Episode Overview

When was the last time you let yourself want something without immediately talking yourself out of it?

So many of us learned early on to keep ourselves small. Then a diagnosis arrives, and that quiet voice telling you not to ask for too much gets even louder.

Have you ever found yourself making silent deals, promising to be content with less as long as you get to stay?

I overheard a conversation at my kitchen table more than forty years ago that shaped what I believed I was allowed to want.

What would it feel like to spot that same voice in your own life and realize it was never telling you the truth?

This episode gives you a way to hold your gratitude and your wanting in the same two hands, without guilt and without apology. And let me be clear about what this is not. No one is sick because she did not believe hard enough.

You will leave with one simple exercise you can do in five minutes today. Your life is allowed to be full. Your wanting is allowed to be loud.

Resources Mentioned:

Work with Laura:
https://www.thebreastcancerrecoverycoach.com/health 

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Read the full transcript:

Laura Lummer 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 episode 471 of Better Than Before Breast Cancer. I'm your host Laura Lummer, and today I want to talk with you about something that started as I was developing a lesson, creating a lesson inside my Better Than Before Breast Cancer membership. And as I was creating this lesson, it just landed so powerfully with me that I thought I need to talk about this on the podcast because more women need to hear more than just the clients that I serve. Like we need to spread this message everywhere. So as I reflect back on the 15 years of life that I've had since my breast cancer diagnosis, as you know, I'm celebrating for this month of July. I look back on how much life I have actually lived in the years since my first diagnosis, and honestly, how many dreams I've accomplished, how many plans I've made and and brought to fruition, how many goals I still have in front of me that I am genuinely excited about, and this lesson is a core to all of this, and I'm not here to dwell on cancer ever. It's just not what I do. It's not even a part of my life. Even though, well, hold on, dwelling on cancer is not a part of my life. Managing and dealing with what I need to to save my life and to heal from cancer is a big part of my life, but I'm here to talk about that part of my life, of the healing of what I think is important that a lot of people don't address. You know, when people find out I've lived for 15 years after a breast cancer diagnosis, when they hear that I had a widespread stage four diagnosis almost six years ago now, they want to know what I ate. They want to know what I cut out. They want to know what supplements I take. They want to know what my morning routine looks like. And I love having that conversation. I love talking about those things because terrain work and nutrition are so important. They excite me. They matter to me. I've spent a ton of money studying and getting degrees and certifications in that, so they're a real part of my life, and I never want to stop talking about them because they're such an important part of everybody's life. But if you ask me to point to the single most important thing I've done for my healing, it's not going to be food. It would be my thoughts. It would be the slow, ongoing work of addressing what I think, questioning what I believe, and giving myself permission to want a bigger life. Giving myself permission to want and receive healing. Giving myself permission to dream, to believe in a future, and then actually work toward creating that future because I allow myself to expect it to be there, and a huge piece of that work has been unlearning one very specific belief, the belief that I'm supposed to keep myself small, and it's very interesting because I never really thought it in those terms until I was working with a coach, Amy Porterfield. I don't even remember how many years ago I started working with her, and I was at a live conference with her, and she talked about why asking ourselves why we choose to play small, and it was such an insightful question. And I did a lot of work on that over the years. I still do. Let me tell you another story that was very personal to actually happen to me. And this story has stuck with me for a long time because it happened in high school, and I graduated from high school, I think 40-five years ago. All right, so this left an impression. When I was in high school, I played basket. Well, I played basketball. I played softball.

Laura Lummer 4:27
I played every sport I could get onto, every team I could get onto. But it was basketball season, and I had come home from a game because I remember distinctly being in my uniform. And what I would always do as I would walk home from school, those of you born in the generation with me, you know we didn't get rides home from school. Didn't matter if it was raining. Didn't matter if it was 100 degrees. You walked your butt home from school, so I'd walk home from school. I would pour myself an ice cold glass of milk. I loved milk, and then I would sit down at the table and I would. To do my homework, so this day I'm sitting there with my glass of milk, with my homework, and my mom and one of her sisters, my aunt, were sitting there having a conversation, and it was the kind of conversation I had overheard 100 times. They're going back and forth about the things they wanted, the things they didn't have, the things their husbands were providing or not providing, and just their issues with the money that was or wasn't there, and I looked up from my homework and I said, "I'm never going to worry about that because I'm going to make my own money, and I'll never never forget this. My aunt turned to me and she said, "Oh yeah, let's see how that works out for you. You better hope you find a rich man that marries you. And here's here's what I want you to understand about that moment. I am not telling you this story because my aunt is some kind of villain. She she is not a villain. My mom and my aunt were born in the 1940s. They were raised in a time where women could not get their own jobs easily, could not sign their own leases, could not even open their own checking accounts without a man signing for them. So the world had told them in hundreds of different ways, in every way that they turned and they looked, that a woman's security, that a woman's life, quality of life, even came through a man. So of course that's what they reflected back to me, right? So my aunt was referring to the only map she'd ever been given and that she ever knew. So she thought I was out of my mind to think outside of that box. But even as a kid at that kitchen table, something inside of me pushed back and said no. I mean, I didn't say it out loud because I was not allowed to be disrespectful to adults. But inside of me, I said to myself, "I will never, ever live a life that I don't love. I am capable. I can take care of myself in any way I choose, and I can do whatever I put my mind to. And I feel very lucky that I have that little internal voice. I know a lot of women don't. I have a little voice that's always telling me push back, push harder, right? But a lot of women get handed that same map, and they do follow it. And there's no judgment on that. It's not right. It's not wrong, unless it doesn't work for you, because when everyone around you is telling you to want less, to expect less, not to make waves, not to stand out, not to be too loud, and for God's sake, do not show off. You start to believe that being a wallflower, shrinking, staying small is the safe choice, and you start to believe that a small life is a humble life, and that a humble life is the best kind of life. And then, if you're listening to this show, you probably had a breast cancer diagnosis. And here's what I've noticed: I notice this in myself, and I notice this in a lot of the women that I work with. When you go through something that threatens your life, the instinct to play small does not quiet down. It gets louder because now you're scared, and the stakes feel really big. And somewhere in the middle of all of that fear, there's a quiet deal that we make. Maybe you didn't even notice you made the deal.

Laura Lummer 8:25
Maybe you're very aware and you made this deal out loud on your knees in tears because this deal goes like this. Please just let me be okay. Let me live. Let me watch my kids grow up. Let me have more time. And if you do that, I promise I'll be good. I'll be grateful. I promise I won't ask for more. And then, thank God, you make it through, and you get your more. You get your life. But that deal that you made in the scariest moment of your life, it doesn't expire when the danger passes. It stays with you, and in fact, it stays with you so deeply that it becomes a rule. And the rule says you already got your miracle. Don't be greedy. Who are you to want more than this? Just be grateful you're still here. Have you ever caught yourself thinking like that? I have absolutely. I'm just happy to be alive, so I shouldn't complain. I shouldn't want more. I shouldn't ask for anything else. As if being grateful for your life and wanting more from your life were two things that cannot live in the same body at the same time. So let me just say this really clearly, because this is really the foundation this episode is built on. Gratitude and wanting more are not opposites; they are not enemies. You do not have to choose between them. In fact, the full. Most alive version of your life is the one where both of them are true at the exact same time, where you can say, "I am so grateful for this life. I am so lucky. My heart is so full, and I still want more. There's nothing wrong with that. Both of these things can be true at exactly the same time. So let's talk about what wanting more actually means. What am I even talking about? I'm not talking about greed. I'm not talking about more stuff, unless there's something like maybe you want a really nice car. You get to want a really nice car. I'm not talking about never being satisfied or always chasing the next shiny thing and never really stopping to enjoy what you have. Wanting more, the way I mean it, is is this letting yourself want something clearly enough that you turn to face it, and you're willing to work through what you have to feel to get to it. That you stop pretending you don't want it, that you allow it to be real, and that you take one honest step full of integrity towards it every chance you get. That's it. That's that's the whole thing, and don't just take my word for it. Let's talk about the research. So there's a psychologist named Andrew Elliot, and he spent years studying two different kinds of motivation. One is called approach motivation, and the other is avoidance motivation, and the difference between them changes the trajectory of your life because avoidance motivation is when you're moving away from something you're afraid of. You're bracing. You're protecting what you have. You're trying not to lose. You're looking at something and you're saying, "I may want that, but what if it doesn't work out? What if I have to trade off? What if I have to give up this comfortable thing to get to that thing? Right. We're avoiding what we're afraid of, but approach motivation is when you're moving towards something you actually want. You're taking the steps for it. You're reaching for it, and you're letting yourself feel all the discomfort that comes along with it. So this research looked at what happens inside the brain and the body, depending on which one of these motivational tracks you're on. So when people take the exact same goal, the same task, and they frame it as moving towards something they want, they feel more positive emotion. And when they frame that same thing as trying to avoid a bad outcome, they're afraid. They're afraid to get it. They're afraid of the steps towards it. They feel more anxiety, so they could have the same goal, but a very different direction and a completely different experience of it. So think about what that means for someone who has spent years in avoidance mode. Think about when we're bracing constantly. Maybe we're bracing against the next scan, the next diagnosis. We're protecting the okayness that of what I have, right?

Laura Lummer 13:09
We're not wanting too much because wanting feels dangerous. Because if you want it and then you lose it, what then? That woman is living her whole life in that anxious direction. But the truth is, living small does not protect you from loss. It never did. Bracing does not keep the hard thing from coming. All it does is rob you of the joy you could have right now. In the meantime, while you're working towards it, so you end up paying either way. So you might as well let yourself want the life you want. Now, there's more research on this that I want to tell you about, and these are two researchers. One is named Rami Tolmax, and the other is Mariel Mikulinzer, and they studied something called entitlement. And now that's a buzzword, right? We all think of entitlement as this loaded word, and it means somebody who wants too much or thinks they just deserve to have things handed to them. The person who thinks the world owes them everything is the entitled person. But their research showed there's a different kind of entitlement that we don't talk about, and it's the opposite problem. It's called restricted entitlement, and it's about wanting too little. It's the person who can barely let themselves ask for anything, the person who feels like they don't have the right to their own needs, the person who hesitates to even express what they want. And you again may think, well, that's humble, right? That sounds good. It's unselfish, but the research doesn't back that up. In fact, a suppressed sense of deserving is linked to lower well-being and not higher well-being. And so, this science, this research, was done in the context of relationships, not in the context of your own relationship. With your whole with your own life, right? But I do believe that the pattern carries over, and I'll tell you why this resonates so much for me, because there's a real difference between gratitude and obligation, and yet they can look almost identical from the outside. Gratitude says, "I'm so thankful for what I have, and gratitude is just like open, right? There's room in it. Like being thankful for what you have makes space for more good to come in, but obligation can be like a wolf in sheep's clothing, except obligation wears gratitude's clothing sometimes, and what that does is says, "I'm thankful, so I better not ask for anything else. It takes your thankfulness and it turns it into a barrier, a fence around you. It takes a gift. Gratitude is a gift, right? Blessings are a gift, and it takes that gift, and it turns it into a debt, and you're now supposed to pay off that debt by keeping quiet and staying small. So, I want you to check in with yourself. I want you to ask yourself: When you say you're grateful, is it the open kind with room for more? Is it I am so lucky and I'm so grateful, and I love this life, and I'm open to receiving still, or has your gratitude become a rule that keeps you from ever allowing yourself to reach for anything again because you're indebted to it? Now let's also look at this from a little different lens. That's the psychology lens that I love me some woo woo. So let's talk about the spiritual energetic side, the part that we call manifestation, the lens that I love. Now, when I talk about manifestation, it's never about wishing hard enough that something appears on your doorstep. There's no magic lamp. It's not squeezing your eyes shut and demanding a parking spot from the universe. Not the way that I live it. The way that I live manifestation is a posture, a way of being. It's the difference between hoping something might happen and living in expectation that it will living in expectancy, and again, that's very different from entitlement. And let me describe what it what it really feels like when I say this. So when you're living in expectancy, you make room for the thing you want before it even gets here. I've shared this on the podcast so many times.

Laura Lummer 17:40
I say I am a woman who's healed from metastatic breast cancer, and what that helps me do-that see that very clearly that future version of myself-and so then I get to look today and say, "Well, what choices am I making today that are going to get me there? How do I become that woman? How do I step into her? What I believe are the things that will move me closer to that. So when you live in expectancy and you're making room in your life for the thing that you want to come in, or the circumstance, or the way of living, you start acting like the version of you who already has it, and you notice that the doors to it were there all along, and you say yes to invitations, and you make the calls, and you sign up for the things, and you invest in yourself, and you let yourself get excited about what you're bringing in. But it isn't because you've got a guarantee. There are no guarantees in this life, but it's because you've decided to face towards the life you want instead of bracing against the things you're afraid of happening, and if you notice that that sounds a lot like the approach motivation with a little magic sprinkled on top, yeah, that's true, right? And I think the woo woo and the science often point us at the same thing, just from different sides. This is why I love so much the book called The Source from Dr. Tara Swart, it's the it's the neuroscience part and lens of manifestation, and it's remarkable. It's remarkable to see how science and energetics and spiritual come together, and I do believe that I live this when I let myself actually want a full life after my diagnosis. When I let myself dream and plan and get genuinely excited for a future that is not a guarantee to me, but I believe I'll be here for it. I fill my life up. I feel safe inviting joy in. I feel safe living for today, and that isn't because I magically willed a tumor away. And I really want to be clear about that because I turned towards my life. I really decided, in order to heal, I had to step into my life. I had to say yes. I stopped treating my wanting like something I wasn't allowed to have. It wasn't something I had to apologize. For it wasn't a zero sum game. It wasn't that I can have all this and then nobody else can. Like it would take something away from somebody else, and I think that it's really important for us to understand this because we live so much in a black and white, all or nothing. If I didn't get this, I didn't try hard enough, and that's just not true. I believe that living this way simply opens the space for us to enjoy life even more. So manifestation is never, ever, ever about believing hard enough to heal, because there's not a woman listening to this who is sick because she didn't want it bad enough, or she didn't think positively enough, or she didn't manifest hard enough. Okay, that's that's just a really cruel thing to say, and I would never put that weight on anybody's shoulder. Living with disease is not a failure of belief. Getting a diagnosis is not a failure of belief. Your terrain, your biology, these biosuits we live in, your genetics, your circumstances-all of that is very real. None of it is our fault. We're not to blame. So when I talk about wanting more and living in expectancy, I am never talking about your diagnosis being something you could have wished your way out of. I'm talking about the life you get to reach for while you're here, however long here is. I'm talking about the things we can control, regardless of what the circumstances of life are. That's the part that's in your hands. That's the part that's in our hands. Not everything, right? We're not in control of everything, but that we are how we choose to live each day. So, if you have been spending your life being told to stay small, to not want too much, to not stand out, to not be too loud, I want you to really know that that voice was never true.

Laura Lummer 21:57
It was just the only map that somebody gave you, maybe it was only thing they believed would keep you safe, and then you believed it would keep you safe, and then if you had a diagnosis, and that diagnosis made that stay small voice even louder, if it scared you into making quiet deals and promises to never ask for more as long as you got to be alive, I want to relieve you of that debt because I don't believe that's a debt that you have to keep paying on for the rest of your life. I absolutely believe you can hold your gratitude and your wanting together in the same two hands. It can be like peanut butter and jelly. You can say, "My life is so full, and I'm so lucky, and I want more, and I'm going to make it happen. Me, right here today. I'm so lucky. I have an amazing life. I really do. I have a full life. It's full of love. I have a wonderful husband. I have great kids. I get to travel. I have great sisters. I have a great life. I love my life, and I have a new goal: to speak on more stages, to spread my message to women and audiences, and help them find that power that's in themselves. And there's a lot that's involved in that, and it's a little bit scary. And you know what? I get to do it because that's not greed; that's being fully unapologetically alive. That's saying, you know what? I already have a podcast that's reached hundreds of 1000s of women. I already have webinars and programs that have reached hundreds of women, and I want to do something more as well. So, here's a little project for you, little homework. What I'd love for you to do, one thing, I want you to let yourself finish the following sentence, honestly, without editing it to make it something that feels acceptable, but just like all in, not the version that you would tone down so that nobody judges you, because this is just for you. I want you to finish this sentence. If I let myself want more, what I would actually want is fill in the blank, and I want you to write it down. Really, truly, write it down. Look at it. You don't have to do anything about it. You don't have to fix it. This is the scary part, right? This is why we don't let ourselves want because we say if we want, then I've got to do something. No, first step is awareness, allowing, seeing what comes up, seeing how you feel. When I write down how I feel, when I write down I want to speak on more public stages, you know what? I feel scared because that's a scary thing. You know, am I going to be judged? Am I going to be good? Do I have the ability to do it? Oh my God! What if I say all the things a human brain throws out there to keep you safe? Mine does too. I just have a human brain. That's it. But I know in my heart of hearts, I want it, right? So I want you to stop pretending. You don't want it for yourself. That's all. Just allowing yourself to say it because letting yourself want it clearly, at least to yourself, is really the first step towards that future version of you. It's the first step in just saying, "Yeah, I want that, and let me see what comes up. Do I tell myself it's not okay. Do I tell myself I'm allowed to? Am I scared? Am I willing to step towards it even though I'm scared? Am I willing to take the pottery class even though I'll probably get judged on how horrible my pottery will look the first 100 things that I make? Yeah, let yourself want it. It's okay. So I would love to hear from you, and I have a free community. It's called Living Well After Breast Cancer. It links right here, either where you're listening this podcast or watching this YouTube video.

Laura Lummer 25:50
Go there, join it, come to it, and tell me in the community what it is that you want. It's going to be kept private just for those of us in the community, but come and share it with me. I would love to hear. All right, friends. I will talk to you again next week. And until then, please be good to yourself and expect others to be good to you as well. Take care.