It’s tough to choose only four life lessons over the course of dealing with cancer for twelve years, but this final lesson to close out my twelve-year celebration had to be in the top four. 

This is not only a lesson to support a healing mindset, but it’s a lesson that supports a life of self-love and the guilt-free self-care. 

Learning how to adopt an abundant money mindset is a must when it comes to creating the life you desire and treating yourself with the care you deserve. 

I don’t have to go into an explanation of the financial impact a cancer diagnosis can have. We all know that too well.  

But do feelings and thoughts of financial scarcity affect your decisions when it comes to seeking the treatment you want to support your body and mind, inviting in or letting go of relationships, or pursuing your passions in life? 

If they do, you’re not alone, but this episode will give you some insights on how to develop a healthier mindset around money to support.

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 there friends. Welcome to Episode 264 of the breast cancer recovery coach podcast. I'm your host, Laura Lummer. And today I am here with life lesson number 412 years of managing breast cancer. I've learned a lot of stuff. And in this month, the anniversary month from when I was originally diagnosed, I'm sharing four of what I think are pretty much the most powerful lessons. So if you're new to this podcast, and you're just hearing this episode for the first time, I encourage you to go back and listen to the previous three lessons. But for today, I want to talk about our money mindset. It's kind of an uncomfortable topic, isn't it? Money plays such a huge part of our lives. It's a huge energy in our life. And it's a huge tool for us in our life. But depending on the way we were raised around money or the things we were taught around money or the thoughts we've conditioned ourselves to adopt over a lifetime, we can be really uncomfortable talking about money. And that's important because I believe we have to have a really healthy relationship with money, we have to be really clear on how do we want money to work for us in our life. How do we want money to support us in our life, and over the last 12 years of making some really big decisions, and having to invest money in some very big things like cancer treatment, like integrative oncology, higher education, further certifications, ongoing training, I've had to work through a lot of thoughts. And I've had to develop. And I continue to work on and develop a really healthy relationship with money, and a lot of clarity over what money means to me, and how I want my relationship with money to be. So we could talk about so many different aspects of having a money mindset. But for the purposes of this show, I want to focus on our money mindset when it comes to creating a life we want after breast cancer, and I mean after a breast cancer diagnosis, because some people say to me, my gals out there with metastatic disease, when we will say well, what do you mean, after cancer? Like I have stage four cancer? Well, I do too. And what I mean is, after a diagnosis, get a diagnosis of cancer, we deal with the things we have to deal with. And we say, am I living the life I want to live? Am I doing life the way I want to do it. This is the third pillar of breast cancer recovery, regrouping life. And I want to share with you some of three actually three thoughts that have come up that I think are very powerful thoughts, for me and for women that I've coached and work with, when it comes to our money mindset in creating the life we want after breast cancer. Now, I've shared this story before, so I'll give you the Cliff Notes version of it here. But when I finished active treatment, I went through a couple of experiences. And I decided I wanted to go back to college, I wanted to get a degree in healthy lifestyle coaching. Now, I want to talk to my husband about this. And of course this man is shell shocked his new wife was just finished breast cancer treatment. And now at I was 50 years old, and he was 57. And now she's coming and saying, hey, now I just finished cancer treatment, I'm still kind of bald, and I decided I want to invest 10s of 1000s of dollars and hundreds and hundreds of hours in getting a degree. And I didn't approach that conversation lightly. I had to give a lot of thought to it before I went to speak with my husband about it. Because I needed to know that that was really something that I wanted to do. And I want to share with you one of the biggest thoughts that I had to work through before I could get clear on that decision. And I see this thought come up over and over and over again with my clients over the years. And that thought is that what if I die? What if I get cancer back? And I never finished this? What if I get cancer back before I finish this degree? What if I get the degree and I don't live long enough to even use the degree. Isn't this a waste of money? How can I justify the investment of this money and this time in something that I want to create for my future? What if I'm not going to have that future. And I know that this is a thought that comes up for a lot of people, and especially when it comes to using your money into investing in yourself something you want to create for yourself or do for yourself, what if it doesn't work? Isn't that a waste? Am I taking it from some other thing my family might be able to use it for. And I think that that's a very normal thought. I think it's a very heartfelt thought. We love the people that we love in our lives. And of course, we want people to have all of their needs met their financial needs met as well. So when that one came up for me, and it's come up again and again over the years, because even after getting a stage four diagnosis, it was after that, that I decided to make an investment into a top notch, life coaching certification. I made the investment into studying the metabolic approach to cancer with Nisha winters, in each time that I've had to make those decisions on investing money in myself, and in the future I want to create for myself, I've had to work through the idea, the thought, What if I die before I'm done? Is this going to pay off for me in the end? What is worth the investment? Right? If I'm going to invest this much money, does it mean I just go through the experience? What if I die, that thought keeps coming up? And I know it comes up for a lot of you because I hear it all the time.

Laura Lummer  06:32

And this is what I want to offer to you. This is a question that no one can ever answer. We only have this life, while we're here we have this life. So we have to make a decision to invest in ourselves and make it everything we want to be no matter how long we're here. Whether I'm 50 years old, making a decision to create something for my future that requires a financial investment, or whether I'm 25 years old, and making a decision that requires a financial investment. I have no idea how long I will live, no human being knows how long they're going to live. And, you know, people might hear that thing. Oh, that's just cliche. Nobody ever knows. But it's a fact. It's a very true fact. And I think it's important to consider your thoughts around that your beliefs around that, when it comes to investing in yourself, when it comes to using your money to create the life that you want. What are your thoughts on how long you have to live to make that worthwhile? Is it two years? Is it 20 years? Is it 30 years? Is it two weeks is it just you know what I'm just gonna do the things that I want to do from day to day to enjoy myself. And that in and of itself is worth the investment. That was the decision that I made. The decision that I made was, however many days I'm here, each day, I'm going to be stepping into the life that I want to create. And if I get to the end of it, and the brass ring, and I've created all the things, I look back and I say yeah, I got there, I'm going to be so glad that I didn't let that thought but what if I die before I finish stop me. And here I am after that initial decision to invest in myself. And that was back in 2013. So 10 years later here, I am really glad that I didn't let that thought stop me. So when it comes to money mindset, into making a decision to invest in yourself, to create something new, or to take care of yourself in a certain way. I think that this is a very important thought to consider. And when I say take care of yourself in a certain way, I do mean making decisions with respect to the treatments, the nutrition and the expert support that you feel you need in your life. I see a lot of women struggle with this. Will I make this investment in myself to hire a coach to go to therapy to work with a nutritionist to work with an integrative oncologist to invest in organic foods? Will I make this investment in myself? will it matter? And I want to offer that it always matters, that every single day we're here on this planet, it matters. So that's money mindset, thought, number one, are you willing to invest in yourself to get the best care and the most joy out of your life, regardless of the length of that life? Which you never know. All right, here's the second thought that I see come up that really revolves around money and can limit you and having the life you want. And that is this limited thinking versus curiosity. And what I mean by that is pretty much everything has a price tag. Everything has a price tag, right? Whatever it is that you want to do that you want to call It's going to come with a price tag. And when we hear that price, and our mind immediately goes to, oh, that's expensive, or I can't afford that, we're not doing ourselves any favors. It's natural. And I get that those thoughts come up, and especially they'll come up if you've been in a scarcity mindset around money for a long time. So the challenge isn't, do you stop your brain from just thinking that thought? Do you stop your brain from saying, oh, gosh, I want to work with that integrative oncologist. But her package is $5,000 Oh, my God, I can't afford that. That's too expensive. When we go right to that limiting thought, it's okay. It's a natural response. But then I encourage you to adopt the mindset of curiosity. Because there's a 100% possibility that that could happen for you. And when we let our mind go to that place of curiosity, go to, you know what, there's 100% Possibility existing out there. If I adopt an abundant mindset, if I stay in my scarcity mindset, and I just go straight to dots too expensive, I can't afford that. Because you're used to the mechanical relationship you have with money, then you close yourself off to other ideas, to other opportunities to other avenues. And trust me, there are a lot of them out there. I think that people so often don't realize that they can ask more questions, they can ask about more resources, you can find ways to create things in your life, to invite things in your life, if you intentionally decide to adopt an abundant mindset when it comes to your money. And if you allow yourself to go into curiosity, and explore what ways might that work for me? What opportunities are there. So when it comes to supporting ourselves with a healthy money mindset, allowing fear to come up knowing that concerns about finances may come up, and it's a natural thing. allowing that to be there is okay. But immediately buying into that, and not allowing yourself to move to curiosity and explore possibility could definitely be restricting the life that you can create for yourself. So thought number two, going into curiosity and asking yourself, what are the possibilities here in my life that might make it possible to make this investment into myself? Okay, and money mindset block number three, the struggle between joy and security. Now, this is a really big one, for some reason. So many of us think that we either have security, or we have fun. And I want to offer that we can have both, that if we allow ourselves again, to go back to mindset number to step into curiosity, that when we look at our money from a limited mindset, there's only this and this is the only thing I can do with it, then oftentimes we miss out on the joy that we can bring to our lives with our money, we miss out on opportunities to create more joy or experience more joy, because we believe that there's not enough we move into scarcity, rather than into curiosity, and opening ourselves to the possibility of abundance, the possibility of different opportunities, and the belief that no matter how long or how short life is, both joy and insecurity can exist together. Now, I'll give you an example of this from my personal life. I love to travel, I want to travel, if anybody says you want to go, the answer is yes. And they'll like Where? Where are we going? I love to travel. And my husband loves security. So we have had to figure out ways to come to terms with his desire for security, and my desire for fun, and find a balance. Here's the trick to that. You got to have clarity. So if one person wants security and one person wants fun, or if you're the only one person and you want security and fun in your life, you have to know what each of them mean to you. What does security mean? Does security have a number attached to it? Because if you don't have clarity on what that means, then you'll always be in scarcity and worried that there's never going to be enough. You'll always be in fear. But if you can sit back and ask yourself, what is security and this is a discussion I had with my husband at one point he said, What do you need to see when you look in the bank to make you feel comfortable? saying, Let's spend this on fun. Okay. And at first, you know, there was back and forth conversation on what that amount was. But it was important for me to know that he felt comfortable and had that feeling of security. But I also wasn't willing to wait until he had that hit that number before I had enjoyment. So when we both had clarity on what does Joy mean, for me, how much money do I want to spend on fun and travel? What does security mean to me when it comes to our money, and we could look at that and actually attach a number to it, then it becomes much easier to balance the security and joy, because you can have a goal for each of them. And you can work towards those goals incrementally and at the same time. Now, this is a process that I you hear me talk about on the podcast all the time, I work with my clients on this, getting that clarity is important in every aspect of our life. When we're in relationships, and finding ourselves in frustration, it's so important to get clear, and clean up your own thinking and know what you want before you go in to a professional relationship or a personal relationship and have a discussion with somebody about what you want. How do you discuss expectations of others if you're not clear on what you want, and why you want it. And I believe that that is another very powerful step, for laying the foundation for a healthy money mindset. When you're creating the life you want to have. What does that life look like? What does Joy mean to you? What is fun to you? What is security to you? And how can you work towards both of them at the same time and feel comfortable with that decision. And it absolutely requires getting clear on the meaning and defining those terms for yourself. Now, I can go on for days. But I think having three of the big questions. Three of the big thought process to go through with money mindset, and creating the life that you want to have after breast cancer leaves a lot to work on. It's been 12 years for me and I still work on those three thoughts all the time, when it comes to having a healthy money mindset, and having a healthy relationship with money in being my friend and my partner in creating the joyful life that I want to live after breast cancer. So let me just summarize them. One, look at your thoughts around the fear of death and how long life has to be. In order for you invest in yourself to create the life you want to getting sucked into limiting thoughts without creating space for curiosity and opening yourself to the possibilities that exist. And three, believing the joy and security cannot exist at the same time. All right, my friends, I encourage you to do some work around those thought processes and know that you are worth the investment you are worth the time to figure out the possibilities. You're worth the effort to have a beautiful relationship with your money in your life and use it to support you in finding joy and creating your best life after breast cancer. All right, come on. Let me know what you think about that. You can find me on Facebook and Instagram, Laura Lummer, the breast cancer recovery coach, you can work with me in the better than before breast cancer life coaching membership. You can find all the information on my website, the breast cancer recovery coach.com and you can join my free Facebook group, the breast cancer recovery group all kinds of ways that we can connect so find me DM me, let me know some of your questions. Let me know your thoughts on how you develop a healthy money mindset to support you in your life. All right, I will talk to you soon.