who can create it.

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Do you want to have strong relationships? Do you want to have loyal and loving friendships? Do you want to be treated well with kindness? Do you want to be surprised and pampered now and then? Of course you do. Who wouldn't want that? But if you are not willing to do that for yourself, you send the message and set the example for those around you that you either don't need it. You don't deserve it. Or you don't think you're worth it. My mom raised six kids, and that is not an easy thing to do. Anybody who has kids knows what I'm talking about. She also raised these six kids me being one Have them obviously, in this old school traditional way, which meant my dad worked, he made the money, he came home. And he expected her to take care of everything else. He did cook, actually, because he loved cooking. And he did take care of his yards. But I saw my mother mop iron. So clean cook taxi kids around work in classrooms worry about my dad being able to sleep because he worked at night, and she had six loud kids running around the house, waking them up all the time, I saw her stress out over who left the lights on, and if the bills were going to get paid. But what I never saw her do was something nice for herself. Never, not once, there's not a single memory in my childhood, where I can recall my mom saying, I'm gonna go have coffee with my friend, or I'm gonna go get a massage, or I'm gonna get my nails done. Or I'm going to buy a new outfit for myself. I literally think my mom wore the same clothes the entire time I was growing up. I mean, you know, she always cleaned them, she looked nice, but she rotated the same. I don't know, four or five outfits. I mean, her closet was never bursting. And now she's 78 years old. She lives on her own because my dad has passed already. And she finally allows herself a bi weekly manicure and pedicure. But there are other things that she would like to do for herself, but she won't spend the money on herself. So let's talk about self image for a minute. And how self image impacts our willingness to practice self care. So we're bombarded with social media, with advertising BS. And we women judge ourselves by whoever the quote unquote ideal female body type of the day is. I mean, suit in all seriousness, my family is known for having big butts, we actually call them the lumbar but, and we were always ashamed of this because we're made fun of for having fat butts. And now, out of the blue, Kim Kardashian comes along and having a big butt is the most popular plastic surgery procedure in the United States. Seriously, I have a friend who has beautiful full lips, completely natural. And she's very insecure about them because she was ridiculed for them her entire young adult life. And now people pay hundreds, even 1000s of dollars to make their lips look like hers. It's ridiculous how first of all, the look of the day is always about a woman. It's never about how a man looks. And we allow ourselves to be pressured by this ridiculous advertising. And these flighty, popular features to influence how we feel about ourselves as a human being. And here's what that turns into a lack of self worth. Ladies, we have got to learn to look past our bodies, for our sense of self worth. And I know that's not easy. I certainly struggle with it. Every day, I struggle with not having the body I feel reflects the work that I do and the nutrition plan that I follow. But I work with it because I know I'm doing everything I can to achieve my goal. And my body is not reacting as quickly as I would like it to do I love the way my boobs look. No, it look weird. They're scarred. And they look like that big softballs with wavy things under the skin were fluid moves around in my implant. They don't feel normal, they don't look normal, and they don't respond the way they used to. And by normal, I mean, what I was used to looking at for the majority of my life, that's my normal, right? When I'm watching Game of Thrones, and I see all the boobs if you watch Game of Thrones, you know, they're in every scene. I look at them sometimes. And I think, wow, I forgot will real boobs even look like it's been so long since I've seen them. I forgot how they moved. But you know what, I don't have real boobs anymore. So I can make a choice to accept how I am, which saves me actually a lot of money because I don't have to keep buying those $60 Victoria's Secret bras all the time. Or I can choose to devalue myself. Because I don't look like someone else. If that. Here's the danger in that when you go down that slippery slope of comparing yourself I've talked about this so many times, comparing yourself to what you used to be or to what somebody else is. You will find yourself in an unhappy life thinking you don't deserve any better because I mean, hey, look at you. Right? No, not acceptable. My sister. She sells a beautiful clothing line and it's not cheap. It's a lovely clothes. It's very nice quality. And do you know how often I hear women at her show? Say oh, I not going to buy that for myself until I lose weight. Stop it right now. You know what that says? That says right now, as I end today, I am not good enough to deserve nice things. Just because you buy a size 14 or 18, or whatever it is, instead of the size you want it to be, does not mean that you're not going to keep working on your health or trying to achieve the weight that's more desirable to you and suits your opinion. But it also doesn't mean that you have to treat yourself badly now because you don't look the way you think you should. And you know what the thing is, that when we're a little heavier and fluffier than we'd like to be having nice clothes that fit well actually makes you look less fluffy, because you don't have all the tight spots and all the muffin tops. So buy something that fits, buy something that makes you feel good. So when you look at yourself in the mirror, you don't go oh, that doesn't fit. Look at my back fat. Oh, look at my muffin top, you look nice. And you look at and say, you know, that looks nice on me. Today is the only day you have and your body is in it. Today, you need to treat yourself like the freakin Goddess that you are. And you know what? When you look good, you feel good. And when you feel better about yourself, you treat yourself better. So it's time to start looking in the mirror. And instead of judging what you don't like, ask yourself what you can do to make it more likeable to you. When I talk to women who live in unfulfilling relationships, or work miserable jobs that they detest, it literally makes me sick to my stomach. Because I've been there too. And I know how horrible that situation is, and how difficult and complicated it can be in those situations to find your voice, to ignite your passion and to change your life. It starts with improving your image of yourself so that you feel worthy of being fulfilled. And that's one of the reasons why I'm a healthy lifestyle coach. Yes, I love food and nutrition. But if you've listened to my podcast, you know I don't consider healthy lifestyle to just revolve around food and nutrition. You must have a healthy mindset. If you want to live a healthy life. Because buying and preparing good food for yourself getting regular physical exercise and taking care of you presenting yourself in the way that you want to see yourself takes effort and or it takes money as well. And why would you spend time or money and put all that effort on someone you don't value as a priority? Well, you won't, at least you won't for very long. You'll start something and then someone else will need something. And you'll put your needs aside because you don't think you're worth it. And I truly wish that every time you did not you could call me girl. Because I would straighten you out. I would. Some people might hear the comment that I just made about my own breast and say, Whoa, how your breast cancer recovery coach? How are you saying you don't even like the way your own boobs look. But the thing is, I don't have to like them. I just have to not allow the fact that I don't like them to impact the way I feel as a human being.

13:34
Now I'm not naive enough to think that you being attractive to another person sexually is not crossing your mind right now when we talk about this. But let's talk about what really attracts people to each other. physical attraction is obviously important and has something to do with what a person's body looks like. But physical attraction also includes the way someone smiles, the way they present themselves with competence, the way they walk, the sound of your voice, when very surprising, actually top rated things that attract another person to you, is having good hair. There's also having a good sense of humor and having a sense of adventure and risk taking. And you my dear can have all or most of those things and the good hair thing, trust me go into an alto you'll find something to make your hair look good. So you see when it comes to self image, there's much more to focus on, except for the one or two or three, whatever it is, hopefully not more than three things that you don't like about yourself, to switch that paradigm to switch the way you think and start looking at what you do like about yourself. Start pouring energy into that. start valuing your big heart, your smiling eyes, your awesome laugh, you get where I'm going with this when we concentrate on those things that make us feel crummy, guess what? We feel crummy So start with how you want to feel, do you want to feel happy? Do you want to be fulfilled, then pick one thing today, today, think of it right now in yourself that causes you to feel good, that makes you feel more competent. And then focus on that thing, until your self image starts to improve starts to shift. I spend a lot of time talking about self image because it's the foundation to practicing good self care, and to living a fulfilled life. But let's talk about self care for a moment. I mentioned my friends and my mom, and how they don't make themselves a priority. But I truly believe one of the biggest obstacles women have to overcome when it comes to self care, is the idea that it's selfish. And I know that's an issue with my mom and my friend. So let me share with you the Merriam Webster's definition of selfish, one, concerned excessively or exclusively with oneself, seeking or concentrating on one's own advantage, pleasure or well being without regard for others, arising from concern with one's own welfare or advantage in disregard for others. Ladies, self care does not fit into this definition. Self Care is taking time for yourself, to treat yourself well. So that you can be rejuvenated, you can focus on what's important to you, like healing, or growing or learning so that you are even more capable of getting back to those you love, to contributing to your family, to your community, and to your world even more effectively and more fully. It's not only not in disregard of others, it's in full regard for others. You know, there's this thing I hear constantly, and it boggles my mind. Why do we women like to brag about how little we do for ourselves, we want to talk about how exhausted we are because we worked all day, all night and all weekend, how little we do for ourselves, the last time I spent money on myself, do you know what that is? It's martyrdom. And you need to drop it. Being a martyr is not a healthy frame of mind, working yourself to death is never going to make you into someone else's idol. And if you think you're doing that, to take care of your loved ones, know that you are setting the example for your loved ones, that they should work themselves into exhaustion, and that they also should not live a fulfilled life. Self Care does not have to be frivolous. It doesn't have to cost rules of money, it doesn't have to happen. It's an elegant spa that serves you champagne, and other treats while they paint your toenails. Although that really would not suck, right sounds kind of nice. Self Care is as simple as taking a quiet hour for yourself to have a bubble bath, to read a book or a magazine, to just sit and do nothing, or to indulge in whatever your favorite television show is, or whatever thing it is it fills your heart. Maybe it's baking, it's painting, it's dancing, it can be anything, but you do it so that it feels you back up. And when you feel full, you have so much more to give back. And then guess what happens, you start to get in touch with the things that are really important to you. You start to identify those things that are your passions, and then you begin to make time to pursue them. Something I find to be very common in breast cancer survivors is this need to give back to other survivors. And that's what led me here to the business I have now. And it also keeps me going in the volunteer work I do for breast cancer patients that are currently in treatment. There's some deep connection that we have, because of going through this very traumatizing experience. I'll consult with women very often who want to start some type of a business or foundation that gives back to other survivors. But when we start to dig into all the steps that it takes to get started in a business, which is a lot of work, they oftentimes forego that passion, because they feel it'll take too much time away from their marriage or their children and they're afraid that their loved ones will get upset about it. And it's fine to make that decision if it fits with your life and give up your passion if it's because you really don't want to give up that time. But if it's because you'll give up your passion because you don't want the blowback from making the time for yourself to follow your passion. Now to different story. So the self image self care passionate fulfilling lifecycle is very connected. And that does not mean that everybody has to start a business to have a fulfilling passionate life, it's whatever it is you want to do, which could very well be, I want to improve my self image, so that I invest the time, the money, the energy and taking better care of myself, so that I can be more present for my family. So that I feel like I have the energy and the stamina to bake cookies with my kids or my grandkids or go on walks, or go kayaking, whatever it might be. I hope that makes sense to you. So if you find yourself feeling that your life is disengaged, you feel isolated, you feel like there's something that isn't what you want it to be. Start with your self image. How do you feel about yourself? How do you see yourself? And what is one thing about yourself, you really, really think is cool, whether it's a physical attribute or an emotional attribute, I don't care. But I want you to figure out what that one thing is, and I just want you to be completely absorbed by it. Anytime you have self doubt, go back to that one thing, and use it as a foundation for positive self talk. And if you can honestly say when you're listening to this, that there's not one single thing that you love about yourself, then, my dear, you need more help than this podcast. And I'm not saying that lightly. If that's truly how you feel, please find a professional to talk you through what's going on. So that you can learn to make yourself a priority in your life. So this weekend, when I made my presentation to a group of coaches, I really wanted to get them into the right mindset and help them understand what it feels like to be a cancer survivor. Because I know that the general public really doesn't get it. And that's why we seek each other out. Because we understand what happens in the aftermath of surviving cancer. Whereas other people might just view us and say, Wow, well, great, you live move on, you're done. So I started my presentation with a story to put them in the right place. And it was a story of them becoming a victim of violent crime, a crime that ended with long term injury to their body, and repeated hospitalizations, a crime ending with them being at the mercy of the decisions of surgeons and doctors, because I wanted them to understand that that long term fear of something coming out of nowhere and changing your life forever, is significant. And that's what cancer does to us. But I also wanted to explain how incredibly resilient and strong mentally and emotionally survivors are, because we can take that experience. And we can practice and develop the skills to help us overcome it, to help us change the way we think, and to help us change the way we see ourselves. And once you do that, what ever you want in life is at your fingertips.

23:19
So I want to thank you for taking the time to listen to the breast cancer recovery coach. Your support means everything to me seriously. And if you enjoy the show, please take the time to subscribe and leave a review in the iTunes store. It helps so much to allow other cancer survivors to find this information more easily. If you haven't gone to my website recently, Laura lummer.com You can now download my free guide care the four steps to healing after breast cancer. And I'm very excited now to tell you my online downloadable coaching program is available for everyone. This program is called RE vivify. It's a week long program. And the practices you learn in it will be things that you can practice for a lifetime to help you develop more and more strength and skills in living a fulfilling life and in healing after breast cancer. I have an awesome group of ladies going through this program right now and I have to tell you, it is a dream come true for me. It truly is. And I look forward to reaching even more of you having you go through vivify and getting to work together, and even more of my upcoming online group coaching programs as well. So check that out. I'd love to hear what you think. And so I am running a very, very special discount because I want so many people to be able to take advantage of it. So you can get rid vivify with lifetime access right now for only $37. On my website, it's normally 157 Just use the code big savings, or when you download the free care program. It will take you straight to a web page. that will give you this discount to get 75% off agree vivify. So if you have more thoughts on self care and self image or questions or concerns, reach out to my Facebook page, and leave your comments and questions and become a part of our thriving community of breast cancer survivors. So I'll talk with you again in the next episode, which is going to be all about busting myths and understanding the reasoning behind drinking water. Yeah, it's simple, but important, and I'm going to talk about hydration and all the ways that it impacts us. All the ways that the treatments we've been through can impact our hydration levels, and how hydration affects our bodies overall. So make sure that you subscribe to the breast cancer recovery coach so that you never miss an episode. And until next time, be good to your

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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 been waiting

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this is your