Episode Overview

As the year comes to a close, many of us start reflecting on what the past twelve months held and what we want the next twelve to look like. But if you’ve ever found yourself stuck in the question, “What is my purpose?” you’re not alone. That question creates pressure, confusion, and even suffering for so many women after breast cancer.

In this episode, we look at a different approach. What if the more helpful question isn’t “What is my purpose?” but “Am I living on purpose?”

We explore why living on purpose has nothing to do with having a perfectly defined mission and everything to do with how you show up each day. You’ll hear how intention changes your brain, your stress responses, your healing, and your life experience. You’ll also learn why it’s so common to fear intentional living, and why so many women associate it with discipline rather than freedom.

We walk through what the science says about purpose, how purpose develops through small intentional actions, and why living deliberately can help you reclaim your life after a breast cancer diagnosis. By the end of this episode, you’ll feel grounded, hopeful, and clear on small steps you can take to bring more alignment, meaning, and joy into your daily life.

If you’re ready to step into the new year from a place of clarity and intention instead of pressure and confusion, this episode is here to guide you.

Listen now and start discovering what it means to live on purpose in your own life.

Explore more support 

• Better Than Before Breast Cancer Life Coaching Membership: https://www.thebreastcancerrecoverycoach.com/lifecoaching

• Creating a Life You Love in 168 Hours a Week: https://www.thebreastcancerrecoverycoach.com/168-hours-sp
   

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Read the full transcript:

0:00
You're listening to better than before breast cancer with the breast cancer recovery coach. I'm your host, Laura Lummer. I'm a certified life coach, and I'm a breast cancer thriver. In this podcast, I will give you the skills and the insights 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. Hey, friends, welcome to another episode of Better than before breast cancer. I'm your host, Laura Lummer, and I'm really excited to be here with you today and to talk about this really important subject. You know, actually didn't have any intention to record a podcast today, but I was out walking on the beach, and I was thinking about end of the year, you know, wrapping up the year, as far as business, and what we were doing with the holidays, with my family, and every year, when we start to get close to the end of the year, I find myself really thinking about what I've accomplished, what I've learned, what I wanted to create in this year, and what actually did create, and reviewing what I want, what I've done and what I want to create in the year ahead. And as I was doing that I was reminded of something that I hear a lot in my clients, and it's actually this comment has led to my own struggle to figure it out. When I would start hearing my clients say, I just feel like I need a purpose, or I don't know what my purpose in life is, or I feel like I should have a purpose, and I don't know what it is, and I would help them and coach them through this, but I would also think about like, what, what? What does that really mean? And something that I've noticed, both in my coaching practice and in my own healing journey, is how much confusion and suffering that question actually can create. And I have often wondered, you know, does that block us, like, does that stop us from actually living our life? Because it kind of puts us in a holding pattern. When we ask ourselves, What is my purpose, or when we tell ourselves, I don't think I have a purpose, when we're asking that, we can start to feel like we're supposed to have some big, really clearly defined answer, right? The heavens open and say, This is what you're supposed to do with your life. And to me, that's like purpose becomes this destination, right? It says you're meant to find something so you can feel fulfilled, and you have to figure it out before you can start living your life, because otherwise your life is just directionless. But the longer that I coach and the deeper that I get into my own healing, and the more I think about what I want my life to look like, no matter how long my life may be, the more I realize and get clarity on something important, which is really what came up for me this morning. And I thought about, instead of asking ourselves, What is my purpose, especially as we come up to looking at a new year or even a new phase of life,

3:12
I think a better question is, am I living on purpose? Because I think there's a world of difference between those two questions. When we ask ourselves what our purpose is, again, our mind goes searching for that big, all defining answer, that thing we're supposed to do. But when we ask, Am I living on purpose, there's this beautiful shift into, how am I living? What are my choices? Where's my energy? Am I in alignment with what matters to me? And that's what I want to talk about today. I want to talk about living on purpose, and how living on purpose can actually change your brain, your health, your life experience. And I'm going to share some science with you that talks about what purpose means and what we discover, what happens in people's brains when they decide to have a purpose, to live on purpose, and then what purpose actually means and why we stop ourselves from living with intention. Because there's some real blocks that come up, and I want to address those. There's a lot of fear that comes up, and it can stop us from just really jumping in with both feet to our life. So there's a growing body of research, and it shows that living with purpose and intention doesn't just make you feel better emotionally, it literally changes your brain and your body. There is a study out of UC Davis, and they followed over 13,000 adults, and they found that people who had a strong sense of purpose were 28% less likely to develop cognitive decline or dementia. And other studies have shown that people who feel their lives have meaning have better stress. Resilience, lower depression rates and even stronger immune responses. So Neuroscience tells us that purpose and intention engage what's called our goal directed circuitry, which is the areas in our brain that help us make conscious choices, rather than just running on autopilot. When we don't have intention, we live in habit mode, we wake up, we do what we've always done, we respond to what gets thrown at us. But when we choose how we want to live, we light up different neural pathways. We become more aware, more adaptive, more present. And it's not just an abstract idea, it's literally a brain body shift, and that might be a part of why people with a stronger sense of purpose tend to live longer and recover better from illness. Because when you have a why, even a small one, your brain regulates stress hormones differently. Your body knows where to put its energy, toward healing, toward growth, towards resilience, towards what you decide on right? I'll often say to clients when they'll make a comment to me and say something like, Well, we'll see what happens. Right? We talk about a plan that they want, because they most of the time we know, we know at least something we want our life. Maybe it's I want to eat healthier, maybe it's I want to move more. Maybe it's I want to spend more time with my kids or with my spouse. There's something in us that we know I want a little bit more of this in life. And sometimes I'll work with people, and they'll say, Yes, this is this is definitely what I want. And we'll decide on small steps they're going to take towards that. And then they'll wrap up with, well, let's see what happens when we want to just see what happens. We just stepped out of intention. We just said I'm going to wake up and see what life throws at me, rather than I'm going to wake up and do this on purpose, take action. Will life still throw stuff at us? Yes, and we'll talk about that in a minute. But first, I want to talk for a minute about what purpose means. Because when we hear people with a purpose, those are air quotes. It's easy to imagine that these people with a purpose have found some grand calling, right? They're writing a best selling book, they're starting a nonprofit, they're saving the world, and that is not what the research is saying at all. So living on purpose really means living with conscious intention, which means it's about how you show up in your life, not what you do for a living, it's the ongoing practice of aligning your choices, your time and your energy with what truly matters to you. So I want you to think of these layers to living with intention. One is awareness. So you're aware of what you value, what energizes you and what drains you, and you notice how your choices feel in your body and in your emotions. The second one alignment, you start to make choices, big choices and small choices that reflect those values, and that might mean setting a boundary, saying no to something that feels off to you, or carving out time for something that brings you joy or rest aligning with what is important to you. And then the third layer is action. You must take action. You must consistently act from that place of alignment, even when it is inconvenient or uncomfortable. And it's not about perfection. It's about direction. It's intentional direction, meaning you're not going to be able to do it all the time. You'll fall through sometimes, and that's okay, because you're still taking action and living on purpose is a verb. It's not a noun. So intention is an action, is how you live each day, and not the title that you hold or the achievements that you're going after, because we never know if we'll reach those goals. And it isn't about reaching the goals as much as is who you are becoming while you attempt to reach those goals that is purposeful. So having a purpose, saying having a purpose, what is my purpose, can again feel like that destination, and it can leave you stuck because you think you got to discover it before you can start living your life fully. But if we go back to living on purpose, that is the path itself, that is you creating meaning through the way you engage in your life, wherever your life is at, so you don't need to know this grand purpose before you live intentionally. In fact, the studies that I've talked about and the science that we can look at actually suggest the opposite. It shows us that people who consistently live with intention, who choose meaningful activities, who set goals that align with their values and act consciously to take steps toward those goals, those people develop a stronger sense of purpose over time. So when we say live on purpose, what we're really saying is, you don't find purpose first. You grow into the purpose by the way you live. That's pretty cool, right? So that takes a lot of pressure off our shoulder. Oh, my God, I don't need to know my grand purpose. I just need to live on purpose. When psychologists talk about purpose in life, they define it as a self organizing life aim that stimulates goals, manages behavior and gives life meaning. So in everyday language, what does that mean? It means you know what matters to you, and you make daily choices that reflect it. So when researchers find that people with a higher sense of purpose have better brain health, lower depression and longer lives, they're really observing what's happening when humans live with intention, when they wake up each day with some kind of direction, like I'm going to take 10,000 steps today. It doesn't have to be huge. It doesn't have to be world changing. You know, honestly, there are people that I've worked with where that intention just means I'm going to get up, take a shower and actually get dressed for the day. That in itself, is a purpose, and that helps us to get in line with that internal compass of ours that says this is how I want to live, but I want to be a person who's actively engaging in my life. What is a step I need to take to do that? So we can look at the science, and we can look at people who live with intention, and we can see that the benefits are really clear. So why is it so hard for so many people do this? When I talk to clients about designing their life with intention, deciding how they want their days to look what they want to make space for, I'll often hear things like this,

11:37
I living on purpose equals like living by rules. I don't want to be that disciplined. I don't want to live by a schedule. I want to feel free. But what's really underneath that resistance to living intentionally isn't laziness. It isn't rebelling. It's often fear, because, as I mentioned just a few minutes ago, when we haven't been taught to live intentionally, we've been conditioned to react. We've been conditioned to be busy, to meet expectations, to do what's in front of us, and then to call that productivity. So the idea of stopping long enough to decide what you actually want feels very weird. It feels foreign. It can even feel selfish, and for many women, especially those who've been caretakers their whole lives, the idea of saying, This is what I want, this is what I want my day to look like, can feel wrong to them. And yet, the paradox in this is that when you live on purpose, you create more freedom. You create more time and space for those you love and what you love, and you set an amazing example for those who are watching to do that for themselves. When you start living with intention, you're actually clearing space. You're choosing what gets your energy instead of letting everything take your energy. So you're saying, These are the things I have to get done, right? We all have things that have to get done, so we've got to put those in there. And then here's all the white space I want to protect for the things that make me feel alive, right? White space is where joy and creativity and spontaneity live. When we don't live with intention, we use up all our white space, or we're so exhausted and drained that when there is white space, we don't recognize it for the opportunity it gives us, and we end up just vegging out and binging on Netflix because we're just exhausted, and we don't have an intention, right? We don't have a plan or a thought or a vision of what we want our life to look like. And now sometimes, you know, like, when a new series like the diplomat, which highly recommend, comes out, you want to binge on Netflix. And I do that intentionally. I'll say, Hey, here's a nice bag. We're going to watch the diplomat. I love that show. So it is in that white space where when you choose to binge on something or to walk on the beach or to just go have lunch with a friend, something else isn't in the back of your mind, going, No, I should be at home getting this done instead, right? Because you've lived with intention. So you know when the things that have to get done are going to get done. So the difference here is when you're always in reaction mode, your white space disappears, you're overwhelmed, you're over full, you're not living with intention, and life is just happening to you, and your capacity for joy also disappears in that space. So if you find yourself resisting structure to planning because you tell yourself it feels like discipline. I want to offer you a few things to maybe reframe it. I want you to think about planning as permission to live life your way. I want you to think about living with intention as creating freedom. I want you to think about structuring your life as a safe place to live. Life as that foundation that allows creativity and spontaneity and joy to flourish. And when life throws unexpected things again, as it will, it always does, you still have that foundation so you don't lose yourself right, the wheels don't come off. You just adjust, you pivot, but you know what you want to come back to, and so you can come back to it a lot sooner than if you're not living with intention. So I think one of the most interesting things I came across while really researching this topic was how our brains actually separate habitual behavior from goal oriented behavior. And we have a lot of habitual behaviors, and when we start trying to live with intention, with goal oriented behaviors. I think that those habits start to make themselves a lot more visible. We start to see, wow, I just do that out of habit. I just do that because that's the way I've always done it. I mean, that's like driving somewhere you're familiar with, and you get there and you think, wow, I don't even remember the path I took, because we're just not really present in it, right? But when you live in habit modes, and you keep doing what you've always done, just because you've always done it that way, your brain uses less energy, but it also limits your awareness. So you're not really choosing your actions, you're just repeating conditioned behaviors. But when you live with intention, those goal directed circuits in your brain light up. You think ahead, you plan, you reflect, and you make conscious choices, and that process itself builds new neural pathways, and that is neuroplasticity in action. So when you start each day by having an intention, not just a to do list, but something like today, I'm going to show up with patience. Today I'm going to protect my peace, then you're training your brain to look for alignment, and you literally rewire yourself towards that awareness, that agency and that meaning. And I do think that after a breast cancer diagnosis, this idea of intentional living can hit very differently, because when the rugs been pulled out from under you, and your life's been turned upside down, and you suddenly are looking at life going, oh my god, I never know what's going to happen, and I don't know how long I'm going to be or I mean, a cancer diagnosis is something that lifts that veil. And so when your body and your plans and your sense of certainty have all been challenged, then there's this temptation to slip into survival mode and just get through each day, which is totally understandable. But there comes a time, I believe, when we have to slip out of survival mode because it's not enough, and we have to decide we want to decide that we want to live, but sometimes we really don't know how living on purpose is about taking back that, that steering wheel to life. It's about saying, I get to decide what my days are going to feel like. I get to create a life that supports my health, my peace and my happiness, and that is actually a metabolic action, because when you live with intention, you reduce stress reactivity, and that impacts everything. Reducing stress impacts blood sugar, inflammation, immune function. When you start to intentionally say yes to things that align with your values, not to the things that drain you. Your body feels that relief. Your nervous system calms. Your cells literally experience a safer internal environment. So it's not just about mindset, it's about metabolism, where we're so connected, so intertwined. So again, let's come back to a little bit more. Why not? Why do so many of us still resist living on purpose when we know it's better for us? Well, living with intention invites vulnerability, that big, long word that so many of us fear when you choose how you want to live, you have to face the possibility of not living that way. What I mean by that, it requires self honesty. It means you have to say to yourself, if I want to live with peace, why do I keep choosing chaos, and that can be very uncomfortable, right? But discomfort is where growth happens. It is where alignment begins. We've got to face those discomforts in our life. So how can we do it in a gentle way that's not overwhelming, but starts to move us in that direction of living with intention? So again, small, small things. I say this all the time in the podcast, start small. Choose a micro intention, something like, I'll take five minutes to breathe every morning when I wake up before I check my phone or I am going to eat lunch without multitasking. I'm going to take my lunch, I'm going to sit down with just me and my food, and I'm going to be very present. So simple, simple, not easy, right? That That sounds like something really easy. I'm just going to sit down and eat my lunch without multitasking. But when you try it, you might be amazed how you've wired your brain to not allow it to sit down and just be present with your food, and then you have to work through that, right? So these simple, doable actions are not necessarily easy actions, but they do train your brain to connect choice with awareness. And so it's a practice, right? We're rewiring, and that happens over time with practice another thing, and this is so important, so I have a program that's called creating a life you love in 168 hours a week. And one of the steps in that program, of course, is being intentional about your week. But something else that's very, very important, and I think it gets discarded a lot people don't see the value in it. Reviewing the week. This is so important. We got to review our life. This is why, at the end of the year, I say review the year, not with judgment again, but with awareness and curiosity. So where did I feel aligned? Where did I feel off? What did I tell myself I was going to do, and then did I do it? And if I didn't do it. Why not? Not with judgment, not, oh, because I was lazy, because I didn't feel like it, but things like, Well, I didn't do it because I would have had to have this difficult conversation, or I would have had to set this boundary, and it was really difficult for me. Or actually, I really don't want to do that thing. I really don't like doing that thing. I'm not sure why I keep choosing it right? So the reflection and looking back at the choices that you make at the end of your week are so important to getting an understanding of the choices you make so you can decide how to live intentionally in the upcoming week, whenever someone starts a creating your life program, or whenever I start working with someone on how to become very intentional about the way they live. I always say, give yourself three months. Don't think you're going to do this in the first week. Don't think you're going to pull out a life planner. You're going to decide on what you want your week to look like, and it's going to be perfect because it isn't. And I think what we can start with that and we can accept that it isn't going to be perfect. We can give ourselves a little bit of grace, but I say it's going to take at least 90 days, at least three months, to plan, review, examine why I did things, why I didn't do things, and decide on what I want to bring forward and decide on what I want to let go of, and decide how to let go of that. It is a process, and so we've got to hold space for ourselves. And so another small step we can take is really being intentional about creating that white space. Don't wait for it. Schedule it. Schedule the walk. Schedule the time for journaling. Schedule the time for sitting all by yourself and watching the sun come up with a cup of tea. Block your calendar and respect and honor it just like you would with any other appointment, your lab appointments, your follow up scans, picking up your kid from school, showing up to work on time, your time for you is equally as important. And when we create that white space, we write it down again, we have great questions to ask ourselves in the review, because we look back at the review and say, Man, I really said I wanted to do that. Why did I choose not to? And I think that keeping yourself out of judgment in that review and keeping yourself out of the idea of discipline or restriction in the planning, that we can have a guiding phrase, right? We could have a guiding phrase for when things come up in life and the plans don't go as we had intended, and so choose something that feels really good to you, something like having a little model that says, even when life plans change, I can still live with intention, right? And something like that that keeps you anchored when life feels unpredictable, like these things are happening and I have no control over them, but these are the things I do have control over that I will continue to do, like nourish myself with good, healthy food, stay consistent with the sleep schedule. Like whatever small thing you can do to stay anchored in those things that you do have power and choice over is very helpful when life plans change. And you know, I see this a lot. A lot of my clients have elderly parents that need lots of attention. Some of them have young children who need lots of attention and rides and things like that. So in different times of the year and different times of life, when things shift. It's really important we don't throw out complete, intentional living, but we look at, ooh, things have shifted, and I didn't see that coming. So how do I take care of that in a way that works for me and for whatever the situation is, and I don't lose myself? Okay? So having that. Anchoring phrase for yourself, whatever it is that resonates with you, I think can be really important,

25:05
all right, friends. So you know, as the year comes to an end, I think it's a powerful time to pause and ask yourself questions like, How did I live this year? Not what did I accomplish? How did I live? Did I spend my time on what truly mattered to me? Did I create moments of peace, connection and joy wherever I could? Did I protect my energy and my body with love and intention, and if not, what small shifts can you make going forward so that your life feels more aligned, maybe not more productive. Maybe we can get productivity off the charts and say, aligned and meaningful, right? The goal isn't to design a perfect life here. It's to design a life that feels like yours, because when you live on purpose, intentionally, compassionately, consciously, you become a magnet for the experiences that feed you, that nourish you, and I think that's what healing is really all about, right? So maybe try to incorporate some things this week, and instead of chasing what is your purpose, just try living on purpose. Just try asking yourself each morning, what matters the most to me today, what is the most important thing for me to have in my life today? And let that question just guide your energy and your choice and your peace one day at a time, because when you live with intention, remember you don't have to find your purpose. You become your purpose. You live purposefully. All right, my friends, if you would like more help and support with that, come and find me at the breast cancer recovery coach.com where I do personal one on one sessions. Or join my better than before, breast cancer, metabolic health and mindset membership, it's an amazing membership, so valuable. Or go to my website and start off with creating a life you love in 168 hours a week. Grab that program, or grab my manifest program and start living your life with intention. And you can find me on Facebook and Instagram as the breast cancer recovery coach. If you'd like more guidance. You have questions, you want to leave your comments for me. I love to hear from you. All right, I'll talk to you again next week. Take care.

27:22
Take care. You've put your courage to the test, laid all your doubts to rest. Your mind is clearer than before, your heart is full and wanting more, your future's at the door. The door.

27:43
Give it all you got no hesitating.

27:46
You've been waiting all your life. This is your

27:55
moment. This is your moment.

28:14
This is your moment.