Here’s an interesting thing to consider: 

We plan for birthday parties, weddings, anniversaries, camping trips, and what we’re going to wear to work or have for dinner, but when was the last time you planned for life? 

Way too often we allow ourselves to be in the random acts and unprocessed emotions of life. 

This can lead to feeling, hopeless, powerless, and having no future vision for your life. 

The end result…Failure to thrive. 

In this episode, I’ll tell you some of the things I hear from survivors in their struggle to engage in life during, after, and long after treatment and how those thoughts limit the potential of their future. 

I’ll also offer you a simple action you can take to start changing the thoughts you have about your future so you can be inspired and motivated to create the life you want. 

Referred to n this episode: 
The Better Than Before Breast Cancer Life Coaching Membership 

The Will to Live 

Read the full transcript below:

Laura Lummer 0:00
You're listening to the breast cancer recovery coach podcast. I'm your host, Laura Lummer. I'm a Certified Life health and nutrition coach and I'm also a breast cancer thriver. If you're trying to figure out how to move past the trauma and the emotional toll of breast cancer, you've come to the right place. In this podcast, I will give you the tools and the insights to create a life that's even better than before breast cancer. Well, let's get started. Hello, Hello friends. Welcome to another episode of the breast cancer recovery coach podcast. I am so excited because this is podcast number 196. Moving closer and closer to that landmark 200 I can't wait to get to it. Before I jump right into this show, I just want to give you a quick reminder that you can go to my website, the breast cancer recovery coach.com. And you can find on my website free resources and free downloads to help support you in things like understanding lymphedema, I have a book on lymphedema that I co authored with Andrea Leonard, the founder of the cancer exercise Institute. There's my four pillars of breast cancer recovery, with some action steps on that to help you get a little bit of a better understanding on taking some first steps to creating a life that's better than before breast cancer also have some resources on there that I often get asked about, for instance, things that I use to help control lymphedema. And there are some specific podcasts that have action sheets, kind of downloadable sheets to go along with the podcast, check it out at the breast cancer recovery coach.com forward slash resources or just go straight to my website and click up at the top on the menu where it says resources, you find a lot of great stuff there. And I hope that you enjoy it. Okay, I'm gonna jump right into this today. I was on Twitter yesterday. Now I rarely go on Twitter, but it is on my phone because my podcast gets published to Twitter. And so now and then these feeds will pop up. And I saw this comment pop up. And I rarely comment on Twitter, because honestly, I just find it to be a really kind of a negative platform. But I saw this comment pop up. And it really spoke to me. And so I looked at it and I looked at the thread that followed it. And I thought this is it's just really sad. It's very heartbreaking. But it's also very common. And I thought I'd talk about it on today's show, to see if I can offer some suggestions that might help you if you're finding yourself in this place. So the tweet was, I'm just gonna say it, I'm angry with cancer tonight, cancer took away my ability to dream about the future. I feel like I can't plan farther out than three months. And that just sucks. And then someone responded, yes, this, it's hour by hour, can't even plan for dinner, let alone what I might do next. And I'll just read one more, because there are a lot of them. And this one says, I feel this. Even once I hit remission two and a half years now, I could not allow myself to believe any future was possible, is getting better. But this shit is really hard.

Laura Lummer 3:30
I saw this and like I said, there are a lot a lot of responses like that in this thread. And I know that it is not uncommon. And it reminds me that this is something that should be talked about more so that if you're someone who's experiencing this difficulty, seeing your future, this difficulty looking forward having a vision for your life. It's something that is really important to get a little more awareness around and maybe some tools that can help you with that. Now, I understand this firsthand. And I will tell you that the one day that it became shockingly clear to me was not that long ago, several months now. And I've always thought even though I got a diagnosis of stage four cancer, I've just never thought that I bought into the death sentence piece of it. Right. I always believed my body could heal. I've always been very focused on continuing coaching, continuing my business, having future goals, and really putting a lot of energy into what my future self and my future life looks like. But then at one point, my coach said to me, let's sit down and do some goals and I want you to start working back from 25 years. And I found that inside of me my reaction was kind of like ooh 25 years, not going to be 25 years. You know, and not because I'm 58 years old now and was that right that I thought, oh my gosh, that's awfully long to believe I'm going to be here. And then noticing that I thought that was really eye opening for me. And that made me consider what was going through my head like, oh gosh, where's this deeper thought that I might not be here because of cancer? And why do I have that thought. And so I ended up saying, I feel really comfortable doing 1510 and five year goals. And I did, and I do. But my work then became what's after 15 years, and I started to really do a lot of thought, work on that on understanding what I was believing about myself. And where I was getting stuck, where my thoughts were getting me stuck, or where maybe some fear was coming up. So I really understand that mentality, I understand that thought, and of course, I understand why someone would have that thought. But I also think that it's extremely important to work through that thought, because like those tweets that I shared with you, and many others that are on it, and many conversations that I have had with clients that I coach, when it's difficult for you to see your future, and plan ahead, you can get very, very stuck in life. And that is not what we want to do not now you work too hard, not time to get stuck, time to thrive, time to grow, time to do everything that you want to create the life that you want to have. So I started to do some more research into this, reading some articles on it, and just trying to get a sense of how often this happens. Where there's statistics out there, does it talk about how often cancer patients go through this, I'm just calling it kind of a failure to thrive. And so I found this really great article by Stanford Medicine. I will post a link to it in the show notes, but it's called the will to live. And in it, there's this quote, and it says many patients react to the diagnosis of cancer in the same way that people in primitive cultures react to the imposition of a curse or a spell as a sentence to a ghastly death. This phenomenon known as bone pointing, results in a paralytic fear that causes the victim to simply withdraw from the world and await the inevitable end. In modern medical practice, a similar phenomenon may occur when out of ignorance or superstition. A patient believes the diagnosis of cancer to be a death sentence. However, the phenomenon of self willed death is only effective if the person believes in the power of the curse. And I thought that is very, very important. And that's why I say we look at our thoughts are we going to believe in this are we going to give power to the idea of cancer occurring again, at some point in the future, or the idea of cancer overtaking our lives, ending our lives, at the cost of withdrawing from life, and missing out on it entirely. So I think that there are kind of two sides to this coin. There's the side where there's that paralytic fear that they talked about in that article, and the withdrawal from life and the I don't want to do anything, because it's inevitable that cancer will come back. And then I think that there's another side to that coin, which is you don't necessarily live in a lot of fear of cancer coming back, you might feel pretty good about where you're at. But you still have a failure to thrive, you still are in the jacket that doesn't fit because you haven't been able to move forward with your life. And I think that a lot of that has to do the failure to thrive, with the failure to plan and to take actions that help you to be forward focused. Because when we don't have goals in life, when we don't have a vision of who I want to be in a year from now and who I want to be in five years from now and what I want my life to look like and 10 years from now, that we're just kind of floating here on the waves just waiting, bouncing around what's life gonna give to me what's life going to do to me, we're not being intentional about creating the change and building the life we want to live. That's a big part of what we talk about in the better than before breast cancer program. If you want a life that's better than before breast cancer, it requires change. It requires some changing some of the ways that you think it requires evaluating some of the things you do to support yourself. And there's definitely a future focus in that. I'll often say to my clients as we're coaching, what would your future self tell you to do now? So in the interim, winds were some of these tweets that I shared with you. If you were just saying, I just I can't do anything past three months, then what would your future self 10 years from now say to you right now? Well, my future self, look at me right now and say, Laura, you can do this. It's okay. You can go past three months. I'm here. I'm waiting for you. What would my future self Tell me? And I think that's very, very important. But sometimes it's hard to get to that thought you may be listening to me now and thinking, How do I know what my future self is going to think. And that's why I believe it is not just the desire to think forward and to have that forward vision. But it actually requires taking action to help yourself be forward focused. So this reminds me last week, I think it was last week, I did a workshop for my members. And it was called forgiveness on the A line, the A line meaning the action line, what are actions we take to forgive? Because sometimes we want to forgive, we want to let go, whether we're forgiving ourselves, someone else, something else. But we can't get to a forgiving thought. It can be really difficult. So we work through that. And we use some tools to say what actions can we get to what actions do you take, that bring you to a place where you feel more open to being forgiving? And I think that this is why planning is so important. When we find ourselves in that place of lack of motivation. I saw a tweet in there that said, I don't even know why bother, I just get up and say whatever, I have no control. Oh my gosh, talk about failure to thrive. Right. So clearly, that person in that state is having difficulty grasping a thought that's going to move them forward into the future. So what actions can we take to help us move forward, be forward focused, and have hope, and have the desire to create a future life that we want. And notice I say that we want, right, not just one that is just the hamster wheel kind of going over the same thing again and again, and the jacket of lifestyle not fitting properly, but something you really and truly want, how do you want to live. And I believe that one of the most valuable actions in that is planning. So it's an interesting thing. Every time I put out a program, that first week of the program, we take for planning, for putting time for you on the calendar for putting time aside to say this is the time that I'm going to watch the videos or go to the coaching calls, spend time on me so that I get the value that I desired to have, so that this program that I invest in, gets me to that future self gets me closer to the future self, I want to be calm, which is the reason you do something like that in the first place. Right. And when I first started learning about how to create online programs, and the first thing someone told me is Okay, the first thing you do is time blocking, planning. And I thought, what, that's so boring, like, Why in the world would someone want to do that. And then I started teaching coaching courses, I started teaching coaching programs, and I saw the value and the importance of taking that time to plan for yourself. I even have a course in the better than before breast cancer a mini course creating time for you, because it's so very important. And it translates not just from our day to day life, but it translates into us having a vision for our future. If you can sit and write things down, for instance, a story I shared with you where I was asked to write down my 25 year goal? Well, if you were asked to write down a five year goal, say, and you find that your brain just comes to a complete halt, or you find your brain start freaking out, how can I plan for five years? What if something goes wrong? What if I have cancer? How am I going to know? Well, nobody's gonna know ever, under any circumstances, whether you have had cancer or haven't no one knows what's going to happen between now and five years from now. So of course, we have to build flexibility and we have to be open to changing and shifting with life. But taking the time to write down what you want for your life. Where you want to be in your life is a valuable action that helps you start to see the thoughts that are getting in the way of you thinking for your future. I think I've shared on the show before that one of the practices I have is writing a life to do list on a daily basis. You know, and it's so interesting because you In this last year, some of the things that are on my to do list have happened like watching my son graduate seeing my daughter getting engaged, and now I've got seeing her wedding. And I keep putting future plans on there. I'm writing plans and planning out my vacation and my experience from when I turned 60 years old, writing things down, actually looking at prices, looking at what flights are going to be in planning, gets my brain in this place where it's like, yeah, I'm gonna be there, I'm gonna be there. And I'm going to be feeling good. And I'm going to enjoy that, right? This is what my life is going to look like in the future. And then as any thoughts come up, when I'm trying to plan it, I can work through them, I can drop the fear because first you have to be aware of what's stopping you before you can do any work on it. Now, going back to my thought that isn't that boring, like what the heck, you just start off your your course with planning and doing a calendar. And I looked back at my own life. And all of the times when people would say schedule this or plan that all the daily planners that I bought that never had anything written in them. And I look at that, and I compare it to my life now, where I love my planner, I friggin love it. Because something I realized at some point in my life at probably a really painful point when I had forgotten one thing too many or lost my keys one too many times. And I realized I got to sit down and get the stuff on paper, I've got to sit down and get this plan together. I don't like running around like a chicken with my head cut off, I need a plan. Because I want more time for fun. I used to think if you have a plan, that just means there's no fun, everything's built into the schedule, everything is on paper, you don't get to have any fun. And then I realized the more self care I wanted in my life, the more I wanted to live a life by design, the more planning I had to do, because I had to look at the action line, I had to look at the actions I needed to take, in order to have fun, I needed to look at the actions I needed to take to make the things happen that I'd committed to happening and have whitespace in my life, for walking, for meditation, for sitting in the morning and having a long, slow cup of coffee, for preparing the food I want to eat, for spending the time I want to spend with my family, my friends, my children, for having flexibility in my life. If I wanted all of that I had to become a planner. And another example of that is coming up next month, I have a couple of short trips planned. But in order to go on those trips, and be able to be fully present in the trip with the people I want to spend time with, I am doing a lot of planning for before I leave, because I have a lot of things happening in my business next month. So I need to get it all done, I have to have a plan. And then I have no stress. And I have no worries. And when I get to where I want to be I get to be present. And I don't have to think about something not being completed. So that's why I say that the planning piece, taking the action to plan can kind of have this beautiful reverse energy. When you take that time and you sit down and plan and you see the thoughts that come up. It can reverse things and then you can start coming to the thoughts that let you think forward into your future. You can start seeing the thoughts that say, we'll hear like for instance, there was another tweet on there that said, oh, I need to buy a new car. But what happens if I end up back in chemo at some point? Well, what if you never end up back in chemo?

Laura Lummer 18:44
What if you get to just drive a lovely new car for 10 years, 15 years until you want another new car? Why do we not choose to have our brain go in that direction? Because it is a choice for us? I saw something that said I wanted to remodel my house. But now No way I have to hold on to this money in case I need it for cancer. But what if you never need it? How long are you gonna sit there and a house falling apart around you? Because you're in fear. And you're afraid to think forward in the life that you want to live? This is so important. So when we can get that down on paper and plan, it kind of brings that just up to the surface more where we can see wow, look at what I'm thinking and look at how thinking is giving power to cancer. So when I see tweets, like people saying or any kind of comment where people are saying things like cancer, ruin my life, I'm angry at cancer. I say okay, here's my coaching. Here's my coaching for that statement. I'm angry at cancer. It has taken so much from me. If you hear yourself say something like that, if you hear yourself thinking something like that, that's a time to stop and go Hold on The only thing that can keep me from living my life to my best ability, I mean, some days if you're in treatment or if you're on meds and you're really sick, you're not gonna get up and be, you know, going running five K's. But to the best of your ability in the day in the moment, how full can you make your life? The only thing that stops you from that is the way you're thinking about it. Oh, I did have cancer, but two and a half years out of cancer in remission with no evidence of disease? How can I help myself feel safe enough to make a five year plan? How can I help myself feel safe enough to plan a trip for next year to make a list and think about all the fun things I want to do in my life? And then start looking at each step I can take to make those things happen. Right? So when you hear yourself saying or thinking cancer did this to me, remember, you have power in come back and look at that and say, What am I telling myself here? Why am I not doing the things I want to do in my life? What's keeping me from stepping out of this fear into fun? At the end of that article in Stanford Medicine that I shared with you, I want to read you another quote. It says, Be bold, be adventuresome, and be willing to experience each day to the fullest to enhance your enjoyment of life. As long as fear suffering and pain can be controlled, life can be lived fully until the last breath. Each of us has the capacity to live each day a little better. But we need to focus on both purpose and goals and set into action a realistic daily planning, they mean there's the buzzword, often altered many times. And that's important, we need to be open to altering the plan. And this is to help us achieve them. These resources are the foundation of the will to live only by using the power of the will to live nourished by hope. can we achieve the sublime feelings of knowing and experiencing the wonders of life and appreciate its meanings through vital living? I love that it's kind of a long quote as a whole paragraph. I love that. And I think that one of the really important things is to say it may be altered many times when I work with people on time blocking on time planning. They'll say I tried that. But it fell apart, I put a schedule and then I couldn't do it. Of course not. That's always going to happen. That's part of time blocking and planning and scheduling. It's not always going to work. And that's why you do because when you write it down and you see the pieces that do work and the pieces that don't work, then you learn to flex it around, you learn to move pieces to where they need to be, you learn to look at the pieces of the plan that you honor, because they're super important. They're non negotiable. Like I said, my exercise is non negotiable. My meditation time my walk non negotiable. It's just not happening. I'm doing it. I'm not giving it up. And so when I write down the plan, I write down the time I wake up and when I start my walk, and when I start my exercise, it's a part of my plan for the day. Now, I said non negotiable. And I'm going to retract that a little bit. The other day, my granddaughter called and said, Hey, Dad has to go here. Can you take me to summer camp, which was a couple hour drive? Yes, of course. So I changed my morning plan. And I made that drive with her. And I figured out how to get exercise in some other points in the day. That's the flexibility. So when we say I tried to have a plan, so I could have more time for myself and more fun, but it just didn't work. Don't give up. That's the point of it. Nothing is ever going to flow exactly the way we put it out there. So give yourself space and give yourself grace, to figure out the plan, knowing that the plan is part of your future vision for your life so that you can let go of fear and you can embrace more fully living and creating whitespace to enjoy your life. All right, I hope that helps someone because man, it breaks my heart to see tweets like that posts like that. I just hate to think of anyone out there whether you're recovering from cancer in remission from cancer in cancer treatment or not missing out on life because we're telling ourselves a story that really can be dug into and extracted and kind of unwoven and when that happens and we unweave it we see this beautiful picture of life that we can actually step into. If you need more help than that. I invite you to come and join me in the better than before breast cancer membership. You can find all the information at the breast cancer recovery coach.com forward slash life coaching, you will get live coaching, you will have an amazing experience with wonderful women who are all working towards creating a life that's better than before breast cancer. It's an amazing experience and got some fantastic exciting stuff coming up in July because July is a really big month of celebration for me. All right, thank you so much for listening. I'll talk to you again next week. And until then, Please be good to yourself. I'll talk to you soon.

Speaker 2 25:41
You've put your courage to the test laid all your doubts your mind is clearer than before your hardest, wanting more. Your futures Give it all you know you've been waiting on