Have you given up on making new year’s resolutions or setting new goals because they haven’t stuck in the past?

Or have you decided to give one another shot for 2023 but you really don’t know how you’re going to succeed at it?’

In this episode, I’ll give you three questions to consider that will help you see why your goals have fallen off the radar in the past and how to manifest what you want for yourself this year.

Contrary to popular belief, discipline and willpower aren’t the keys to successful behavior change.

When you support yourself with self-compassion, patience, space, and the right mindset, you’ll get a lot farther with your goals and you’ll have a lot less frustration.

Check out this week’s episode and get the right start at succeeding in whatever you want in 2023.

Referred to in this episode: 

90 Days of Wellness

Better Than Before Breast Cancer Life Coaching Membership 

Read the full transcript below:

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

Hello, and welcome. Happy New Year, you're listening to Episode 224 of the breast cancer recovery coach podcast. And I am your host, Laura Lummer. And I am thrilled to kick off the brand new year with you. There's just something so awesome about a new year isn't there? It just new beginnings, fresh start, we have all these great ideas about the new year. And it's those thoughts that are so exciting for us that help us to be excited. And that causes us to want to start new things. What do we always do at the beginning of the year, we start new goals, whether those are financial goals, or health goals, or relationship or travel or anything else, we start a new year and we say this year, this is what I'm going to do. And then typically, statistics show that by the beginning of March, those goals are behind you, meaning they fell off the radar. Now that they're done now that you've checked off the boxes, but for most people, they fell off the radar, I want to talk about all you can change that for 2023 how you can make sure that when March rolls around, you are still focused on your goal, you may have come up against obstacles. In fact, you probably most certainly will come up against obstacles, most of those obstacles are going to be coming from your own thoughts about what you're doing. But you can face those obstacles and you can make stuff happen for you. And I'm gonna talk about how you do that. And why it hasn't happened so far. Because that's an important question, right? If you really want something in your life, and you've been saying you really want something in your life, why haven't you created it yet? The question, and we have to be careful when we ask ourself that question, to ask it with curiosity, and not judgment. Because the minute you go to judgment, the minute you go to, why haven't I done that? I haven't taken that trip. Why haven't I built that savings account? Why haven't I lost that? 10 pounds, and then you go into judgment. Nothing good is gonna come from that unit, call yourself named, you're gonna shame yourself, you're gonna beat yourself up and you know, 100% I don't stand for that. Right mean, I don't advocate for that. There's no way that beating yourself up ever leads to success. So let's if we don't do anything else, have the goal of for 2023. Leaving self deprecating thoughts, eating yourself up and treating yourself like crap behind about that a lot. We treat ourselves better than you were treated yourself before. That sounds like an amazing goal for 2023. And it's 100% possible. And we're going to talk about how, before I jump into it, I want to tell you, this show will air on Friday, January 6, meaning you still have time to join me in the four pillars of breast cancer recovery coaching experience that is happening inside the better than before breast cancer membership. Now, let me be really clear about that. That program, the four pillars of breast cancer recovery, coaching experience will be available on its own, but first we're gonna go through it inside the membership before I make it available again, on its own, which will probably be in the beginning of March. So you're ready to make some real change and to understand how to create long lasting, sustainable, compassionate change in your life. You can still join me inside, the better than before breast cancer membership. And we will go through the four pillars of breast cancer recovery together, you just go to my website, the breast cancer recovery coach.com forward slash life coaching and join the membership. You're going to love it inside the membership is not only going to be the coaching experience, and it's happening inside the membership because I always give my members everything first. I always want them to know how much I value them a special they are to me and I always want them to have the richest experience or everything that I offer. I give it to my members first and then I put it out into the world on its own. So and not that the people who purchase my coaching programs that are standalone programs are special to me, they're very, very special to me. But inside the coaching membership is where we do everything the first time around. And my members always get to have the experience that I put out there. So I'm very excited to do that. And I want to give all of my attention to this program to my members to the women who are going through this experience with me, this is the first time that I'm taking everyone through the four pillars of breast cancer recovery coaching experience, a couple of years ago, it was called RE vivify. And I took it, and I redid it, and they updated it. And so this is our first time going through it in the format that it looks like now. And I want to make sure it's got 100% of my attention. So that's why the registration has closed, to buy that program on its own. And it will reopen sometime in March when we finish up inside the membership. But this will be the richest experience because you get to have the coaching experience and the life coaching membership at the same time, which means you get access to everything inside the life coaching membership, which is a lot. It's a lot, all of my other programs becoming you 90 days of wellness, the five step sugar reset challenges that I've done. And two years of content in coaching that has happened inside that membership are all there inside the library. So I'm telling you it is value beyond belief. And if you want coaching and support, if you want to create lasting change for 2023, this is the place to do it. So come and join me inside the membership. And let's make stuff happen for you. Okay, I want to share a story with you my own story with you about how my diagnosis and the new year have anything to do with each other, how I look at the New Year differently, how I changed the way that I think about health and how that changed the way I approached the new year. But before I even tell you that story, I want to share some what I think are pretty dang startling statistics. So I found these statistics on Discover happy habits.com. And on that website, they say that there was a 2016 study. And in that study, they found that only 9% of the 41% of Americans who made New Year's resolutions ended up keeping them. And here's the drop off rate. After one week, they found that 75% of the people were still successful. After two weeks 71% of the people after a month 64% of the people. After six months 46% of the people who made a New Year's resolution were still sticking to it. And I found this to be really interesting to this study looked at another comparison, and it said people who didn't set resolutions but set a new goal. After six months, only 4% of those people are still successful at working towards their new goal. So I want to talk about why that is. Because if something is important to you, I want you to be able to have it in your life, I want you to be able to achieve it. And I have found for myself in my own personal experience. And with so many of the women I work with the one thing that shifts that. So let me share with you my experience first, in 2011. I finished chemotherapy on December 30. So my mindset for the New Year was I'm gonna knock this out of the park. I've got three weeks because the chemotherapy cycle is three weeks of feeling like crap, right? And then you start to come back to life a little bit. So I thought, Okay, I'm gonna give myself three weeks. And then after three weeks of hitting the gym, doing a liver cleanse, I'm just going all out on this, and I am going to be super healthy by the end of March, which was the scheduled time for my bilateral mastectomy. I did not achieve the goal that I set out to achieve by March and not for lack of trying. But for failure to recognize that a very sick body. I had a body that had just been through cancer, to chemotherapy, or surgery, steroids, drugs, anti nausea medications. I mean, you know what I'm saying? And you know what it does to you. And then of course tamoxifen started in January as well. And all of that is a huge stress, a huge shock to the system when it requires healing. And I didn't create space for that. So fast forward. Mastectomy happens give myself time to heal from them infected me and I was super careful to follow all the directions because I was determined to get back in the gym and I didn't want to have anything go wrong. So I was really careful followed everything the doctor said so that I could heal so I could workouts, I could lose the weight that I had gained. So like it gets stronger, again, all the things. And that didn't work. And I guess it's kind of fortunate that none of that worked for the first three years that I tried to force myself to go back to normal. And I say is fortunate because that's why I'm here. If not, for the frustration of that experience in that space of trying to recover from breast cancer in 2012, I wouldn't be here, that's really what drove me down the path to becoming a coach and to digging into more about behavior change and nutrition, and Exercise Science and deciding and meeting a lot of women that have found were going through a similar experience to mine and wanting to support them. So hold, that's a different story, different podcasts. Fast forward, 2020, October 2020, I get a diagnosis stage four metastatic disease, I immediately go into treatment, including radiation. And at the end of December, I've just finished 30 rounds of radiation 15 On my left hip 15 on my spine, I'm still on crutches, and I'm approaching the New Year with this mentality. What do I have to do to support my body's ability to heal?

Laura Lummer  11:17

Among crutches, I don't like it. I have zero weight bearing, I'm not allowed to lift weights because of the condition of my spine and my hip at that time. I don't like it. When I decide not to fight, if I decide, I'm not going to feel the way I felt in 2012. That is not how I'm going to live. I am not going to put myself through that emotional health. I am going to tune into my body. And I'm going to ask myself one question, no matter what it is that I'm doing, I'm going to ask myself this question. Is this supporting my wellness? Now, sometimes, I would make a decision against my better judgment. So sometimes I would say well, I want martini, is this supporting my wellness? No, but I want it right. And I would have that rebellion, period. But a lot of that has shifted over the last two years. And the reason that it shifted, the reason that my 2021 New Year was so much healthier, and so much better, and so much more emotionally stable and healthy than my 2012 New Year was because my goal was not I'm going to lose 25 pounds, I'm going to get down to 18% body fat, I'm going to be able to benchpress X amount of weight. No, my goal was make decisions to support my wellness. And that was what I approached everything with, does this type of exercise support my wellness? Or is it too hard for my body and breaking it down? Does making this food choice support my wellness? Or is it going to make me feel like crap, potentially put on extra body fat that I don't want to have, or prevent me from losing body fat that I do want to lose? Because that's going to give me a better outcome? Engaging in certain social interactions, I would ask myself, does this support my wellness? Do I have the energy for this? Does having this person in my life make my life better? Or suck the energy out of me? I applied that question to my life across the board, or you've applied it here to this business. Because in 2020, I was delivering a 10 week coaching program that was very time consuming. I loved it. But it did require or at least I felt it required a lot of energy, and to be very present and offer a tremendous amount of support for the women who were in it. I wanted to do that. I want it to be there. But I also had to recognize how much it took an ask myself, does delivering my coaching in the way that I was doing in 2020 still support my wellness? And the answer was not so much. So I changed up the format of how I did my coaching. I changed up the format of my courses to give myself more time to focus on my daily healing practices. And I will tell you that from January 1 2012. Until October 23 on each one he didn't lose a single pound. No matter how much I worked out. No matter how much I told myself I had the healthiest diet I had the healthiest lifestyle that was healthier than anybody that I knew. I just did not lose weight. And I kept telling myself, I just can't lose weight. I just don't know what's wrong. It's got to be this medicine. It's got to be that and then I get off the medicine and I still wouldn't lose weight. And I'm going to tell you why here in a sec. But from January 2021, until October of 2022, I lost 50 pounds. You know how I did that? By asking myself? Does this support my wellness every single day, all the time? And again, like I said, there were times when I said, No, it doesn't, but I'm going to do it anyway. But because I was so aware and so conscious of that decision of the intentional decision to go against my best judgment, then I focus on it even more, and I would do some work on that. And I would ask myself with a lot of curiosity, why? Why was it that I decided to go against what I knew was best for me? Why was it I made a choice that didn't support my wellness? What was it I wanted to feel that caused me to make that choice instead of the one that I knew would support me. And because I was very observant, and asking myself those questions and observing my own actions and thoughts. I continued to grow and evolve over that two years, when I became healthier, and healthier, and without the frustration and the fight, and the discipline and the deprivation that I put myself through, in 2012, I approached myself with peace and compassion, and space and kindness. And I achieved my wellness goals. And that's what I want to talk about today, I want to talk about the thing that gets you from having whatever it is you want to start the new year with a new year's resolution, a new year's goal. And the most popular New Year's resolution bar none is health. And for us in this community, those of us you either you just got a diagnosis, or you're healing from a diagnosis, or you're living with cancer, or you're several years out, but you still don't feel like you're living your healthiest life. And you really want to have any health goals is super important. And being successful with them is super important. And this year, I'm going to focus a lot more on what we eat, how we move and the things we do to support our health. Because it's so imperative. And it gives us such a great chance to reduce the risk of recurrence, and to extend and improve our odds of mortality. If we do get a recurrence, so important. And we go through life a lot of times telling ourselves, everything in moderation, it's okay, if I do this, this is a treat. I deserve this. And what we're actually doing is undermining our health. So let's talk about why these goals fall by the wayside. Why is it that nearly half the population of the United States want something so bad, that they start their year setting a goal to achieve it, and then less than 10% actually succeed at it, it comes down to a couple of things. The difference between knowing what you want, and knowing how to incorporate that in your life, creating time to actually achieve what you want to achieve. Because things take time. If you're not living your healthiest lifestyle. Now, if you're not exercising regularly, if you're not making the time to prepare good wholesome food for yourself, if you're not making the time to look at your thoughts around why you make decisions with diet and exercise that don't support your health, if you're not making time for self care for stress management, and you're not sure how to make the time, you are bound to fail at your health goals. It takes time, supporting yourself supporting a healthy lifestyle takes time. So we've got the difference between knowing what you want and knowing how to incorporate it in your life. Creating the time to incorporate that in your life. And then looking at what you're telling yourself about your goal. Because the goal the brass ring may sound amazing and wonderful, and you really want it but are you approaching it from a standpoint of I gotta make this happen. Because there's some idea that this is the epitome of health, whatever that goal is 20 pound weight loss or more muscle or eight cups of vegetables a day, whatever that is. And you're telling yourself I have to because that's what I should do. Or are you approaching it from a place of love for yourself? And have you found a thought that works for you? Because that right there that thought that will change your outcomes. If you look at something as discipline, frustration have to should and there's shame involved in it and there's guilt involved in it and there's I feel like failure involved in it. Ah, you are setting yourself up for failure. But if you look at something from a place of love for yourself, and you say, I want to feel a certain way, I want to feel more energetic. I want to sleep more soundly. I want to feel calm and rested, I want to feel strong, I want to feel flexible. I want to feel less than Haim, we want to feel like I'm actually making myself a priority, I want to feel like I'm important enough to make the time for those thoughts are going to take you way closer to that road to success than the other thoughts of everything you have to give up to create the healthy lifestyle that you say you want. And as I reflect back on the health goals that I had, in the fact that I wasn't losing weight, and I was telling myself, my body's just not responding anymore, you know, because of everything that it's been through. Some of the thoughts that didn't serve me were exactly that. They were the thoughts where I said to myself, I'm already doing everything, I'm doing all the things. They were the thoughts where I compared myself to others, where I said, Well, I should be able to have a glass of wine now. And then I mean, look at that person over there, who doesn't have nearly the healthy lifestyle I have, and they drink way more than I do. And they don't have cancer, telling myself that I deserve things, telling myself that things were a treat, those thoughts were actually undermining me. And that can be really slippery and really subtle when it comes to our brain. Because we think our brain is like, yeah, you deserve this poor thing. Come on, girl, you've been through hell, this is okay for you, you can do this, because it gives our brain a dopamine hit. And then we buy into it, and we believe it. And we keep telling yourself that story. I'm already doing all the things and just look at me, nothing's changing. Nothing's changing. But when I stopped telling myself that, and I just kept asking myself again, is this supporting my wellness and my body's ability to heal? Then I saw that there were even more changes I could make. And then resistance came up, because I didn't necessarily want to make all of them. But it's okay, because I would notice that and I stuck with that question. I stuck with the thought that I wanted to make choices that supported my wellness and my ability to heal. So it's important as you move forward into your goal as you establish your goal that you consider these things, whatever your goal might be. One, is it realistic? Is it something that fits your lifestyle? And what does it mean to you? Why is it important to you? It doesn't matter if it's important to somebody else. It doesn't matter if Muscle and Fitness or Shape magazine, or whatever wellness magazine you're looking at SAYS IT support. Why is it important to you? How do you incorporate it into your life? Because remember, in the very beginning of the show, I said, it's important to ask yourself, if this has been something important to you, and you haven't done it in your life. Why is that? Most of the time, it's because you don't know how. It's because you have habits that don't support that change. And you're not sure how to create new habits, you could look up how to create a healthy lifestyle. And you could easily find, eat a balanced diet, have more fruits and vegetables, more lean proteins exercise regularly, get more sleep, manage stress, stay hydrated, practice self care, you can see all those things you already know all those things. We all know those things. Why don't we do them? Because knowing them, and knowing how to do them and incorporate them into your life are two very different things. So as you explore whether or not your goal is realistic, it's important to ask yourself, How do I incorporate this into my life? How does it actually fit in, you might find that you need support with that accountability is a huge boost in being successful with your health goals. Whether that is an accountability group, a workout buddy, somebody who's on board to help you prepare healthy food, getting a coach hiring a personal trainer, but having support and having someone to help you understand the how behind what you want to accomplish is very, very important. So when you catch yourself saying things like I know that I know that, let that be a cue for you. I know it meaning I know it on the level of knowledge, right? I know it on this cerebral level, that this is how many calories are in a gram of fat. This is how many calories are in a gram of carbohydrates. But I don't know how to change the way I think about this or incorporate this new habit into my life. Something super important to recognize. And then finally, what do you actually think about your goal? Are you excited about it not are you just excited about the outcome? Because yeah, if anybody said hey, you could be you could weigh 50 pounds less than a year and a half. You might say, Oh, awesome, that sounds fantastic. I want to weigh 50 pounds less. But what about the journey? What are your thoughts about the journey? Are you going to get on a scale every day and use that as your metric? And I hope not because using weight loss as a metric can be very, very frustrating. But the way that you feel can be more empowering, because a lot of times before we lose weight, we start to notice we have more energy, we start to notice that we're looking more forward to things. And so having some metrics and some thoughts about your journey are very, very important. Are you excited about it? Are you willing to feel whatever comes up? Are you willing to explore and feel the emotions that come up? When your brains as to? Why have you let yourself get here? What did cancer do to my life? How am I ever gonna get back to normal? And all those thoughts start to come up? Are you willing to feel them without turning to the Ben and Jerry's? These are really important thoughts to explore. And when you start noticing, and please don't think I'm suggesting that negative thoughts won't come up, that resistant thoughts won't come up? Because they absolutely will. They're a part of our brain. That's why I want you to look at them. I want you to accept those resisting thoughts. I want you to notice and say, oh, okay, yeah, I look at this as deprivation, I think about this as being hard. Notice that, be prepared to work your way through it. Because as I said, In the beginning, those obstacles will come up. And that's typically where people fall off. But if you're willing to feel all of those emotions, and you're willing to work through all of those negative thoughts, and stick with the one thought that does support you, then you're again, creating a much clearer path to success for yourself. Okay, my friends. So before you start on the new gym membership, get out a pencil and a piece of paper. And write down those questions. Really work through your goal. And ask yourself with lots of honesty and lots of curiosity and no judgement, do this work and figure out how to set yourself up for success. And if you want my support, you know, you can always get that inside a couple of my programs you can join the better than before breast cancer life coaching membership, where you can enroll in the 90 days of wellness, which is an excellent starting point and an excellent program that gives you some step by step tips on what things help you to be healthier, and how you're thinking about them and how you can begin incorporating those in your life. And you can find all those choices of coaching programs on my website, the breast cancer recovery coach.com. So find one that works for you. And remember, you've got to lay the foundation, do the work for yourself first. So you set yourself up for success because I want to see you be successful, because I know how good it feels. And I know that you deserve it. All right, have a wonderful, happy, happy New Year. And let me know your thoughts and questions. You can always find me on Facebook, Laura Lummer, the breast cancer recovery coach, you can DM me there, you can join my free Facebook group, the breast cancer recovery group or find me on Instagram as the breast cancer recovery coach and DM me there if you have questions. All right. I will talk to you again next week and until then, eat good to yourself. Take care