Breast cancer, anorexia and the only way to help yourself.
Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. So last night we finished our fifth session with Casey Pierce on stoicism and we spoke about impermanence. Of course, our own death, mortality, now don't run away, it's a topic we all need to talk about.
Speaker 1:But you can go listen to in your own time. She does give a trigger warning. Some people it's not the right time, some people it is. But yeah, I mean the gist of it is, a few things really. You know, Seneca says, it is not that we have a short time to live but we waste a lot of it, % true.
Speaker 1:And acknowledging that the people we love won't live forever increases our level of gratitude for them, that's true as well. And if we don't accept that it does come to an end, there is no urgency to live basically. So as you reminded today to make the most of today, I mean how many times left we got to see our parents? Fifteen, twenty five, 20 seven, it's not many, it's not many. So you need to make the most of these times when we do see these people.
Speaker 1:You do see your friends, you on your phone like just on your phone like going yeah, yeah, yeah, not listening, slap, that's what you need. But how many times we're not present with the people we we take for granted really. That's just one lesson from that and I'm not gonna talk more about impermanence in this voice note but give it a listen. It's important. What I do want to talk about today is Sarah Jelly.
Speaker 1:Jelly? Jelly? Sarah, tell me, is it is it just chat? I'm I'm I'm just being too Welshy with saying every letter of every word. But I say, Sarah Jelly.
Speaker 1:She did the first turtle talks on our Instagram. Okay? And it was unbelievable. It's like nine minutes, so it's shorter than my voice notes these days and it's definitely better to listen to than my voice notes. So I'd like to urge you all to maybe just put this voice notes down and go to the turtle Instagram and give it a listen because it's a phenomenal story but I'll give you some some snippets from it if you want to go and listen to after this.
Speaker 1:But you know essentially Sarah family have suffered with breast cancer genetically. She kind of knew we would come in because her mother had it and then her grandmother had it and her mother had it and you know, then she beat it. But during this time I was here I was in school and she felt full of anxiety because she knew what was coming and then when her mother did beat her she felt better but then unfortunately mother passed away and you know she went into university, had an eating disorder, anorexia and you know like she says it's a miracle she passed university you know going through such tough times in university where you are thrown into drinking and partying and trying to learn when your body's not physically strong and fit to like kind of withstand all that, it's remarkable. And Sarah you have an edge, can't believe like the resilience get through it because it takes a lot to get through all of that. And then Sarah eventually, you know, one point she made and I think everybody should take us on board is she says, if you've got an eating disorder, the help has to come from you, it has to come from within.
Speaker 1:Nobody can, I can tell you, she can tell you, anyone could tell you all the studies in the world, all the benefits of eating more, all the benefits of, you know, fixing, quote unquote fixing the eating disorder but help has to come from use the same as therapy? If you turn up to therapy and you expect them to give you the answers it's not how it works they will lead you down a path and they will make you come up with your own answers. It's all self therapy, everything is self therapy. Everything is self help. You have to decide you want to help yourself first.
Speaker 1:And then you have to go and find these answers yourself and people can help you of course. You can have amazing guides and teachers and stuff like that and friendship groups that make you think about stuff. But you have to be willing to to look for these answers and you have to be willing to accept. It is it is down to you. It's always been down to you.
Speaker 1:It will always be down to you. It will always be down to you. And this is the responsibility that comes with that. Okay? We have a responsibility, the body, our body is the only place we do have to live, we can live in other places, other houses, wherever, but our body is the only place you have to live.
Speaker 1:You know, and there's an amazing quote from, what's her name now? Edith Eger and she says she survived Auschwitzman. She says the worst prison she's ever been in is the prison of her own mind, even worse than Auschwitz. Think about that for one second, the prison of your own mind and she admits this is worse than the prison of Auschwitz which is the worst prison you ever think about physically. So we can put ourselves in the worst prison ever in our own minds.
Speaker 1:And who can help you get out of that prison? Only you. You like there's an amazing, visual in Laurie Gottlieb's, what's the book? How to talk to Why You Should Talk to Someone or something like that. And she says, there's we're in jail, right?
Speaker 1:The jail, the bars are in front of It's what she says. The bars are in front of you. But what you fail to share with other people is to your left, there's open space. And to your right, there's open space. You can walk around the bar.
Speaker 1:You can get out of that jail. You're just standing in front of these bars at your own doing, at your own will. There is way there are ways out, but you have to take the steps. So, Sarah, thanks for bringing her up. You hit Tom on that big time.
Speaker 1:I think it's important that you if anyone is here and I think Sarah says as well eating disorders come up in wintertime are the worst times for them as well. So if any of you are struggling with eating disorders, we are not we're not there, we're not qualified to help like one to one with eating disorders. But we're here to help. We're here for you to talk to, we're for a supportive community, people for you to share your experiences with other members and as many members we've got who have overcome eating disorders. I'm not going to say we've done that because we've just been one part of the journey they've decided to go on.
Speaker 1:It's their help, it's their own doing. They've decided they wanted to change it and they've gone to places and they've put the work in and done the change and we've been a small part of that. And I think you know, talking to these people is beneficial. So if any of you do feel like go on the turtle Instagram, I'm sure you can just DM anyone who's commented on it about it. But then Sarah's story goes on, Sarah's story goes on and unfortunately, she goes through more adversity.
Speaker 1:She breast cancer, right, she gets breast cancer, catches it early I believe she says, think sorry, if I'm butchering her Sarah and then after that manages to fight it off. And while still going through surgery right now actually, so I'm not a % up to date on where her recovery is at. But what I can say is Sarah is smiling. She's glowing. She's smiling.
Speaker 1:This is what she looked like in university with anorexic all and then even after when she put the weight again on she, the difference is phenomenal. The internal glow Sarah's now gone from this new mindset she's been through it, she's done the Hercules journey, she's gone through all of these tests and trials, you know, losing your parent from a young age. No win is coming, no win, no win you're gonna get cancer. I can't fathom how I just can't fathom how difficult that is to know that it's coming to you due to genetics. It's scary, you just know it's going to hit you, don't know when.
Speaker 1:That's going keep you up at night, isn't it? But what are we going to do in those scenarios? The thing is talk about impairments, we all know we're going to die. So we all got this end result but to be taught to be to realise young that can't Sarah I don't know how you did it but what helped getting fit and healthy. Like she says we all know getting fit and healthy will help us reduce the chance of getting diseases and stuff like that.
Speaker 1:If we can be as healthy as possible physically, it's gonna help. But more importantly being healthy as possible mentally because we can create an environment inside of our bodies, the most stressful environment you can think about simply by thinking things into existence. So when people play chess, right, they're not even moving, but what they do when they look into the chess piece, and they look into the board, they are exert in a lot that like the I think the quarter's crazy, something like the mono g force or whatever. The kind of mental stress inside them, their bodies is equivalent to like a Formula One can't believe Robert Sapolsky says. And we can think things in existence.
Speaker 1:So merely thinking about something stressful or something like catching, being told by a doctor. For example, you start thinking now nothing's ever happened to you. You start thinking, my god, doctor's going tell me next week I've got cancer. You start sweating, your palms start sweating, your body reacts as if it's actually happened, your stress response is turned on. Hail Mary, oh, it's go time.
Speaker 1:What happens when your stress response turns on is you are basically again prepare, you're preparing yourself for battle to run to fight. So all this adrenaline goes through the body, glucose goes through the thighs and stuff like that. What we do usually is we just sit down and we get agitated. We're like, oh, why can't I think I'm stressed and all this and you keep the stress response on but keep thinking about it. The power of your thoughts to keep the response on and make it chronic as opposed to acute is crazy.
Speaker 1:And there's so many bad things that happen in this scenario. They look at what happens with ulcers in the stomach when you got stress, chronic stress response. The more you stress out about stuff, lower, the weaker your immune system, right? You get stomach ulcers and stuff like that keep keeping autoimmune conditions. Robert Sapolsky saying a link to stress.
Speaker 1:Don't exactly know how the mechanisms are but it's definitely a link because they flare up when people get stressed all the time. So you can think these things even if they don't happen. Okay, think of crazy that is. So we have to, like we train our bodies, have to train our minds. So we can't put ourselves in hell stress when it's not actually happened.
Speaker 1:If things do happen, we deal with them as they happen. But if we don't take this proactive step and train, go to the gym to train our bodies, still train your mind as well in the gym, push passer, but also train our minds and that's what Sierra mentions as well. She had to overcome going back to the gym and being really weak and being like, I used to be really strong. But it's a process, it's a journey to return to things. You know, if we're trying to fight against something that's impossible, like if you want to say, I want to be back to where I was last summer and you know you're injured, then you're fighting the impossible.
Speaker 1:Of course you're going to be annoyed and pissed off and you're angry stress response on. There's no good, you're not doing anyone good with that. What you can say is you know what I'm taking my first step back on this journey. I'll be in that farmer that's putting the seeds in the ground today knowing tomorrow it's not gonna be you know, the wheat isn't gonna be there tomorrow because that's be stupid if we think about that. Okay, farmer.
Speaker 1:Farmer comes up to you, he's like, yeah, put the seeds in yesterday. Why the hell is my wheat with me today? And you go, that's not how it works, mate. You know how it works. You need to, you know, it's gotta grow.
Speaker 1:Give it time. Now I wanna know. I don't know what to say. You're just crazy. Do you know I mean?
Speaker 1:So we need to look at these things and try mindfulness techniques, stoicism, read up about it. Read these books, go and buy them. Christmas has come in. You know, what are you gonna do with your time, you know, downtime hopefully? Read a bit of stoicism, get back control here.
Speaker 1:So yeah, you know, reading mindfulness and chatting to community to support you is important. Yeah, Sarah is still going through, you know, fighting the cancer and stuff like that, still got a smile on the face, still, you know, is growing inside out, even though she's gone through all of that and still going through adversity. That's how you deal with it. That's how you go through these things with a smile on your face, or at least with the attitude that you can conquer it and make the most of each day. I think that's it.
Speaker 1:I mean, it's easy to say isn't it? Yeah, you can do it when you go through adversity. When you see people actually do it, when you see you know, I'm not talking about Marcus Aurelius here, I'm talking about Sarah. Sarah, secondary school music teacher. Sarah, like you, me, everyone, or all of us here, we are just normal people.
Speaker 1:And we see other normal people being able to do it, like it can does show shows us the way we can do it. So there is ways out, whatever position you're in there's ways out. And there's ways to improve yourself. But it all comes down to you deciding right now you want to improve yourself or you want to improve something you want to fix this and do that. No one is coming to save you.
Speaker 1:It's just not how it works. It's just not how it works. I think I'll finish off with this quote we put on turtle before that might resonate with you guys. So you know doctors won't make you healthy, teachers won't make you smart, gurus won't make you calm, mentors won't make you rich, trainers won't make you fit, Ultimately, you have to take responsibility, save yourself. And if that's the way to the end of our sentence, don't know what is, but please go and watch that video on the turtle IGTV of Sarah.
Speaker 1:Show it some love. Give it some likes. Show what you think. Anyone you know struggling. DM each other guys.
Speaker 1:The community's there. I know all of our members are amazing at the DMs and WhatsApp groups and chatting to people. Reach out to someone if you're struggling. If anything resonates and you're struggling, reach out to any of us and we're there to help. Just one message, one reply, point you in the right direction, all it can take to change everything for you.
Speaker 1:I'm not saying you have to join the charity membership, I'm not saying that, That's the best offer we got of course. I'm not saying you have to join the turtle membership. So you have to spend extra money and just saying reach out to people, the people that do care, the people that have been through it. They are willing to help you as long as you ask for it. And that's my message for today.
Speaker 1:Off you go. Make the most of today. Don't mess about. Make the most. Get off your phone, scroll on Instagram apart from watching this video of course.
Speaker 1:And, I'll see you tomorrow.
