There are some things I see women do a lot of: 

-Criticize themselves 

-Judge themselves 

-Belittle themselves 

-Minimize their accomplishments 

There are some things I want to see women do more of: 

-Praise themselves 

-Embrace their self-worth 

-Set healthy boundaries 

-Acknowledge their value  

We start a new year in two days, and I'd love to see you take the habit of celebrating yourself into that new year. 

Wouldn't it be great to make a habit of giving yourself credit, accepting compliments, and knowing you deserve all the best? 

Check out this week's episode and see if it inspires you to celebrate yourself and the gifts you bring to this world. 

Referred to in this episode: 

The Four Pillars of Breast Cancer Recovery Coaching Program 

Better Than Before Breast Cancer Life Coaching Membership 

Read the full transcript here:

Laura Lummer  00:00

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.

Laura Lummer  00:32

Welcome to Episode 223, of the breast cancer recovery coach podcast. I'm your host, Laura Lummer. And this podcast is the last show for 2022. It's hard for me to believe this year has flown by the show will come out on December 30. And when the show comes out, I will be in Iceland, hopefully looking at the Northern Lights. Because I have an extremely generous sister who has gifted a trip to me. We went in 2021 in June to Iceland. And we had an amazing, amazing time. And ironically, that trip was gifted to me by another sister of mine who knew that one of my bucket list things was to be somewhere that's 24 hours of sunshine. And we had such an amazing trip that I'm going back. I'll be leaving on December 27 with my sister, my granddaughter, my niece and nephew and their significant others. And we're going back now when it's dark for most of the day, and we're going to go to ice caves. And we're going to see the northern lights. And we're just going to have an amazing time and actually see what is supposed to be one of the most spectacular new year's eve fireworks show. Ever. Because Iceland the whole island just goes off apparently there's no restrictions when it comes to fireworks. And there's just one hell of a firework show, which I'm super, super excited about. So when you hear this know that I will be in Iceland probably freezing my butt off because I'm from Southern California. And whenever the weather drops below 70 degrees, I'm shivering and putting on a parka. But anyway, I'm looking forward to it. And I'm wearing lots of layers. So as I think about that, as I think of wrapping up this year, and starting off launching a new year, so many things come to mind. And I think that a lot of times when the new year starts, we're just so excited for the new year, it's something that feels fresh, new. And if you've had a rough year of 2022 was a rough year, like 2020 was hard just about everybody in the world, then we all look forward to the next year being better, which is kind of interesting, because it's as if it's just going to be better on its own. We think of it in terms like Oh 2020 Do or hopefully that'll just be different. But it's such an interesting thing, because even though 2020 was a tough year for everyone, and you're listening, you've had cancer or have cancer. So there may be specific gears that stand out in your mind that were very tough getting a diagnosis or, well, their struggles. I mean, we all go through struggles in life, I can think of very difficult years years of loss, years of divorce and pain and heart attacks and struggles with children, you know, many, many times that there have been difficult periods of life to get through for me and for just about every human being. I know. I mean, there are struggles in life. That's how it is. But I also knew that there are wonderful things in life. There are wonderful and amazing, miraculous, magical, love filled moments. And I don't think we give enough time. To those. I don't think we celebrate the beauty and the guests enough. And you know, I've talked about this so much. And you know this, our brains have this negative bias. And as a result of that negative bias, we often look back at the things that were challenging and tough and nothing wrong with that we learn we grow. There's a lot of good stuff that comes out of difficult times. There's a lot of good stuff that comes out of good times and achievements. And I want to talk about that a little today because I hope to encourage you to celebrate that for yourself and to really look at how amazing you are. And before I do that, I just want to remind you, this is coming up to the deadline of the GRI enrollment for the four pillars of breast cancer recovery coaching experience. That experience is kicking off January 1, the doors open the course opens and you have until midnight New Year's Eve to enroll. When you enroll you get a special early bird discount the price changes on January 1 And I'm doing that because you're trusting me by like buying a house sight unseen Not really because you know me through the podcast or you know my programs because you've been in them or heard about them. But because of your pre enrollment. I want to give you a special offer for investing In yourself for this new year and kicking it off and making it something fabulous, but four pillars of breast cancer recovery coaching experience is going to blow your mind. It is an incredible experience. And I know that because I've already put dozens of women through it. And I've gone back and made it even better than it was. And it was amazing the first several times around. So I encourage you to join, and there's two ways for you to do that. One is just to go to my website, the breast cancer recovery coach.com forward slash pillars and enroll just in the coaching experience, or to join the better than before breast cancer life coaching membership, because the first time I'm delivering this experience, I'm doing it inside that membership with all of my members and with anyone who enrolls in just the coaching experience itself. So I hope that's not confusing, it's like, there will always be two, there's two programs, my life coaching membership and the four pillars coaching experience. So you can do that experience just on its own, or be in the membership and get all the goodness it's in the membership, the whole library of everything that's in there. All the other programs I've ever created are inside, the better than before breast cancer membership. So you get 90 days of wellness, you get becoming you, you get my challengers, you get the five day sugar reset, all that is inside the membership. So when you pre enroll, you get to do this coaching experience inside the membership as a live coaching member. So that just offers you even more bonuses, even more special content, and even more coaching calls with me. The next time people go through the coaching experience, when they just go through it on its own without doing it inside the live coaching membership, it's a little bit of a different schedule. So I encourage you to pre enroll, get the best deal get even more value for the best deal. And come and work with me for the next four months. Like we're not just going to kick off this year. But I'm going to keep you strong and support you through the whole first four months of the year. It is an incredible transformational experience, and you are going to absolutely love it. Get all the details at the breast cancer recovery coach.com forward slash pillars and enroll, enroll in either the pillars or in the live coaching membership to do it. And you'll see all of that right on the page that I just shared with you. Okay, so let's come to celebrating successes. So I wanted to do a little bit of a recap, because towards the end of 2021, right around Thanksgiving, it was my birthday. And I did a podcast that said that there were three areas I was going to focus on for 2022. I wanted to look back this year. But those areas they've been top of mind for me the whole time, there have been something that I think about and something that I've worked on. And I wanted to give you a little bit of an update on how those went for me and how I'm celebrating them now and what I've learned. And I hope that from sharing this, you will learn to look back at everything that you've done for yourself over this year 2022 And carry that forward with you every single day. It's so important that we celebrate ourselves every single day, rather than look back and hold on to things that didn't serve us and belittle ourselves and tear ourselves down and compare ourselves and all of the things we do to make life harder. Let's make life easier, better, more joyful. And let's make 2023 a year filled with self love and self compassion, a little bit of grace and a lot of whitespace a lot of whitespace to enjoy your life and the people and the things in it that bring you even more joy that make your life better because they're a part of your life. Okay. So there were three areas that I said I was going to focus on for 2022. And those areas were releasing self judgment, letting go of comparison, and not turning to emotional dependence, like really being rooted in emotional independence. So I'm going to tell you a little bit about how that went, and what it looked like for me. And maybe this can help you carry some of these into 2023 for yourself. So when it comes to dropping self judgment, I gotta tell you, I'm very proud of myself. I feel like that was a big accomplishment in 2022. And I'll tell you why. I used to be someone who was very hard on myself. I called myself very competitive and something that I learned from being a person who thought of themselves as being extremely competitive. Was that in competitive really has a huge element of self judgment in it. It's this weird mentality that I had that's like I have to do the hardest. I have to be the best. It has To be the fastest, it's got to be just right. And all that is just BS. Like, we're never always the best. I mean, I guess there's some superheroes and some super athletes and some extreme experts in fields. But for the most part, we all just do the best we can. But one of the things I learned about self judgment, and I think this really started with my first diagnosis of breast cancer in 2011, was it really made things hard on me being competitive, which was just a euphemism for judging myself if I wasn't the best telling myself, I wasn't good enough. If I didn't start every level, expert, right? If I didn't go out to serve, which I haven't done it years, but years ago, when I went by, it wasn't good. Well, I don't want to do it, because I can't be the best at it. You can't get on a surfboard and be the best at it. The first time you get on a surfboard. I mean, it takes time, it takes practice, just like golfing or any other sport. But I felt the same way of you when I started yoga, I want to start yoga at level one, a beginner level, like, I don't want to be a beginner. There's so much judgment in that so much comparison, comparison was a second area that I was looking at in my life. But really think about that for yourself. Think about how much judgment is really involved in things you tell yourself a different story about, do you tell yourself? Well, I'm a perfectionist? What is a perfectionist, so much judgment in that, because you're saying everything I do has to be better than what anybody else did. I'm going to compare everything I do. And it has to be excellent, it has to be the best. And if it's not perfect, and I won't do it, which is really just kind of a buffer, and a reason not to do it because there is no perfection, and you can never achieve it. So when we look at things like self judgment, and we call them perfectionism, and we call them competitive, the competitive spirit, it's important to spend time with and look and say, Wow, when I hold myself to this standard, and I call it this thing, what I'm doing is judging myself incident saying, hey, self, I want to try something. And I want to see how it goes. I want to see what I can learn from it. I want to see how much I can enjoy it. Instead of that we start off with this looming dark cloud that's like it better be the best, it better be better than anything you see out there or better be better than what anybody else has done. And then it's really not fun. So one thing I learned about self judgment over the years, but really, really applied it in 2022 is that I'm tired of making myself miserable with self judgment. I'm only human, I make mistakes. And when I make those mistakes, I noticed them. I learn from them. And I don't beat myself up for days on it. In fact, I can recall, it was just at the beginning of this month, I had taken a trip to Florida. And usually when I'm traveling, like for instance, as you're listening to this podcast, I planned everything ahead of time, I've scheduled everything so that it opens and everything just flows on schedule, as I promised people. And in my life coaching membership, there's a video and an email and a lesson that goes out every Sunday that just keeps people informed and in touch and let them know what's coming and you know, kind of reviewing what's happened. And I completely forgot to open that I had a lesson set up. And I completely forgot to make it live to make it active for my members. So I flew home on Monday and I was on the plane from Florida heading back to California. When all of a sudden it dawned on me. Oh my god, I never made the lesson active. And then I just said to myself, well, it's too late now. I can't rewind Monday and make it Sunday again. So I'll get home, I'll take care of it. I'll send an email to my people. I'll give my apologies. And I'll ask for a little bit of forgiveness, a little bit of grace from them. And I'll be done. And I won't think about it all day long. And I won't beat myself up for it all week long. And I didn't I just gave myself that grace and said, Well, you know what? You were totally present on that vacation. You're 100% present with your grandkids and my stepdaughter, my husband, her whole family and then with my dear friends I visited afterwards. And you know what? I messed up on that stuff from a business perspective on something I promised. It was unintentional. But you know what, it all works out and all I can do is move forward. That is something that would not have happened years ago. years ago, I would have just been thinking, oh my god, you're so dumb. This is so stupid. This is so embarrassing. What are these people going to think of you? How are they going to trust you? But then I've realized as I became a Coach, and I've spent these years coaching and working and supporting other women. That one, those thoughts not only don't serve anybody, they don't help anybody, they don't make the situation better. They don't rewind time, so you can go back and fix it because we don't get do overs. God, that would be amazing, wouldn't it? And we don't get do overs. So why beat yourself up? Make yourself feel like shit. You messed up. What would you tell someone you love who messed up, we need to give them a little bit of space, a little bit of grace, we wouldn't be so judgmental this I hope gods. So what I've learned about self judgment has been amazing over this year. And it's also helped me to launch new programs. You know, I kind of played it small with things I released and coaching programs I released, I played it safe, and I played it small. And I had things on my list that I wanted to make happen in in 2022, I just made them happen. I just came out with the becoming a new program, I came out with 90 days of wellness, I created new free giveaways, how to eat without fear and guilt after breast cancer. I went back and redid the five day sugar challenge and created the five days sugar reset for breast cancer survivors. And I'm so happy that I let myself do that. Sometimes when I was creating these programs, there were some restrictions on my time. And so I put together the pages that informed people about what they were. And I'd look at those pages and say to myself, you could do so much better than that. But you know what better that you get out into the world to potentially support another person, then judge yourself and judge what you just created, and say it's not good enough to put out into the world, get it out there. And I got it out there. And I've supported so many more people because of that. So many more people who are new programs spoke to or specific programs spoke to. And so I encourage you when it comes to self judgment and comparison, to really ask yourself, why, why why? Why would you have that in your life? Why would you choose that way of thinking? How does it serve you in any way, shape or form? To compare yourself? You know, I can look at people who are really well known coaches, coaches that I've learned from and been in their masterminds or their study programs. And I can look at some of the things on their website, say, I mean, amazing, amazing. And I could compare myself to them and say, Well, I'm not going to put anything out there until it looks like them. And then I wouldn't be putting any value into the world. And neither will you. You each have a gift, a special gift. I don't know what it is, you know what it is something you do so well, a way you communicate a way you help people understand the way you can serve people. Or you can cook for people a way you can tell a story a way you can paint a picture, you have something in you, that gives value to the people around you and the value in your life. But if you hold on to self judgment and comparison, it stops the value from being in the world. And it stops other people from getting the value of the experience of your gift. So I hope that you'll take a moment as you listen this podcast and look at you're here. And really let yourself celebrate what you've given back to the world, the value you've put into the world. Even if you say it's no big deal, it's something little it doesn't matter. I think about him to share something that I saw with one of my members, then he works with people who have aphasia who can't find their words, who struggled to communicate. And she's just so friggin brilliant and comes up with these simple ways to explain how to better communicate with someone who has something going on in their brain that's affecting that. And she created this awesome holiday door for her office at work and explain to all of us in the membership, how she did it, and how she had one of her patients, sing a song and record it a patient who was suffering from aphasia and I just think, and that makes my heart glow. Like there's so much value in that than another patient who has trouble finding their words would go by and press Rudolph's red nose and listen to the song and have hope and have encouragement. That is a gift. Decorating that door is something to celebrate. Every time you put something in the world that gives comfort, joy, a smile, happiness, a feeling of safety to another human being. You celebrate that for yourself. Give that to yourself. Give that gift to yourself, acknowledge at the end of 2020 to look back and think of every little thing you can think of and don't judge yourself and don't say it wasn't good enough and don't say somebody else did it better. Think about everything you put into the world and embrace it and sell it read you, because you deserve that. Now the third thing that I said I was going to work on is emotional dependence that I would let go of that that I would be very cognitive, of when I allowed my feelings to be attached to someone else's behaviors. That's emotional dependence. When we walk around saying, You hurt me, you made me feel this way, you made me feel that way you make me not want to be around you. That's emotional dependence. That's when we say I'm giving up all of my power over how I feel. And I'm giving it to you. And if you don't behave the way I think you should behave, and if you don't say the things I think you should do, and if you don't clean the way, I think you should clean and if you don't look the way I think you should cook, or come home, the minute I think you should come home, if you aren't a person, I think you should be and instead, you just choose to be yourself. And that's not good enough. I'm going to choose to be upset by it. And I look back at my training at the Life Coach School, and how much concept of emotional independence has brought me so much power in this world has brought me so much power in my life, has made my life so much easier, has taught me to stop. And when I'm on the verge of saying, You acted like that now I feel like this, that I stopped myself and say, Laura, what are you making that mean to you? Why are you allowing yourself to feel this way, and blame someone else for it. And I have to tell you, that the practice of that, the practice of being emotionally independent, the commitment to letting go of emotional dependence, and to do the work on myself behind that brings so much peace, it has brought so much peace to my life. It has brought such a lightness to my life. And the women that I coach, I can 100% tell you, I see and hear from them the same thing, that once you start learning that lesson by practicing living that way, brings an incredible freedom into your life, you are no longer a pimp ball bouncing off of everyone else's actions, behaviors, lux snorts, giggles sighs whatever the hell they are, your emotions aren't tied to them. So by really practicing and committing at the beginning of 2020, to to let go of emotional D pendants. It helped me a lot with some things I talked about on this podcast that were real struggles. Some of them were with my adult children, seeing them make choices, that I normally would say that really hurts me. Those are the tough ones, right? It's always tough when with kids, because my belief system as a mom is that they should think the way I taught them to they know, they should treat me the way I think I should be treated at all times and say the things I want them to say. And they're adults, and they make their own choices, and they live their own lives. So I think that that was probably one of the biggest areas for me, in really making sure that I was focused on emotional dependence. And noticing when I felt hurt or sad or angry and taking the time and giving myself the space to first get right with myself in those instances, to first say, Oh, I'm really angry. What's going on here? What's the story? I'm telling myself? What's the expectation I'm putting on another human being to make me feel the way I want to feel in this situation. I feel like in this last year that has improved my relationship with myself, and my relationship with the people closest to me in my life. It's also helped me drop a lot of judgment from people who aren't really close to me, but people who I would normally go

Laura Lummer  24:01

spend time with that person or Oh, that person drives me crazy. And it's caused me when I noticed myself saying that to say, Okay, what's the problem here? Why are you allowing someone to annoy you? Why are you allowing someone to make you crazy? What's your belief about how that person should be? Why is it that you're not just accepting them for who they are? Why are you ruffling your own feathers here in this situation? And so it has helped me drop not only a lot of anxiety, angst, a lot of angst for myself, but notice places where I've just been really judgmental in my life towards others. So I think that the practice of letting go of emotional e pendants is something that is incredibly valuable, and that it goes so deep. Once you start practicing and you start noticing how many times you say to yourself, they hurt me they made me mad they disappointed me that you have to look and say like, wow, wow, are you making all the rules for all the people in the world what's happening here. And we start to give ourselves a little bit of grace and those around us a little bit more grace than they deserve. So I want to encourage you not to just celebrate the things that you did not do. But do celebrate those to celebrate the accomplishments at work, the accomplishments at home, but also celebrate those little victories you have for yourself and where you got your arms around your emotions. If you're someone who was newly diagnosed this year, if you're someone who finished treatment this year, and you've really dug in to support yourself, and support your healing, and give yourself time and space, support that celebrate that, you know, oftentimes I hear women judge that I hear women say, Oh, my God, I have to get back to this because I took too much time for myself, or was off all this time. And, you know, I gotta get back, I've got to do more for whatever the people are the work. And instead, I would encourage you to look back and say, I am so glad I took that time for myself, look back and say, Well, remember when my doctor, my husband, my boss, my spouse, my kids said, this has to happen now. And I said, I need time. celebrate that. Celebrate taking time for yourself over the course of this last year to treat yourself better, and set a higher standard for how you deserve to be loved and treated in this world. All right, so before we move into 2023, let's just take a breath here. Let's just stop. Before we ring in all of the beauty of a new year. Let's pop that champagne, and celebrate an amazing year of 2022 an amazing year of life. I look back on everything that it's filled this year. And no wonder it went so fast. Because it's been an incredible year. And I'm wrapping it up by celebrating with a group of people who I absolutely adore. And watching one of the most spectacular firework shows ever. And I hope you do this. I hope that you take that time and make end of the year a giant celebration for the amazing person that you are, and that you also look forward to what's coming in 2023. And remember that you have the power to make it an amazing year. Sometimes things just don't happen on their own life as 5050 We've got good and we've got bad. But we also always have a choice, to reframe, to learn to process and to grow and to choose joy. No one gets to make that decision for us. We are the ones who get to choose joy. So when you bring in that new year, don't think well I hope it's a better one. But make that commitment to yourself and say, Oh, I'm committing. These are the things I'm going to let go of. And these are the things I'm going to practice so that I decide to make it an amazing year, not just to wait and see what happens. Alright, so the happiest, happiest, happiest of New Year to all of you. And I have so many amazing things coming in 2023 that I cannot wait to share with you. So Happy New Year. Congratulations on everything. They filled your life in 2022 and I'll talk to you again next week. Until then, Please be good to yourself and expect other people to be good to you as well. Take care