Confusion, overwhelm, and being “stuck” all have on thing in common…lack of self-trust. 

It’s so easy to get caught up in other people’s ideas, opinions and judgments that you forget something vitally important….you are the expert on you. 

You are the only one who knows what you want in your life, what feels good to your body, and what makes you happy. 

Isn’t it time to learn to trust yourself again? 

In this episode we’ll talk about some simple, seemingly innocent thoughts that derail your self-trust and how you can choose a different approach that supports your ability to be confident in creating the life you want to live after breast cancer. 

Referred to in this episode: 

Better Than Before Breast Cancer Life Coaching Membership

Read the full transcript here:

Laura Lummer 0:00
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, and welcome to another episode of Better than before breast cancer. With the breast cancer recovery coach, back finally, live again. I left on November 9 for a trip to Italy. We got back on the 18th. And less two podcast episodes were well one I didn't even put out an episode I did send out an email with a list of some of the top five downloaded podcasts for people to listen to. And then on our Tuesday terrain talk, I reposted an episode that was actually a really popular episode and really appropriate for the time of year we're in. But today, I'm back. And I want to talk a little bit about the decisions that I made to not do to brand new shows when coming back from Italy. And it wasn't a plan wasn't part of the plan. I believed that when I got back from my vacation, I would just jump right back into things. But not only was I a little bit tired, but it was Thanksgiving week. And initially I normally do. Thanksgiving is my holiday I love to cook, I usually cook and have the whole family over. But this year because we were traveling and I wanted to honor and to have a little bit of space left. When I got back. I decided I wasn't going to cook for Thanksgiving. And then I got a call from my eldest son saying that my granddaughter really wanted to traditional Thanksgiving and I can't say no to her, nor do I want to. So I said okay, we'll do Thanksgiving. So I had Thanksgiving. And then that weekend was my 60th birthday, when we had plans on Friday night, and we did something on Saturday, and we play had plans all day Sunday. And really when I stopped and I looked at the schedule, we got back from Italy on Saturday, which was my husband's birthday. And on Sunday is when I do my planning on Sunday, I break up my calendar, I look at the upcoming week and make sure and check it against all the calls that my clients have scheduled coaching calls, group calls all that. And I looked at my schedule. And I just said, I don't have the energy for all this, right? This is not happening. I could do it. I could push myself, I could stay up late, I could dress out about it. But I'm not going to. Because something really important has happened for me over the last several years. But especially when it comes to the last I'd say two or three years when I've really become a student, like a focused and intentional student, of manifesting what I want in my life. And being really honest and transparent with where I'm at now. And the capacity, I have an answering that question that I've shared so many times on this show. And then I asked myself daily is this supporting my ability to heal. And when it came to doing more things, the week we got back, even though I was very inspired, I was excited to share some ideas, I was excited to share experiences. And whenever I kind of take a break and tune out from things, I get all kinds of new ideas of things that I want to do. So I was super excited about it. But I realized that in looking at my calendar, where we have 168 hours in a week, and looking at how I wanted to spend those hours to get the most value from my life and take the best care of myself. It just didn't make sense to me. And I had other alternatives. So the reason I'm talking about that is not because I feel like I need to defend putting out new podcasts. But it's to share with you that when we are considering taking care of ourselves and when we're looking at what we want to do in the world, what we want to put out in the world and what we tell ourselves we have to do. We have a lot of options. But we have to start with understanding that most of the pressure we put on ourselves comes from our thinking. If I had gotten home from that vacation and I had said to myself if my thought was I have to do new podcasts I have to get these podcasts out. If I don't get a new podcast out of lose touch with my audience or whatever other drama or story then I probably would have pushed through a done what I used to do year years ago, overnighters, or whatever it takes to get something done. Whereas now my thoughts have become, it's all going to be fine. I need to trust myself. And that's really the topic of this show, is learning to trust yourself, not just because of my own experience, which I just shared with you. But because I hear this often in my coaching. And trusting yourself doesn't only apply to deciding to not put out something new, or to change a deadline or extend something. But it applies to everything. It applies to trusting ourselves to say, the things that need to be expressed, to expressing our needs, our desires, it is important when we think about leaning into life, this is something I'm working on with my clients and my memberships right now, leaning into life, trusting yourself and your intuition, that what you're doing is okay, and that it's safe, and then it's going to be okay. Learning to trust yourself more, even impacts what you eat. I have so many clients who creates so much stress for themselves with worry about what they should eat, based on other people's opinions of what is the best way to eat. You know, I'll share a funny story with you that comes to mind. As I'm saying that years ago, I can't remember her name, there was a famous model. And I cannot remember her name, I'm going to look for this book. And I'm going to post the link to the book in the show notes so you can get her name. But she was a famous model, beautiful, beautiful one. And she wrote a book about eating raw, eating raw food. And in the book, she tells her story of how raw is the only way right it cleared up her skin and improves her digestion. She's a supermodel. So she was of course thin and gorgeous. And it was really kind of new in the trend of raw foods like vegan and raw back in that time was not what it is today. But what I found interesting about it was that she was just this huge proponent like raw is the only way we eating raw food is going to make you feel better. It's going to fix every ailment. And when you read her story, you see that she went not from having a healthy whole food diet to eating raw diet, right? She wasn't it wasn't like she had a great diet and wasn't feeling well. She was living on alcohol spiked coffee in the morning, she was starving herself. She was eating junk food when she did eat. And when she spoke about the lifestyle choices she made before deciding to eat raw food. Anyone would be sick on that diet. And anyone would feel better if they stopped eating that way and started eating real food. So is it a raw food diet that changes everybody's life? Or is it the fact that you finally decided to eat some whole good food? Right? And I see this a lot so much in the food industry, I guess in the book publishing industry in the diet industry, right, we've got paleo and keto and vegan and carnivore and then who knows what the next new trend is going to be. And I love that we just call regular eating omnivore, the omnivore diet, like the person that eats like a human.

Laura Lummer 8:27
But when it comes to all of these diets and all of these choices, what I hear more often than not, is that my clients are confused and overwhelmed. And it's so important. And I love this I love having clients that keep me on my toes. I love it when they do research and they ask tough questions. And I had a post in the better than before breast cancer membership the other day from one of my awesome clients who loves doing research and a super informed and it was an article from a well known physician and well known vegan advocate, in fact, his whole platform and his business and everything is about being a vegan to cure all of your ills. And she posted about it because basically he was trying to debunk the ketogenic diet. And she said, you know, this is why it's so confusing when it comes to what to eat. Because here's a well known and well respected authority. And he's saying, not only is veganism the only way that ketogenic is like the opposite. It's the worst way shouldn't do it. And when it comes to things like that, it's a little bit I mean, I could let myself get frustrated, but it's not worth the energy. But what happens is, we get so caught up in other people's opinions and their interpretation of what the studies say that we forget to trust ourselves. Now, you might be listening to me and saying, Well, Laura, you talk about a ketogenic diet. I do talk about a ketogenic diet because it works for me. But if it didn't work for me, if I were following a ketogenic diet plan, and my tumor markers were not improving, and my labs were not improving, then I wouldn't talk about the benefits of a ketogenic diet because I wouldn't be experiencing the benefits. But even as I speak about the benefits, it's out there, for those people with whom it resonates. If it makes sense to you, if it sounds good to you. If it sounds like something you might want to try, or if you've tried it, and it works for your body, and you feel good, and you have good energy and good elimination and clear brain, and your labs look good, awesome. But if you don't get those results, and you're doing that, that is probably not for you. And maybe a vegan diet is maybe a vegetarian diet is maybe an omnivore diet is. But the important thing is it's not about what I say, I'm only here to give information. And the only information that I put out in the world is based on my own personal experience, or my experience with what I see with women I work personally with right, I'm not just going to talk about things I heard, I heard this was great. Maybe you should try it. But I try it and I use it. And I do that because I trust myself. Now, if I were following the lifestyle plan that I'm doing now. And suddenly, I realized that it wasn't working for me, I would change, right? I'm not so 100% committed. And I don't care. If somebody says if you have cancer, you have to be on the ketogenic diet. I care about what I see in my labs, I care about how I feel. And I've learned to trust myself. When I speak with women, who are struggling with being stuck in an emotional place, being stuck in making decisions about how to nourish their body, therefore, they're just not making good decisions or choices about nourishing their body because they get in this indulgent emotion of confusion or overwhelm, and therefore take no action. One of the comments that I hear when I speak to people that are in this place, is I don't know what to do. Or it's never worked for me before. When it comes to trusting yourself, you must begin to pay attention to the language you use with yourself. If you want to trust yourself in whatever decision you're making, if it's about food, if it's about cancer treatment, if it's about a relationship, it's about a job, a hobby, a business, whatever it is, and you realize I'm uncomfortable here, I don't like the way this is or isn't in my life. I don't like it. But I don't know what to do. I've never tackled something like this before. I've never tried something like this before. Well, I tried something like that in the past, and it didn't work. When you do that you are completely undermining trust with yourself. And so I want to offer you a few thoughts, options to replace those ideas that undermine your ability to trust yourself. Because I've said this before, I'll say it again, I'm sure you'll hear me repeat it in future shows. But information is that thing that is out and around us. But answers are those things that are within us. Okay, so I can get information on any kind of diet on any kind of approach to cancer, I can get information on relationships, on how to start a business on this is the plan you have to follow in order to do it. But when it comes down to taking action, I had to take that information, process it and listen to myself, trust myself, does this work for me? And I'll tell you another example of that. Is it a mistake that I made in the beginning of doing online coaching? I think I've shared it before but long time ago, but I hired this coach because I didn't know how to do an online business. I didn't know how to start a podcast, I didn't know how to build an email list. I didn't know how to reach people with a message I wanted to get to them. So I hired this coach. And they helped me and they're like, here's what you have to say, here's how you construct an email. Here's what you have to tell people. And I didn't know. And they were successful. And when they were telling me that there was something in me that was like, hmm, that doesn't feel totally me. That doesn't feel totally comfortable there and I kind of argued with them. Right? I push back as

Laura Lummer 14:39
I feel like for me for my voice for the people I want to reach I don't know if that approach is really me like I don't know if I forget Oh, no, no, you have to do it this way. You have to learn to get comfortable with it. Hmm, okay. All right. Well, let me try. And even as I started writing these emails with the guidelines that these people gave me Have something just didn't feel right. But I did it anyway, against trusting myself, right? I gave my power away to someone else. Because I trusted their information more than I trusted myself. And what happened was, I got an email back that literally made me sick broke my heart. And it was from someone who is newly diagnosed. And she read me the riot act, and rightfully so. And she said, here, I reached out, basically, what she said was, I reached out to you because she had heard something from me. And she wanted support. And in return for reaching out with hope of getting support, she got a spammy email. Ah, I literally wanted to vomit. It made me feel sick. It was exactly the opposite of what I wanted to put into the world. And I knew it when I was doing it. But I didn't trust myself enough at the time to do what I knew was right. Okay. That was the last time that I ever did that. From that point forward, no matter who my mentor was, no matter what kind of program I was in, I took the information they gave me, I process it. And I said, Now how does this work for me? Where's my voice? How do I want to connect to people? What do I want to create, to put out into the world, and I never made the mistake of doing what someone told me because they said, This is what you have to do. But we do this so often throughout our lives. And we do it because of not trusting ourselves. And because of telling ourselves or telling ourselves these stories and these thoughts of I don't know how to do it. Right? Well, I don't know. And I've never done it, or I tried something before and it didn't work. So I want to encourage a couple of mindset shifts here. And they literally will change your life. They won't stop the thought of I don't know how to do it from coming up. But that's okay. We don't have to stop our brain from upgrading the way that it's operated. We just have to become aware that that's only a thought, in a thought is only as real as what you make it. It only has meaning if you assign meaning to it. So whatever it is in your life that you're uncomfortable with, if you are living in fear every day, and you don't want to live in fear, and you say yourself that I don't know how to do something differently. Here's something I want to offer you. When you notice that thought of I don't know how remember, that undermines your trust in yourself. Any completely strips you of power, it leaves you here, like the person with a dunce cap in the corner. I don't know how to do it. And so then there's no options, right? Just listen to the whole energy behind that I don't know what to do. You're stuck, you're stuck, you're waiting for someone else to tell you what to do with your life, how to choose things in your life. So I would like to offer you this when that thought comes up. Instead of telling yourself buying into it and putting energy and I don't know how to do that. Change that thought to something more like, oh, I want to learn how to do that. Or I'm learning how to trust myself more. I'm practicing how to understand what's right for me. Do you understand how like when you hear that, it changes the energy of everything, it opens yourself to new ideas. But it takes that belief and that power from the external thing, and it gives it back to you. So I'll share another experience I had just recently when I was in Italy, when I went to Italy, I decided that I was going to eat pasta, if I wanted to wasn't like I'm gonna go in and I'm eating Boston every meal. No. But if I wanted to eat pasta at something, I gave myself permission, I'm going to eat like an Italian. I'm gonna experience Italy like an Italian. If I want a croissant, I'm gonna have a croissant. And that decision is one thing. But bigger than that, I decided that I would experience this vacation in the way I wanted to experience it without fear and without guilt. That's the big part. Because I decided I trust myself to know what's okay for me and what's not. I realized as I was on this vacation, I had this really cool shift. And I thought, Oh, I see where the energy of my trust is in the supplement or in the food program. And I'm thinking I trust this to support my healing, right? I trust that to support my healing. And when I realized that I thought, oh my gosh, I'm putting my trust in external things. And therefore I'm not building and growing and tuning into my own power. And so I change that to I trust myself to do was right for me. I trust myself to take all the information to tune in to this beautiful body, that's my partner in life, to love on it. And to trust myself when it comes to making decisions for my life, and my health, and my happiness. If my decision is to take that supplement, it's not because I trust the supplement is because I trust me that I'm doing the right thing by making that choice. If I decide to eat the croissant, it's not because I'm trusting that the croissant won't give me cancer. It's because I trust that I know how to balance my life. I believe in myself, I trust in myself that I have the power to seek balance, that I have the power to change, that my body is fluid and adaptable and making changes. And I trust myself not to live in fear of making choices that may not follow a plan that someone said to me, you got to follow that plan 100%. And that was a really eye opening shift for me. Because it's an incredible feeling of safety that I have now. And it does not by any means mean that I don't trust the program that I'm following that I'm going to deviate from it that I'm not going to be diligent and being aware of how my body's feeling and what's going on. But it's that I've made a decision that I can trust me. And that if I get to a point where I say, You know what, I feel like maybe the supplements are a little too much for me right now. And I'm going to take a break, I'm going to trust myself to make that call. So people ask me when I say you got to learn to trust yourself. This is oftentimes the response I hear. I don't know how to do that. Right? So I don't know how to do that comes up when we think of doing something new. When we're faced with a decision, or we were just told to trust ourselves? Well, I don't know how to do that. Here's how you do it. This sounds so simple, and you're gonna hear it and you're just gonna be like, Oh, what a trust me. You just make a decision to do it. You literally get to this point where you say I am done with feeling this way, which means confused, overwhelmed, ambivalent, make a decision to be done with it. And when you make that decision, then you say, I trust myself, to step into this future version of me. I may make mistakes along the way. But I trust myself enough to be aware of what I'm doing to catch things that may not be working for me. And then to shift them again. How do you know if something is the right thing for you? You don't until you try it? How do you know you can trust yourself? Because you just decide to do it. You decide you're enough. You're smart enough. You know what you want. You know how your body feels, you know what you need? You know how you feel. And we have to take that energy and turn it back into us and realize what I'm feeling is what I'm feeling. I don't have to question it, I don't have to doubt it. I don't have to wonder if somebody else would agree that what I'm feeling is true. What I'm feeling is what I'm feeling. What I need is what I need, I get to own that I get to embrace it, I get to trust it. And the way that I do that, is by simply making a decision to say, I am going to trust myself. Right? I am going to trust myself. I trust myself to gather the information. I trust myself to say it's time to stop gathering information to make a choice. I trust myself to have my own back. If the choice goes well or doesn't go well. I trust myself. This is a huge step in changing your life. Just trust yourself mean everything will go right all the time. And it will always feel good. It absolutely does not. But it means that you will love on yourself. When that happens. You will say it's okay. I trusted myself and I'm human. I'm not perfect. And nobody knows if it's right until you do it. Like we only know the how and the what is right when we get to the other side of it. So will you make mistakes? Yes. Will you do or say things that you think I wish I would have done that differently? Yes. But that's okay. Because you trust yourself to regroup. You trust yourself to take a different direction. And you trust yourself to say,

Laura Lummer 24:40
I'm not going to hold this over my head. I decided to try. I tried. It didn't work for me. I'm going to try something else. But when we go back to one of my previous statements that I tried that before and it didn't work, well what did you learn from the time it didn't work? How could you do it a little bit differently. And when did You try it last? Have you learned something since then? Wouldn't your approach be different now we've got to stop living in the past. We want to start, stop judging and creating life based on the past. And we want to step into the trust and belief in ourselves so that we can manifest the life we want, and lean in to that future version of life and that future version of us with trust and love and respect. All right, I hope that helps you, my friends, I hope you can keep your mind open to the idea. What if this could be better? What if I did trust myself? There's a thought download for you. But that other top of page where would it be different in my life? If I trusted myself? How could this be easier? Something beautiful to explore, and I highly encourage you to do it. And until you learn to trust yourself like that, I will hold this space for you because I want to trust you even more than you trust yourself. I believe and know that you know the things that are right for you in this life. All right, my friends. I will talk to you again soon. It's good to be back. And if you want to work with me dig deeper into this work. You like what you hear on the podcast, come and find me and join me in the better than before breast cancer life coaching membership. You can get all the details on my website, the breast cancer recovery coach.com forward slash life coaching or just click on coaching and programs up at the top of the website page. There's no doubt in my mind do I trust myself to know that I can support you in creating the life you want? 110% All right. Take care of yourself and I'll talk to you again soon.

Speaker 1 26:49
Your courage to the test laid all your doubts your mind is clearer than before your hardest, wanting more your futures all you know you've been waiting on