In this season of abundance and gratitude, it’s the perfect time to notice how your own words can create or keep you from seeing the abundance in your life.

Gratitude is the key to creating more abundance in your life. When you have a practice of directing your energy into the things you’re grateful for, it’s easier to see the abundance that already surrounds you.

In this episode, I’ll give you a simple practice that you can easily incorporate into your life to skyrocket your gratitude and your ability to think more abundantly.

A gratitude practice doesn’t require journals and hours of reflection.

A simple shift in the language you use can shift your perspective and the energy in your life.

Referred to in this episode:

30% Off Black Friday Sale

Free Abundance, Gratitude, and Sleep lesson

Read the full transcript:

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, and welcome to episode 218 of the breast cancer recovery coach podcast. I'm your host, Laura Lummer. And this show is going to come out Thanksgiving weekend so it will air the Friday after Thanksgiving. So I thought that there could be no better show to talk about abundance and gratitude, and to also share a lot of gratitude with you on the show. Now, if you're a regular listener to the podcast, you probably heard last week that I have a free lesson available on abundance, and gratitude and sleep and actually how establishing a gratitude practice and training your brain to think more abundantly, rings more peace reduces stress in your life, and leads to a better quality of sleep, which is the foundation of so many things in our health and supporting our wellness. So I want to remind you that that's available through November 30.

So go to my website, the breast cancer recovery coach.com forward slash joy and download that free lesson. That's a lesson that actually I took out of my program, the 90 days of wellness, because I just thought it was such a great lesson for this time of year and I wanted to share it with everybody. So you can access it until November 30. It's completely free the breast cancer recovery coach.com forward slash Joy please go and get that. And speaking of the 90 days of wellness as with any of my coaching programs becoming you the eight week reinvention after breast cancer, in 90 days of wellness, where we explore deep health, all of the aspects that contribute to your well being not just food and exercise, but everything that loans itself and lends itself to supporting your wellness and your peace of mind emotionally, spiritually, mentally, physically, all those good things. And of course, the better than before breast cancer life coaching membership. And because it's Black Friday, all of those are 30% off, which is something I never do, I usually don't discount my programs. But there have been a couple of occasions, special anniversaries special events where I have and this is one of them.

So you can get 30% off when you enroll in any of my programs, even in my VIP coaching program, which gives you three months of membership and better than before breast cancer and also 12 One hour one on one private sessions with me. And you can get all those at 30% off beginning now until Monday, November 28 2022 at midnight Pacific Standard Time. And it's not just because it's Black Friday. And it's not just because it's Thanksgiving, but it's because Thanksgiving weekend is always my birthday weekend. So my birthday is on November 26. And the code to get 30% off on everything is happy B day. So go to my website, the breast cancer recovery coach.com and click on work with Laura, you'll see that up at the top of the menu and you'll see all my programs, get the details on choose one that works for you get this screaming deal. And all you have to do is enter Happy bday. And I'll know you're wishing me a happy birthday, and you're doing something good for yourself as well. All right, friends, let's get into this, I'm not only going to talk about the language that we use, and how our language moves us into scarcity or into abundance. But I'm also going to share my perspective on gratitude, and in expressing and practicing gratitude in your life even when it's difficult. And I'm going to share with you some beautiful gratitudes that some of my members sent to me to be able to share on this podcast. And I think that's so important because there's such a broad range of things that we can be grateful for. And we're all at different places in our lives. So I think it's really cool to hear other people's gratitudes and it gives us this larger perspective. And when it comes to the language that we use for our lives, and when that language moves us into scarcity is exactly that is exactly perspective. That gets smaller when we're not speaking to ourselves using abundant language, training our mind to think in more abundant ways.

So I'm going to give you a couple of examples because I think that The first step in changing anything in your life is awareness. It's becoming aware of what you're doing, and how what you're doing what you're saying how your thinking is impacting your life. When you start to have that awareness, then you start to catch yourself more and more frequently. And that's how we start to change the way our brain works. It's how we start to change the way we talk to ourselves and about our lives, and about other people. And when we practice using abundant language, and using language of gratitude, this just opens more options in our life and opens our mind to more opportunities. It helps us to be more curious about the way that we're approaching our lives. And it helps us to be aware of where we're limiting ourselves. Because limitations may have existed in your past. And that's something I work with women on all the time, when they come up to a point in life. And let's face it, breast cancer is that pivotal point, right, we get a diagnosis, we face a life threatening illness. And it's a very critical point for change in many, many people's lives. When we come out of treatment, and we start to look forward and say, What do I want my life to look like? You know, I talked about the jacket that doesn't fit like this life doesn't seem like it fits right anymore. We often hold ourselves back from moving forward into this amazing life that we want to live and create an experience for ourself, because of things that have or had not happened in the past. And we tell ourselves, I've never done that before.

I don't know how to do that. And in doing so we limit ourselves. And even those statements, and those types of thoughts. Keep us in scarcity. When we tell ourselves something can't be done, because we don't know how that's not an abundant way of thinking. In doing that. It's very limiting because it says here's the things that have happened in the past. And so I'm going to decide that my future is going to work the same as my past. Right there, I hope you can hear it was just me saying that out loud. We're totally limiting ourselves. We're saying that whatever's happened in my life up until this point is all it can be. That there's no other option here. That in itself is a type of language and the type of thinking that I want to see you become more aware of, because when you are, that is key to creating change for yourself. So I said a minute ago, that having a practice of gratitude is something that's so important, especially when it's gratitude, when it's not easy, meaning we're having adversity, we experience adversity, and that can make it more difficult grace, to use the language of abundance, and to use the language of gratitude and to practice gratitude in our lives. So something happened the other day, I'll share the story with you.

My two of my sons had come out to visit from Colorado, and they stayed for the weekend. And we were doing our Thanksgiving celebration together. This was last weekend. And my husband and I went out with my younger son, he's 23 years old. And you know, for people of his age right now, for all of us, we're seeing a tremendous amount of adversity in the world, in society. And this is not a political podcast. And I'm not going to talk politics. But it would be silly of me not to acknowledge that there's a lot of adversity around us right now. When that's happening and be very difficult. It can be difficult to step into change, accept change, be open to different perspectives and conversations. And then we become very critical, critical of anything that is different from what we've experienced in the past. So we're having this conversation, and my son starts to tell me about why he doesn't want to have children. He starts going into all the things that are wrong in the world wrong, according to him, right? Wrong. According to his perspective, as he's saying this, I can hear him getting more and more emotional. You know, he's getting riled up. He's getting angry, he's getting frustrated. And although some of the things that he said have truth to them, the focus and the way he directs his energy into only the negative aspects of what's happening, created a tremendous heavy energy.

We were in the car and I was like, whoa, hey, I'm feeling like crushing right here crushing energy. This is very, very heavy, but it It also is very limiting. And I asked him, as I often ask my clients and as I often ask myself, how is thinking that way useful for you, you know, when you don't have to make a decision to have a child at 23 years old, but look at how you limit your life by only focusing on what's bad in the world, and what's challenging in the world, and what's difficult in the world today. He's a grown man, he can make any decision he wants whether or not he wants to be a parent at some point in his life. But I wanted to use that example, because my son, for instance, has an incredible life. He is so smart, he's very handsome. He lives really the dream right now. He's living the dream, working and snowboarding and living in Aspen. And he's got a great circle of friends. He's super healthy. He's got great ideas for his future. And there's a tremendous amount of abundance in his life. But when he redirects his thoughts to what's wrong in the world, his language, his body language, everything changes. And the end of that conversation when he finished his monologue was there's just no hope. And I don't think that there's any more traumatic place to be in life than in a place of hopelessness.

It actually that statement, there is no hope isn't true at all, and isn't useful. And I use that because I think that I don't think that I see that once we have cancer, once we've had the experience of cancer, even if we are living a cancer, free life, or learning to manage cancer as a chronic disease as a chronic illness, and something we have to come to terms with in our life, we have a tendency, because we have a brain, a human brain with a negative bias. And because we've been through traumatic experience, we often have a tendency to look at life and say, I want to do these things. But what's the use, I might get cancer again, anyway. And we think from a very limiting very scarce perspective, we often use the language of I have to do now one of the biggest challenges that I deal with a lot with my clients, is this belief that somehow now life is unfair, because I have to deal with all of these doctor's appointments, right? Even if you get the clearance that okay, you have no evidence of disease, we still have bloodwork, we still have scans, we have to deal with managing our mind around skin xiety, whenever a scan comes up, and we tell ourselves the story of now look at this, I have to deal with this. And I want to offer just the slightest change in language when you catch yourself doing that. Because I'll often have clients that say to me, I'm frustrated, I'm tired, I'm angry, I shouldn't have to go through this right? I shouldn't have to manage all of these doctor's appointments.

And that's such an interesting statement. Because why shouldn't you have to? Where did that rule come from? It's interesting to explore that and get really curious about it should nobody have to, should biological beings, like human bodies somehow be above getting cancer, or any other disease. So it's an interesting thing to say and to think through. Because underneath that, when we use those kinds of statements, I shouldn't have to do this, or I'm tired of this. We have to go a little bit deeper. Sometimes you're in that moment. And it's important in that moment to say I'm experiencing frustration, and to process that frustration. But I want to offer just the smallest change in language. And I heard about this, I may have even talked it on previous talked about it on a previous podcast. I heard this years ago, many, many years ago. And I think that I could be wrong about the source. But I think the source was Sharon Salzberg, and she is a Buddhist nun. And she's written many books, and she does many talks and speeches. The the statement was when you catch yourself saying, I have to, if you just switch that, to, like get to, you could change your life. And I gave you a lot of fun and I started to practice it. I thought I'm gonna try that out. At the time. I remember very distinctly that I was in a job I was not very happy with i It wasn't something that I found fulfilling. But it was something that provided really well for my family. And it was something that allowed me to have a lot of freedom in my in my life as well. At the job itself was something I did not enjoy. And so I would catch myself using that language. I have to I have to go to work I have to sit on the freeway. And when I do learn that lesson. And I would catch myself and I thought, every time I say I have to do this,

I feel a little stressed, I have to do this. And the truth is I don't have to do anything, I could choose not to work, I could, I could choose a lot of things, I'd have to face the consequences of those choices. But those are choices I could make. So it wasn't even a true statement to say, I have to write, I have to, for instance, in my life, now, if I said, I have to take my chemotherapy, I have to go get bloodwork every two weeks. Well, I don't have to, and a lot of people choose not to when it comes to dealing with cancer, if I say I have to eat all organic food, or I have to be careful to stay away from sugar. It's not true. Many people don't, and nobody has to. But we do choose to oftentimes, we decide that this thing is something I think will benefit my life. And so I choose to do it. So when we replace the word have, with the word get, I get to let's can really begin to shift things I get to go to work today. Hmm, it's kind of hard to feel frustrated, when you realize I have a job, and I get to go to work, I get to take chemotherapy today, that's quite a blessing, something I feel a lot of gratitude for, because many people don't have access to chemotherapy. And this medication that I take is extending my life and has contributed tremendously to healing my body. So I think we can get stuck in this the scarcity and this negativity of I have to choose. And now this has to happen in my life. And I have to do this, I have to go there, when we can start to become aware of that. And notice that every one of these opportunities in our life is a get to, and a choice, then we're moving more into abundant thinking. And we're creating a practice of gratitude. When I say I get to go to work today, I get to record a podcast today, I get to go to a yoga class today, I get to take a shower today because I have more clean water and access to soap and shampoo. That in itself becomes a practice of gratitude. When you begin to notice I get to go to bed today,

in this warm cozy bed in my safe home, I get to have breakfast today, I get it fast. Today, I get to choose how to manage my health. When it comes to managing our health, there's a lot of half twos that we do. And I just want you to notice that when we do those have issues around food around exercise, that you're moving into a place of stress and scarcity. And when you think about just language of I have to notice how that feels to you. To me, it feels forced, I have to do this, I have to do that it's filled, pressured, I feel stressed, I feel my body get a little bit tense in my chest, I feel there's kind of a pressure of OH GOD, I have to I have to. But the fact is, I don't even have to record this podcast, I could decide today. You know what, podcasts take a lot of time and a lot of energy. And I'm just gonna do it anymore. I don't have to do it. I get to do it. And I choose to do it. So when I talk about abundance and gratitude, I'm not talking about just your every day, I can't complain, I shouldn't complain, I should just be grateful to be alive, I should just be grateful to still be here. I'm talking about establishing a practice of gratitude that helps you see really the fullness of your life, the blessings in your life, even when they're difficult. You know, I just said, I get to take chemotherapy, you may have heard that and thought, oh, yeah, I just can't wrap my arms around that right now. That doesn't feel like a blessing. But to me, it feels like a blessing. Because I believe it's helping me heal. And so for me, I'm very grateful I have access to that. So when we start to think in a different way, and we even feel resistance come up to changing that we feel resistance to choosing a different word that shifts a sentence and shifts the way we approach our day and our brain is like no, no, no, no, I don't want to go there. I don't want to go there. That's great. It's great to realize that because then you can see okay, there's some resistance there. There's something for me to work on.

Why am I resisting this so much? But then there's also the flip side of it. If I say I was in a job that I don't like then I adopted a practice of gratitude where I said I get to go to work today. Does it mean that And suddenly, I don't want to change that job. Does it mean that somehow now that job becomes more fulfilling? No, it didn't. But what it meant is that I felt better going and doing this thing that I realized this is really a benefit in my life. I'm very fortunate. But I'm not fulfilled by it. And so I can recognize the blessing in my life, I can use gratitude language, when I approach things that are still challenging, and don't feel 100% where I want to be on then I can step into creating more opportunity. Because when we're not using the language of gratitude, the language of abundance, the thoughts of abundance, when we're not opening ourselves to the opportunities that exist in life, it's draining, right, it's stressful. And it's draining. Like the example I gave you about my son and the examples I've been giving you about the way we speak about our day to day activities. When we use scarcity language, when we use language that creates stress, it's exhausting, because it takes so much more energy, feel the difference therapies that I get to go to the grocery store today, versus I have to go to the grocery store, I hate grocery shopping, feel the difference in that energy, I get to go to a grocery store today. I mean, come on, that's an incredible blessing. Even I live in the United States, even in the United States, where you have lots of food and access to food everywhere some people can't afford food in so it's a tremendous blessing that I get to go and purchase groceries. So it's these small little things in our life that we do take for granted, or that we look at as kind of a pain and an errand and I have to take care of this. And if we can switch that just a little bit, just that little language, that little word that have to, to get to and start noticing how much more abundance that creates in your life. It's really pretty amazing. Because when we open ourselves to that, and now we start to feel the energy of abundance. And now we start to recognize, holy moly.

Now I have so much love so much in my life, then we become more satisfied with the life that were in with its challenges with its opportunities. Because recall, when we're recognizing the opportunities in the blessings, it doesn't mean that we have this toxic positivity, we just ignore things that still need work on effort. But when we're practicing gratitude, language, and abundant language, we feel more charged, we feel more energy, we feel more fulfilled. And that gives us the energy to put into creating the change we want to create. Before I move into the gratitudes, from some of my amazing members who sent in these audio, little snips, I just want to leave you with that practice with the requests for you to try this, to try changing your half twos to get tattoos. And start to see when you do that when you practice that gratitude language, how much more you notice the abundance that already exists in your life. And when you come from a place of abundant living, you will be amazed at the opportunities that you see that have been there all along. So give it a shot. And come and let me know that works for you. DM me on Instagram at Laura, the breast cancer recovery coach, by me on Facebook, Laura Lummer, the breast cancer recovery coach amuseum Find or shoot me an email, and let me know how this practice goes for you. And I just want to say before I leave that, why I'm so very, very, very grateful for you. I'm grateful because you listen to the show, you give me the opportunity to do the work, I believe I came into this world to do the work that is more fulfilling than anything I've ever known. And for that I'm incredibly and eternally grateful. So thank you so much for being here. And we'll talk to you again next week. Take care.

Unknown Speaker 24:28
Hi, this is Cheri. And today I'm so grateful for the awareness, support and guidance of this community, led by Laura to explore and live out my authentic self. Having the gift of time is everything. And I get to intentionally live and be who I want to be the best version of myself. I'm so so grateful to be here now.

Unknown Speaker 24:50
Hi, this is Maryanne Eller and I'm thankful that at the age of 58 I finally understand that I cannot control other People I do know that I have the power to control myself and my feelings and thoughts. And when I feel that I'm having trouble doing that, I'm very thankful for the community that supports me and is able to help me remember who I am and how important and loved I am.

Unknown Speaker 25:24
This is AMITA I am so grateful for Laura, her podcast her amazing coaching program and her inspiration in the way she lives her life and encourages us to live ours has truly changed my life. And the way I see the world. This is Kelly today

Unknown Speaker 25:41
I'm grateful for trees.

Unknown Speaker 25:44
This is Avril Ferguson and I'm grateful for finding the breast cancer recovery coach podcast as this has been a transformational resource for me.