Episode Overview

Have you ever caught yourself waiting for permission to be happy? Saying things like, "I'll relax after this stressful phase is over," or "I'll treat myself once I hit that goal"? You're not alone—so many of us delay joy, saving it like a precious prize to be earned later.

In this heartfelt episode, Laura invites you to explore the deeply-rooted mindset of treating happiness as something conditional rather than essential. She shares relatable examples—waiting for the stressful season at work to pass before taking a restful weekend, holding off on self-care until you reach your ideal weight, or delaying relaxation until all your tasks are complete.

Drawing from personal experiences navigating life after breast cancer, Laura gently reveals how postponing joy can negatively impact your emotional, mental, and even physical health. She encourages listeners to recognize that joy isn’t just a reward reserved for achieving milestones or good news—it's a fundamental right, a powerful tool for healing, and a crucial element of overall wellness.

Listen in as Laura offers practical ways to incorporate spontaneous joy into everyday life. Discover simple, nurturing activities that you can embrace immediately, like enjoying your morning tea, connecting with nature, or dancing freely in your kitchen.

Join us for an empowering conversation that will inspire you to shift your mindset, embrace happiness in the present moment, and fully integrate joy into your healing journey.

In this episode you'll learn:

• How childhood conditioning shapes our views of joy and reward
• Specific ways you might unknowingly be postponing happiness
• The tangible health benefits of regularly allowing joy into your life
• Easy, actionable ideas to experience spontaneous joy starting today

Remember, you deserve joy right now, not just after achieving certain goals. Tune in and start welcoming happiness as a vital part of your healthier, better-than-before life.

Subscribe, listen, and share to help other women embrace joy as their right and not just a reward.

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👩‍💻 Follow me on Instagram for daily inspiration → @thebreastcancerrecoverycoach
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Read the full transcript:

0:00
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 on the insides 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.

0:33
Hello and welcome to Episode 403

0:37
of better than before breast cancer. This episode is going to be dedicated to my beautiful client, Katie. Katie, you know who you are, and I'm dedicating this episode because I just met with Katie just a short time ago, and she told me that she just finished listening to Episode 402 she started at episode one. She listened to 402 episodes of this podcast. So I have to acknowledge that. I had to say thank you. I don't even know that I would go back and listen to all those episodes of my own podcast, and I'm just so I don't even know the right word for that. Like I'm so honored. I think that's the best word. I'm so honored. It's such a joy to get to do this work and to put my message out into the world, and to serve people and connect with people, and to watch how things change in their lives, right? To watch like Katie is also a client of mine, and she's just done some amazing work for herself, but it's that dedication, right? It's when we show up and we choose to change things. We choose to live life differently, and we gather that information, we apply that information to our lives, and we we just make amazing change in our mindset, in our life, in our approach and our connections, and I'm just so proud of her and so honored and really thrilled. And Katie, this episode is for you. So I was actually going to talk about something else today. I had a plan on my mind, which you'll hear next week on the show. And then what happened is, for the first time in several days here in Southern California, the sun came out. It is stunning outside. It's beautiful. It's about 65 degrees. I'm here in Southern California at the beach. It's about 65 degrees. There's the gentlest, gentlest, gentlest, breeze outside. It's not like windy and miserably cold. It is absolutely gorgeous outside, and I had some clients earlier today. I had some plans for this afternoon, but I stopped and I looked outside and I thought, I gotta get outside. I've just gotta go be in this sun and take in this day and allow myself a moment of just soaking it up, because I love being outside. I love the sunshine so much, and I just needed to have that joy. Not that the rest of my life isn't joyful, but I just saw this opportunity. I thought, I'm getting out of this house for a little bit. I am going to go out there and just soak it in. And I was outside, and I called my daughter, who lives close by, and she works from home, and I said, Hey, where are you at in your day? You have time for a quick coffee break? There's an awesome coffee shop across the street from where she lives. I went and got a quick coffee with her. We sat out in the sun, we had a little chat. And I was driving home, and I was thinking, why don't we all do that more often? Why don't we all just thrive and invite and live and expect spontaneous joy? Why do we so often hold happiness hostage? And here's what I mean by that, I'll go do that. If this goes right, I'll celebrate here if I hear about this. You know, it reminds me of a story my second husband, his mom was very much a planner, very nice lady, very much a planner, and she had a room in her house that was pretty much floor to ceiling, boxes with different people's names on them, and in those boxes were gifts. She would see things. She would think of these people. She would purchase this gift. She was a very thoughtful lady. And then she put them in the box in the room, and the box would be open for either Christmas or a birthday. And I would see these boxes, and I would think to myself, That's so interesting to me. She loved giving gifts. But why can't we just spontaneously gift a person, right? Why can't we just look at that and say, I love this, which I know this woman would do this. Right? She'd see something, she'd think about someone. She'd think this was gonna bring them joy. She'd get it, and then she'd put it away. And I think we do that often in life. My husband does this a lot. He'll see something that he really wants, and he'll say, Well, maybe get that for me for my birthday, or think about that for Christmas. He said this to me the other day, maybe that thing you could get me for Christmas. I said Christmas, it's freaking March. If you want it, you can afford it. It's not frivolous, it's not irresponsible. If it's going to be a joyful experience for you, why do you have to wait until Hallmark says here's a holiday where we give gifts in order to treat yourself to something this, it blows my mind, right? We just we hold our happiness hostage. We do this in our relationships. Also we're with in a relationship, child, sibling, parent, friend doesn't matter. Let's say that, especially with children, right? Let's say that someone goes through a difficult time, and I think we can connect this a lot with family, because we can have a lot of trauma with family, right? We can we know people, right? I mean, who do you spend if you have a sibling, then the majority of your life is spent with a sibling. Like these are probably some of the longest relationships that you will ever have right from are the siblings in our lives. And so let's say that you've got someone that's close to you, whether it's a child, whether it's a sibling, cousin, whatever, and they go through a really tough time. Let's say who knows what that tough time might be. It might be emotional difficulties, financial difficulties, it may be substance abuse, who knows. But then they make a change. They make a decision that they want their life to go in a different direction, and they start working towards that direction. And we see that, and we see them doing well, and we hold back a little bit, right? We see them doing well, and we go, yeah, that's good, but this is what they did, and let's see if they don't go back, right? We don't allow ourselves to just be joyful, to just embrace change, to just to just celebrate. Wow, right now in this moment, you're doing amazing, and that's wonderful, right? We, we kind of hold stuff over people's heads and hold it over our own head, right? Because, if I'm looking at someone who I love, who has gone through a period of suffering, and now they're doing better, but in my mind, I'm holding on to the suffering. I'm holding my back, myself back from celebrating the joy of this person and the success of this person. And I've been thinking about that a lot. A couple of my kids are are struggling with some just challenging times. Come on, guys, life is always challenging, right? People say to me all the time, if it isn't this, it's that it's always something. And that is true, right? This is life. There's always challenges coming up in life. There are always things that we could choose to even think about, which we often do we choose to think about if something goes wrong, even though it isn't going wrong now. And so we rob ourself of our own happiness by doing something like this. So think about it for yourself for a sec. Have you ever found yourself holding back? Maybe you have the thought, I'll celebrate this after I get good news. If my labs are good, we'll go out to dinner, right? Or I'll treat myself once I've accomplished something. I see this a lot when I'm coaching people, I see them holding back as if happiness can only be a reward. And I think we're taught that from childhood, right? Many of us are taught that we had to view joy as something to be earned. We have to finish our homework and then we can play. Now there's good reason why parents did that. I certainly did that with my kids, to teach them to be responsible, but sometimes we can misinterpret being a responsible person for being a person who cannot enjoy spontaneity, right? We have to we carry these ideas with us into adulthood, but we had them from the lens and perception of a child, and so then we carry what that meant to us as a child into this life, and we can miss out on so much as an adult, because we're still thinking with the brain of a little kid who thought that being responsible meant you can't just have spontaneous joy, right? We delay our happiness, we treat it like this special gift that can only be unwrapped if we hit a milestone, if it's a holiday, and who the hell determines that's what the holiday was, and that's why I get to have something fun or enjoyable, right? What if Joy was a right, instead of just a reward? I. What if happiness didn't have to be earned? What if you just deserved happiness simply because you're worthy of it, right? So I mentioned that a couple of my children right now are struggling with some challenging things in life and and about a week or two ago, I was having a conversation with my daughter, and she was very upset about what was going on and what might come of what was going on, and we talked through it. And understandably, there are some stressors. There were some good reasons for her to have some concern. But in the last couple of days, it's been an amazing shift to watch, and she's just decided, You know what,

10:39
I'm just going to choose to be happy and believe this is all going to work out. I'm putting out into the world what I want to happen. I'm doing the right things. And you know what? It's all going to work out. And I gotta tell you. So today, I shared with you that I called her and said, Let's go get a cup of coffee. And she just a whole different energy, right? A whole different vibration about her. And then she actually had some really good news today. And no, I'm not saying because she changed her mind. The good news happened. But things do come to us that are good, and we can choose

11:12
in the moment to make a decision between looking at life as it is right now and saying, Well, here I am. You know, here's my situation, am I safe? Am I healthy? Do I have food? And yes, these things may go this way in the future, but they might go this way as well, and it might turn out even better than I thought. And we can allow ourselves to allow happiness. I believe the joy is available to us even in the midst of uncertainty, right? Just because there are some uncertain things, some scary things, some maybe negative things, doesn't mean that joy can't also exist for us as a choice, that it doesn't have to be something that we stockpile just for good times. What if, even in the midst of uncertainty or unhappy news, what if the joyful things in life could actually be the fuel that helps you navigate the challenges, that helps you nourish yourself, physically, mentally and emotionally. Think about this when, when we allow ourselves spontaneous moments of happiness, whether it's a walk outside, whether it's laughing with a friend, having a cup of coffee with someone you love, or just sitting in silence, savoring your cup of tea, you you are actively supporting your health when we allow happiness, when we allow joy, even in just enjoying a cup of tea, we reduce stress hormones, we boost our immune system, we flood our body With healing energy. And so it's so important to be intentional about choosing joy and trying to catch ourselves when you hear ourselves saying, Well, if this goes right, then I'll go do this. It Well, I really want to go do that thing over there, but I'll wait for this certain day. Now I'm not saying just run out and do all things all the time. Of course, we've got financial considerations, we've got time considerations, we've got responsibilities. But do we hold ourselves back even when those things aren't truly limiting us in the moment? But it's our thoughts that are limiting that choice for joy, some of the things I just mentioned just deciding to take a break for 30 minutes and go outside and get some sunshine and go for a walk. Right? We can do things like this that just give our brain a break and bring joy into our life. So many times, I'm coaching people who spend an exorbitant amount of time sitting on a computer, researching cancer, researching drugs. And I don't just mean to make informed decisions. I mean just obsessively researching what could go wrong with our wellness. And think about that like visualize yourself in that spot where you're thinking about what could go wrong, what bad thing could happen? What's gone wrong with so many other people? That's a terrible feeling. And I often, and I've said it on the show before, too often, tell people, once you've got enough information to make an informed decision, start researching what people do to heal. If you want to spend time on the computer, looking up things. Look up how people heal. Look up how people get positive outcomes. Think about how good that makes you feel right. And let's be very intentional about making a decision to allow ourselves to feel joy and. Happiness, instead of always waiting for the other shoe to drop, because, you know, sometimes the other shoe is going to drop, but between here and the dropping of that other shoe, we can choose to live in misery worry and holding our happiness hostage, or we can choose to enjoy our life even if the other shoe drops at some point in time, right? We can choose to make time to read a book, to cook our favorite meals, to treat ourselves and to look at things through the lens of joy, to look at nourishing our body with good, healthy food as what an amazing joy that is, what an amazing opportunity it is to have access to information that helps you understand how this good food supports your wellness and your healing, rather than look at good food and nourishing food as, oh, this is a chore. This is more work that I have to do, right? But reframing things and allowing ourselves to feel happiness right, to remember joy is an essential part of living a healthy and fulfilling life. It's not just a reward. It's not something to be held hostage. It's not something you have to earn, and it's not something you only get on special occasions like your birthday. It's always here and it's always at your fingertips, and we can have multiple things existing at the same time. I think it's really interesting how we've been programmed to think about certain things that are supposed to make you feel sad or supposed to make you feel angry, or if something else is going on in the world, in relationships with people around you that we're not allowed to feel joyful, as if we can't have empathy and enjoy our life at the same time, right? So I want to put that out there to think about what does this mean to you? Where do you see yourself hold back instead of lean in to happiness and joy in your life. Where do you put off joy? Hold things hostage and tell yourself I can't have that until I accomplish something else. Rather than thinking, You know what? That sounds good, that would be refreshing and wonderful and bring joy into my life. And if I do that, I think everything else will flow a little more smoothly. Everything else would be a little easier to handle. This is part of putting ourselves first as a priority, about living into self compassion and self love, right? It's so interesting because oftentimes when we see someone else who is sad, who's struggling, who's got challenges? What do we want to do? We want to make them happy. We want to give them presents. Take them somewhere. Say, Let's get out. Let's go have some fun. Let's laugh a little bit. We want to do something to bring joy to their lives. But yet, when our lives have challenges in them, so many times we just want to withdraw. We step away from joy and into intentional worry and into projecting. You know that Netflix original horror series in our mind, instead of saying, whoo, this stuff is heavy right now. Now, there's times where we need to process. Oftentimes, when I get news that's a setback or startling, I kind of have a two day rule. It usually takes me about two days to wrap my head around it, work through things, process and then decide how I want to move forward. So there's nothing wrong with taking time for yourself to process and create a plan. But we have to look at this idea, especially when it comes to cancer, where I hear about people often saying, you know, I'll do that after treatment is done. Or, you know, cancer took my life away for this amount of time. Nothing can take our life away unless we allow that to happen. You know, I think about my diagnosis, which is so wild to think that it's like four and a half years ago that I was told that I was my body was full of cancer. And now I'm four and a half years later, and I look at all I've accomplished and how much my life has changed, and how much I'm still building, and what is still just coming to me, right? Just there's Have there been struggles, yes, pain, yes, difficulties, yes, but a tremendous amount of joy. And I truly believe that that is an extremely important part of my healing, that we've got to hold space for ourselves to allow happiness, you know. And this is what happens when the sun comes out and it's a gorgeous day, and I can go outside and I can walk, and I can just, you know, get that nature connected the people I love. This is what happens. I get so excited and so inspired, and I want to share that feeling and that emotion with others and encourage you to be intentional about inviting that into your life. Because we need it, right? We need it. We need to have. Have the opportunity to shift our mind into accepting good things, to see this is good and it's okay if I allow it to be good. This may be challenging at the same time. This may have happened differently at some point, but right now, this is good, and you get to be in it, and it's perfectly okay. All right, so I don't know, maybe somebody out there needed to hear it. I felt super compelled to talk about this today. I think that, especially in our world today, we need more joy. We need to focus on more connection, more joy and allowing happiness. Think about that. Just think about that term. Do you allow happiness? Do you block happiness? Are you afraid to accept happiness? Do you put more energy into projecting that something might go wrong or that you can't fully accept that something is good because maybe something else will happen, like, where, where's your mindset when it comes to viewing things that can bring joy into your life? And what's one small thing you can do every single day to invite joy into your life? Small, little thing or a big thing. I don't care a trip that you've been wanting to take forever and you just decide do it, I'm going to make it happen. It's going to go on the calendar. So I'll leave you with this thought today, in the midst of whatever is happening in your life, how can you invite a little bit more joy in today? Is there something in your life right now that's really pretty good, but you're holding yourself back from fully embracing it because of fear that something might go wrong with it. And can you make a conscious decision to let go of that fear and step fully in to happiness? Let's stop holding happiness hostage and let's live into it and lean into it every single day.