I've always thought there's something magical about how stories and analogies can make complex concepts more relatable and understandable. I mean, who doesn't love a good story, right? 

Back in my school days, I always appreciated teachers who could transform a subject into a captivating tale we could all connect with. It just made things so relatable for me. 

In this episode, I want to share an analogy with you that I think takes the story from a pretty good movie and relates it to our relationship with our bodies and the world we live in. 

Have you ever considered where your responsibility and power lies when it comes to caring for the trillions of living cells that you take care of in your body? 

In this episode of The Breast Cancer Recovery Coach Podcast, I hope to inspire you to adopt a new perspective of yourself as the steward of your amazing body. 

Listen now and become the captain you've always wanted to be or discover how to become one. 

Referred to in this episode: 

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. Hello, hello, welcome to episode 252 of the breast cancer recovery coach podcast. I am your host, Laura Lummer. I'm super excited to be here today, as always, every day because every day is a gift. And every day I get to show up here to do this podcast. Trust me, I do it with gratefulness and gratitude in my heart every single day, I'm happy to be able to be here to support this amazing community. So let's jump right into this. I'll give you a little insight into the workings of my brain. So I love a story. I love a good analogy. And in fact, in school, I was a good student. But when I had a teacher who could take the subject that they were teaching, and put it into story terms, take these concepts and apply them to real life. I loved those teachers, I loved those classes. And it just makes more sense in my brain. I love hearing that it just helps me remember maybe I'm a that maybe that's why I love audiobooks. So much. I love listening to something and then I can repeat that story. But I also when I see something, oftentimes I'll connect it back, I'll see it I think, Oh, that makes total sense in my life, or that makes total sense with this story. So the other night, I was watching this Tom Hanks movie with my husband was called greyhound. And if you haven't seen it, and like historical horror movies, it was an interesting movie, it was pretty intense. Actually, I was kind of surprised about how intense it was. But as I was watching this movie, I don't know, my brain just started to relate it to everything that I'm going through. In this process of learning more about my body of healing my body, I started thinking about it in terms of all the women that I work with and support. And it just became the story in my head that I want to share with you. Because I'm always trying to think of ways that make it easier, and I guess more enjoyable, and fun and interesting to connect back to our bodies. And to think of our bodies in terms of the power we have over them, you know, we meaning the conscious person, you and the decisions you make. And I think and I believe and I talked about this all the time, the more we step into our power. And I think knowledge helps us do that, the more confident we feel. And I think the more grounded and rooted we become in our life. So as I'm watching this movie, I'm thinking, you know, Tom Hanks is the captain of this battleship. And it's so interesting, because I think that the consciousness in me is the captain of this body, right. And he has all of these troops on this ship with him. And each of them have a very specific responsibility. And there's a really cute scene where one is supposed to be relaying some critical information back and forth from the person reporting it to the captain. And he hesitates momentarily, because he sneezes, and he catches hell for that, right? Because when you need something in your body to work right in his work right now, we don't want to delay in that, right, we want it to work correctly. But there was not only these layers to here, all the troops, each of them have a very specific job. Each of some of them are more obvious. Some of them are up on the deck with the captain and interacting with the captain all the time. And I think about some of the things in our body that we interact with all the time. Some of the things we notice some of the cues we listen to like when we're hungry, when we're tired. Do we honor those things? How do we treat those signals for our body? And then there are the ones that worked down. I don't know what you call the bottom of a ship. Sorry, I have no marine training, but down in the bottom of the ship. And they're mapping things out and they're working with the weaponry. And the captain really never knows what's happening down there. Kind of until something goes wrong. And then when something goes wrong, he gets this signal and it's like oh, shoot Shit. It's not like something might go wrong. It's like, something's gone wrong. Okay, now what? And I think about that with the inside of our body and with our gut, and with our organs and just, you know, at the cell that the cellular level that we can't see. And we often don't know, necessarily that something's wrong, until it's gone wrong. And then we get an indicator we get pain or something else, or some kind of a mass or god knows what. And we go, Well, where did this come from? You know, it was out of sight. I couldn't see it. And here it is a no, it's a problem. But the Captain has to figure out how to deal with the problem. Right? The captain can just say, Okay, well, that's it. I didn't know that was happening in the bottom of the ship. So forget it, like this is a pointless endeavor, I'm not going to try to Captain this ship anymore. Right? The Captain has to say, Okay, I have a problem. How are we going to deal with this problem? So well, he's navigating this, and all of these troops, just like when we're navigating our body that has these trillions of cells. And, you know, I am so fascinated with anatomy and with biology and the thought that these microscopic parts of us, the cells are these little tiny worlds inside of us. So fascinating. And inside each cell, I remember when I would study cellular anatomy in school. And I thought, oh, my gosh, you know, there we, I mean, entire classes and semesters devoted to the working of just tiny particles inside a cell. And now and then I would stop and realize, I think, you know, what, I'm not studying a body, I'm studying a microscopic cell. And there are so many complexities to it. It's absolutely amazing. And it's this living, functioning community, inside this little microscopic capsule. It's absolutely fascinating. So here we are the captain of all these trillions of living things inside of us, each having a job to do each having a responsibility, all working as part of a community. And when the community is in sync, things work well. And the community responds to distress signals, something goes wrong, something comes into the body, like when the captain is out on this ocean fighting the Battle of the Atlantic. And there's a U boat hidden underneath the water that shoots a torpedo at it. What's the captain gonna do? He's got to navigate, right? And he's got all of the the troops young, torpedo over here, torpedo over there. And he's running back and forth. I mean, this was pretty intense movie. But isn't our life intense sometimes? Isn't our body intense sometimes isn't what we do with with our health intent sometimes. And doesn't it feel like things are coming at us from all angles, that we've got the torpedoes coming at us. But we've also got, like, the captain has the other ships, the other battleships that are there to get his back. And we also have support and communities, but those people also have input. And those people also have ideas of ways they want to support us and things they want to do, we kind of have to navigate that as well. And we sometimes get friendly fire from those people, we have to figure out how to navigate that as well. Ultimately, we are the captain of this ship. Ultimately, we are responsible for every single decision. And what really made me think of this was a phrase I often hear from survivors I work with, where they say, my body has betrayed me. And when you slip into this mentality, this belief, my body has betrayed me. I don't see good outcomes come from that. That thought doesn't bring anything positive to the table. It doesn't serve us in any way. But I understand why the thought is there, because I've had the thought myself. So back to my story of my analogy, as I thought about this, I think about in this ship analogy was kind of like a mutiny, right? Because it's kind of like, okay, we all come in here. We're trusting this captain. Watching this captain.

Laura Lummer  09:17

Captain is making some good choices. Cathy's making some questionable choices. Oh shit, here comes the torpedo from outside. Oh, dang, captain didn't see that one. Oh, Captain kinda saw that one. Right. We avoid stressors. We walk into stressors, we deal with some stressors. Well, we don't deal with others well, but if we go long enough, not making great choices as the captain, not taking the time that we need to feed our body correctly. Right. Think about the troops. You've got this ship full of troops, you're responsible for them. You're responsible for keeping them well and keeping them fed and making sure that they have the energy and the mental clarity to do their job correctly, what about in our body, we have cells in our body that need certain nutrition, we have communities of cells in our body that need to be fed that need to be rested that need us to manage stress. And when we the captain, go long enough, without making consistent, thoughtful, good choices, we could get hit. With so many 20 hours or so let's say we even give up. We even just stop trying to make good choices to support our health. We get hit by these torpedoes over and over what are torpedoes, stressors, you know, toxins, things that come into us, maybe viruses, maybe bacteria, things that can have an impact on us at a cellular level. And then we say, well, I got this disease, I got this illness, my body betrayed me. But did our bodies betray us? Or do we not pay attention to the signs as the captain first? Now? Easy, easy? I know, the first thought that's going to come to somebody's mind is, Are you saying I'm responsible for getting sick? And no, I'm not. This isn't about being responsible for being sick. In fact, it's just like I say, I don't want to talk about fighting cancer, I want to talk about supporting health. And I think this way, also when it comes to making these statements, when we look at our life, and we think about what do I have control over? What can I take control over? What can I look back at in my life and reevaluate and say, maybe I could have done that differently, maybe I will want to do that differently going forward. I never think of it as that was my fault. I got cancer, I think of it as Oh, I see that. And if I change that, then I'm making a better choice to support my health and healing going forward. Okay, because I don't ever believe the blame or shame, or beating ourselves up or wondering if we're the ones responsible for disease. I don't see how that's ever serving us how that's ever helpful. How that ever leads to something good. I'm not even sure why our brains go there. But I know that they do. And so I want to specifically address that. What I'm saying here as the captain is, can you look back? And can you say, you know, there were these choices that I made. And I know you can because I've coached enough women, and I've been in this long enough to know my own thoughts and the thoughts that I hear. You know what, that probably didn't help. You know, that choice I made, the decisions I made not to be myself. And we know this because we can think back on things that we've done in our past. And we can remember how bad it felt physically. Our emotions are always giving us physical signals. They're talking to us physically through our body and saying this doesn't feel good. Are you going to listen? And that takes us back to the analogy, right? If I've got some guy on the sonar looking for torpedoes, and he's telling me, Hey, Captain, I see this thing coming. I see this here comes here comes and I choose not to listen, we're gonna get hit by the torpedo. So when we are taking responsibility for this amazing body, we have to kind of own what steps we can take to support and promote its health even more. Right. And we do that without shame. We do that without beating ourselves up. We do that without self judgment. It's just really stepping into curiosity, stepping into personal awareness, personal responsibility, and never blaming herself for something like cancer. I mean, I just, it's, let's just let ourselves off the hook for that. And when we let ourselves off the hook for that, it allows us to be free to explore what we as the captain can do better. How we can better serve our troops, how we can better support our beautiful, amazing body. And how even though we're gonna go through life, and life is this big ocean, that's got u boats in it. And on Scott hmm, killer whales in it. And it's kind of giant predators in it all the time. And crazy waves and crazy storms that can throw us off track that can leave us disoriented. It's up to us to always come back in to realize we can control that ocean. We can try to sidestep some of the torpedoes and sometimes it'll work and sometimes it won't. Sometimes we'll get by them. When we get hit by them. We have to make decisions. This thing happened in life. And so what do I do to decide to support myself in the best possible way that I can, that is always our choice. And it's really our only choice. You know, that's our only power. What do I do to support myself in the best way that I can? How do I support myself emotionally? How do I support myself physically? How do I step back and evaluate myself as the captain of this ship? Would I want a mutiny? You know, if I were under the control of this captain, if I were reporting to me, would I say, I've got a pretty good captain here, you know, I'm pretty happy with something, I'm gonna stay on this ship. Over, I think I am jumping in the ocean. I don't care how many sharks or torpedoes I'm out of here. But what our bodies say? What would our cells say? Now, I also started to think about in this movie, Tom Hanks character was an older gentleman. And I thought, you know, here's an interesting thing. Here's this captain, who worked hard, who understands everything about this ship, who understands the ocean, who knows what has to be done, and knows that those choices are difficult and hard, and that they take a lot of time and a lot of commitment. And because this character puts a lot of time and commitment into the ship. But I think, you know, some of us haven't been lucky enough to have the experience and the personal growth and the development, that helps us be the best captain of our ship. Some of us didn't go to Officer school, right? Some of us just came in as the grunts when we came into this world, let's say we're all grunts when we come into this world, and what were we taught? You know, who did we receive guidance from with respect to the best way to take care of a body? And if you think about it, when we have kids, a lot of times, we're not teaching kids, what's the best thing to keep their body healthy? Sometimes we give these kids the example of, well, you know what, you're young your body can take it. And so yeah, they're young. But as they're growing up, how are they learning? That?

Laura Lummer  17:12

How do I be the captain of this ship this body? Right, so sometimes it's going to be a bigger learning curve, because you may reach the age that a captain usually is, but not have the skills and ability to be the captain of the ship to manage the emotions to make the best choices, nutrition wise, exercise wise, lifestyle wise, relationship wise. And so I think it's important to be able to evaluate that and honor that and respect that as well. And understand, do I need more training? Do I need to go to office or school? You know, do I, I look back at my life. And even though I was always interested in health and nutrition, when I think about the, I don't even know, hours and hours, years, you know, spent on education and training and courses and continuing education, learning as much as I could about the body and how to take care of it. That's a really big commitment. So I think sometimes that you can give yourself that break and say, you know, what do I know? And how much more do I need to know, to be a good captain of this ship? How much more do I want to know? Because sometimes people don't want to know, I will have people say to me, I don't want to know how it works. I just want to know what to do. I think it's important to know where you're at with respect to that. So don't be afraid to make that investment in yourself. If you think you know, I'm just not really sure I'm not feeling really powerful. I've been promoted to captain here. I'm an independent adult, but I'm not sure of the right things to do to support myself. Then look for those right things. Ask yourself, what do I need to know, you know, so that you're not finding yourself in scarcity and nervousness and anxiety when it comes to captaining this body? Right? It's okay. It's okay to reach out for emotional support. It's okay to reach out for nutrition support, it's okay to reach out for physical exercise, support, everything you believe you need. It takes a village sometimes, you know, we don't just learn everything on our own. And even you say like, I'm self taught, what does self taught mean? means We reached out to other experts and either read what they put out into the world or trained underneath them. I mean, we just didn't sit back and meditation and download the knowledge of the universe. So it's okay to give yourself the space and the grace and the permission to learn more. If you're looking at your experience, and you're looking at where you desire your future self to be, what kind of Captain of this ship you want to become? Do you have the skills and the knowledge to do it? Or do you need some help? And if you need assistance, what kind of assistance do you need? What do you think would serve you best And once you figure that out, are you willing to invest in it your time and your money, right? Because no matter what it is, if it's therapy, if it's coaching, if it's nutrition counseling, if it's cooking classes, it's going to take time and money. So are you willing to look for the things that you need to support yourself to become the best captain of your ship, and to support your future health, your current and future health in the best way that you possibly can? Alright, I hope you enjoyed storytime today. But I just wanted to let you in on that analogy. I'd love to hear what you think about it. So find me and DM me on Facebook and Instagram, you'll find me as Laura Lummer, the breast cancer recovery coach, you can join my free group on Facebook, which is the breast cancer recovery group, where you can join my life coaching membership, where you actually go through so many of these concepts with me we look at new concepts every month. We have private coaching calls and small group coaching calls where you can work with me one on one, so I'm here to support you in any way that you need. And you can find all of that information on my website, the breast cancer recovery coach.com All right, I'll talk to you again soon. Until then, be good to yourself.