What are your thoughts about investing in yourself and your health? 

How do you overcome the mental barriers you have when it comes to spending money on yourself and your well-being? 

It’s so important to be open to seeing that you’re worth whatever you need in your life and to be able to receive it openly and graciously.  

In this world of managing breast cancer, we all know that treatments, therapies, and support come with an expensive price tag. So, we need to allow ourselves to explore all the options and not close ourselves off to therapies that could support us because of the dollar amount attached to them.  

The universe is rich and abundant, and we never know what may be available to us. 

Some of us don’t have financial resources on hand, but some of us do and still choose not to use them on for self-care and support. This is a common mindset that we need to shift. Sometimes we need to prioritize ourselves and our health over other things. 

We need to adopt the thinking of "I deserve this" and "I am worth this." just as we would tell a loved one in need. 

Investing in ourselves and our health is not a selfish act but a necessary one.  

Listen now and start embracing your worthiness today. 

Referred to in this episode: 

Know Yourself Know Your Money by Rachel Cruz  

Better Than Before Breast Cancer Life Coaching Membership 

Read the full transcript below:

Laura Lummer  00:00

Hello, friends, welcome to episode 238 of the breast cancer recovery coach podcast. I'm your host, Laura Lummer. And this is a really great show, I'm actually really looking forward to doing the show and talking about this topic, because I think it's so incredibly important. I'm going to talk about something that I've been working through a lot from myself and my personal life. And this discussion also has come up in my membership groups in our coaching calls. And actually, we're coming to the end of the four pillars of breast cancer coaching program, which I launched back in February. And so we're on the fourth pillar, which is revive. And in that revive pillar, we're talking about creating the life that you want, and specific steps that we have to take in order to create the life you want. And that doesn't just mean tactical steps doesn't mean set a goal, do this, make it specific, make it measurable, it's not about that. But it's about the way that we think and what we're willing to accept in our lives. And this circles back around to this topic, because you have to be willing to allow abundance in your life. But in order to allow abundance in your life, you have to believe that you're worthy of abundance, you have to believe that you're worthy of accepting things, you have to believe that you are worth. And I'm not just going to say like your worthiness as a human being, but your worth, like you are worth spending money on, you are worth investing in, you are worth spending time on you deserve fulfilling relationships, you deserve wonderful health. And you are worth doing whatever it takes to get you to that point to do what you need to do for yourself to get you there. And so first, I'm going to share a story with you of something that really made me think a lot about this. On Easter Sunday, we came home and we have two dogs, we have two cockapoos, they are my husband's best friends in the world. And they were fine when we got home. By the end of the evening, one of them was clearly not feeling well. And you know, we had to make some decisions, we had some medication for him at the end of the story all ends, well, he was fine. And he was up and back to himself in a matter of two days. But what it caused me to think about was the value, how much money would we spend on medical care for this dog? Because we are at this point in my life. And in my journey, where as I am pursuing, I was gonna say exploring, but actually pursuing integrative oncology. Alternative, not alternative, I'm just a complementary because to me, alternative methods mean, doing something instead of doing standard of care. And complementary means I'm doing standard of care treatments, but I'm complimenting them with natural therapies as well, which is the metabolic approach to cancer and all that is contained within that space. But if any of you have pursued in a complementary or a naturopathic path to your own healing into supporting your own health, then you know very well, it is not cheap. It's really expensive, actually, to get good quality care and a well trained integrative physician, it's very important to me that the physician that I choose is not just a natural path, but an oncologist. So this person has a tremendous amount of training, a tremendous amount of experience. And I believe that they're worth the price that they charge. Sadly, insurance companies don't cover it. Right. It's not that it's not worth what they're putting out. And it isn't that what they put out into the world is not effective, because it is very effective. And I'm seeing the results of that. But insurance companies don't cover it. And we're not going to get into all the politics of what's going on in medicine, but it's just when you're in this place and pursuing this path. Money is a thing. And you have to really look at your mentality about what you can afford, or where you're willing to direct your financial resources. And so, I noticed a lot coming up, especially when I first started to pursue this path. A lot of the thoughts that would come up which will just be subconscious responses to getting a price tag on something many naturopathic oncologist or integrative oncologists have programs or packages and they have a process that you will follow that they offer and that way They're able to offer certain pricing. And then if there are things that might vary within that package, then they tell you, Hey, here's a range, it can go from this to that. And it can be really costly. So I started to notice that when that came up, my mind would go right to oh my gosh, that's so expensive, I can't do that. Now, that is not just something I hear inside my own head. That is something I hear from women, all the time from my clients all the time, from people who do an exploratory call with me. And it's an interesting thing to explore. Now, something that I work with my clients on that I work with myself on, and that I encourage everybody to be very rooted in, is not to judge yourself not to judge those thoughts. But to get really curious when thoughts like that come up. When thoughts that limit your ability to do something for yourself in your life that you really feel is necessary, that's very important to you. And the brain goes right into scarcity and throws out, Oh, my God, that's so much money, I can't do that. Rather than going to Okay, that's really expensive. But it's worth it. And it's really important to me. And I'm really important. And I'm worth that type of financial investment. Because Come on, you're listening to the show, you either have had gold you're going through or you do have cancer. And so when we're in that position, whether you have disease actively processing in your body now, or you've had it, and you now have no evidence of disease, it's still so critical that you support your body, your body's ability to heal your body's ability to perform and your body's ability to attain an optimal state of well being. And when I say that, I don't just mean within the normal ranges of everything. I mean, optimal ranges of everything. And a lot of times that testing can cost money, the support to get you into optimal range can cost money, the things you do once you've been given a plan like supplements, or infrared sauna therapy, let's see high dose vitamin C, intravenous therapy, hyperbaric oxygen treatments, all of these come with a really high price tag. But all of them also can be very, very effective in supporting your ability to reach and maintain optimal health and supporting your body's ability to heal. So why when our brain automatically goes into scarcity, sees an expensive price tag and says, Oh, my gosh, I can't afford that. That's really expensive. Why don't we accept that thought? Let's give some thought thought to that. Let's give some thought to that thought. Let's explore that for a second. Because I know for myself, this has happened many times where I see it, and I go, Oh, that's expensive. And then I'm just kind of done with it. Right. Whereas now I've worked a lot on that. Because I've needed to work a lot on it. I've looked at therapies and things and gone, this is really important. Let me look at my thoughts here. Because I'll tell you what, sometimes it isn't that you don't have the money for it. It's that we're choosing not to allocate that money for that certain thing. Some thoughts I have had, and other thoughts I've heard Express are I shouldn't spend that much money on me. Or while I should save that money for whatever it might be, I have a daughter who's getting married, well, oh my gosh, that money could go to my daughter's wedding, that money can go towards our retirement or I wanted to take a trip at the end of the year. If I use that for this, then there won't be a trip. So so many things can come up around our money. Or we can actually say to yourself, I can't afford it. And you may not have the money like sitting aside for something else. And you're just choosing not to allocate it for yourself. You may have a budget that says I literally can't fit that into my budget. But even then, I encourage you to explore that idea. Because I know for a fact that there are a tremendous amount of resources out there. for breast cancer survivors. There are all kinds of nonprofits that support people in treatment. And there are scholarships and there are payment plans. And there are things we can sell. There's actually a lot of options when it comes to us saying to ourselves, that's really important. I'm worth that. Let me give some thought to it. Let me explore what that might look like.

Laura Lummer  09:51

I see people run GoFundMe campaigns. And when I say that some of you may hear it. Oh my gosh, I would never do something like that. I've heard that from people before, I've heard them say, well, I won't do anything like that. I don't want to air my dirty laundry, your dirty laundry, your need to support your health, your need and desire to live your life. And I want to offer this when it comes to doing something like a fundraiser. And I mean, it could be a bake sale, it could be a GoFundMe, it can be anything. And when our mind goes to, oh, I don't want that. Our offer to consider reframing that, because so many people love you in your life. And those people want you to be with them. And those people want you to be healthy, and to be able to enjoy life, to have energy and to feel well. And they love doing things to support you. I know when I was diagnosed back in 2011, my niece who at the time was 12 years old, gathered a bunch of her friends and they went to my sister and said, Can we bake cupcakes and have a bake sale for Auntie Laura, I mean, kind of brings tears to my eyes when I even think about it. Now it was so meaningful. But here's the thing is people want to help not because you look like a charity case where you have these thoughts in your head that tell you that, but because they love you. And the people who love us would wipe cancer out of our bodies in a second in a heartbeat if they could, and they cannot. But what they can do is show support. And when we allow people to show support in whatever way that looks, cleaning your house, giving you rides to treatment, having a bake sale, offering financial resources, it allows them to express love in whatever way they are trying to express love. They know what resources are available to them, they make a decision on what they want to give. And when we say no, no, thank you or we don't let people know that we need that help. We shut down their ability to be there for us in the capacity that they can be there for us. So just consider that if you're someone who is going through treatment or who needs something to support your health, even if you don't have cancer right now. And you know, people I mean, we all know people, right? And you know that there are resources out there. Just give that some thought, you know, do some thought work on that and ask yourself, when you say I can't afford to do that, or I can't afford that, or I don't have the money for that. What other options might there be? This is so important. You know, this story just popped into my mind as I said this in my breast cancer recovery group, which is my free Facebook group, I saw and this was Prakash maybe a year ago, there was a post about a compression sleeve. lympha divas compression sleeves. In fact, I think that I had gotten a new compression sleeve or something like that we were talking about compression sleeves in the group. And something was said about lympha divas and one woman posted and said I love those sleeves. But I really can't afford those because they are expensive. And compression sleeves can be very expensive. I mean, I was kind of shocked. I was like gosh, this is a piece of elastic with one see mice is so damn expensive, but they are. And so this woman posted how much she loved them, but it wasn't within her budget. And within minutes, someone else said please allow me to gift you one, I have the money to give it and I'd love to give it to you like I'd get choked up thinking about that. That was so friggin cool. And they connected outside of that group. And this person sent her this compression sleeve and the glove. And I know that she did because months later I had a coaching call with that person who was gifted the sleeve and she was wearing it and it meant everything to her.

Laura Lummer  13:46

Little things like that are so meaningful. And it's so meaningful to be able to be that person who can give. And we never know who's out there who has the capacity and the resources to give if we don't allow ourselves to be open to receiving abundance, if we don't allow ourselves to be open to the worthiness of whatever we need in our lives, have everything that we need to support us and receiving it openly and graciously. Right, allowing it to be just an extension of love and care from someone. And I can tell you I have met women on my coaching calls who've people have given them apartments to live in people who had you know, who had rental properties. One woman I met someone had a boat that they rarely used and it was like a big boat like someone could live in it and I spoke and they let this person live in it because she was going through treatment and she couldn't afford to keep up with her bills and she didn't have the energy to continue to work like people are so nice. So many people have such big hearts and I hear and see stories like that and it's ABS salutely Amazing. So when it comes to that need for some kind of treatment, some kind of therapy, some kind of support for your health that is important to you, and it has an expensive price tag, allow yourself to explore that. If you look at your own financial resources, and you look at them and say, Gosh, I really just don't have that to allocate. What else can I do? Let that be the next question. Wonder what else is out there because the universe is so rich and so abundant. So allow yourself to explore it, rather than closing yourself off to it. And I just want to, again, re emphasize for you to adopt the thinking of I deserve this. I am worth this. Okay, but what if you do have the resources and you just choose not to use them on you? So I just shared a couple of stories with you where I've looked at my money and gone, oh, my gosh, well, my daughter's weddings coming up, I've got to set that aside. Well, and as I do some thought work on that I look at it and I say, well look my daughter rather have that money towards her wedding or me alive for her wedding. I'm pretty sure I know the answer to that. Right? Sometimes we have to look at our thoughts behind money. And realize and ask ourselves this question. If someone you loved your sibling, your parent, your child, came to you in the exact same situation and said, I need this. But this is how much it costs. Would you whip out the checkbook? Would you whip out the debit card? The credit card? Would you figure out a way to support your loved one? I think the answer to that, and mostly what I've met with the answer to that is absolutely 100%, I wouldn't think twice. And yet we think twice when it comes to us. We have to stop this because continuing to support our health. After we finish treatment, looking for ways to support our health, wow, we're going through standard of care treatment with excellent care, right. And this is really important because when we are in the situation, when we have a breast cancer diagnosis, or we're going through treatment, or we're recovering from breast cancer treatment, or we're just in life, let's say that you're five years out of breast cancer treatment, but you just don't feel the way you want to feel. Are you the expert? Are you the nutritionist? Are you the personal trainer? Are you the exercise scientist? Are you the herbal specialist, the essential oils specialists, right? Think about that there's so many rich resources out there for us. And there's a real danger in experimenting with some of those things without knowing what you're doing. And I would say especially when it comes to supplements, because when it comes to supplements, those again can be very costly. And I know I'm totally guilty of this, of picking up a book reading about it reading about the supplements like oh my god, this sounds like the cure to cancer, this supplement sounds absolutely amazing. And then I'll purchase that supplement and realize that over the course of a couple of months, I mean, I've spent hundreds of dollars on this supplement. And I've stopped and thought well, do I feel me different? Is this helping. And sometimes you have to get off to supplement to notice if it's making a difference. But part of the problem there is that you didn't know if you needed supplement to begin with. So when we're talking about investing in ourselves, one of the most important factors in that, in my opinion, is testing first. And knowing where you stand, and there are so many amazing tests out there and available to us. And again, people's minds go straight to oh, that's got to be really expensive. Some of them are expensive, but some of them are actually quite affordable. Even with nutrition genomics, which is an incredibly informative test that I did, as I started working with a natural path to get a real insight into my genetics, my epigenetics and how food affects my body. I think that it's a little I think it's a little over $300. So that's not cheap, right? That's a good price tag. But it's also something you could say okay, it's $300 and we can save for it, right? Or we can look at it and say what can I reallocate, but the bottom line comes down to do we feel we deserve it? Do we make ourselves a priority in our lives? And do we say I am worth this? Do we stop and do we look at sometimes when we're in fear when we're not really happy with the way that things are going and we turn to buffers to make ourselves feel better, and a very popular buffers, retail therapy. Another popular buffer is alcohol, another popular buffer is food. These are all expensive. And if we stop and we look at the money we spend on buffers, sometimes we could say to ourselves, you know what, I could have spent that on an expert that could have given me the information I needed to help me feel more comfortable and confident in what I'm doing to support my health and healing now. And I just think that this is such an important area for us to explore. I know for me, it has been when I made that mindset shift to oh my gosh, here's all this stuff. It's so expensive. When I went from there to oh, that's expensive. How can I come up with this money? I, it's like these doors open opportunities presented themselves. ideas came to me, and I started realizing, oh, there are all of these things I can do. There are these different things that I can do to support myself and come up with the finances I need for this, just because I changed my mindset. And instead of closing off to anything that may have been out there, or telling myself a story, that certain money should be set aside for something more important than me. Right? Or something that might happen someday in a rainy day. It's like, I'm saving this money for something that might happen. But if I don't spend it now on me on what is happening, I'm not even be here for that rainy day. This makes no sense. But these are common thought patterns that we go into. And I just love like I said, we had this discussion in my membership groups. And I just think it was such a valuable discussion. It was so awesome for me to listen to the vulnerability of these women and I completely identify with it and continue to work through it. You know, we are raised with money mentalities. And those money mentalities sometimes outweigh our ability to see what we need for our health, to be able to thrive in this life. And too much of the time, we stay in suffering when we don't have to, because we don't realize that we haven't decided that it's okay to spend money on ourselves. Now, there's another way that I see this used when people say I can't afford it, or I hear people say I can't afford it.

Laura Lummer  22:35

Because it can be a lot of work. And sometimes that's really scary. changing your diet, following a supplement protocol, adopting an exercise routine, committing to a meditation routine, showing up and being vulnerable and open with an integrative practitioner, who's definitely going to want to delve into emotional issues, past traumas in your life, a lot of people don't want to go there. And so we use financial resources as an excuse to not dig in and do the work that brings up fear inside of us. That makes us say, oh, cuz, you know, nobody's gonna argue with that. If you say I can't afford it, if you tell yourself, you can't afford it, if you tell your partner, hey, we can't afford it, we don't have the money for that. Most of the time, people aren't going to argue with you. Right? That seems like a very reasonable excuse. But there are so many other options underneath it. And sometimes there's so many thoughts that are buried underneath that, that it's actually just an excuse more than it is a true fact. So I would ask you to explore those thoughts for yourself. Get off that piece of paper and at the top of that piece of paper, put spending money on my health. And see what comes up for you. What thoughts do you actually have about that? How much are you worth? Would you put a price tag on that? Honestly, if someone came up to you and said, Hey, here's this program, it could save your life. It's $10,000. What would you think? What would you do? What would you be willing to do? What would you be willing to rearrange is an interesting concept to dig into? Who would you be willing to ask what resources would you be willing willing to look for? What is your worth that you attach to yourself? On a financial level? What's the price tag you put on your optimal wellness, emotional wellness, physical wellness, overall wellness? It is such an interesting topic to dig into and I invite you to do that with so much curiosity. Right and if you notice the judgment coming up even notice thoughts like That's so dumb, I shouldn't think that, or if you notice the thoughts that come up from when you were a kid, if you were raised with someone who thought in financial scarcity, and you realize, I'm still adopting that thinking, that was ingrained in you when I was a child, and I need to decide to start thinking for myself now from the place I am today, I need to work through letting go of the scary thoughts of a child, who were when you were worried about everything, because an authority figure in your life kept saying, we don't have this, we can't afford this. We can't do this. And it felt really scary because he didn't even know what it meant. Right? We hold on to those things. And I remember listening to Rachael Cruz, I think it was I think it was a book that she wrote, I don't think it was a podcast, I think it was her book. And she was talking about the money mentalities that we were raised with, and how we just believe that that's the way we're supposed to think about money. In fact, I've no for sure, it was her book. I wish I could remember the name of book, but I will look for it. And I'll put a link to it in the show notes of this podcast. But she tells a story in that book about how as a kid, her mom made spaghetti a certain way. And then one night, she was invited to go to a friend's house for spaghetti dinner, and she loves spaghetti. So she went to her friend's house, and they serve dinner. And it was like, What is this, this is not the way you eat spaghetti. And I don't recall what the difference was like her mom either made it a certain way long noodles and no meatballs. And this lady made a different noodle and meatballs, whatever it was, it was different than what she was used to. And she had never seen someone eat spaghetti in this way. And she likened to that to the way that we are taught about money, whatever our parents told us, whatever we were shown is what we adopted. And we may have changed and added and maybe put work into that for ourselves over the course of our life. Or maybe not, maybe we're still holding on to the same fears. And we don't even realize it because we think it's true. We tell ourselves a story and we think it's true. So I encourage you, especially when it comes to you, and what you need, and what is important to you, and what will help you get out of suffering and move forward in your life, that you examine these thoughts. And you look at the value that you attach for yourself. I think it's a fascinating exploration. It absolutely has been for me, and hopefully, it opens your eyes and your mind to some new opportunities for what ever support you may need so that you can experience optimal well being of your body and your mind. Alright, my friend. I will talk to you again next week and until then please be good to yourself. Take care

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