Every individual has his or her own beliefs. I believe that each person’s life is predestined and what I mean by that is that God plans our lives before we are born. I feel that everything happens for a reason. You need to love everything about yourself and realize that God does everything for a reason. We may not understand now, but eventually our questions will be answered as time goes on.
This does not necessarily mean that the answers to our questions will be laid out on the table for you, but eventually you will put together the pieces to the puzzle. Yet as time passes, we can usually see things more clearly and comprehend why everything turned out the way it did. I feel that God walks with us during these troublesome times, and he gives us tools we need to get through these times. As these problems are occurring, we are learning also, so we can help others struggling. It is our decision to choose, if we are going to use the tools God has given us. Rejecting the options God has given us would be foolish because it will help better our lives and strengthen our inner souls.
Each individual has three parts, the mind, body and spirit. We can do anything we put our minds too. The mind is a powerful and vital part of our body. Many underestimate its capability.
Accepting that you have breast cancer, realizing what is ahead and the obstacles that need to be dealt with are the most important and most critical step in learning to cope with breast cancer. To live with a happy state of mind, you need to have high self-esteem. You need to feel that you are no different from anyone else and that you can be the person you set in your mind to be. You need to reconstruct your life. You need to put yourself in a lifestyle that will make you happy and bring you as little stress as possible.
Stress is the worst thing for someone with breast cancer. You have enough of stress dealing with breast cancer, do not let the other things in life stress you. There are more important things in your life you need to conquer.
Therefore, you most try to avoid stressful situations and try to live your life with as little stress possible. During the day if you feel you are becoming stressed, you should try massage therapy. This is when you relax the muscles, ease muscle spasms and pain, increase blood flow in the skin and muscles, relieve mental and emotional stress, and induce relaxation.
You could also try listening to music to relieve stress or talk to someone about what is bothering you. Having a pet aids in reducing stress. If you tend to stress easily, you may want to give some thought to having an animal friend to help reduce your stress.
Learning to love everything about yourself is one major step in learning to accept that you have breast cancer. If you are unhappy with yourself, then you need to change what makes you unhappy by going through the process of change.
The process of change involves several things. First, let us ask ourselves, what does loving ourselves for who we are really mean? What does it involve? Is this something that is easy to accomplish or does it take time and effort? Learning to love ourselves is not easy and it does not happen overnight. Loving yourself takes time and this is something you must work at each day. You need to be able to get up each morning, and look in the mirror and like the person that you see. If you are unhappy with that person than you have to do something about it.
I have worked hard trying to change the things that I did not like about myself. It has taken me years of hard work to get to this point. I realize that I am no different from anyone else. I do not feel embarrassed about having epilepsy and have become the person I set forth to be. Nevertheless, the key to all this is living life with a healthy and productive perspective, not a rebellious one. You must set reasonable goals and objectives in your life.
The first thing, I did to help me on my road to success was to say to myself aloud, “I am StaceyChillemi and yes, I have a seizure disorder.” You need to hear yourself say that there is nothing is wrong with having breast cancer, absorb it into your unconscious and conscious mind.
Once you learn to strengthen your inner self and develop strong self-esteem, you will begin to feel you can accomplish whatever you set your mind on. You must understand and truly believe that no one can change you; only you can change yourself.
I learned to love myself by accepting all my faults and putting the past behind me, but if, you focus on your faults than you will only experience an unhappy life. You need to think positively and focus on your accomplishments.
My life began to change for the better once I started to focus on my achievements and stopped dwelling on negative things. We all deserve to live life to its fullest.
To be able to live with breast cancer, you need to develop a great emotional strength so you can accept the negative things about yourself, yet want to change them... To heal yourself you must focus on all your positive qualities. You must change the factors that lessen your self-worth. Doing so will help you live a happy and healthy life and make you feel that you can accomplish anything the world dishes out to you.
To begin the healing process we need to develop strength, wisdom, confidence and knowledge. If you can develop these qualities, you will achieve all your goals and dreams. First, you must focus on the goals and dreams you want to fulfill. I am going to teach you the true meaning of strength, wisdom, confidence, and knowledge. I will show you how to obtain them and how to use them. This process of change theory will help you live a happy life and you will not be ashamed that you have breast cancer.
Understand that all these characteristics come from inside us. Have you ever heard the expression, “mind over matter?” It means learning to take control of yourself and the world around you by using the knowledge you have gained. To use your mind productively, you have to understand yourself. The people who do not let others take control of them are the individuals who know what is best for them. By developing and acting on these qualities, you can look at breast cancer in a positive way and not view it as the ruination of your life. You are probably thinking, “What!” “Is this chick crazy?” No, I am not!” You need to take charge of yourself and learn how to nurture yourself. You cannot hide the fact that you have breast cancer, and should not. You must become proud of who you are and realize that you are not the only one with breast cancer. Millions go through it each year and overcome it, and they become one of the millions of breast cancer survivors.
Now let us look at each individual characteristic separately.
Strength—the development of strength in the inner body begins in the mind. The inner body is our mind, soul and spirit. How we think and program our minds to work, helps us build mental, physical and spiritual strength. Our strength comes from how we feel about ourselves. The higher our self-esteem, the stronger we feel and in turn, we can do more for ourselves.
I cannot even begin to stress the importance of having high self-esteem; it is the key to having mental, physical and spiritual strength. The first stage of developing strength is learning to love yourself and your life. You need to learn to be grateful for what God has given you. You need to let go of all those angry emotions inside. Holding anger inside yourself will not help you, it will only hurt you. The past is just that—over. There is no way of changing the fact that you have or had breast cancer. Yet, if you have the strength and motivation, you can make the present anything you want.
Breast cancer will not interfere with your life unless, you let it. So many people who have written to me or people I have spoken to, felt angry because they have a disorder or a disease. To free yourself that anger, you have to say to yourself, “Yes, I have breast cancer. I accept the fact that I have breast cancer and that I am unable to change the past. Nevertheless, I can change my future because I love myself and refuse to hurt myself by drowning in my own self pity.” You cannot rely on others. You need to learn to rely on yourself.
You have to believe in yourself, develop a sense of pride in yourself. It does not matter what others think about you, what matters is how you think about yourself. God put us on this earth to love ourselves and other people. He did not put us here to hurt ourselves and take our anger out on others, who are usually on the people we care about the most.
Knowledge—is the second part of the process of change; it is another important factor in helping deal with epilepsy. Knowledge comes from experience, from being open minded to suggestions others may give. We may not always agree with other people’s suggestions, yet it is always wise to listen to what others have to say. Some individuals may try to be controlling and may get frustrated if we do not act on what they have to say. You should set these people straight and tell them; I will listen to what you have to say; however, that does not necessarily mean I am going to agree with you. I have my own mind, too and I need to do what is best for me.
We learn from each other and we acquire knowledge from the world around us that we should pass along to others by helping them. We need to take our experience and use it in our present life now, including the mistakes we have made in life. The mistakes we have made are where we get most of our knowledge that helps us become stronger individuals. What weakens us when we repeatedly make the same mistakes?
Do not pity yourself for the mistakes you made in life or imperfections. Studies have shown that people who have negative attitudes are more likely to live chaotic lives. They are more likely to become mentally or physically ill with extremely debilitating or life threatening illnesses. Many people have a hard time focusing on the positive because they allow their negative sides to consume them... I firmly believe that focusing on the negatives will causes seizures.
Say to yourself, OK, what I have learned from these mistakes or from my shortcomings. Taking what you have learned and using it to help others is the best therapy. When you help, you feel a sense of accomplishment and self-worth. You are overlooking any negative characteristics because you are too busy focusing on helping others’.
Confidence—our confidence comes from our self-esteem. To have high self-esteem we need to feel good about ourselves, to get to this point in life you need to begin by starting to do things in life to make yourself happy by focusing on the future, creating direction in your life. Begin by planning short and long-term goals for yourself and confidence level will rise.
It worked for me. When I started accomplishing some of my short-term goals, I had more self-respect. I developed a greater sense of pride and my inner strength and self-worth increased.
Wisdom—comes from your sixth sense. We all have five senses, our sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch, yet I believe wisdom to be our sixth sense. Wisdom is understanding the inner signals and the directions that your body sends out to you, becoming aware of what your body is trying to tell you. Your sixth sense always leads you to the right answers. It is up to us to learn to understand our inner self (spirit) and to follow the signals it sends out to us.
Listening to what our inner self has to say is essential. For example, have you ever felt like you had a feeling something was the right thing to do? You need to learn to understand your mind, so you can understand your inner soul and all the wonderful things our soul is capable of doing. When we listen and act on signals our inner self-gives us, we become stronger. Slowly, we begin to understand our body as a whole. Spiritually you can give your body what it needs.
We feed our body food to survive on a daily basis. Spiritually we need to feed our body with love, understanding and different forms of relaxation, such as meditation. I strongly suggest that everyone starts with relaxation exercise for al least five minutes daily.
Either in the morning when you start your day, the afternoon if you are able to, or at night before bed. This will help to release the tension that has built up throughout the day. Each week you should add five minutes until you get to an hour each day.
When you do these things, you increase your level of strength, wisdom, knowledge and confidence. By having a high level of strength you feel as though, you can conquer the world. This helps you decrease your stress level.
Once you accept your breast cancer in your life, you can cope with the world around you and accept the fact that you can do everything you expected to do in life. However, to accept that you have breast cancer you first have to love who you are and be proud of the person you have become. There are many things in life you are capable of doing, but you must develop the motivation and the will to get out there and JUST DO THEM!
thank you,