Facing challenges we never wanted, making decisions when all options seem bleak, searching for joy while feeling ensnared in despair—how do we navigate these turbulent waters?

It's in these moments that we must realize perfection isn't the goal; perhaps what we need is a perspective shift. It's about finding the 'better' amidst the 'worst.'

In this episode, we tackle the sensation of feeling trapped, the significance of recognizing it, and the path to breaking free. While life post-breast cancer presents a myriad of difficult choices, waiting for circumstances to magically improve won't lead to a more fulfilling life.

Could there be a different, brighter way forward?

Tune in, and let's explore the possibilities together.

Read full transcript below: 

0:00
This is Laura Lummer, the breast cancer recovery coach. I'm a healthy lifestyle coach, a clinical Ayurveda specialist, a personal trainer, and I'm also a breast cancer survivor. In this podcast, we talk about healthy thinking and mindfulness practices, eating well, moving your body for health and longevity. And we'll also hear from other breast cancer survivors who have reengaged with life, and have incredible stories to share. This podcast is your go to resource for getting back to life after breast cancer.

0:37
Hello, friends, welcome to episode 161 of the breast cancer recovery coach podcast. I am your host, Laura Lummer. And I say Episode 161, with emphasis because this month, I'm just so deeply into the practice of exploring opportunities in life, of looking at the abundance in life, and of recognizing successes and accomplishments. Because I think that we just don't do that enough in our life. And it's easy to get distracted. And to have your mind pulled away from looking at those things, for several reasons, which I'll go into in this show. But it's also important to bring yourself back to that place, because we've got to bring balance. And the good and the bad are both very real in our life, as I've talked about so many times. But it's so much easier for us to focus on the bad, so much easier. It's just our lizard brain, it's our survival instinct, we go to the negative. And we have to practice and be intentional and aware, when it comes to acknowledging the successes, the opportunities, and what is good in our life. And just the potentials when I say opportunities, the potential for something to be different than what it is right now. If you don't like what it is right now of what it is right now isn't working for you. What else could it be? And we're working on this question, what if in my Empower membership, that's the theme of the month? What if explore the possibilities? What if this thing that you dreading, doesn't have to be what you're telling yourself, it's going to be, and I'll give you a personal example. But first, I just want to give a quick reminder, when this show comes out, it will be Friday, I think it's going to be the 22nd of October. And I will be nearing the end of enrollment for the revived membership experience, which is my monthly coaching program. So I want to put that out there. Because if you're anything like me, and you get busy and you forget, well, I don't even have to get busy, I just forget things every five minutes if I don't write them down. And if I'm not intentional on tracking them, and I don't want you to miss this great opportunity become a part of this coaching program. And to help yourself, coach yourself, get the support you need, do the self coaching that you need to do and join this community of women who are creating lives for themselves that truly are better than before breast cancer. Because we're really looking at all of the aspects through a different lens, a lens of empowerment, a lens of future thinking, a lens of deciding to let go of suffering and being stuck and holding on to things that don't serve you in your life today, the way you want to be served. So you can find out more about the revived membership experience at the breast cancer recovery coach.com. Forward slash revived. And I hope that I will see you there. Okay, so let's talk about my story. This weekend, I went to my 40 year high school reunion. And the reunion was put on by a group of fabulous women who I actually see all the time still from high school. So a group of friends that I've known since some elementary school, some junior high school, and they decided to bring and to create this high school reunion. Now I'm not big on high school reunions, and I had all these thoughts around it. As we do with so many things in life. We do that with everything the way things should be. We call it the manual. This is the manual for the way things should be. This is the rulebook for how class reunions go, this is the rulebook for how life is supposed to go, and how jobs are supposed to go and how kids are supposed to behave. And I'd say 100% of the time, things really don't comply with your rulebook right? Yet we hold on to them. We hold on to them. We hold them near and dear to ourselves for all of our reasons. So I noticed

5:00
that, as my friends were planning this reunion, I started to notice that I was feeling dread. You know, I had that feeling the physical feeling you know how you feel when you feel dread? I feel like this constriction, right in my solar plexus like this law, I don't want to go. And for all the thoughts that I was telling myself of what it would be like and what I would have to put up with, and how long is it gonna go and dragging my husband and keeping him entertained, right, all these thoughts. And I stopped one day, because I am doing this work with the Empower group. And as I've said before, on the podcast, I'm very careful about making sure I'm focused on the same work that I'm working with my members on, because it brings me more insights, it brings thoughts up for me, and we, you know, we all have similar experiences, we're all having a human experience. And so I like to be in it in in this experience with my members as we're working on it. And I was walking one morning, and I started to notice, you know, how you catch your mind thinking, right? Your mind is thinking your brain was going no matter what, and sometimes we're watching it, and we're aware of what it's thinking, sometimes we're not. And sometimes all of a sudden, we'll go, Whoa, what was that thought? Right, we will suddenly become aware of what we're thinking and then start either running with the story on it, or look at it and say, Why am I thinking that? So I'm walking along, and I catch myself thinking and creating stories of how awful that night is going to be. And as I noticed that, I thought, why am I doing this to myself, I was probably a week and a half, maybe two weeks out from the reunion at this point. And I thought, Look at what I'm doing. I'm telling myself a story that's creating a constriction in my physical body that I don't like, I don't like the way that it feels. I don't like the feelings these thoughts are creating. I'm not even aware that I'm thinking these thoughts, right. They're popping up in my mind, for whatever reason, I'm conditioned to believe this way. I have a rule book around reunions. And as I noticed it,

7:02
that is not helping me.

7:04
And I started to ask myself, What if this class reunion is so fun? What if, when I go to this reunion, I have a great time, I connect with people that I didn't even know I needed to connect with? What if I have great experiences? And what if I walk away just treasuring that night and thinking? So glad I did that? What if, right, because when we tell ourselves stories about something that hasn't happened? They're just stories, and we get to choose? Do you want a positive story? Do you want a negative story? Do you want a story that's going to open your heart that's going to open your mind to possibilities that's going to help you feel better about things? Or do you want a story that's going to constrict your chest and make you feel apprehensive and dread, and maybe even be ruminating on how horrible it's going to be? You get to choose because both are present. Both are make believe both are options. Both are opportunities.

8:08
And I bring this up because it applies across the board. So of course, I decided I want to be open to opportunities, I've made a decision. I'm going, I'm going to the union, I'm going with my friends, I'm bringing my husband, I'm going so because I've made that decision. I don't want to limit now the experience. I want to open myself to How good could this be? Right? And there's gonna be good and bad. And probably, you know, it was beautiful, but it was hot, right? We were always going to look for this was great. But this could have been better. So what doesn't matter, right? You make a decision. And then we decide, how do I want to feel about this.

8:49
So I noticed that I shared it with my Empower members, I shared it with my revived members on how beautiful it is when you let go of that resistance. When you stop the resistance and you allow yourself to think, what if?

9:07
What if it didn't have to be the way I'm thinking? What could it be? What are the opportunities, what is the potential? So then, as it happens so often in this life, which I love and which inspires me constantly to do these podcasts is throughout the week after I have this experience, one after the other in coaching calls. And in people I met and even in podcast I was listening to this idea of resistance starts coming up. And I found myself several times this week, coaching people on asking themselves the what if it didn't have to be like that? Because we limit everything. And we create suffering for ourselves. When we decide something's gonna suck.

9:57
Right? Because that's what we decide. So

10:00
I ran a an ad this week because I run ads on Facebook to let people know about the revived membership, let them know that support is out there. And on this particular ad, I said, hey, what if life after breast cancer didn't have to suck? Because it doesn't, it doesn't have to suck. And when the very first comment that I see on the ad is all Cancer sucks.

10:24
There you have it, right. So this person made up their mind. And if you make up your mind, that it's gonna suck,

10:32
and you're gonna have a lot of problems. Because side effects and issues come with our treatment, ongoing treatment comes with our treatment, and it can be challenging, and it can be difficult. And we can decide, are we going to focus all of our energy in that? And are we going to keep telling ourselves, this sucks? I hate it. Or are we gonna say, this is really difficult, difficult. But I've decided this is what I'm doing. So what if it doesn't have to suck? How can I support myself in the best possible way to experience the least amount of suffering? As I go through this. And we can apply this, as I said, across the board with us when it comes to breast cancer, because we've got the diagnosis, which is life shattering, earth shattering. We've got the treatments, which are invasive, and toxic and challenging and difficult. The emotions that go along with them. We finished treatment, we've got the fear of recurrence, the fear of not being watched by our physicians and constantly doing blood work. We've got the misunderstandings and fear of isolation and loneliness that come with people around us thinking, yeah, you lived your great, let's everything go back to normal, and we feel like we can't even get our footing.

11:59
And then we have ongoing medications, maybe more surgeries, we have tons of doctor's appointments, we have CT scans, we have MRI scans, we have ultrasounds, whatever it is that your doctors do for you, right? It's not a one and done.

12:16
And we can either decide that we're going to resist it every step of the way.

12:24
And allow ourselves to be overwhelmed, crushed, paralyzed, I hear these words all the time, buried drowning in anxiety, and depression, and fear, and sadness.

12:40
Or we can ask ourselves, what if it doesn't have to be like that? Now, asking that question, what if it doesn't have to be like, That?

12:51
Feels pretty good. Right? It feels like, okay, maybe is there another option? will I allow myself to explore if there's another option? And it can kind of lighten up the body? Right? The physical sensation that you feel from that thought? Like, what if it didn't have to be like this, but then it's gonna take work on your part. Because as I've just been talking about, our brains are conditioned to give us worst case scenario. So if we don't want to be in quicksand, in worst case scenario being pulled down and sinking and sinking and sinking constantly, then we've got to focus on the tree branch, right that we can hold on to, and pull ourselves up, we've got to focus on the spots where the quicksand is weak, and walk around them and say, whoa, whoa, whoa, I know, if I go there, that's gonna start pulling me down.

13:44
And again, it isn't that it isn't true. I have to be, I want to be really, really clear on that. It isn't that suddenly we say, Oh, I'm just going to pretend like there's nothing bad and there's nothing difficult, but that we accept. This is very challenging. This may even be creating physical pain. And from this physical pain, I'm feeling emotions that are coming up that are difficult emotions. And now I'm going to look at what I'm thinking about these difficult emotions. And then that that is where you get to have an opportunity for change.

14:19
That is where you get to say, Okay, here's my thought. And this is just throwing this out there. And the thought is, this sucks.

14:28
And if you're going to hold on to that thought, and we're going to resist, and round the thought, this sucks comes the story of all the things you can't do. Can't have never be the same again.

14:41
Then that quicksand is going to just keep pulling you down, and pulling you down and pulling you down.

14:48
But if you can say, well, this really sucks. This is hard. This hurts. I'm unhappy. I'm sad, I'm isolated. I'm lonely, I'm, I'm scared, whatever, whatever those emotions are

15:00
And then you can say, What am I thinking? And then you realize, I'm thinking, this sucks. This is hard. This is terrifying. And then you get to ask yourself, What if it didn't have to be?

15:11
That's the work? What if it didn't have to be terrifying? How would I have to think differently?

15:19
What would I have to do differently?

15:22
How would I act if I weren't terrified right now?

15:28
Because that is where your choice lies.

15:31
And so when it comes to recovering from breast cancer, these are super challenging, right? They're not as easy as deciding to change my mind about going to a class reunion. That's just a simple example. But it's the same concept applied across the board. It's the concept of being aware of the way you're thinking

15:50
and realizing that that thought, will continue to feed, whatever feeling you're experiencing. And if that feeling is dread, fear, loneliness, whatever it is, and it's creating result in your life, you don't like that we have an opportunity to let it go. We have an opportunity to ask ourselves, what if it didn't have to be like this? Because it doesn't have to be like that, I can tell you. And I can tell you that with 100% certainty, because I live every single day with stage four breast cancer. And I choose not to feel like that.

16:31
I choose not to allow the negative emotions to become overwhelming, right? It's not that they don't exist, it's not that they don't come up. It's not that fear, or doubt doesn't raise its head with me sometimes. Because it does. And I look at it, and I say, okay, and that's true. That's true. I may not be around for that. But if I am, I'm gonna make sure I have fun doing it. So to help you with this, I want to encourage you to become very aware of what resistance feels like in your body. Because the words we use in the language that we use make a huge difference in how we deal with things. So if I was to say, I'm stuck, people might acknowledge, nod their head, everyone knows what it feels like to be stuck to be in a hard place where it's difficult to decide something, or where you're uncertain of the best decision to move forward. People can relate to that. And so we nod, we nod to ourselves, we nod to each other, and we're like, you're stuck. I mean, we stay stuck, what can you do? But what if you change that word stuck to who I am resisting? I feel the resistance because stuck. If you say, I'm stuck, my friend, you are resisting something, you're resisting, making some kind of a decision, opening your mind to some other opportunity, right? We get in this place where we say, This isn't how I want my life to be. But that's how my life is. And I don't know what else it could be. I don't know what else to do. I'm stuck. Right? There is where you get out that pencil and paper and you start writing. That's when you use this phrase. What if?

18:21
What if it didn't have to be like this? What if I weren't stuck right now? What if I were able to make a decision? And then you get to start reading all of those thoughts behind it. Now you've opened opportunities. Now you've given yourself a tunnel to have a light at the end of you just didn't drop a big rock right in front of the tunnel. You opened it up and you're like, what if? If there was another possibility, you're not committing to it? Right? You're not saying this is what I'm going to do? You're just exploring. You're saying I don't want to feel stuck, stuck? doesn't feel good? What if I weren't stuck? Well, if I weren't stuck, I might do this. I might try that. I might decide to do this. And I might make a bad decision. That's okay. What happens if you make a bad decision? Then, right, that will happen if you make a bad decision. And as you well know, Friends, if you're here listening to this, and you're a breast cancer survivor, there are a lot of very difficult decisions that we make in the process of treatment in recovering and it's not necessarily that we make bad decisions. We have to make decisions over choices that we would never want to make. We have to decide to do things we don't want to do. So it's not a bad decision. As much as it is a difficult decision between two unappealing things. This often happens and so dropping that

20:00
Resistance again. Because we will resist and say that's not a good option. And this is not a good option. So I'm stuck. What do I do when I'm presented with two options, neither of which are good?

20:14
Well, you ask yourself,

20:17
What will works best for me?

20:20
What if I decide on option A? What's that going to look like?

20:24
What if I decide on option B? What's that going to look like? And then you sit with yourself, this is a super important thing. Because as I've said, So many times we get information outside of ourselves. But we have the answers within us. And oftentimes, when we're in this place of resistance, and stuck, and we're telling ourselves a story of how awful everything is going to be, and we're just asking, we're telling people outside of us, the difficulty in the decisions, the choices that we're faced with. And if they're not breast cancer survivors, they truly cannot 100% identify with what you're feeling and going through. But they're going to nod in support and say, I'm here for you. Yeah, it's tough. Yeah, it's tough. Are they going to reinforce? Yep, yep, I'd be stuck to if I were you, that doesn't help, does it? It doesn't move you forward.

21:18
You have to take that information in. And you have to ask yourself, What if,

21:25
and then you have to say, what works best for me.

21:30
Because we have to find a place to be really good, with just where we're at. And

21:38
we can't, we can tell ourselves that where we're at has to be good, has to be happy, has to be perfect, has to be healthy, has to be beautiful, has to have a six pack has to whatever. But that's not really realistic, is it?

21:55
So we resist ourselves in our present situation, or even things that may be coming up? Because we say they're not good. They're not perfect, and they're never going to be.

22:08
And so we say what if I accepted this imperfect thing?

22:14
What if I loved my imperfect body that is now scarred and discolored and maybe has some thigh chub that we don't really like? Speaking for myself?

22:28
But what if we just said, I'm just gonna decide to live it anyway?

22:33
And that doesn't mean give up on yourself? Good Lord. No, every day I exercise I eat right? I do things I get my hair done, you know, wear sparkly nail polish, whatever, we still do things to take care of ourselves. But we don't hate on ourselves. We don't resist ourselves. We don't say it's not perfect. So I won't accept it.

22:52
We say what if I did accept this right now? What if I accepted it made peace with it? How would I feel differently?

23:03
And could I still move forward with the creating the life I want working on the things I want? But without the uncomfortable and tumultuous feelings?

23:15
What if I did it with a feeling of peace? What would that look like?

23:20
How would I have to think differently about it?

23:24
I want to offer this to you. Because

23:27
I see all the time. And oh, I just want to grab these women and hug women and look them in the eye and say you don't have to live like that. I promise you, you don't have to live like that. And it's I'm paralyzed with anxiety, and fear. And I'm stuck. And I'm so anxious. And I'm so stuck. And it comes back to us. And the way we're thinking and resisting. Whatever that thing is in our life. And then we resist, we get a thought about it. And then we take that thought and we create a story. And then that story. Half the time when I even show we don't even know we're not even aware that we're thinking and we're telling ourselves the story over and over and over and the stories making us feel like shit.

24:14
And so if you want to stop feeling like that, then you're going to have to become aware of the story. You're going to have to become very aware of what resistance feels like

24:26
buzzwords that you use that should trigger awareness and say, Ooh, I just said I'm stuck. There's resistance. Right? I just said I can't do anything. I'm buried. I'm overwhelmed. There's resistance. And now I get to work on that.

24:41
And I get asked myself, ooh, what if? What if this could be different?

24:47
Because I promise you there's an opportunity for every experience to be different. Whether it is another option, another path or just another way

25:00
To think about it and view it so that it works better in your life. Again, not that it makes the bad go away, but that we learn a way to accept. That may be, everything isn't going to be perfect. But it can still be awesome.

25:21
And as we move into the end of the year, we're coming up on the end of October. So we've got holidays coming up and managing holidays and family and pandemics and travel and all the things that are going on, can bring up a lot of stress. But what if it didn't have to?

25:43
What if you could approach it differently, find some peace, and have less suffering, and the best end of the year that you can possibly make it.

25:55
That might be cool, right? And if you need support with that, I'm here for you. Come and find me and join me in the revived membership program. Because these are the kinds of things we work on places people get stuck thoughts that we have that keep us from moving forward in life. And that's what coaching does. It helps us see that there are opportunities there are what ifs out there that exist and ways that we can create a life that fits us a little bit better. All right, take care my friend and I will talk to you again next week and until then, Please be good to yourself and expect other people to be good to you as well. Take care of

26:37
us took your courage to the test laid all your doubts

26:45
your mind is clearer than before your hardest, wanting more. Your futures