Get ready to shatter the glass ceiling of happiness! In this empowering episode, we're diving deep into a common phenomenon that affects us all: the 'happiness ceiling.' 

Join me as we explore the powerful tendency we have to self-sabotage when life gets unbelievably good or positive change starts stretching beyond our comfort zone.  

Why do we do this? How does it impact our lives? And most importantly, what can we do to break free from this self-imposed limitation? 

In this episode, I’ll shine a light on the psychology behind this phenomenon. Discover practical strategies and mindset shifts for reclaiming your worthiness of happiness and success, no matter where you're at in your breast cancer journey.  

This show will help you uncover hidden beliefs, confront self-sabotaging patterns, and create a roadmap to soar beyond your happiness ceiling. (Think of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory!) 

If you’re ready to embrace the incredible potential that awaits you, tune in now to gain the tools and inspiration you need to rewrite your story and live a life that’s Better Than Before Breast Cancer™. 😊🎉 

Referred to in this episode: 

HSA and FSA Health Coaching Information and Template

Medicare information on Health Coaching coverage

Dr. Nasha Approved Store 

Better Than Before Breast Cancer™ Life Coaching Membership 

Thoughts to consider: 

1. I am open to receiving unlimited happiness in my life. 

1. As I teach myself to stay open to receiving unlimited happiness, it's going to feel uncomfortable. And that's okay. 

1. When I feel uncomfortable, as I break through my happiness ceiling, I'm going to hold my own hand, have my own back, and I'm going to reach out for any support I need. 

Follow me on Social Media: 

Facebook 

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Pinterest 

YouTube 

Read the full transcript below: 

Laura Lummer 0:00
Hey friends, before we jump into this episode, I have an exciting announcement for you. As a certified trainer advocate, I get asked all the time, what's a good resource for high quality supplements? What are safe things to use on my body in my home? What are good foods to eat? What are good sources to find these things. So I am thrilled to announce that I have partnered with the metabolic Institute of terrain health. And I have added a store to my website, the breast cancer recovery coach.com. This store is full of products that have had their eyes on and been vetted by Dr. Nisha winters, and are approved as high quality, reliable resources. I'm so excited to be able to offer these to you everything from body care to home care to nutrition products to therapeutic care. I trust the recommendation of Dr. Nisha and the metabolic Institute of terrain health, and I believe you can trust them too. So check out the store and enjoy Dr. Naisha approved products. And now let's get into the show. You're listening to better than before breast cancer with the breast cancer recovery coach. I'm your host, Laura Lummer. I'm a certified life coach, and I'm a breast cancer thriver. In this podcast, I will give you the skills and the insights and the tools to move past the emotional and physical trauma of a breast cancer diagnosis. If you're looking for a way to create a life that's even better than before breast cancer, you've come to the right place. Let's get started.

Laura Lummer 1:40
Hey, friends, welcome to episode 311 have better than before breast cancer with the breast cancer recovery coach. I'm your host, Laura Lummer. And I am thrilled you're here with me today because we're going to talk about something that is really important when it comes to your recovery and to creating a life that is truly better than before breast cancer. Now, before I get into the show, I want to tell you about something really exciting, especially for you at the beginning of this new year. So it was just recently brought to my attention that both FSA flexible spending accounts and HSA health savings accounts. Both have plans that in a lot of cases cover healthy lifestyle coaching and health support. Even more exciting this year 2024. I don't know if it's more exciting, but equally as exciting. Medicare is covering healthy lifestyle coaching for the very first time. And that is the foundation of the better than before breast canceling life coaching membership and the individual coaching that I do. I'm a certified life coach. But I'm also a certified health coach, a certified nutrition coach, and I have a bachelor's degree in healthy lifestyle coaching. So meaning I qualify. So if you've always wanted to explore the better than before breast cancer life coaching, membership, and then over three years of amazing content that's in there to support you along the way with anything you want to work on in your life or in your health. Along with all of the bonus content and live access to me and coaching. This is the time to do it. There's no better time than 2024. And if you have an HSA and FSA or if you're on Medicare, I'm going to include links to some information in the show notes for this episode, which you can find where you're watching it on YouTube or listening to it on a podcast platform or on my website, the breast cancer recovery coach.com forward slash 311. I'll put the links in the show notes. So you can check out the article and information on this exciting news. It really thrills me because what it means to me is that insurance organizations, healthcare corporations, are actually recognizing the importance of the emotional and mental support provided through coaching, and how it benefits our overall physical health. And I'm very, very excited about that. I think it's a huge missing component in our medical system. We need advocacy, we need support when it comes to not just getting information that you need to help support you in creating a healthy lifestyle, to support you in moving past trauma, to help you process all kinds of emotions that you might be going through and to help you adopt and maintain a healthy mindset. But it's equally as important as having access to that information is having access to somebody that can help you understand how to implement that information and those behavior changes into your life. And that's what it is. It's a process of behavior change. And behavior. Change is an amazing science. I love it. I study it all the time. Heck I did my degree in it. It's the foundation of all of the thought work and all that we talk about and work on here at the podcasts, and in my memberships, programs and coaching because it can literally change your life. It changed mine, it's changed the lives of so many other women that I work with. And I'm very excited and very happy to know that there are programs out there that are giving you even more options to be able to access, the benefit of coaching, and to support yourself. Okay, so check it out, read the show notes. And let's jump into the show because I have a lot to tell you. So I want to talk to you about something that I'm calling our happiness ceiling. And let me tell you what that means. There's something that I noticed coming up for my clients, and I've noticed it coming up for myself personally. And I've had to work through this. And especially lately, so I'll share a little bit of a story with you of my own personal experience. I've set some really big goals for myself for 2024, especially when it cons to my coaching business. Now I've been coaching for the past, oh my gosh, this is 2024. So I've been coaching for the past, I started in 2017. What is that seven years, nearly about six and a half years now. But a lot of those years first, in the beginning, were figuring it out. And then as I really launched into a really solid program in 2020, I got diagnosed with stage four cancer. So a lot of my business, which I love about the way I've created my business, my business has functioned around my life, as my focus has been very, very much on supporting my health, on supporting my body's ability to heal, and taking all the time I need for the health appointments that I have. And for all the work that I do. So in 2024, I decided this was a time I was going to invest more time in more programs and exciting things that I have planned for my business. And so what I've experienced over the last couple of weeks, as I jump into that were at the beginning of the year, and I've got a schedule, and I've got all kinds of things on the calendar that I want to create. And the time that I have to put into that it was I'm stepping into it. I'm leaning into these big goals, I've noticed this fear coming up, I've noticed this tendency that I have suddenly to look around me and see, oh, my goodness, look at all these people who are coaching breast cancer survivors now. Oh, my goodness, look at all this stuff these people are putting out there is that better than my stuff? Am I right? In this direction? I'm going should I be doing this? Should I be investing my time, right? I see this happening in my brain. Now I'm aware of it. And I'm working through it. And I'm coaching myself on it. And I'm getting coached on it. And I'm doing all the work because I noticed what my brain is doing. And I know better than to let it stop me, right. I know what I have to do to stay on track. But it's fascinating to watch the way that my brain is working. And I want to offer because I see this happen a lot that as people decide to create change in their life, which oftentimes happens at the beginning of the year, I see my clients experiences. So when we start to lean into big goals, big changes, a lot of fear comes up. And then we have a tendency to self sabotage. Even when it comes to something like losing weight, eating a healthier diet, you get on a roll of making healthy choices, you start to realize that you're feeling really good, and that you're really enjoying it, you start to get really proud of yourself for your accomplishments. And then you start to give yourself a little leeway. And you start to lean back in to unhealthy practices. You lean back into habits that you've been working on so hard to change. And it's a slippery slope, when suddenly you find that it lends you right back to where you started, or even in a worse position than what you started off with. Now I see this happen when people try to adopt healthy lifestyle. I see this happen when people try to work on their relationships, when they want to change jobs, when they start visiting, want to start businesses, they talk themselves out of it. It is all encompassing every aspect of our life this happens in and I've noticed it more and more again, I think that the time of year has a lot to do with it. And I can tell you exactly what happens when we start to do this to ourselves. Because there's certain thought patterns that inevitably create the same result. So for example, when we have thoughts of overwhelm, right, the thoughts that give us this emotion of overwhelm 100% of the time if we're thinking things that create overwhelm, we will create the result of doing nothing will start to spend will start to waste time will start to buffer by scrolling through social media will start to tell ourselves all kinds of stories because we're slipping into feelings of scarcity. An overwhelm always ends up in nothing happening, no change being created. When we go into thoughts that create feelings of scarcity, like the ones that I just talked about, when we lean into something big and fear comes up, we start feeling fear. And telling ourselves stories like this is too scary. This is too much. I've never experienced this before. I'm not sure that it's something I can handle. I'm not sure it's something I'm worth. I'm not sure I'm ready for it. Those are all scarcity thoughts. And when we have thoughts of scarcity, what will happen is we go into fear. And when we go into fear, we lean back into what we perceived as safety. And we confuse safety with comfort, even if what is comfortable does not create the life we want. So as I said, I've seen this come up a lot recently. And I think it's because at the end of 2023, in my membership, we focus last two months on creating what you want in your life. And when my members when my clients are opening their minds to thinking about what you want in your life, what you want this upcoming year to look like. And when any of us we start to give ourselves space and permission to think big. And I encourage my clients and I encourage you to think big to give yourself space to do an exercise in releasing judgment and allowing yourself to think anything. So let your mind just get as big as it can get to create as much space as possible, and believe and decide that you can manifest anything in your life. And when you open a space like that, a lot of amazing ideas can come up. And then we move into the beginning of the year. And here we are in January. And we're moving into what do you have to do to release scarcity thoughts that are stopping you from leaning into these things that you want to create? And guess what happens? That starts to get uncomfortable? It starts to get scary. And now the brain starts throwing up thoughts like, what do I think I'm doing here? What is this all about? Am I stepping too far out of the box? Are people gonna think that I've changed too much. I hear clients say things to me like this all the time I hear them say to me, I feel like I'm an imposter. They're getting, they're sliding into imposter syndrome. They're questioning their own ability to do something bigger. They're telling themselves who am I to do this big thing? I'm, I'm no one who am I to do this? Who am I to take this on? Who am I to think it's okay for me to change my life. If we don't catch thoughts like that, if we don't address them, if we don't become aware that we have other choices, and other ways to think, then thoughts like those which are scarcity thoughts, fear based thoughts, they will lead us to giving up, they will lead us to stopping they will lead us to playing small, and they will lead us to believing we don't have the ability to accomplish the life we dream about. So I'm going to give you a very personal example of that. And it's something that I'm sure that all of you can relate to. As I've shared so many times on this podcast, my ultimate goal is to heal from metastatic breast cancer. Now, when people hear that oftentimes they say, well, that's not possible, right? It's not curable.

Laura Lummer 13:36
If I say that to somebody in my oncologist office, if I say, Yeah, my goal is to heal. They literally look at me like I sprouted a second head. So if I allow myself to get caught up in this standardized thinking, when I say standardized, I mean, conditioned thinking, the conditioned, acceptable belief. If I allow myself to get caught up in that, I could very quickly find myself questioning my ability, questioning my plan, questioning myself, and what I believe is true for me. And then I will move more interference scarcity and say, thoughts like, maybe I'm wrong, maybe I am crazy to think I can do this. Maybe I just need to surrender to the fact this isn't gonna happen for me right now. Can you see how these thought threads one leads right into the other, and the result of all of them is giving up on yourself. So as I've been thinking about this a lot lately, and I consider myself to be kind of a perpetual student. I'm constantly reading and researching and learning because I love learning new things. And two of my primary areas of focus are what I have to do to support my body's ability to heal. And another area of focus is finances. I focus a lot on manifesting an abundant mindset when it comes to life. And when it comes to money, because here's another thing I bet you can all relate to. When it comes to healing, when it comes to being in the medical system, there are a lot of expenses involved in that. And because a lot of what I do requires that I lean into and speak to and train with, and mentor with experts in the fields of healing, and how to support the body's ability to heal. Even more expenses come up, even more expenses are laid on the table. And it's very, very easy to slip into scarcity, thinking and fear when it comes to spending a lot of money. So I decided a while back when I noticed that I personally was limiting my access to things I believed could support my healing. Because of slipping into a scarcity mindset around money, I decided at that point, I was going to become a student of financial manifestation of a positive money mindset, and teaching myself how to receive abundance in my life. So I'm constantly reading that I'm constantly reading, listening, studying, working on this. And recently, I'm reading this book, the author is Amanda Francis. And in the book, she talks about how she notices people have a financial setpoint. And she talks about if you don't change the way that you think about money and finances, and if you're used to having X amount of money in your bank account, X amount of money in your checking account, X amount of money in your paycheck, then if you do something in your life, that changes one of those variables, and suddenly you have more money, for whatever reason. So let's just say for instance, that you come into an unexpected check, right? I don't know, let's say you get a bigger tax refund than you're expecting. And you get a check for $2,500. And you're like, oh my gosh, I had no idea I was gonna get that much. I didn't know this was coming. That's so exciting. And then the next day, you get a bill for $2,500 for a new transmission on your car. And you stop and you say, I knew it, this always happens. Every time I get some extra, it's goes right out the back door, it comes in the front door, and it goes out the back door, and you always find yourself at the same financial level. And what she was saying in this book is that that's because it feels comfortable and normal for you. And you believe that is the most you can have, that's the normal level for you. And you get stuck in that place. So whenever you start to break through that financial barrier, we self sabotage because it feels uncomfortable. And because we haven't adopted a mindset that says this is okay for me. I'm worth this, I can have this, I can hold this, this can be mine, it's okay. We don't have that mindset, we have the mindset that I'm not used to that much, I don't have that much. You know, money doesn't just come to me like that, there's always going to be something else that it's needed for. Okay. So I started thinking about this. And I was thinking about it relation to finances, but I started to notice that it crossed over into happiness. And I started to see the for my clients and even for myself, that there seems to be a certain expectation of how happy you can be of how good you can have it. And then when things start to get better, we go into fear. We start telling ourselves like things like this can't last. This is too good to be true. This isn't sustainable. This is bound to stop, right. And inevitably, it will. Because this is how the human brain works. When you have a thought and your thought is I don't get to be happier than this. Once I exceed that level, something will happen. And I hear this all the time I just waiting for the other shoe to drop. Take me back down. And when you think that way, you're right. It will always happen. Because your brain will look for ways to say I knew it. I knew this was gonna happen. And that right there is how we limit ourselves to the amount of happiness we allow ourselves to bring into our lives. And when I started seeing that, it was like this light bulb came on and I thought, What the heck is going on here? What's going on? And why don't we do this? So I started to research it. I started reading some different things and researching into trying to understand why the human brain does that. Why do we subconsciously or unconsciously sabotage ourselves and keep our lives under a certain level? And I came across this very interesting theory. And it's called the Social efficiency model. Now, this is a concept that was primarily used in the field of education. So it's this philosophy and approach that emphasizes preparing people to be efficient and productive members of society. So this model is grounded in the belief that the primary purpose of education should be to teach students specific skills and give them specific knowledge so that they can fulfill predetermined roles in society and in economic systems. So some of the characteristics Now bear with me, as I go through this, you may be thinking like, what in the heck does this have to do with creating a life for myself, or dealing with my breast cancer, and I'm going to come back, I'm going to circle back around to that. Stay with me for a second here. Okay. So some of the key characteristics of the social efficiency model are that one, there's a practical and vocational focus. And that means that what we're taught is centered around having practical skills. Rather than exploratory learning. The focus of the social efficiency model is aimed directly at preparing students, because this is a foundational concept on which our public education system was founded on it focuses on directly preparing students for specific jobs and specific roles, standardization is very critical to this. And that means from the time we're children, right, so I started kindergarten when I was four. And that was a really long time ago. And I think kids are older dogs, we've got pre K and all that kind of stuff. So maybe kids are 567, very, very young. But they go into school. And this key concept of standardization, is a part of the model they're educated with. It's part of the model our parents were educated with, and their parents were educated with. And it is this idea that everyone achieves a certain level of proficiency in all areas across all students, right, no matter where you were raised, what your ethnicity is, what your socio economic background is, the whole purpose of the system is rooted in everyone meeting a standard. Another key concept is conformity is conforming to social needs. So that the system is designed to teach people to conform to the existing social and economic structures. The idea is to produce people who can effectively function in the current economic system, right be better employees. And that concept limits the emphasis on individualism. So unlike philosophies that prioritize individual development and critical thinking, the social efficiency model downplays individualism in favor of conforming to social norms, and expectations. So when I read about this model, I thought, holy cow, this is starting to make sense, right? The penny is dropping here. Because let's think about this. If we're taught from children, from small children, to meet a standard, and that everyone is expected to meet that standard, we're taught to conform to this expectation and not be an outlier, right? Don't be a disrupter conform, understand, here's how things work. Don't think about how there are other ways that things might work, because that's not what we're trying to teach you or try and teach you. This is how it works. And this is what is expected. This is what is called normal, quote, unquote. So what does this have to do with the happiness ceiling? What does this have to do with your life? Well, the concept of self sabotage in relation to the happiness ceiling is very intertwined with the social efficiency model, if we think about it, because the framework that we've been educated in that we've been conditioned in in our society and our schools and our workplaces, it emphasizes conforming to standards, and that shapes how we view our world, our life, our success, our happiness. When society emphasizes being average, being normal. It can stifle your personal growth, and your self expression. So for breast cancer survivors, think about this. You've undergone a life altering experience, and how badly do you want to return to average? How badly do you want to be normal again? How much how often? Do you tell yourself I want to feel normal again. We tell ourselves that being normal is the expectation. We've been taught our whole lives to internalize the idea of a social standard. And this internalization is unconscious To sleep creates a happiness ceiling, where we believe that if we exceed this benchmark, then it's uncomfortable because it's not the norm. It's not the norm you've been used to. And even worse than not being something that's considered normal, or that you're comfortable or used to, you might stand out. You might have this underlying fear, the subconscious, even unconscious fear, that being different from normal is not safe. So what do you do in order to appear normal? You downplay your own struggles. You downplay your own achievements, you don't celebrate your successes. You downplay your own needs, so you can continue to fit into what you have decided. And society has conditioned you to believe is normal. So when you get close to the edge of what you believe, is normal, and you're veering out of this range of normalcy, whether it's because you have breast cancer, and now you're not normal, because you're sick. So you've dipped underneath the normal standard, right? Or after breast cancer treatment, you've made a decision to make some changes in your life, you've stirred death in the face, you've realized that life is short. And you've realized that there's all kinds of stuff that you haven't done, then you start thinking these things unexciting these things sound like fun. These things sound like, I want to try them. And now you're approaching the upper edge of the normal, the upper edge of the happiness ceiling, you're getting so close to that ceiling of happiness, and you want to break through it. Because you've lived your life happy at a certain level. And now you want to be happier at a higher level. And that doesn't feel normal, it doesn't feel comfortable. And you start saying things to yourself, like maybe I shouldn't expect this. Maybe I don't deserve this, maybe I'm not worth this. And the scarcity thinking starts to slip in. And you get more uncomfortable because you hit the ceiling. And when we hit the ceiling, we say, whoa, whoa, whoa, I gotta come back down, I gotta stay normal. And so we suddenly sabotage ourselves over and over. So that we slide back into what feels normal, because that's a safety mechanism. It's a way of pulling ourselves back into a comfort zone that we've established by whatever social norms you've agreed to, as an adult. You know, one of the most common things that I hear when I'm coaching women is that they're holding back. I talked to women almost every day. And they tell me, they live with this feeling of constriction in their throat and in their chest. They feel like things are bottled up, that things are tight, that they're holding in their voice, that they're holding in their desires, that they have to keep other people happy that they don't express their own needs for happiness, because they don't want to appear needy. They hold themselves back. And I believe this is because they're approaching their happiness ceiling. And it's uncomfortable. When you're in your normal life. And you're telling yourself, my life is good, and your life is good. And it should be good. You deserve it to be good. So you're thinking, gosh, I have a good life. I shouldn't expect more, who am I to expect more. So I don't express the things that I need. The things I don't like, I don't allow myself to dream, I don't allow myself to believe that things can change. You don't allow yourself to let go of ideas that limit you, because they've been drilled into your entire life.

Laura Lummer 28:50
The social efficiency model. So what do you do about it? How do you break through your happiness ceiling? How do you allow yourself to be like Charlie in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory and ride that frickin elevator through the glass ceiling and burst out and allow yourself to be open to the happiness that is available on the other side of that ceiling? How do we give ourselves permission to not hold back? Even when it gets uncomfortable? How do we continue to move forward and see what else is out there for us? How do we help ourselves understand it's okay for us to believe beyond some other people's limiting thoughts. And it doesn't mean that their thoughts are wrong. If they want to have thoughts that limit themselves to think that if I can get a certain diagnosis, that's it for me. This is all I have to live with. I don't have any other options, and that's what they want to believe that's okay. But that's not what I want to believe. And you need to ask yourself What do you want to believe in your life? This reminds me of how often I hear, even after women complete their treatment for cancer, they continue to research terrible things that happened to other people with breast cancer, you know, we get a new diagnosis. And understandably, we start researching a lot of information to understand the diagnosis, and to try to understand what's available to us, and what steps we have to take and what we have to ask our doctor about. And all of that is 100%, understandable, reasonable and highly advised, you should always make informed decisions. The once you've made those informed decisions, many women continue to research what I call the dark side, then they focus on recurrence, and they live in fear of recurrence on a daily basis. On a daily basis, I coach, people who tell me, I live with fear of recurrence every day. And it's totally understandable. Because the mentality that exists in our society, the social efficiency, the norm, is a tremendously horrifying fear of cancer. But what if we decide as cancer survivors, to rise above that standard belief and focus on what we have to do to have a healthy fulfilling and happy lifestyle? Happiness is such a critical factor in longevity. And when we're in fear, and when we're limiting our happiness ceiling, you're actually undermining your own dreams of longevity. Let me share with you there was a study that was done in 1986. And the study started in 1986, they started collecting information, but a lot of the initial information actually occurred back in the 1930s. So what this study did is it looked at a group of 678 nuns, and these nuns had done some writing in their early 20s. So they were basically different autobiographies, different emotional writing pieces. And the people came together do this study, the researchers categorize the writings that these nuns had done in their early 20s. And they categorize them based on the amount of positive content. And they were kind of like essays. So the essays were scored based on emotional content, and they divided them up into quartiles into four pieces. And the studies found that the nuns in the highest quartile, the nuns whose writing showed the most positive emotions lived significantly longer. The study went on for decades, these nuns live significantly longer than those in the lowest quartile. So these writings happened when the nuns were in their 20s. And they followed these nuns into their 80s and 90s. And one of the most striking statistics out of this study was the finding that 90% of the most cheerful quartile of that top 25% In terms of positive emotional content, they were alive at age 85. And only 34% of the lowest, the least cheerful quartile was still alive 90% Compared to 34%, and 54% of the most cheerful quartile, live to 94, compared to only 11% of the least cheerful. So this study is cited a lot in discussions about how positive attitudes and emotions can potentially impact our long term health and happiness potentially, because obviously, there's a lot more factors to longevity. But that's a really important thing to consider. Because happiness is good. Happiness is wonderful. Let's allow ourselves to break through our happiness ceilings and invite more of it into our lives. Let's not allow our happiness to be dictated by circumstances and social norms. So we come back again, how do we do this? How do we do this? It's a great question. And I could come up with so many answers for you that this podcast could go on and become a docu series. But the one most prominent answer that comes to my mind is that it's okay to let yourself feel fear.

Laura Lummer 34:19
What how does feeling fear make me happier? How does feeling fear break me through the happiness ceiling? Well, what I've just explained to you this whole idea of social efficiency, the whole idea of being conditioned to be normal and falling within a certain range and getting comfortable to a way of living or an amount of money or an amount of happiness or an energy in a relationship. When we start to break through those things. It's scary. And it's okay. It's normal. The earn known triggers fear in the human brain. So if you have never experienced a certain level of happiness, but something in you says, I believe that's out there for me I believe it exists for me, I want to explore it, and you feel scared, let yourself know. It's okay. It's when we get to the breakthrough of that ceiling. And we start to feel the fear. That's when we stop ourselves as if fear was a bad thing. And this is a really important thing to realize fear does not always mean something bad. Sometimes fear means that something's bad. And we should pay attention and keep ourselves safe. But sometimes fear just means I don't know what's coming. I don't know what to expect. It's like being on a big rollercoaster. It's scary when you get up to the top of the big loop, because you don't know how far down you're going on the other side, or how fast it's going to be. So you're supposed to feel scared, it's healthy, it's a healthy mentality to be scared of something you don't know. So the way we break through the happiness ceiling, is we know, and we accept, and we embrace fear. We tell ourselves, this is scary. But I'm going to have my own back. I'm not going to resist the fear, I'm not going to say this shouldn't be scary, this should feel normal. No, it shouldn't feel normal. If you're trying to do something you've never done, if you're trying to achieve a level of happiness you've never achieved. If you're trying to think in a way that you've never thought before. It's not going to feel normal, because it isn't normal. It's beyond normal. It's beyond the normal you're familiar with. So fear will come up. And when we try to suppress the fear, when we try to resist the fear, we push it away. We say it's not okay to feel fear, I shouldn't feel fear. That's when you stop yourself dead in your tracks. So if I could give you one thing to practice as you move into creating whatever it is you want to create in your life going forward, whether it's a healthier lifestyle, a different lifestyle, a different way of thinking, a new career, a new business, a new way of thinking about your healing, a new hobby, a new adventure of meeting new people, whatever it is, if I could tell you one thing, I'd say, expect to feel uncomfortable. And tell yourself, it's okay. This is uncomfortable. But I know how to be uncomfortable. Because I know if you're listening to this podcast, you've been through some uncomfortable stuff in your life. So remind yourself of that. Remind yourself when you overcame the feeling of discomfort. And on the other side of that discomfort was achievement. And remind yourself how good that achievement felt, even if it was something that was way beyond what you thought was normal. After my first round of breast cancer treatment of breast cancer diagnosis and breast cancer treatment, I came out of that treatment as a 50 year old with a different body, a lot of trauma, a lot of negative emotions, I needed to process and I decided to go back to college. I decided to spend a lot of money and a lot of time on a degree. And everyone around me thought I was out of my frigging mind. What is the point of going back to college? When you're 50? Hold on. You just went through breast cancer treatment? What are you doing? What if you don't live long enough? What if you get cancer again? How do you know you're going to be okay? Because the idea of going through something as traumatic as cancer and coming out on the other side, saying now I'm gonna invest a whole lot of money and a whole lot of time in creating something bigger for myself. People were like, What is wrong with you, that's not what you're supposed to do. You're supposed to be like, Thank God, I'm alive. And just be happy to be there and spend more time with your kids and stay in your small space and stay safe. But that wasn't what I wanted. So it was very uncomfortable. It was hard to feel confident in my own desire to believe in what I felt was driving me to do something. And I'm certainly not suggesting that I'm going to go back to college and earn a degree or something like that. But what I'm saying is if there's something you know, and you believe that would make you happier if you pursued it, even making your closest relationship, a better relationship. God knows that scary. Learning how to transparently communicate with someone that you love. After you've had an established routine for who knows, five years, eight years, 10 years, 15 30,40 years, and then suddenly you're like, hey, this relationship has to change, buddy, you need to get up off of that chair and start helping me do the dishes. That in and of itself is breaking through a ceiling and it's uncomfortable. You've been conditioned to stay within the status quo. And as a result of that, so many of us have unconsciously created a happiness ceiling and it's time to break through that ceiling, isn't it? So I want to offer you a couple of thoughts to work with one :I am open to receiving unlimited happiness in my life, two. As I teach myself to stay open to receiving unlimited happiness, it's going to feel uncomfortable. And that's okay. Three: when I feel uncomfortable, as I break through my happiness ceiling, I'm going to hold my own hand, have my own back, and I'm going to reach out for any support I need. So I can keep moving forward, even when it feels scary. I want you to consider those thoughts. I'm even gonna write those thoughts, all three of them in the show notes for this episode. So you can copy and paste them onto a Word document and print them out and put them on your bathroom mirror, I want you to think about them. I want you to tell yourself them, I want you to just keep looking at those thoughts and ask yourself, do you have a happiness ceiling? Can you see a pattern in your life, even subconsciously, self sabotaging, when you start to reach that ceiling? And would you like to see what's on the other side of that ceiling? I know I want to see it. And if you want to see it, and you need help with it, come and join me in the better than before breast cancer life coaching membership, and get the support that you need to make it happen. Get all the details at the breast cancer recovery coach.com forward slash live coaching or you can scroll down where you're listening to this podcast or watching it on YouTube and just click the link and join me in the life coaching membership. You will be so happy you did and I know that because I have never had anyone come to me after during my membership and say Dang, I really regretted doing that. All right. I've never heard anyone say anything but positives. All right, my friends. I'm going to leave you with those thoughts. Let's break through our happiness ceilings. Let's be good to ourselves. And I'll talk to you again very soon. Take care