Ep #50: Embracing Change: How to Move Forward during Coronavirus

In today’s episode you’ll learn how to surrender and befriend uncertainty during the coronavirus, and how to embrace this unique opportunity to reflect and shift your perspective. I’ll teach you how to arrive to acceptance, and help you return to it with curiosity and wonder, so you can spend more hours and days in the present moment while embracing change and constructively moving forward.

What You’ll Learn From this Episode:

+   Why you need to surrender to the initial discomfort of self-isolation

+   How to challenge yourself to envision the best case scenarios

+   Releasing what’s holding you back - and moving forward

+   How misfortunes can lead to miracles

+   Truth & Dare Quote: It’s the times of hardship that often lead to radical thinking and profound changes.

Featured on the Show:

+   Episode TDC #35: The 5 Stages of Cancer Grief

+   Episode TDC #48: Part 5: The 5 Stages of Cancer Grief: Acceptance

+   Episode TDC #49: Julia Spinolo, Dr. NP: COVID-19 and Cancer Q&A

+   Episode TDC #08: Miserable and Magical

+   Book The Power of Your Subconscious Mind by Joseph Murphy

+   Book The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

+   WANT TO CREATE A LIFE YOU DESERVE? Whether your goal is to get healthy, change careers, improve relationships, focus on self-care… You can create whatever you desire. If you need help figuring it out, it's time for private coaching, no more waiting for Monday.

+   Are you looking to use your cancer as a catalyst for emotional self-awareness and powerful change in your life? That’s exactly what my work with Truth & Dare Cancer is all about. If you need help getting started, book a free consultation call, and we’ll explore how you can take the first step. To schedule go to truthanddarecancer.com/call.

+   Join the Truth & Dare Cancer Facebook Community. It’s a safe space where I and lots of other like-minded women with cancer hang out and share our stories, struggles, tips, and support.

+   I’d love to hear your perspective and thoughts about the conceptual cancer topic – just tag me on Facebook or Instagram @truthanddarecancer handle

Full Episode Transcript:

Welcome to Truth & Dare Cancer, the only podcast that teaches you how to supercharge your self-healer, navigate fear, and recalibrate your life by using cancer as a powerful catalyst for change. On this show we get real about all things cancer. And now here’s your host, cancer survivor, mathematician and certified life coach, Ceca Mijatovic.  Hello and welcome back! You are listening to the episode number 50 of the Truth & Dare Cancer Podcast. If you have not yet done so please subscribe to us on Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcast, and like us on Facebook. Just use @truthanddarecancer handle on Facebook, Instagram and other social platforms. To access the show notes for this episode go to truthanddarecancer.com/podcast and select episode number 50. I’m your host Ceca Mijatovic and today’s episode is about embracing change during the coronavirus lockdown. Before we get started, a quick update that this is the last podcast episode of Season 2. Just as I’m encouraging all of you to use this time of the coronavirus outbreak to reflect and assess your life, work and priorities, I’ll be doing the same. I’m as excited as you are to find out where this break from recording podcasts will lead me, and to hear from all of you where this break from your normalcy is leading you! My blog posts and email newsletters will be going out as usual. I will also still be posting regularly on all my Truth and Dare Cancer social media pages. So on today’s show, I am talking about the importance of knowing how to embrace change. With everything going on globally, it can feel like a lot is up in the air. You may be wondering how long this pandemic is going to go on, when your children will be able to return to school or when you’ll even be able to even leave the house again. But you may also find that everything going on has already started to shift your perspective. This could be your perspective about cancer, your career, or life in general. By now, many of us have been self-isolating at home for a month or even longer. If you reflect back over the time you’ve been at home and the place you were before the lockdown, you might notice some internal changes. What are the things you no longer worry about? Are you starting to think about new, different possibilities? And what are the things in your life before the coronavirus outbreak, you now know you're not going to bring forward? Even though this pandemic is bringing unique hardships to all of our lives, it also provides the opportunity for self-reflection and change. And did you know that I have a free closed FB group for women just like you? One essential aspect of healing is to have a community and be surrounded by other women going through cancer and experiencing so many same things as you are, especially when we talk about embracing change. So now you can have that experience, and you are invited to join my free closed FB community called Truth & Dare Cancer. Once you join you can continue the podcast conversation with other women going through or living with cancer, who just get it. To join go to truthanddarecancer.com/facebook -- I’ll also include the link in the show notes. A while back, almost 15 years ago, I hurt my knee while running. I fell into a pothole and was ordered by my doctor to be on bedrest with my left leg elevated for 90 days. After this bedrest period he was going to assess a need for knee surgery. Looking back, working from home and staying in bed for 90 days is what started my intense spiritual journey. In my first week of bed rest, I honestly didn’t even know if I could make it through the whole week. I felt like my room was shrinking and the walls were closing in around me. I had no idea how I was going to cope with the full 90 days. On around day 8 or day 9, everything changed. In the first week, I felt like I was wasting time. I was, however, still motivated to stick with the doctor’s guidelines because I wanted to give my leg the chance to heal and I didn’t want to undergo surgery. It was only after the first week that I finally surrendered and this is what started my spiritual journey. I read a book called The Power of Your Subconscious Mind by Joseph Murphy that completely changed how I dealt with the days ahead of me. When I learned to use the exercises in this book, I was spending at first 10-30 minutes a day visualizing myself running through rainforests in Australia with my healed knee. And I gradually worked up to four hours a day of the intense visualisation, engaging all of my senses and reaching the feeling states one usually experiences while running. Without noticing, these meditations were actually helping me heal my knee. When I went to the doctor, he looked at my leg in amazement before saying “what happened here? wow, your knee has healed”. All I could respond was “I know” and it didn’t even feel like it was me saying it. The key lesson here is that sometimes you have to give into the discomfort. And completely surrender. Once we allow ourselves to accept that nothing will be the same, we can start adjusting. Right now, we are living through history and the world is changing forever. Yes it can be scary. But at the same time, it’s liberating. It’s the times of hardship that often lead to radical thinking and profound changes. It’s human nature to think of the worst case scenarios, it’s our primal brain’s “protective” response to traumatic situations. So today, I’d like to challenge you to instead think of the best case scenarios. What do you see changing for the better? This could be in the world, in your life, or it could be in yourself. Only once you let go of old expectations and ideas, you can start to create space for something new. Think of it this way: If your hands are full, you cannot pick up anything else. In order to make space for new plans or changes, you have to let go of some things. When I had my knee injury, I had to let go of certain expectations I had of myself. I knew I could no longer work at my desk or do the things I was used to. In the first week, when I still was struggling to let go of these expectations, I was unhappy and frustrated. It was only after giving into the changes that I was able to start truly recovering. And so, today I encourage you to start thinking of the things you want to get rid of and release. This could be emotions, commitments or jobs that are holding you back. Once you clear this mental and emotional space, you can start planning for how you would like to move forward. Pro tip: cleaning your physical space helps with clearing your mind. Maybe you want to start spending more time with loved ones or you hope to prioritize more time focused on your hobbies like reading or baking. Perhaps you need more downtime and time with yourself to reflect and simply be. Whatever it is that you envision as a positive outcome from these challenging times, you need to plan how you can incorporate this new goal into your life moving forward. As the Alchemist author Paulo Coelho famously said: “And when you can’t go back, you have to worry only about the best way of moving forward.” I challenge you to start thinking about how what feels like misfortunes in the world today can lead to future miracles. I talked more about this duality in the “Miserable and Magical” podcast episode #8. If you plan your time intentionally and use it wisely (with lots of free-time incorporated into your days), you will surprise yourself by how many new ideas and changes will come your way. Be curious and stay open to all possibilities. If you are still unsure how to move through the discomfort you are experiencing or how to embrace this change, I encourage you to book a free consult call with me. To schedule, go to truthanddarecancer.com/call, and together we can figure out the best way to move forward. I’ll also include the scheduling link in the show notes. To recap: the best way to embrace the change is to give into the discomfort. While you cannot change your circumstances, you can change how you react to them. And once you learn to accept the new circumstances, you will amaze yourself by how much you can grow and achieve when you learn to let go. I hope this episode inspires you to surrender and befriend the uncertainty until we speak again. If you enjoyed this episode and know someone else that can learn from it as well, please share it with them. And in the meantime, I dare you to find your truth in what can seem to be the worst situation! Thanks for tuning in. If you want to stop identifying with your cancer, you can download a free “You Are Not Your Cancer” guide at www.truthanddarecancer.com/podcastfreeguide.

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