November 25, 2024 • 26 mins
Grammy-winning rock star Melissa Etheridge takes the helm this week with a powerful episode about creating your own joy.Find out how she struggled with relationships, career, and fame before she learned how to create and cultivate her own happiness.Plus, she shares great advice about not taking things personally and how to change the negative narratives in your mind.
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
This is Let's be clear with Shannon Doherty. Hello, my friends,
welcome to this wonderful podcast. I am honored to be
here as a guest. I love that you all have
a different one every time. This is all in the
spirit of Shannon. I know you spend a long time
(00:24):
love and listen to her. And I am Melissa Ethridge
and I'm looking forward to chatting with you a little today.
I want to bring the topic of love and fear
and the importance of joy. Now. I know we lost
Shannon to cancer, and I myself was a cancer I
(00:48):
experienced cancer. Let's say that. I like to call myself
a thriver. Now. I don't think I'm just surviving. I
believe I'm thriving. It was twenty years ago I had
my experienceperience with cancer, and my life has been very different.
And I tell people, I let them know that cancer
was actually the best thing that happened to me. I
(01:10):
know we've lost many people that we love. I know
there's many of us who are out there right now
dealing with it that are very fearful. Well, let me
tell you my experience. That's all I can do is
tell you my story, because that's all we are is
our stories now. If you aren't familiar with me, I
(01:32):
am a singer, songwriter. A people ask me what I am.
I say I'm a rock star because I like that.
I like to let people know that I write songs
and entertain and I've always loved that. I grew up
in the Midwest in the sixties and seventies, and it
was very well my family. I didn't have a a
(01:54):
terribly bad childhood. I had a very quiet childhood, I
like to say, because I grew up in the time
where my parents lived that life of if there's anything
wrong in the family, you don't talk about it, you
don't air your dirty laundry, you put it, you know,
under you pretend everything's okay. And as I grew, as
(02:21):
I became a teenager and adolescence, I realized that my
mother was incredibly unhappy. She was very intelligent. She had
a job working, which was unusual in the seventies, and
she actually made more money than my father. But the
work that she did, she was one of the first
computer programmers. If you know the movie Hidden Figures, that's
(02:45):
what she was. She worked in those big rooms and
she programmed the computers and she did it at the
army base which was next to our town of Leavenworth, Kansas,
and she would work and never get the credit and
certainly got paid half as much as anyone else was
getting paid around her. And she'll see she was very unhappy,
(03:09):
and so I was really looking forward to getting out
of that experience. My father, on the other hand, was
a high school teacher. He was a coach. He was
a really great guy. He supported my crazy dream of
being a rock star by actually taking me on the
weekends to play in bands in bars and clubs around.
(03:32):
I had a very unusual childhood, I realize, but it
was those experiences that that sort of set me up.
And as I look back, I don't look back and
want to change anything or think that it was bad.
I look back and I'm again grateful for that experience
(03:55):
because it enriched my life. It made me want, It
made me desire, and as I went through and tumbled
through my life and had loves and realized I was
gay and lived in the world in the eighties as
a as a gay woman in southern California, which was
(04:17):
very delightful and very educational. There's a lot of women,
a lot of feminists in southern California in the eighties.
That shaped sort of the person that I am now,
so that when success finally came to me, I had
a good, solid foundation sort of in feminism and then
(04:41):
was able to achieve my greatest dreams. You know, I
played Madison Square Garden. My dreams came true. I had albums,
thousands of people listening to my music and wanting to
hear my music. And yet personally I was unhappy. I
was unfulfilled. I didn't understand what relationships were. I was
(05:04):
in a cold relationship or relationship that I kept thinking
I had to make that person happy. I kept thinking
their job was to make me happy. And I'm telling you,
when you think someone else is supposed to make you happy,
that is the first ingredient in unhappiness. Your happiness is
(05:27):
your choice. Your happiness is your job, your responsibility. A
lot of people, well, they think differently, but this is
what I believe. I was going through a divorce, my
first divorce. I was just trying to figure out who
(05:49):
I was. I had two children. I didn't want them
to have a broken home. I thought I had failed
at that, I had failed at relationships. I'd failed the
lg BTQ community by being a role model and then
doing it all wrong in my mind mind? And what
became of that stress and that desire to keep that
(06:16):
fame that I had by eating less and trying to
look a certain way and trying to be something, trying
to fit in. When when the nineties went from singer
songwriters to more pop music, I was like where do
I fit in? And I started just burning up with stress.
(06:37):
And this fear of losing everything and doing it wrong
and what other people thought of me was the beginning
of my cancer. It's very very lonely, very hard when
you're living your life afraid of what other people think
(06:58):
about you. That's crazy making you can't ever get out
of that hole. So I'll tell you. Being diagnosed with
cancer stopped my life all of a sudden. I was like,
wait a minute, this is life and death. Now we're
(07:20):
talking about why is cancer with me? Yes? Cancer was
in my family. I'd lost my father cancer, my grandmother.
It was the way my body absorbed stress. It's the
way my body reacted to stress, and the way I
(07:40):
was eating. It was living on Vinti, Starbucks and power bars.
It was all just acid acid. Acid and acid is
what creates cancer. The environment around cells in your body.
That environment changes the cells to cancer cells, and all
(08:01):
of a sudden, you've got these rogue cancer cells that
are living in acid, and your body puts a tumor
over it. So that you'll know and maybe you'll change,
Maybe you'll change something. And the ones that survive are
the ones that change and do not fear change. Change
(08:25):
is everything. Changes is what you can do every single morning.
Change is what you can do right now. Changing your
mind is what you can do right now. I threw
(08:48):
myself into books and spiritual teachings. Nothing, nothing organized organized religion.
That's That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about
your own relationship with your inner person, that that voice
(09:11):
in your head. Some of the books that I started reading,
I'm sure you've heard of Don Miguel Ruiz, The Four Agreements.
I'm telling you, it's like a handbook to the human,
the whole human. If you if if you want to know, oh,
what's what? What? What? Four things can I do to
(09:33):
have my body run better, have my body run in
at at optimal speed and joy? Well, these are the things.
Don't take anything personally see don't take anything personally. That's
probably the hardest. I took everything personally. If someone I
(09:56):
used to. I used to think it was a badge
of honor to be able to walk into a room
and think I knew what everybody was thinking. And that's
the second agreement. Do not assume. I assumed all the time. Oh,
that person likes me. That person doesn't. Oh, my partner's mad.
(10:17):
They're mad at me. It comes from my mother. I
thought she was unhappy because of me. She was unhappy
because she was unhappy. And when you start going, okay,
my happiness is my responsibility. I choose, and that's where
love and fear comes in. Is the choice. We all
(10:39):
have a choice every day about how we feel about anything.
Nobody can make us feel. If you find yourself saying
oh they made me feel sad, no, you observed something
and you chose to feel sad. I started playing a
(10:59):
game with myself. I would I traveled a lot, so
I'd be in the airport a lot, so I was
around strangers a lot, and I would I would I
would see someone and where I might assume right away,
oh that person is angry at this. I played this
(11:21):
game called Tell a different story. And if my initial
reaction was Oh, that person's mad, Oh that person's mean,
Oh that person whatever, I would switch it in my
head and go, No, that person is an incredible sensitive
person who might have had something really horrible happened to
(11:44):
them just a few minutes ago, and they're fearful and
they don't understand, and so they are speaking it out
and it has nothing to do with me, not my business.
I used to see. I used to even go so
far as to someone I remember in an airport. I
didn't understand. I saw someone who absolutely looked homeless, yet
(12:06):
they were in an airport waiting for an airplane. They
were like wearing a trash bag, and it just twisted
my mind and I went, wait a minute, this is
not a homeless person. This is the son of a
billionaire who is messed up about money and he doesn't
know what to do, you know. And I just I
(12:29):
changed these stories in my head. And when you do that,
you change the way your whole world looks. Get curious,
study study your own biology. Study what makes the human
brain work. The human brain is amazing, and yeah, we
(12:51):
only use part of it. We don't even understand how
what we see and how we perceive it creates around us.
So when I understood that there is a choice between
love and fear all the time, that these are the
(13:11):
dual things that are happening. We live in a dualistic universe.
There's this reality is dualistic. There's light and dark, up
and down, good and bad, and you can't have one
without the other. And because we have both, we see,
we experience. You know, there's life and death that's going
(13:36):
to happen to all of us. The third agreement is
be impeccable with your word. Now, some people think, well,
I'm honest, but it means so much more than that.
It means that everything you say, everything you create in
your mind and then it comes outthing is important, everything creates.
(14:05):
Being impeccable with your word is not just what you
say out to other people, but what you say to yourself.
And as women, man, we are the worst at what
we say to ourselves. What do you say to yourself?
The moment you wake up is your first thought, I
shouldn't have had that chocolate cake last night. Oh I'm
(14:28):
so fat, I'm so we are we are so mean
to ourselves sometimes, I you would think, as a rock star. Oh,
she doesn't have any problem? Are you kidding? When when
all I used to do is compare myself to other
female artists, to movie stars, to people you'd see on
(14:52):
the screen, it was it was torture. And I know
what other women are going through. It isn't it is not,
and nobody escapes it. You're not thin enough, you're not
pretty enough. It's why, inexplicably, these women that we think
are so beautiful will get their face is done because
(15:15):
it never ends. There's no there is not a woman
that's like, that's right, I'm the most beautiful and I'm
fine with it. No, we all torture ourselves because of
this culture we live in. So it took a while
for me after cancer. I would get up every day
(15:36):
and I would look in the mirror and I looked
like hell. For a while after cow was bald as gray, ashy,
it was not good. I would look at myself in
the mirror and I'd say, hello, gorgeous, Hello, gorgeous. I
just leave it at that. I wouldn't think about it.
I wouldn't let myself go, oh you're not gorgeous or something.
It's just boom, Hello, gorgeous until now. It took a
(15:59):
couple of years until one day I went, hello, gorgeous,
and I looked and I went, ah, oh, I am gorgeous.
I believe it. People say seeing is believing. Believing. You
got to believe it first, then you will see it.
You will never see it if you don't believe it.
(16:20):
So you just you just water that part of you.
You keep it going. You go as long as you
can in your day with good thoughts. I mean I
would have like thoughts already written down. Things good things
(16:41):
that make me happy. Oh the way my children smiled,
Oh my dog, Oh when I looked out this window.
It's so beautiful. That appreciation, appreciation and love are the
same thing. The feeling of appreciation and the feet of
love the same thing. So find things to appreciate. First
(17:05):
thing in the morning. You're gonna get up bam. You're
gonna be impeccable with what you say to yourself. The
things we say to ourselves, would we ever say them
to anyone else? Make sure those words, those things are
true and kind. If you want a kind world, especially now,
(17:40):
which we might be on the fearful side of when
we are choosing how we think about the world right now,
there's a lot of fear. Well, if you want a
kinder world, you got to be kind. You've got to
believe kind You've got to believe that kindness exists. You've
(18:02):
got to find kindness. You've got to walk down the
street and think, I'm expecting kindness from this person, and
then you'll see it. And that's how we change. That's
how we change, not only ourselves, but the world around
us is how we perceive it. And the fourth, the
(18:26):
fourth agreement, that's the easiest. Just do your best, do
your best. If you just do your best, then you
can't be hard on yourself. If your intention is, oh
I want to live a healthy life. I want to
(18:48):
be healthy, I would definitely put health before weight. Oh lord,
how much we weigh? Like there's an optimal weight for people?
There is not. There is where we land is We
are human beings and what is the healthiest thing? What
is the healthiest for us? Think about health every day. Now,
(19:10):
some of us we are under the influence of sugar,
of substances that make us feel good because we are not.
We don't we're not allowing ourselves to feel good about
(19:32):
things and so we turn to things that physologically make
us feel good. Sugar is one. So I cut down
on sugar. I understood. I understand even now that sugar
is sugar does a number on our body, and refined
(19:53):
sugar probably the worst I would I did. I went
through my life and I took all refined sugar out
and it means just you know that going for a
Snickers bar, that's that's not the choice anymore. That's gonna
hurt me. You know what, if I need that sugar,
(20:14):
if I'm feeling down and I want to do something
and I want to feel better, I'm going to make
something or I'm gonna have a bowl of cereal of granola,
and I'm gonna look and it's gonna be you know,
sweetened with honey, which is which is a type of sugar.
It's just less refined and so as it hits your body,
(20:39):
it doesn't, you know, put the glycemic level up, It doesn't,
It doesn't hurt your body as much, but you're still
getting that sweet that makes you feel good. And then
another thought to put in your head. My life is
sweet enough. I have a sweet life. There are sweet
things in my life. My children are sweet my lover
(21:02):
is sweet. Oh this music that I love, it's sweet.
This book that I love, this television show, I love
this walk that I take, these clothes that I wear,
they're sweet. I have sweetness in my life. And then
those days when someone's got that favorite thing that you love,
that cheesecake, you love, that carrot cake or whatever it is,
(21:25):
go you know what? I love myself. I love this.
This isn't going to hurt me will I will eat it.
And it's one thing to eat sugar. But the thing
that's really going to get you is if you feel
horrible about eating the sugar. That horrible feeling will make
(21:46):
you sicker than just eating the piece of cake. If
you're going to eat it, celebrate it. I deserve this.
This is something I love in my life. This makes
me think about this, and it's going to go through
my body. I'm going to feel the effects of it.
I'm going to love it, and it's going to move
through and move on. Be impeccable, impeccable with your word,
(22:12):
what you're saying to yourself. It's all about you, not
about anybody else. You don't need anyone else to do
anything to make you okay. To make you feel better.
Only you can make you feel better. You have a
choice of love and fear every day. You can look
(22:35):
at a piece of cake and you can love it
or you can fear it. And then the responses you make,
the reactions you make come from love and fear. You
can look at someone and you can choose to love
them or fear them. You might say, oh, how can
(22:57):
I possibly love this person? You know, you don't understand that,
you don't know how horrible this person is. You know, well,
get basic, Get as basic as you can, and find
a place of appreciation. I could go on and on,
(23:18):
and I guess that's what this podcast is for. But
as I close this up for you, I want to
I want to emphasize that health enjoy are partners. I'm
now sixty three and I want to live a long time.
(23:38):
I have three children that I want to see grow.
I want grandchildren. There's so much more I want to
do and create in this life. So I plan to
keep my meat suit. I plan to keep it strong,
and I know that starts with a strong mind, strong thoughts.
(24:05):
I'm going to think about joy every day. Joy is
primary when a request comes in, when something comes in,
first thing, as is this going to bring me? Joy?
Is this going to bring and if joy is a
weird thing for you to think about, say satisfaction. Is
this a satisfying thought that what I'm thinking about this
(24:25):
person or this place or this instance, or where I'm
going or whatever it is. Is this a satisfying thought?
Choose a better thought. You can change your life absolutely.
Read things go down crazy spiritual thoughts. If you are
(24:50):
dealing with cancer, know that this is a time for
you to change. And it's not about anybody else and
what they think you should do. It's about you. Our
medical system is set up to do what it can,
but it really is all up to you. Yeah, it's
(25:13):
not a it's not a burden. Responsibility is not a burden.
It's your ability to respond. How are you going to
respond to this situation? Well, you're gonna you're going to
not assume anything. You're going to tell the best story
about everyone. You're not going to take anything personally. You
(25:36):
don't know when anyone else has been through. You're going
to walk with your own light. You're gonna you're gonna
do your best. You're going to know when you go
to sleep at night, you know what. It might have
turned out horrible, but I did the best I could,
and tomorrow I'm going to get up. I'm going to
do the best I can again. Now, you're beautiful, more
(26:00):
beautiful than you know. You're more powerful than you know.
We've got this every day because the more light that
comes from you, the more light there is in the world.
I hope I shared my light with you. I hope
you have enjoyed this. I'd love taking this time and
(26:20):
sharing it with you. Be strong, speak true, spread the peace,
and choose only love. It's a choice. Thank you very much.
This is Let's be clear with Shannon Doherty. Hello, my friends,
welcome to this wonderful podcast. I am honored to be
here as a guest. I love that you all have
a different one every time. This is all in the
spirit of Shannon. I know you spend a long time
(00:24):
love and listen to her. And I am Melissa Ethridge
and I'm looking forward to chatting with you a little today.
I want to bring the topic of love and fear
and the importance of joy. Now. I know we lost
Shannon to cancer, and I myself was a cancer I
(00:48):
experienced cancer. Let's say that. I like to call myself
a thriver. Now. I don't think I'm just surviving. I
believe I'm thriving. It was twenty years ago I had
my experienceperience with cancer, and my life has been very different.
And I tell people, I let them know that cancer
was actually the best thing that happened to me. I
(01:10):
know we've lost many people that we love. I know
there's many of us who are out there right now
dealing with it that are very fearful. Well, let me
tell you my experience. That's all I can do is
tell you my story, because that's all we are is
our stories now. If you aren't familiar with me, I
(01:32):
am a singer, songwriter. A people ask me what I am.
I say I'm a rock star because I like that.
I like to let people know that I write songs
and entertain and I've always loved that. I grew up
in the Midwest in the sixties and seventies, and it
was very well my family. I didn't have a a
(01:54):
terribly bad childhood. I had a very quiet childhood, I
like to say, because I grew up in the time
where my parents lived that life of if there's anything
wrong in the family, you don't talk about it, you
don't air your dirty laundry, you put it, you know,
under you pretend everything's okay. And as I grew, as
(02:21):
I became a teenager and adolescence, I realized that my
mother was incredibly unhappy. She was very intelligent. She had
a job working, which was unusual in the seventies, and
she actually made more money than my father. But the
work that she did, she was one of the first
computer programmers. If you know the movie Hidden Figures, that's
(02:45):
what she was. She worked in those big rooms and
she programmed the computers and she did it at the
army base which was next to our town of Leavenworth, Kansas,
and she would work and never get the credit and
certainly got paid half as much as anyone else was
getting paid around her. And she'll see she was very unhappy,
(03:09):
and so I was really looking forward to getting out
of that experience. My father, on the other hand, was
a high school teacher. He was a coach. He was
a really great guy. He supported my crazy dream of
being a rock star by actually taking me on the
weekends to play in bands in bars and clubs around.
(03:32):
I had a very unusual childhood, I realize, but it
was those experiences that that sort of set me up.
And as I look back, I don't look back and
want to change anything or think that it was bad.
I look back and I'm again grateful for that experience
(03:55):
because it enriched my life. It made me want, It
made me desire, and as I went through and tumbled
through my life and had loves and realized I was
gay and lived in the world in the eighties as
a as a gay woman in southern California, which was
(04:17):
very delightful and very educational. There's a lot of women,
a lot of feminists in southern California in the eighties.
That shaped sort of the person that I am now,
so that when success finally came to me, I had
a good, solid foundation sort of in feminism and then
(04:41):
was able to achieve my greatest dreams. You know, I
played Madison Square Garden. My dreams came true. I had albums,
thousands of people listening to my music and wanting to
hear my music. And yet personally I was unhappy. I
was unfulfilled. I didn't understand what relationships were. I was
(05:04):
in a cold relationship or relationship that I kept thinking
I had to make that person happy. I kept thinking
their job was to make me happy. And I'm telling you,
when you think someone else is supposed to make you happy,
that is the first ingredient in unhappiness. Your happiness is
(05:27):
your choice. Your happiness is your job, your responsibility. A
lot of people, well, they think differently, but this is
what I believe. I was going through a divorce, my
first divorce. I was just trying to figure out who
(05:49):
I was. I had two children. I didn't want them
to have a broken home. I thought I had failed
at that, I had failed at relationships. I'd failed the
lg BTQ community by being a role model and then
doing it all wrong in my mind mind? And what
became of that stress and that desire to keep that
(06:16):
fame that I had by eating less and trying to
look a certain way and trying to be something, trying
to fit in. When when the nineties went from singer
songwriters to more pop music, I was like where do
I fit in? And I started just burning up with stress.
(06:37):
And this fear of losing everything and doing it wrong
and what other people thought of me was the beginning
of my cancer. It's very very lonely, very hard when
you're living your life afraid of what other people think
(06:58):
about you. That's crazy making you can't ever get out
of that hole. So I'll tell you. Being diagnosed with
cancer stopped my life all of a sudden. I was like,
wait a minute, this is life and death. Now we're
(07:20):
talking about why is cancer with me? Yes? Cancer was
in my family. I'd lost my father cancer, my grandmother.
It was the way my body absorbed stress. It's the
way my body reacted to stress, and the way I
(07:40):
was eating. It was living on Vinti, Starbucks and power bars.
It was all just acid acid. Acid and acid is
what creates cancer. The environment around cells in your body.
That environment changes the cells to cancer cells, and all
(08:01):
of a sudden, you've got these rogue cancer cells that
are living in acid, and your body puts a tumor
over it. So that you'll know and maybe you'll change,
Maybe you'll change something. And the ones that survive are
the ones that change and do not fear change. Change
(08:25):
is everything. Changes is what you can do every single morning.
Change is what you can do right now. Changing your
mind is what you can do right now. I threw
(08:48):
myself into books and spiritual teachings. Nothing, nothing organized organized religion.
That's That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about
your own relationship with your inner person, that that voice
(09:11):
in your head. Some of the books that I started reading,
I'm sure you've heard of Don Miguel Ruiz, The Four Agreements.
I'm telling you, it's like a handbook to the human,
the whole human. If you if if you want to know, oh,
what's what? What? What? Four things can I do to
(09:33):
have my body run better, have my body run in
at at optimal speed and joy? Well, these are the things.
Don't take anything personally see don't take anything personally. That's
probably the hardest. I took everything personally. If someone I
(09:56):
used to. I used to think it was a badge
of honor to be able to walk into a room
and think I knew what everybody was thinking. And that's
the second agreement. Do not assume. I assumed all the time. Oh,
that person likes me. That person doesn't. Oh, my partner's mad.
(10:17):
They're mad at me. It comes from my mother. I
thought she was unhappy because of me. She was unhappy
because she was unhappy. And when you start going, okay,
my happiness is my responsibility. I choose, and that's where
love and fear comes in. Is the choice. We all
(10:39):
have a choice every day about how we feel about anything.
Nobody can make us feel. If you find yourself saying
oh they made me feel sad, no, you observed something
and you chose to feel sad. I started playing a
(10:59):
game with myself. I would I traveled a lot, so
I'd be in the airport a lot, so I was
around strangers a lot, and I would I would I
would see someone and where I might assume right away,
oh that person is angry at this. I played this
(11:21):
game called Tell a different story. And if my initial
reaction was Oh, that person's mad, Oh that person's mean,
Oh that person whatever, I would switch it in my
head and go, No, that person is an incredible sensitive
person who might have had something really horrible happened to
(11:44):
them just a few minutes ago, and they're fearful and
they don't understand, and so they are speaking it out
and it has nothing to do with me, not my business.
I used to see. I used to even go so
far as to someone I remember in an airport. I
didn't understand. I saw someone who absolutely looked homeless, yet
(12:06):
they were in an airport waiting for an airplane. They
were like wearing a trash bag, and it just twisted
my mind and I went, wait a minute, this is
not a homeless person. This is the son of a
billionaire who is messed up about money and he doesn't
know what to do, you know. And I just I
(12:29):
changed these stories in my head. And when you do that,
you change the way your whole world looks. Get curious,
study study your own biology. Study what makes the human
brain work. The human brain is amazing, and yeah, we
(12:51):
only use part of it. We don't even understand how
what we see and how we perceive it creates around us.
So when I understood that there is a choice between
love and fear all the time, that these are the
(13:11):
dual things that are happening. We live in a dualistic universe.
There's this reality is dualistic. There's light and dark, up
and down, good and bad, and you can't have one
without the other. And because we have both, we see,
we experience. You know, there's life and death that's going
(13:36):
to happen to all of us. The third agreement is
be impeccable with your word. Now, some people think, well,
I'm honest, but it means so much more than that.
It means that everything you say, everything you create in
your mind and then it comes outthing is important, everything creates.
(14:05):
Being impeccable with your word is not just what you
say out to other people, but what you say to yourself.
And as women, man, we are the worst at what
we say to ourselves. What do you say to yourself?
The moment you wake up is your first thought, I
shouldn't have had that chocolate cake last night. Oh I'm
(14:28):
so fat, I'm so we are we are so mean
to ourselves sometimes, I you would think, as a rock star. Oh,
she doesn't have any problem? Are you kidding? When when
all I used to do is compare myself to other
female artists, to movie stars, to people you'd see on
(14:52):
the screen, it was it was torture. And I know
what other women are going through. It isn't it is not,
and nobody escapes it. You're not thin enough, you're not
pretty enough. It's why, inexplicably, these women that we think
are so beautiful will get their face is done because
(15:15):
it never ends. There's no there is not a woman
that's like, that's right, I'm the most beautiful and I'm
fine with it. No, we all torture ourselves because of
this culture we live in. So it took a while
for me after cancer. I would get up every day
(15:36):
and I would look in the mirror and I looked
like hell. For a while after cow was bald as gray, ashy,
it was not good. I would look at myself in
the mirror and I'd say, hello, gorgeous, Hello, gorgeous. I
just leave it at that. I wouldn't think about it.
I wouldn't let myself go, oh you're not gorgeous or something.
It's just boom, Hello, gorgeous until now. It took a
(15:59):
couple of years until one day I went, hello, gorgeous,
and I looked and I went, ah, oh, I am gorgeous.
I believe it. People say seeing is believing. Believing. You
got to believe it first, then you will see it.
You will never see it if you don't believe it.
(16:20):
So you just you just water that part of you.
You keep it going. You go as long as you
can in your day with good thoughts. I mean I
would have like thoughts already written down. Things good things
(16:41):
that make me happy. Oh the way my children smiled,
Oh my dog, Oh when I looked out this window.
It's so beautiful. That appreciation, appreciation and love are the
same thing. The feeling of appreciation and the feet of
love the same thing. So find things to appreciate. First
(17:05):
thing in the morning. You're gonna get up bam. You're
gonna be impeccable with what you say to yourself. The
things we say to ourselves, would we ever say them
to anyone else? Make sure those words, those things are
true and kind. If you want a kind world, especially now,
(17:40):
which we might be on the fearful side of when
we are choosing how we think about the world right now,
there's a lot of fear. Well, if you want a
kinder world, you got to be kind. You've got to
believe kind You've got to believe that kindness exists. You've
(18:02):
got to find kindness. You've got to walk down the
street and think, I'm expecting kindness from this person, and
then you'll see it. And that's how we change. That's
how we change, not only ourselves, but the world around
us is how we perceive it. And the fourth, the
(18:26):
fourth agreement, that's the easiest. Just do your best, do
your best. If you just do your best, then you
can't be hard on yourself. If your intention is, oh
I want to live a healthy life. I want to
(18:48):
be healthy, I would definitely put health before weight. Oh lord,
how much we weigh? Like there's an optimal weight for people?
There is not. There is where we land is We
are human beings and what is the healthiest thing? What
is the healthiest for us? Think about health every day. Now,
(19:10):
some of us we are under the influence of sugar,
of substances that make us feel good because we are not.
We don't we're not allowing ourselves to feel good about
(19:32):
things and so we turn to things that physologically make
us feel good. Sugar is one. So I cut down
on sugar. I understood. I understand even now that sugar
is sugar does a number on our body, and refined
(19:53):
sugar probably the worst I would I did. I went
through my life and I took all refined sugar out
and it means just you know that going for a
Snickers bar, that's that's not the choice anymore. That's gonna
hurt me. You know what, if I need that sugar,
(20:14):
if I'm feeling down and I want to do something
and I want to feel better, I'm going to make
something or I'm gonna have a bowl of cereal of granola,
and I'm gonna look and it's gonna be you know,
sweetened with honey, which is which is a type of sugar.
It's just less refined and so as it hits your body,
(20:39):
it doesn't, you know, put the glycemic level up, It doesn't,
It doesn't hurt your body as much, but you're still
getting that sweet that makes you feel good. And then
another thought to put in your head. My life is
sweet enough. I have a sweet life. There are sweet
things in my life. My children are sweet my lover
(21:02):
is sweet. Oh this music that I love, it's sweet.
This book that I love, this television show, I love
this walk that I take, these clothes that I wear,
they're sweet. I have sweetness in my life. And then
those days when someone's got that favorite thing that you love,
that cheesecake, you love, that carrot cake or whatever it is,
(21:25):
go you know what? I love myself. I love this.
This isn't going to hurt me will I will eat it.
And it's one thing to eat sugar. But the thing
that's really going to get you is if you feel
horrible about eating the sugar. That horrible feeling will make
(21:46):
you sicker than just eating the piece of cake. If
you're going to eat it, celebrate it. I deserve this.
This is something I love in my life. This makes
me think about this, and it's going to go through
my body. I'm going to feel the effects of it.
I'm going to love it, and it's going to move
through and move on. Be impeccable, impeccable with your word,
(22:12):
what you're saying to yourself. It's all about you, not
about anybody else. You don't need anyone else to do
anything to make you okay. To make you feel better.
Only you can make you feel better. You have a
choice of love and fear every day. You can look
(22:35):
at a piece of cake and you can love it
or you can fear it. And then the responses you make,
the reactions you make come from love and fear. You
can look at someone and you can choose to love
them or fear them. You might say, oh, how can
(22:57):
I possibly love this person? You know, you don't understand that,
you don't know how horrible this person is. You know, well,
get basic, Get as basic as you can, and find
a place of appreciation. I could go on and on,
(23:18):
and I guess that's what this podcast is for. But
as I close this up for you, I want to
I want to emphasize that health enjoy are partners. I'm
now sixty three and I want to live a long time.
(23:38):
I have three children that I want to see grow.
I want grandchildren. There's so much more I want to
do and create in this life. So I plan to
keep my meat suit. I plan to keep it strong,
and I know that starts with a strong mind, strong thoughts.
(24:05):
I'm going to think about joy every day. Joy is
primary when a request comes in, when something comes in,
first thing, as is this going to bring me? Joy?
Is this going to bring and if joy is a
weird thing for you to think about, say satisfaction. Is
this a satisfying thought that what I'm thinking about this
(24:25):
person or this place or this instance, or where I'm
going or whatever it is. Is this a satisfying thought?
Choose a better thought. You can change your life absolutely.
Read things go down crazy spiritual thoughts. If you are
(24:50):
dealing with cancer, know that this is a time for
you to change. And it's not about anybody else and
what they think you should do. It's about you. Our
medical system is set up to do what it can,
but it really is all up to you. Yeah, it's
(25:13):
not a it's not a burden. Responsibility is not a burden.
It's your ability to respond. How are you going to
respond to this situation? Well, you're gonna you're going to
not assume anything. You're going to tell the best story
about everyone. You're not going to take anything personally. You
(25:36):
don't know when anyone else has been through. You're going
to walk with your own light. You're gonna you're gonna
do your best. You're going to know when you go
to sleep at night, you know what. It might have
turned out horrible, but I did the best I could,
and tomorrow I'm going to get up. I'm going to
do the best I can again. Now, you're beautiful, more
(26:00):
beautiful than you know. You're more powerful than you know.
We've got this every day because the more light that
comes from you, the more light there is in the world.
I hope I shared my light with you. I hope
you have enjoyed this. I'd love taking this time and
(26:20):
sharing it with you. Be strong, speak true, spread the peace,
and choose only love. It's a choice. Thank you very much.
Host
Shannen Doherty
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