When you’re not ready for change.

Why do we have shame when we don’t want to change?

How do you feel about the idea that something in your life needs to change?

What happens when we come back and look at change differently.

How to get to know yourself better when you’re not ready for change.

You don’t have to tell anybody. You get to do this all on your own.

How do we live lives that are better than before breast cancer? We don’t hide from ourselves.

Change doesn’t have to be painful, it just has to be small.

Sometimes we say we’re not ready for change, but as we sit and examine our thoughts, we realize that we are.

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Full transcript:

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, you are listening to Episode 229 of the breast cancer recovery coach podcast. And I am your host, Laura Lummer. I'm happy to be here with you today. And before I jump into the show, I want to give you an announcement and an invitation. I invite you to join me on February 28, for self love after breast cancer. It's a free online event. And I'm joining with five other experts, amazing women, breast cancer survivors, all of them with a different passion about how they support survivors. It's interesting because we all you know, connect with something that's really specific about our own experience and our own lives. And maybe even what we love to do before we went through the experience of cancer. And so I'm really excited to participate in this. It's a three hour long event. But each of us are speaking on a specific topic for 30 minutes. So check the show notes for this episode, or right where you're listening to this podcast is look at where you're listening to it and you'll see the link in the show notes. Or you can go to my website, the breast cancer recovery coach.com forward slash two to nine. And you'll find the link there to register. It's totally free. And yes, it's going to be recorded.

 

So you'll be able to listen to it for 48 hours afterwards, you'll have access to the replay for 48 hours after it completes on February 28. And I believe it starts at 3pm Eastern Standard Time on the 28th. Don't quote me on that, but you'll see it if you go to the link and you register. I'm pretty sure that's what it is. So I'm very excited about that. The host is Karen maestro's. She's an amazing breast cancer survivor and health coach for breast cancer survivors.

 

She has been a guest on the podcast before and she actually hosted a summit a few months back that I spoke on. And it was really cool. So I hope you'll join us again, it's a free spot, so much to learn. And I think it's always cool to listen to different people's perspectives, you know, on their experience, what really spoke to them and what they're really passionate about, and how that may speak to you and what you're going through. So I hope you join us and, you know, get to expose yourself to some really cool, beautiful new personalities and new survivors. All right, my friends, we're gonna jump right into this. Because I think today's topic is so important. I think that it needs to be addressed. Because when we don't address this, it creates a tremendous amount of self judgment, in suffering.

I think even shame for ourselves. And we don't want any of that there's no need for that in our lives. And what I want to talk about is when you are not ready to change. Now, that seems kind of weird. Like Laura, you're a life coach or a health coach or a nutrition coach, is it not all about behavior change? And yes, it is. For me, right? That's what I help show people their thoughts, help them, see their thoughts, help them see what their thoughts are creating in their lives, the results that are coming from the way that they're thinking. But a really important thing is to be aware when you have those thoughts, that maybe you're not ready for change. So it sounds kind of weird that the first step in change is acknowledging and accepting. Creating space and giving yourself the grace to know, I'm not frigging ready for this. I'm not ready to change. And what happens when you think about that? Is a lot of times people have shame. Why don't we want to change?

 

Okay, we get a breast cancer diagnosis, and what is the first thing that people say to us, right? Are you going to change? Are you going to become vegan? I cannot even tell you how many times I heard, are you going to become a vegan now, this was after my first diagnosis because I was already eating a vegetarian diet following a vegetarian diet, which I have very different views on now for in the evolution of everything that I've been through health wise and nutrition wise, but I just think that that's interesting. We have this idea that eating a specific way, which means all plants and only plants is like the healthiest way to eat. But isn't really an doesn't even matter for the purpose of this conversation. Because what happens is we get This idea that this collective idea of what is the healthiest thing and a lot of people think that that's a vegan diet. Some people think it's a paleo diet, whatever, whatever, whatever you think it doesn't matter. But the interesting thing is, many of the people who asked me that didn't even follow a vegetarian diet, let alone a vegan diet. Right? And I would think, well, that's a really weird thing to ask me like, you think I should eat vegan but you're not eating vegan. Okay. So moving on from that, after my second diagnosis, same thing. So many people asked me about what dietary changes I was going to make will you juice now? Will you become a vegan? Now? What will you do now our head goes right to food. And what happens when we hear that is we kind of pull back we in the greater we us as breast cancer survivors, then we kind of think, Oh, God, I'm doing something bad for myself, right? I don't want to change being a vegan sounds horrible. To me.

 

This is hypothetical, not judging anybody. I love vegan diets for many reasons. But this is the kind of a thought process we go to is now I gotta be ashamed. Now, do I need to hide if I eat a piece of cheesecake? Now? Do I need to just like stay at home? If I want to have a pizza? Is everybody watching me? Is everybody judging me. And so we start to think about this in terms of, I should do that. And then what happens when you tell yourself, you should do something, you're not ready to do something, then you feel guilty, then you tell yourself, you should do this, you should be better. You shouldn't treat yourself like this, all the shoulds come out, and you feel like crap. And guess what? When you feel like crap, and you're judging yourself, and you're telling yourself, you're not a good person, because you should be doing all these things that are so good for your health, and so good for your life, and so good for your emotions. What happens, more shame. This is a shame spiral. This is crazy. It's a horrible thing to do to ourselves. So let's step back for a sec here. And let's say, what if you are not ready, or have no desire to change? What's wrong with that? I'm gonna offer nothing. I'm gonna say that if you are willing to accept where you are, that if you are willing to sit with yourself and notice and say, I'm just not ready for that.

That you're going to relieve a lot of pressure, you're going to relieve a lot of emotional struggling, you're going to give yourself this grace, and you're going to forgive yourself for this idea that you're going to have to find all these excuses. I can't do that right now. Because I have to do this. And I have to do that. And it's too expensive. And it's too time consuming. And throwing out all these justifications. Maybe for yourself, maybe for other people, when you can just say, No, that doesn't sound like something I'm ready for. Wow, what a relief. That is, right. And guess what? That is one of the first steps to change is the awareness that I'm not there yet. And then asking yourself the right questions about that. How do you feel about the fact that you're not there is the idea that something in your life needs to change, you should exercise more, you should eat better, you should drink less alcohol, you should sleep more, you should do more meditation, like, you know, we've had breast cancer. So we should be the perfect example of health, right? Everybody's going to look at us, no matter what they're going through, there's dress, you know, basket cases, if they're very, very overweight and unhealthy and out of shape, but they've never had cancer, well, then it's not on them, right? To change their lifestyle.

 

It's on us because we've had breast cancer. So you should want to change some bullshit, right? So you can acknowledge that now, if you in your heart and in your mind, and you want to change, but you're struggling with ideas, and habits that keep you from making the change you want to make in your life, that's a whole nother story. This is a completely different place than feeling like you're pressuring yourself to change. Continuing with the same habits that you're telling yourself you should be doing differently than beating yourself up for them. Versus just saying, I am not ready to change that. I am not willing to change that right now. And I'm okay with that. That's the important thing is for you to be okay with that. Because here's the thing with change why has changed scary? It's because we tell ourselves we've got to go from zero to 100 We've got to go from having Vinay frappuccinos. With caramel drizzle and whipped cream in whatever the hell else you like on them to nothing to no frappuccinos at all ever. We have to go from eating whatever it is that we having all the desserts, to having nothing. No sugar in our diet whatsoever, right? Right there, your brain is going it's not going to happen. Your brain is going to fight your brain is gonna be like there's no damn way I'm going down that road with you. I'm not getting on that train.

 

But if we come back and look at change differently, and we realize that if you make a 1% change today, if you say instead of a Trent a frappuccino. I'm gonna go for a venti frappuccino. frappuccino. travertino sorry, Frappuccino today, and then you go, you know what I did good. And that was okay. And then maybe next week, you'll go from a venti Frappuccino to a croissant, a frappuccino. And then you'll say, holy moly, look at this. This is okay, I did this. I survived. I'm still okay with it. And I just cut a burn to sugar and a bunch of extra calories out of my life. You know, we never tell ourselves that story. We never say, I can do this a little bit at a time. I can cut back 10% I work with people who tell me Okay, I'd usually drink six to eight sodas a day. And they're terrified at the idea that they've got to stop drinking soda 100% tomorrow. And all I ask them is Do you think you could drink one less soda per day, this week? Could you go from six to five a day. Even that, and it's a little scary, because the brain is like, Hold on, I'm getting a dopamine hit from that soda. So I don't know if I want you taken away one of them. But it's okay, this little tiny change. This is why I'm where I'm at today in my life. I've spent decades making tiny changes. I have a very healthy lifestyle. I have a very healthy diet. But I also have a mind that's open to the idea that maybe I could do more. And I also look at things and ask myself, Am I ready to do that? You know, when I reflect back on the two years previous when I was diagnosed with stage four metastatic cancer, and I look at the way that I was living then which anyone looking at me would still say you have a healthy lifestyle. And when I look back at it, though, I can see it was a healthy lifestyle. But it wasn't as deep as I needed to go for someone who was managing active disease, yet. There were many things I was not willing to change.

 

I was not ready to change at that point. But because I would look at those things and say, hmm, I'm just not ready to change that right now. But I'm willing to be aware of when I do those things, what I'm thinking and how I'm feeling that's a huge step towards making positive change in your life. And I tell you what inspired me to talk about that this week is I've had several calls over the last week, several coaching calls with clients who tell me I'm stuck. I'm still stuck on this thing. And I feel like I've been stuck on this thing forever. And maybe they have. But when we drill down into it, the thing that keeps them stuck, is they're not really ready for change. And when they realize that, and when they sit back, and we can work on accepting it because we'll fight that right. Because we tell ourselves a story, I should want change. I should be ready for change. I should be out air quote quote unquote good person, I should be the healthy person and I should want this. But the truth is you don't want it. And when we can embrace that truth, when we can sit there and say, Man, I do not want to get up at 530 in the morning and be at the gym at six. I don't want to walk 10,000 steps every day. I don't want to my brain doesn't want to do that. Fantastic. I say fabulous. Notice that. Look at that. Ask yourself Is that interesting? Interesting thought. I'm not interested in implementing an exercise program. I don't want to do it. Okay, that's cool. You can be there. Now I wonder why. What are your thoughts about it?

 

Maybe Gonna be too much work, maybe it sounds too hard, maybe I don't like to sweat. All the stories that come up once you let yourself see that you're not ready for change are incredible things to get to know yourself better. So in my memberships, and in my programs, we work with a tool that I was taught about the Life Coach School, I've talked about it many, many times here on the podcast. And that tool is called the model. The model is specifically designed to help you be more aware of your thoughts, and the results those thoughts are creating in your life. Now, many of my clients are resistant to doing models. And the reason behind that is our human brain. Anyone, all of us, we all have a human brain, that's one thing we for sure have in common. Our human brain says, if we look at this, we have to fix it, we have to change it. And that is just absolutely not true. And if I could get everybody to accept that, I could be honest with myself, and then not be obligated to change. But in the act of full transparency, of full self honesty, I get to know myself better. I get to learn more about myself, I get to understand what I'm thinking behind the emotions, I'm feeling behind the actions that I'm taking. And as I get to know myself more, as I become aware of who I actually am, I don't have to hide it. I don't have to be ashamed of it. You don't have to tell anybody, you get to do this all privately on your own if you want your own journal, and some people don't even like to write it in a journal because they say I don't want someone to find my journal. Right? I don't want someone to know, these deep thoughts that I have about myself. Why? Why do we feel like that? Because we're ashamed.

 

This is a big red flag, right? If you're not willing to be honest and transparent with yourself, if you can't write that down for yourself, because if you look at it, you feel ashamed. There's something to work on my friend. First of all, giving yourself permission to just friggin be you to just feel what you feel to just be okay with what's true for you, in this moment, in know that you do not have to change it. Not right now. Because maybe you're not ready to. And the only thing you have to do now is say, this is where I'm at, and start to really understand that. That is such a powerful thing. Think about it, if you could just embrace who you are, and where you are. And if you're listening to this podcast, and maybe I have a podcast episode that's about food, or maybe I have a podcast episode, that's about a certain thought that triggers you and you hear it, you're like, Oh, I'm unfollowing that podcast, I don't want to hear that shit. I did not want to hear her talk about that. But that's because there's a resistance even to acknowledging that that exists on herself that thought of ourselves, right? So let's say it's about changing foods. So many of us have all these thoughts about food, that bring us shame that causes us to feel bad about ourselves. But if we could get to the place where we're just like, you know, I'm willing to listen to what anybody has to offer, about nutrition, what it means how it affects my body, I'm willing to just be interested in it. But right now, I'm not ready to change. That is a huge step forward for you, my friend, a huge step forward. Not even that you're listening to consider adopting a new practice. But just that you're listening, for the sake of nutrition is interesting. The human body is interesting. And do I want some tofu with my dinner? No, thanks. Thanks, anyway, perfectly okay. Right? How do we live lives that are better than before breast cancer.

 

We don't hide from ourselves. We allow ourselves to be open with ourselves. Now, I said a minute ago, a lot of people don't want to write things down because it's really difficult and they look at them and they feel they have to hide them or they're afraid someone else might find them. And I say, I get it. I totally get it. It's really difficult sometimes to be fully transparent with ourselves because we're conditioned to think we should live a certain way. We're conditioned to think we should operate a certain way want certain things, but that is all just noise. That's all other people's thoughts that are in our head. So if we can allow ourselves to get these things out of our head, write them down, look at them and ask does this serve me is it's good for me. Am I Ready for this? Do I want to hold on to this thought, and really begin to notice that and then say, Wow, I can be okay with me just being me. I can be okay with that. I don't have to hear a show about the ketogenic diet, and feel bad that I am not the least bit interested in a ketogenic diet. I don't have to look for the bad things about it, I'm gonna have to judge it. I don't want to come up with stories why people shouldn't do it. I can just say, Cool. That's interesting. Sounds like it works for some people. And no, I'm not interested in having an avocado with my lunch every day, this week, right? You get to do that. And so that's why I wanted to talk about this on the show. If I could just support you, in truly embracing the idea that it's okay to be who you are, and where you are. In that when you do that, it will take a tremendous amount of pressure off of you. It will relieve a tremendous burden of shame and self judgment. And then you just get a start to embrace that. And he'd be like, Yeah, this is what I do. This is who I am. Maybe something will come up for you to go you know what I really, I really would like to change that thing.

 

But then something else will come up and you think, yeah, that's, that's, I don't want to change that right now. Cool. That's okay. And honestly, I would always say, if you want to adopt change, do it slowly pick one thing at a time. Pick the easiest thing, not the hardest thing. We always want to go to the hardest friggin thing and make things so hard on ourselves. That guess what, you won't do it. Because when something sounds hard, and painful, and uncomfortable and miserable, we will avoid it like the plague. But if we think about something, like I just said, you might you know what, I think I could go for a venti versus a trente, I could do that. I'm willing, I'm a trader, that to my trade out one time this week, and the other five days, I'm still gonna go for my 20. I don't even know if Starbucks still does it. 20. But I remember hearing about it some time ago. But if they do, you know, you get what I'm saying. Or I never thought about the fact that I could have one less soda a day, each day this week, I just thought I had to cut it all out. Right? Now, you're starting to go, I could test that. I could see how I feel. And little by little, you can see that change doesn't have to be painful. Change doesn't have to be zero to 100. And even then, with the smallest change, there may be areas of your life where you still say no.

 

And that is okay. So this podcast is all about you. giving yourself permission to know you truly to the core know yourself. The good the questionable that wish it wasn't like that. Everything without judgment, shame, or self-condemnation, right? Just self love. And just knowing that whoever you are, wherever you are, whatever you're ready for is exactly where you're supposed to be. In, it's perfect. It's totally okay. So take some pressure off of yourself. And do this for yourself. If you feel a struggle and resistance about specific things in certain areas of your life, ask yourself this question, and be willing to be honest, am I ready to change this? Do I want to change this right now? Do I want to change it? Because changing this thing would be an act of self-love for me? Or am I shaming myself about not changing it? Because I think other people will judge me if I don't. We don't live our lives by other people's thoughts. You live your life from heart-centered place? Will I do this for myself? Because this is an act of self love. Do I believe that? Do I feel that? Is that real for me right now? And if it isn't, Hey, Laura said you could just toss that shit aside, and you don't even have to feel bad about it. Right? And move on. Move on to the next thing. The next smallest, easiest thing and ask yourself the same question, feel resistance to this and tell myself I should change this. I tell myself I should be better at this. Why is it an act of self love for you to work on that? And if so, and if a spark comes up with one of those things, and you're like, Okay, I found my thing. I got it. This is the thing that Yeah, I do want to change and I would like to is to be different in my life, and then dial it back to 1%, not 100%, I don't want you to be 100% Different person tomorrow 1%, tiny, tiny little changes, to build up self confidence to give yourself a sense of self efficacy, the belief that you can do things.

 

Because sometimes we say, we're not ready for change. And as we sit and examine our thoughts, we realize, I don't believe I can change. And when you have that realization that Whoa, Whoa, where did that come from? I remember going through that when I was really struggling for weight loss in the first three years after my first diagnosis in 2011. And I think I've shared this before also, that it came to a point where I thought, I realized, I'm not doing the things that I believe I should be doing. Because I told myself the story that I've tried everything, which wasn't 100% True, right? I tried a lot of things. Because if I would have tried everything, I would have found something that worked. Because later on in life, I did find something that worked. But at that point, I was so stuck in my head, that I said, I've tried everything, nothing worked. And then I realized, I've told myself now that I don't believe I can change. And I've been really work on that belief for a while. So, you know, all of these things are really important pieces in that puzzle of self-development, in that twisted roadmap, right? Evolution to evolving and stepping into becoming the person we want to be, or making peace with the fact that I just love who I am right now. And I'm good this way. I'm good. I don't have to change. Nothing wrong with that. All right, my friend. So give yourself a little break. Give yourself a lot of love. And speaking of love, come and join, get a free seat at the self love event on February 28. And if you want to go even deeper, go to my website, the breast cancer recovery coach.com and enroll in the becoming you program. And in the becoming you program. This is a excellent program that takes you step by step in eight weeks into just really getting to know yourself complete awareness without the expectation of change. Understanding what you do now why you do it, how it benefits you and whether or not you really want something different. And if you do, then who do you have to be in order to create that in your life? It's a really powerful program some great stuff. All right, my friends, I will talk to you again next week. And until then, don't change a thing. I'll talk to you soon.