Episode 4.9 Five Personal Growth Strategies for Cancer Thrivers
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[00:00:00] Welcome to the Living to Thrive with Cancer podcast. A podcast about the big and little issues that come with living with cancer. I'm Kathryn White, a stage 4 colon cancer thriver, passionate about supporting others who have faced a cancer diagnosis, and are looking to feel empowered in taking back control of their health and happiness.
My own walk with cancer helped me to learn more about myself, and how to live with cancer. And it led me to become a holistic cancer coach so I can support others to move from survivor to thriver. So let's get started.
Hello friends and welcome to 2025 and the second half of this season of the Living to Thrive with Cancer podcast. Today is episode 4. 9. So here we are moving into a new year, and this is the time for you to honor your journey, recognize your strength, and look forward with hope. Whether you're starting or continuing treatment, recovering, or supporting someone [00:01:00] you love, this time of the year can offer a fresh perspective, and that's what I want to talk about today.
Now, if you are a new listener, Listener, I want to welcome you to the podcast. I am Catherine White, a cancer thriver using my stories and experiences with stage four colon cancer to guide you through your walk with cancer. As a holistic cancer coach, I want to help support you through creating a health building lifestyle, managing your stress, and helping you to navigate the day to day Stuff that comes up when you have cancer, if you find what you've learned here today to be helpful Please share it with other people that you know that could benefit from this episode Sharing helps me to support more people living with cancer and help them move from survivor to thriver And you can go ahead and subscribe to the podcast wherever you're listening, follow it on YouTube, and I would love for you to head to the show notes and get your name on my weekly email list so you can follow my path to thriving and how I'm using what I've learned to support you in your walk with cancer towards [00:02:00] your goal of becoming a cancer thriver too.
And when you sign up, I'll send you a free download gift from me to you. All right. Here we go. A new year is such a great opportunity for you to reflect on where you've been, where you want to be, and what you're doing to get there. And I personally really love this reflection and I use it a lot with my private clients and when I do talks because I think it's important to go through this sort of thing.
Three step reflection to help guide you on your walk with cancer. Now I'm a firm believer in letting go of what was and what no longer serves you. It's important to use reflection as a forward moving tool, not as a space to get stuck in or feel unhappy about. So just keep that in mind as you're doing this reflection, you can learn a lot from where you've been and what has happened along the way.
This can allow you to create a vision for yourself and of where you desire to be, whether [00:03:00] that's health wise, emotionally, physically, whatever you feel called to reflect on. But what you set as a future vision, and it doesn't have to be far into the future, just a gentle reminder that Sometimes future pacing can be difficult when you're living with cancer.
So just pick a timeline that feels comfortable for you. That could be next week or a month from now, whatever is comfortable. And then just give yourself a purpose. This gives you a purpose and a goal, and even a reason to dig in. And I want to offer even a reason to live. When you know where you want to be, then you can start taking action.
And so then from here comes that question of well, what are you going to do to get there? So to help you with this, I want to share with you five ways to approach the new year with a desire to learn and grow from your past experiences while putting the focus on moving forward. All right, let's just dive right in here.
[00:04:00] So strategy number one is to reflect on the past year, acknowledging the challenges that you faced and the resilience that you've shown is really important. This is part of you helping yourself to heal it because you heal by coming back to yourself and acknowledging what you've experienced. So then from there you can reflect on what's happened and you can learn from it.
I love to call every piece of my cancer story, a learning opportunity. It might not have been comfortable at the time, but they become opportunities to learn and to grow. And as difficult as things can be and feel, ask yourself, what is something that is positive that you can take away from this situation, even A little something positive is better than only seeing an experience in a negative light.
And then from here you can celebrate these small victories or even the big victories because every positive experience [00:05:00] adds up and increases your self love and your self belief and that matters moving forward. So strategy number one is actually to go back and reflect on the past year. And then this is going to help guide you into strategy number two, which is setting gentle intentions for this new year.
So even if you are listening to this a few months after it has come out, you can still do this. You can still set intentions for moving forward. So instead of setting resolutions, when we focus on intentions, we can be more gentle with ourself. We can select things that feel like they're doable, that they are maintainable, and that bring peace and healing.
So for example, you might want to prioritize your self care and rest, if that's what you need. Listening to yourself, helps you to set these into these intentions and these intentions help you to listen to yourself. And so when you prioritize yourself in [00:06:00] terms of something like self care and rest, that's going to help you move into that deeper level of healing, gathering these tools of what you're doing to move yourself forward.
Or maybe what you want to do is nurture your emotional and mental well being. to support your mental health and your self love. This is important also. It doesn't have to be something that is tangible that you can put your hands on. These can be internal intentions that are going to keep you on the path to thriving.
And maybe that includes spending meaningful time with loved ones. The beautiful thing about setting these intentions is that they are yours and they're part of your healing story and you get to decide what you want them to be. And I just want to pause here for a moment to share my intention for this year, which is to continue to grow my health building habits, but also to go deeper into my inner work, my shadow work, because I know I still have things inside of me that require me [00:07:00] to give them some attention and to move them out of my way.
Now, if you're familiar with this. the book Radical Remission, then you may remember that only two of the nine factors for exceptional healing patients are physical. The remainder of them are actually about the emotional and spiritual self. So the physical ones only deal with changing your diet and adding herbs and supplements in, whereas the spiritual ones are about connecting to yourself, creating meaningful relationships and really doing that inner work to get things out of the way.
It was when I started to do inner work last year that I realized that I was able to shift my beliefs about myself and cancer. I was able to do that for myself by diving into things that were still a little bit uncomfortable inside of me because I was able to acknowledge the emotional healing that I hadn't yet done.
And so this inner healing came out in [00:08:00] terms of what still needs to be done. And that's, so that's my intention for me this year. Keep doing what I'm doing and do a little bit more of that inner work. So just in suggestion for you is to make your intention something manageable for you right where you are.
It's taken me 10 years of determination and dedication to solidify my health building practices. So what I mean is Rome wasn't built in a day. This isn't something that necessarily has to take you 10 years. I've just been doing it on my own with some guides here and there, but I haven't, I hadn't had a cancer coach who was able to tell me how to manage these things.
So my health building strategies have been through, my own experiences, finding them on my own, things falling into my lap. But for you, this could happen to you. Maybe at a faster pace because you have knowledge because you are listening to the podcast Maybe you have read my book and you've seen in living to thrive a holistic [00:09:00] guide to living with cancer the tools and strategies that I have implemented so your intentions can be what you want them to be and You can pace them accordingly for yourself, but just be gentle with yourself as you're doing this I'm still learning and growing and going deeper into what is next for me You So that's same thing for you.
Be gentle with yourself, get curious and continue to learn and grow based on where you are right now. Next is to build a supportive routine. Having a routine can help to minimize overwhelm. So in times of unpredictability, Create some predictability. Now, you may need to be flexible because you have appointments and those kinds of things that come up, and so that might not allow for a day to day, regular, same time, everyday routine, but you can still have routines.
You can Do routines like ensuring that you're drinking a fresh juice every day, or going for a walk every day, [00:10:00] that you regularly journal sometime during the day when it's available to you, meditating at some point during the day. There's a lot of things that you can do that don't require you to have them on a specific timeline.
It's about the commitment to doing them on a daily basis. These are part of your self care, so you don't have to be restricted by timelines. It's about taking care of yourself in a time that works for you. Next, we want to be celebrating life's little moments. This is our fourth strategy is to celebrate life's little moments.
Find joy in small daily pleasures, a sunrise, a favorite book, a comforting meal. This is part of your spiritual health. This is the nurturing the inside of you. And part of that is to embrace gratitude for what is present today, what you have in the here and the now, staying out of the past and not projecting into the future, but really enjoying every [00:11:00] moment.
Because every moment of gratitude is a connection to your spirit and to yourself, and it elevates how you see yourself as you rather than as a cancer patient. Now ultimately, you are still living your life regardless of where you are in your process. Why wouldn't you want it to be joyful and to be grateful and to be full of love?
This is going to help support your self love and your self belief. So go ahead and create a little gratitude practice for yourself and make sure that you are enjoying all of this. all of the moments of your life. So we have talked about reflecting on the past year, setting gentle intentions for the new year, building a supportive routine, celebrating life's little moments, and our fifth strategy is to look ahead with hope.
Remember that healing is not just physical, it's emotional and spiritual and personal. And there's always space for [00:12:00] new possibilities, no matter where you are in your journey. Being open to new possibilities may just be your intention for this year. You never know what's going to appear in your life, but when something does, you get to decide how to invite it in, Or you can say no thank you.
It's about learning more about yourself, trusting your intuition, and believing that you can do this. So again, you are looking at reflecting on the year that just came and went, setting these gentle intentions for yourself for this new year. Building a supportive routine that is flexible and that you can manage on a day to day basis, celebrating life's little moments and feeling grateful every day, and looking to the future with hope and possibility.
I want you to remember that your brain is really powerful. It leads everything that you do and every decision that you make, and it's going to want to keep you where you are and make change feel [00:13:00] uncomfortable. This is how your brain protects you. So you may be thinking about tools that you want to bring in and your brain might be saying to you, how about you slow down?
Maybe don't try that. Ooh, that doesn't feel good. But that's again, your brain trying to protect you and keep you from going outside of your comfort zone. But I want to just offer that going outside of your comfort zone is actually a little bit of a good thing. It's a learning opportunity for you to try something new.
So my question is, do you want this year to be a year of personal growth and possibility? If the answer is yes, then begin with believing that anything is possible when you do it from a place of self love, self care, and self belief. Personal reflection, Setting intentions for yourself, having routines, celebrating the wins, and looking ahead with hope will make a difference in your life of learning to thrive.
And to support you in your desire to thrive, I wanted to share with you that I have [00:14:00] created a new monthly membership that is designed for those of you that are looking for Self guided space that you can do on your own time. I know it's not always easy to commit to prescribed programs, so that's why this one is for you to do at your own pace.
In addition to all of the videos and lessons inside of the membership, you get a clear path to thriving through my six month Thriver Success Path. Downloadable PDFs, and once a month we get on a live call where I talk a little bit about the monthly theme and then we do some live coaching when you bring your questions.
This is open to people who are living with cancer, people who are post treatment or trying to reclaim their life and their health, to caregivers who are looking for support for themselves and for their loved ones. You can learn more about the membership in the show notes. It's available for 37 a month.
So you can, and you can join at any time with immediate access upon registration. You can also learn more about learning to thrive with cancer in my book, living to thrive a holistic [00:15:00] guide to living with cancer, and it's available on Amazon and the link is shared for you in the show notes and friends.
If you've enjoyed this or other episodes, I would really appreciate it if you would leave a review wherever you're listening. This helps me to reach more people like you who are looking for support and guidance and a different way to live with cancer. Thanks for being here today and watch for the next episode that features a very special guest who shares her story of overcoming and moving forward and how it led her to help others.
Thank you so much for being here today. I hope you have a beautiful rest of your day, and may you live your life to your fullest, follow your heart, and thrive in all you do.
