#184 Why You Need to Have Your Own Back

So many of us go through life tearing ourselves apart. 

We judge our looks, our decisions, our accomplishments, our strengths, and our weaknesses. 

We blame ourselves for just about everything we can think of including how other people think and feel. 

Then a diagnosis of a life-threatening disease happens and there are so many more things we can beat ourselves up for, not the least of which is what we did to get cancer in the first place. 

Isn’t it time to start having your own back? 

Imagine a life where you don’t decide how you’ll punish yourself before you even try something. 

A life where you just say to yourself, it’s ok, you did your best, don’t beat yourself up…and then you listened to yourself. 

Well, you can have that life. 

Check out this week’s episode to hear more about how to have your own back. 

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. Hello, hello, welcome to another episode of the breast cancer recovery coach podcast. I am your host, Laura Lummer. And this episode is coming out on the first day of April, it will publish on Friday, April 1, which I cannot believe it's April, we're in springtime already. It's amazing. And I've talked about this the last couple of weeks. But the first day of April, is the anniversary of the month that I opened the better than before breast cancer life coaching membership, it's a really big deal to me, you know, it's not just a big deal, because I opened this life coaching membership for breast cancer survivors is a big deal to me because it was a major step in my life, to go from a diagnosis of stage four metastatic breast cancer. And deciding that what I do and the work that I do is so important to me that I was going to figure out how to make that happen, and continue to serve the audience that I serve the members that I serve, and do what I love to do. So I'm not just thrilled that this is the one year anniversary of the better than before breast cancer life coaching membership. But I'm just so damn happy that I made that decision. And you know, I think it's, it's just, it's so good to be on your own team. You know, it's so good to ask yourself, what do I need? How do you want to live? How do you want to feel, and to understand the work that goes that went in behind all of that and to be in that place where I didn't have to go into fear, I didn't have to go into pulling back from life, I could still decide not to play small, I could still decide to continue my work, no matter what the circumstances are, no matter what the outcome of things that I can't control, I could take back my power over the things that I could control. So this month means way more to me than just the anniversary of opening a membership. And I intend all month long to celebrate, I intend all month long to encourage you to join me in the better than before breast cancer membership. Because I know that it will change your life. I know the impact it will have on you. I've seen it with all my other members with my Empower members I've seen in myself, I know the power of coaching. And to start off, I am offering half off of all of my one on one coaching sessions throughout the month of April. That's both for my members who already get a member discount on my one on one coaching, but for everyone in the general public as well, because I want to share as much coaching this month as I possibly can. And I also have some special coaching bonuses that will go to people who enroll in the life coaching membership this month. So very, very excited to share that with you. You can find out all of the details at the breast cancer recovery coach.com forward slash live coaching. And you can sign up for personal sessions at the breast cancer recovery coach.com forward slash 184 Or just go to my website and go to coaching and support and you can sign up for a one on one coaching session with me or you can join the membership. Okay, so let's go back for a minute and talk about how I opened the show by speaking about how I feel like I'm in such a good place where I have my own back where I support myself where I asked myself what's important to you, what do you need right now. And I make the decisions that I make the choices that I make to do the things that I love. And I support myself in doing that. And that's a very important thing. I see posts and I hear other survivors talk all the time about the emotional toll of breast cancer. And I in those posts, oftentimes hear them beat themselves up. I can poach women who are stuck in a place of deep regret for the decisions they made to take life, saving potentially life saving treatments, and now, after the fact to question those decisions and beat themselves up for it, and it's not only in the experience of cancer is in the experience of being a human, and this human brain that we have, in our human brain just has a tendency to be way more of a thug than it is a friend. And so we have to teach it, it's kind of like that unruly baby like, It's Lord of the Flies happening in between our ears, right? Only the strongest survive. So we have to get to that place in life, where we decide that it's not going to be a badge of courage to beat yourself up, where we decide that the emotional toll that cancer and life takes on us is not going to be stacked on by our own behaviors and thoughts, we are not going to add to that emotional toll, we're not going to make that build bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger, that we're actually going to give ourselves a break, we're going to give ourselves some grace, we're going to decide to be our own best friend. So before I talk more about that I want to share something with you. Last week, I did a workshop confusion after breast cancer, and the turnout was great, the workshop was great, the women are amazing. And I want to share a clip from that workshop with you. Because I think that it's very powerful in terms of what we're talking about here and about having your own back. And I hope that it will give you an insight on how your brain isn't always your friend. But how that doesn't have to have the power in your life that it does have. So I want to play that clip for you right now. I want to start off with a bit of an analogy. When I think about confusion, when I think about indulgent emotions. Now in and I'll tell you a little bit more about indulgent emotions in a minute. But when I think about confusion and being stuck in, in indulgent emotions, it's as if you were in a jail cell. And for the purposes of this analogy, your brain is your jail cell. And we're in this jail cell. And but the door is unlocked. But two things are going on with us. One is, we don't know we can open the door. We think this is it. Like this is my reality. This is a I can't get out of it. And I keep going round and round in circles in my reality, because I don't know that I have the ability to open that door. The second thing that often goes on is I know I can open that door. I've heard there's ways to open that door. But if I get on the other side of that door, it might be even worse than inside here. Because inside here, I've still got three hots and a cot outside there. I don't know, if I make a choice. And I open that door. And it's worse out there than it is in here. Not only will I have to experience that, but I'll make a decision more often than not, that if it is worse out there than in here. I will also beat myself up for having made that decision. I will tell myself how dumb I am. I knew it. You're so stupid, you always do the wrong things. So now I'll have self flagellation self loathing all that piled on top of what I'm afraid might be on the other side of that door. So we stay inside the cell. We're not happy. It's not comfortable. It's not fun. But it's familiar. And we think somewhere in our brain, staying here where it's familiar, is safer.

Laura Lummer 9:23
So I think that would probably sound familiar to a lot of you. And I just want to add to that visual, the idea that each one of those bars in that cell is is just a thought. It's each one of your thoughts that hold you back, that keep you in this place where you feel stuck or sad or uncomfortable. And you know, when we're in a place in our brain where we say, I'll feel better or I'll feel safer because this is familiar that always reminds me of this deep desire. We have to go back to normal we want to go back to what we knew. And if we can give ourselves the permission to have our own bag to be our best bud to take ourselves by the hand and say, Okay, here I am now, maybe, while we move forward with here can be even more amazing than I think. And it will be different because my body has changed. And you have to work on accepting now to work on your thoughts around it. But maybe everything can be really good. And if we can get ourselves to the point there where we say, Yeah, and we can tell ourselves, you know what, I'm going to open myself to that possibility. I'm going to start noticing each one of these bars, that keeps me stuck in this place, that keeps me from trying to get on the other side of that bar, especially because I'm afraid outside of that cell, I'm going to be the person who's going to be the meanest to me who's going to judge me the most harshly, who's gonna say, You're fat, you're not sexy, you're not fun, you've aged look at your skin, and we just pick ourselves apart all the time, all the time. And if we can sit back and take that visual into our minds on really let it absorb and realize, holy moly, I'm the one, keeping myself in whatever position I'm in, in the results that I don't like in my life. Because of all the thoughts I'm telling myself. And because I'm afraid if I break through those thoughts, I'm going to be even meaner to myself, if it isn't exactly what I want it to be. In my coaching, we call that the manual, we have a manual for ourselves, we have a manual for life, and everybody in our manual, this was a concept taught to me in the Life Coach School, where our manual is, here are all the rules. And anytime this rule gets broken, I'll be mad, I'll be sad, I'll be devastated, I will be upset. And so we attach our emotions to these rules. And so when it comes to having our own back, rather than beating ourselves up, we have to start looking at the rules we have for ourself, that we tell ourselves, okay, I go through chemotherapy, and then I get done, or I go through all of these surgeries and reconstructions, and God only knows what else happens to you in cancer treatment. And then I'm going to be the certain way when I'm done. And then if I'm not, I'm gonna be really mean to me. And we've got to start really looking at that for what it is taking in those facts and saying, holy cow, I will never let anyone be as mean to me as I am to myself. And then ask ourselves why? And how can you change that? Are you willing to change that? Are you willing to be the person who picks yourself up? Are you willing to be the person who sits there and rubs the mud off your knee and says, It's okay. I was gonna say, Let's go sit down and have a cupcake. But we don't want to buffer with food. Or we get to be the one who just loves on ourselves because we deserve that love. And if things don't turn out the way we want it, things don't turn out the way we expect. If people don't say the things, we want to say that our emotions are not going to be on all of those strings attached all of these other people's words attached to our own imaginary idea of the way life should be now. Because that's all it is, right? It's just an imagination. I imagined this should happen. When I'm done with treatment. I imagine this is where I should be a year after cancer. Two years, five years, 10 years. I imagine this. You know, I one of the things that I hear women just torment themselves about is the aftercare, right? The aromatase inhibitors that tamoxifen, the hormone therapies that go on for years after the active part of being in treatment, and yet where I sit and where I stand and the women I interact with, I see the full range. I see the full range of women who are on aromatase inhibitors when they get a recurrence. Women who never took an aromatase inhibitor and never got a recurrence. Women who took it the whole 10 years and then got a recurrence when they were done. What was the right or wrong decision? There was one of those decisions, right? And another one, not? Only if it turned out the way you thought, you see this is this is the thing. It's that what we want to think about those decisions is the only thing that makes them right or wrong. And we can choose to say the choices I made for myself when I went through this really difficult period of time, where what I felt was best for me in that time. That was the answer that came from inside of me. And if it didn't turn out the way that I wanted it to turn out well. I feel like I made the best choice that I could at the time. This is something that I just see. So So many people struggle with and beat themselves up for and feel guilty about, you know, I took it and went through the misery got a recurrence anyway, I didn't take it at all. And now I got a recurrence. I didn't take it at all. And look at me, I'm doing fine. I mean, there's a full spectrum of results that we get from any kind of decision we make in going through cancer treatment and any kind of decision we make in going through life. When we come out on the other side, we think, okay, I want to establish a new boundary, and you establish new boundary with someone you work with, and then that person blows their top over something and you say, Oh, my God, it was a bad decision, I knew I shouldn't have set that boundary. And we start taking responsibility for other people's feelings, for other people's decisions for other people's perceptions of things that happened, and then tell ourselves was a bad decision. We've got to start coming back to ourselves as our best friend and asking ourselves, what do I need? And if you need something, and you know, you need it, you have to ask yourself, instead of saying, what will that person do? What will that person say? How will that person act? What will that person think? Let that be like your safety word, when you hear yourself questioning? What will they think of me and come back and say, What do I think? Do I believe what I'm saying is coming from an authentic and loving place, and it's something I actually need in my life? What do I believe here, I'm doing this out of service to me. And that doesn't mean in a selfish way, it means in an authentic way, taking good care of yourself and being your best friend, rather than worrying about what everybody else thinks. And they're saying, Okay, well, I don't really matter. And I will sit here and be miserable, because it's better that I'm miserable, right inside the cell, than making a difference to change something and then having to deal with something else or with other people and other people's reactions. We've got to come back and be our own best support system, get a really clear understanding of us. And when we do that, and we come from that loving place for ourselves, we're putting that love out into the world, whether it's through a boundary, because we're dropping those manuals, we're dropping this idea that everyone has to act a certain way, or I'll be mad, or I'll be disappointed, or I'll beat myself up. If they act that way, I'll beat myself up. If I don't achieve this, I'll beat myself up. Like we're just this whipping horse. And we have to stop doing that to ourselves. We have to start being our own best friend. I've probably said that 500 times here. But I can't say it enough. And I wonder what comes up in your mind when I say that? When I say be your own best friend, do you think? Well, I never really thought about it in that way. Or do you think What? What?

Laura Lummer 17:51
I don't want to be a friend with me? Why would I be my own best friend do I like me, have everyone looked at myself and said that, wow, I've got some pretty great stuff going on here. I'm a person that has a lot to offer this world. And it's okay, if I give myself permission to love myself. It's okay, if I look back at all these conditioned beliefs that caring about ourselves and taking care of ourselves is selfish or somehow immodest are somehow self absorbed, they're coming at it from a clean and authentic place of self care, so that we can teach those around us that it's okay to care for themselves as well, that it's okay to be authentically who they are, without beating themselves up, because we choose not to beat them up to write. So it's such a beautiful thing to come from this place where you work on that and look at the things that you tell yourself and make a decision. When my brain offers those things. I'm just chopping those bars down, one after the other after the other because I'm making a decision right here now to be my best friend on the other side of that cell door, to wait there for me with open arms, and to embrace me as I come through, and to just hug me all along the way, right to support me all along the way on some of those days to say, I know this is hard friend, but we got this together. Right? We've got this together, always being the one that standing up for you. Because you deserve it. And that doesn't mean in a defensive way and an overly protective way it means in a loving way. Standing up for you means supporting yourself and the decisions you decided to make in life. supporting yourself in the healing time that you need in life. And that just truly being there to be gentle and give yourself grace. And I hope you can bring that visual back to mind if you find yourself feeling stuck. If you find yourself telling yourself you can't get somewhere you can't do anything and look at Even that thought in itself, when you're telling yourself I'm stuck, I'm stuck. This is miserable. This is horrible. You know, imagine if you had your best friend sitting next to you. And that person kept saying, you're so stuck, you're so miserable. This sucks. This is horrible. Wouldn't you turn to them eventually and say, Stop it. You're not helping. You're not helping this situation. And you have to do that now with yourself. Right? You have to notice how am I feeling here? What am I telling myself? And when do I say to myself, knock it off, knock it off brain. You're not helping me here. And make a decision on how you want to feel and how you want to think about yourself. All right, I would love to help you with that. So come and find me on Facebook, come and join the breast cancer recovery group, and come and check out the better than before breast cancer life coaching membership, because I would love love, love to work with you. I just love the magic of having more awareness of our thoughts and making a decision to change certain thoughts and just seeing the power in that in the very moment that it happens when you decide to change a thought or change the way you treat yourself. And it's just absolutely incredible. Every time I see it happen in someone, how the burden just lifts you know, there's just a lightness and a space for self love that opens up and it's an amazing thing to witness and I'm holding that space for you to. So come and check out the better than before breast cancer life coaching membership, and work with me. Let's celebrate this amazing anniversary together. You can find all the details at the breast cancer recovery coach.com forward slash life coaching. I'll 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 your

Speaker 2 21:54
voices in your head. You've heard your courage to the test laid all your doubts your mind is clearer than before your hardest, wanting more your futures you know you've been waiting on your this is your