#181 It's Not Your Worth, Your Story is the Problem

How many times in life have you felt unworthy, worthless, unloved, or broken because of another person’s words or actions? 

Wouldn’t it be nice not to feel that ever again? 

It is possible. 

Not because you can control what other people think or do. 

It’s possible because you can learn that your worth is inherent and has nothing to do with anyone else’s thoughts or actions. 

Listen to this week’s episode and become more aware of what you tell yourself other people are thinking and what you decide that means. 

Learn the importance of stepping into your authentic self and how the need to control or judge other people’s actions will fall away when you do that. 

Referred to in this episode: 

Better Than Before Breast Cancer Life Coaching Membership 

Confusion after Breast Cancer Workshop 

Read the full transcript below:

Laura Lummer 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.

Laura Lummer 0:38
Hello, Hello, friends, you are listening to Episode 181 of the breast cancer recovery coach podcast. I'm your host, Laura Lummer. And before I even jump into the show today, I want to clear something up because I have received a couple of emails in this last week asking me a specific question. And I always know that even if I just get one email on a topic that it applies to a lot of people across the board. So I received the same question twice. And I want to clear it up here because I know if these two ladies were confused, then more people are confused. So the question was, what's the difference between the breast cancer recovery group, and the better than before breast cancer membership. And so the breast cancer recovery group is a free Facebook group. I created that group so that breast cancer survivors could come together and support each other in processing what they're going through and asking questions of each other. It is a very supportive Facebook group where a lot of information is exchanged. Questions are asked support is given from the members in the group. And for me, I go in and I comment on some of the comments in the group, the better than before breast cancer membership is my coaching membership. So it is a life coaching membership. And in that membership, each month we work on something I have a theme every month. So for instance, this is the month of March, this month, we are working on healthy boundaries. And what that means is at the beginning of the month, I have the action guide that I put together with information, some questions and prompts things you can ask yourself to do some self exploration, some self coaching, I teach tools to help with your self coaching. And I'm in there on Zoom calls live six times a month actually, I do workshops inside the group. And I do one on one coaching with people we have group discussions. So we actually are working through stuff live in the group where you can come and present certain things that you might be struggling with and ask questions and get coaching and guidance actually in the group. So completely different things, you can find out more about the better than before breast cancer life coaching membership at the breast cancer recovery coach.com forward slash life coaching. So that's an active membership. It is a paid membership. And it is something that provides you with a tremendous amount of value and with personal coaching and support from me. Okay, I hope that it gets it gets everything cleared up. Now, I also have a special offer to make for everybody for this month, the month of March in the better than before breast cancer membership. It is a workshop on confusion. And what I mean by that is when we find ourselves in a place that we call stuck, or that we say I just don't know what to do. I don't know what to say I don't know how to feel all of those types of responses and thoughts are very, very common. And I will be doing a workshop on that within the group where I'll talk to you a little bit about how to manage your mind around this idea of confusion. And we'll talk about what indulgent emotions are so indulgent emotions. When we say we're stuck, we're kind of in this emotion, whether it be confusion, ambivalence, anger, overwhelm, a lot of times we can stay in these emotions that feel very justified to us. And yet, they're not helping us at all. So this workshop is going to happen on Friday, March 25 2022 is at 10am Pacific time. And to get more information and register you can join for free, you can register at the breast cancer recovery coach.com forward slash confused, okay, forward slash confused, you get all the details and you can sign up right there. And then you will receive the link for the workshop. It's all it all happens on Zoom. All right. I want to talk a little bit about something I have been seeing just a lot of and you know what, it's not even just free Since it's something that's very common, that I see a lot of, and it's a tremendous source of pain and suffering, and that is when we value ourselves, and we place our sense of self worth, on the actions of other people. Now, this is very normal, because we're taught to do this our whole entire life. From the time we're a little children. And we're told mommy's mad at you because you did. Or pretty girls are supposed to smile, or I like it so much when you're nice and helpful. And we become what we call people pleasers. And then there's so much more piled on that, right. So from childhood to where you are today, you have been conditioned to believe certain things about you. And you believe if other people say do behave, give in these ways, that means I'm worthy to them. And if they don't do those things, then I am not only not worthy, but I'm hurt and sad and depressed and angry. Now, add breast cancer onto that. And that has a huge blow on your self image. There's so so much that we go through emotionally, so many physical changes that are experience. And obviously, we're dealing with changing our breasts in some way. And so there's this big impact on our self worth. Because we start telling ourselves a lot of stories about that I'm not sexy anymore, I'm not desirable anymore. I'm not pretty anymore, this person doesn't respond to me the same, that must mean they're thinking I'm not attractive, right? So there's people's actions. And then there's what we tell ourselves about people's actions, then there's how we value ourselves based on other people's actions or other people's words, I see it spoken about often, not just in the better than before breast cancer membership, but in other breast cancer groups that I'm a part of, because I kind of like to go into these groups. And I never offer support from the point of a coach or like, try to say, hey, come over and coach with me, I just don't think that's appropriate. But I do. Try to give him you know, a little bit of word of kindness and support in some of these groups to women who have no idea who I am, right. I've never heard about the podcast or about me. And yet the things that they pose just really tugged at my heartstrings, and I want so badly, I literally want to scoop them up and say, Please get on a call with me. And let me talk to you because it doesn't have to be like this. And the theme of most of these posts will be things like I'm crushed, because I saw an old friend. And they commented on how short my hair is or how much weight I gained or how different I look. And they hadn't seen me since breast cancer. And I'm so hurt by that, right? Because when someone comments on something we already feel insecure about ourselves, then it brings up feelings of hurt because we tell ourselves, right, this isn't good. You know, I gained weight, oh my gosh, what value do attach to that. I'm not as good a person, I'm not as pretty as I used to be all the judgments we put on ourselves, and then someone brings it up. And then we feel really hurt and upset. And yet we say that they made us mad. I'll see themes. So often of people who say, you know, my husband found out I had breast cancer and love me or my husband can't look at me anymore since I've had my mastectomy or lumpectomy or radiation burns or gained weight, and all these kinds of things. And some of the comments that these women will make about themselves are things like I'm so broken I'm so devastated. I'm beside myself, I can't even get out of bed. And I see this pain and I if it's you if you're listening to this and you relate to this know that you are not alone know that this happens to a lot of people, which is why I want to talk about it now. Because what happens in this situation? Is that our sense of worth our worth, not our sense of worth our worth your worth, as a human being is not attached to anyone else's actions. Okay, me say it again. Your worth is not attached to it is not a reflection of anyone else's actions. Your worth as a human being is established by the fact you're a human being in your in this world. But your story about someone else's actions ans, comments, words, your story about that. And what that means to you. That is what is undermining your self worth. So if someone says, Hey, you gained a lot of weight while you were in breast cancer, and let's say you did, I know I did. And he used to really piss me off. In fact, I remember my mom saying to me one time, wow, I just never thought you'd be so big. And I was so angry, right? But the truth was, I was bigger than I'd ever been in my life, right, my body had more weight on it than I had ever been in my life. It was true. But it was a truth that I hadn't come to terms with that I hadn't made peace with that I had an accepted. So then I was angry at my mom for bringing up something that I didn't like about me.

Laura Lummer 10:50
But that is an important thing to realize, even though it may be a tough pill to swallow. Because what happens is, when we take that back, and when we say, Oh, my value, my worth, as a human being, how awesome I am, how special I am, how beautiful I am, how loved I am, how worthy I am, has nothing to do with their words. And everything to do with the way I think about myself. And everything about the story I make out of their words, right? It's all in our mind. So when my mom says things to me, like she still does now about my weight, I just say, yep, that's just where I am mom, you know, because I've made peace with it. Because I live a healthy life. And even though I don't have the figure I had when I was 28 years old, at 58, I have a beautiful, strong, healthy body. And I've made peace with the fact that it's got a little more fluff than it used to Okay, and I take steps to manage that all the time, right, I'm always managing my body to make sure it stays in a healthy place. So because I've made peace with it, I no longer feel sad or worthless or angry when a comment is made about it. Now, we're not taught this throughout our lives, right? We're taught, like I said a minute ago, if you say this, then you feel like this. And I've talked about this on the podcast before. So when it comes to valuing ourselves, we have to make a decision. Are we going to live our adult life with our six year old brain? Right. And what I mean by that is the thoughts we had when we were six and eight and 10 and 12, about what our parents said about how the kids at school teased us about all of those things. We get a look at those things now. And we get to know, I'm not a little girl anymore, that has no control over her emotions that think her emotions and her worth are based on if the popular kid likes me, if mom or dad say you were good today, if mom or dad even show up for me, right? If they come home from work instead of go to the bar, who knows we've all had different experiences as children. And we may have placed our value our love ability, our ability for someone to love us on those actions. But it is not true. And yet it feels true. Right? It feels true. Because we've told ourselves this story for a very long time. And I want to share something with you. I read this the other day. And I thought oh my gosh, this is such an amazing statement. So I love books by tick, not Han he is a Buddhist Vietnamese monk he passed away in January. But he just writes these really simple. I mean, he was kind of the guy who brought mindfulness to the west, right and just has a beautiful, gentle philosophy. I love reading his books. And I read the statement I'm going to share with you now. And I thought, if we could all understand this and allow a little more space to be in our mind, we would have a lot less pain in our lives. And so the statement is a quote from his book, no death, no fear. And it says if you get caught in one idea and consider it to be the truth, then you miss the chance to know the truth. Even if the truth comes in person and knocks at your door, you will refuse to open your mind. So if you are committed to an idea about truth, or to an idea about the conditions necessary for your happiness, be careful. That is so powerful, so amazing. And so all true. Because if we are taught, if someone is good to us, we'll be happy. If someone brings us flowers this many times in a month, we'll be happy. If someone cleans up the room, they'll be happy, whatever we're told, people should treat you like this, then you can be happy, feel loved, feel worthy. And most of the time people will write because we're all just humans, we all mess stuff up all the time. And so then we attach our value and our emotions to that. And we go through life, a hot mess, with emotions all over the board, with stories of self worth all over the board. And mostly that self worth is in the tank, right? I don't know why it works that way. Like, we never walk around saying, I'm so amazing. You know, so awesome. We don't do that, you know, we look at, we look at the things that reinforce the belief that we're not good enough. And that belief comes from our own brain. And most of the time, it's been in there since we were very, very, very small. And we have to look at that and say, I'm not that little kid anymore. I want to start thinking with my beautiful adult mind. I want to stop taking these thoughts from the past, that tell me that other people have to speak, act and behave in certain ways for me to feel happy. Because that is not true. You have the power to feel happy. Now, I want to address that because I saw another statement in a group in a social media group. And this woman said, Who are these people who call themselves thrivers? She had breast cancer she had and she has metastatic breast cancer. And she said Who are these people who call themselves thrivers? I can barely endure How Does anybody thrive? In under her comment, I was shocked to see that there were dozens of other comments on how no one in fact, one comment said no one thrives after breast cancer. No one. And I was shocked. And I thought, um, yeah, actually, they do. But as long as you tell yourself that you never will. Because your brain will always find evidence to prove yourself correct. And you'll always look for the crappy things that are happening, which you will be able to find because crappy things happen all the time. And so this woman said, No one thrives after breast cancer, no one that's toxic positivity. Now I've addressed toxic positivity before. And I'm going to address it again now. Because I think that's so important. When I talk about the fact that you can choose happiness, in that you can choose to love yourself. That means from a very authentic point of view. So I might still choose anger because I want to feel angry right now. But I might feel anger, because I love myself not because I hate someone else. Right? I might not say, I'm angry with you, because you did this and made me feel this way. But I might say I'm angry because one country invaded another country and people are suffering. And I don't believe that's right. Because I love me, and I love people. And I love humanity. And so I choose to look at that and say I'm angry, right. And I don't want to make this a political show. But I do know that a lot of people are struggling with that right now. So when I talk about choosing happiness, or choosing to come at things from a place of love, it never means that we don't have real human emotions that we don't feel all the things. And we don't look at them and say, I like my reason for feeling that. But that reason is coming from a place of love for me or someone else, not a thought that I'm not worthy because somebody else acted in a bad way. And when we can start to see this when we can start to really look at relationships, as this exchange of thoughts, right? My thought about myself, my thoughts about this person, and knowing you have the ability to choose what you want to think which is going to help you feel the way you want to feel it's going to cause you to feel the way you feel. I'm going to have a thought and that's going to cause a feeling. I'm going to look at my granddaughter and say I love that kid with all my heart and I'm going to feel love, right? Or I might look at something else that I think is an injustice and I might feel anger or disgust. But when it comes to our sense of self worth, especially when we're going through all of the struggling and trying to make sense of everything that happened to us and breast cancer with breast cancer treatment, that's a lot to process. But if you process it from a place of love, which is the whole platform that I teach about right is none of this warrior I Gotta fight. I don't feel screw cancer, all this, but from a place of I love myself, I am worthy of happiness and love. What will I do? How will I treat this body? How will I support myself now, in my life, in my body, in my relationships, because I start with the thought, I am worthy.

Laura Lummer 20:24
I am worthy. And when you know you're worthy, you don't have to change someone else's behavior. You don't have to teach someone to treat you, right? You just decide, do I want this relationship in my life in this capacity? Is that suiting me? Does that follow my healthy boundaries? Does that support me and the way that I want to love myself? And if you are hearing my words, and you're thinking, Well, I don't see myself as worthy, or I don't feel that I'm worthy of this. That's the work. The work is not in changing the way people talk to you look at you think about you, or what you think people are thinking about you. This is a major, major part of suffering. What I think people are thinking about me, well, I think people are judging me what I think people are criticizing me. And we have to get a hold of our mind and bring it back to what if they are, you know? What, if it's someone else's story, and they're criticizing me, what if someone looks at me? And they're like, No, are you too old to have a tattoo? Why do you wear purple eyeshadow. And if I allow myself to feel bad, because somebody else doesn't like what I do, I am going to live a miserable life, I'm going to be unhappy all the time. Because there will always be someone there to judge. But if I can say I do this, because this is what I love. I do this, because this is what I enjoy. I do this because I feel that it's an authentic expression of me, and that's how I want to live my life, then we have so much less pain, because of the actions other people take, because of words other people say, because then we get to hear them and see them for what they are. If we know our worth, and we stand in our worth, and we know who we are, and we love ourselves, then we can let other people be themselves. And instead of feeling angry and hurt and saying you should be this or I can feel like that you can already know you have the power to choose that feeling. And you can look at them and say, Okay, that's who this person is. That's how that person shows up. And I don't get to control that person, because they're an adult and adults don't control other adults. So what do I want to do about this? How do I want to think about this? What's the story I'm going to create for myself about this person and their words and their actions, so that I can still live in a happy and thriving life? Because we can thrive? We can. And we do. And I can tell you that with 100% certainty, because I live with stage four cancer every day. And I'm a very, very happy and driving person. And do things come up? And do worries come up? And do financial problems come up? And do kids do stupid things? And do I worry Yes, all the time. And then I have to manage my mind around that, right? But I get to choose to take these things, anything that happens in life and measure my worthiness against them. Or I get to look at them and say, Well, everybody's out there living their life, just like I'm living my life, right? They're all living their lives, and I don't want to control their lives. I just want to be me. So now I get to do my work on who I am. And I get to notice why do I spend too much time thinking about what other people say? I spend too much time judging myself on what I think other people's judgments are? Do I give more value to other people's judgments of me if they are spoken? Then my judgment of myself? Am I still looking at myself through the eyes of an eight year old that wants to please her parents or her best friend? Or am I getting to know myself and who I am and how amazing I am right here in this manifestation in this life. So I just want to say that and get this out there because it is so important. If you're hearing it you're like what the heck are you talking about? What does this even mean? How can I not be upset if somebody says something mean? Then please come to the free workshop on confusion. And I will help you that and you can ask questions and you can get coached and you can sign up for that workshop at the breast cancer recovery coach.com forward slash, confusion. This is what I do. This is my life this is my passion is to help you understand that you have complete power over the way you choose to think the feelings those thoughts bring up and the results those thoughts create in your life. Because I know as women, we're already, you know, just as people as humans, right, human brains, I don't know why they're so wonky, but they are. And as women, I do believe there's a tremendous amount of pressure put on us in society, especially in all kinds of societies and cultures and religions. We have a lot of belief systems dumped on us. And it's hard to unravel them and see past them and make balance with them and choose the things that work for you and find a way to compassionately reject the things that don't work for you. And really, after a diagnosis and treatment of breast cancer, I know that it lifts this veil and we stop when we look at our life, we're like whoa, who am I now? Right? What's going on now? Is this how I want to live my life in so often will slide right back in? Yeah, I'm not really happy. But shouldn't I just be grateful? And I just offer that you can be grateful and thrive and be happy at the same time. Trust me, I know this for sure. All right. So if you would like coaching if you'd like support you can join me at the better than before breast cancer live coaching membership. And you can find all the details at the breast cancer recovery coach.com forward slash life coaching. Or please join me in the confusion workshop at the end of this month. I would love love, love to see you talked with you answer your questions. If you have questions on this podcast, you can post them on my Facebook group or in the breast cancer recovery group, my free Facebook group. All right. I just want you to know that you are 100% worthy and amazing and always believe that and let's work through all of those thoughts that might be in between you hear now hearing this and you hear now loving yourself and believing it. And 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

Speaker 2 27:26
you've put your 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 have you been waiting on