Create a different story

Kevin Roth is a Life Coach but started his career as a dulcimer player and musician in 1974. By 2015 he had worked on around 50 albums, sung the theme to a children’s hit TV show Shining Time Station that was based on the stories of Thomas the Tank Engine and developed a children’s music career.

Everything was going well when in 2015 he was diagnosed with Stage 3 Melanoma and given around 2 years to live. It was a sentence he didn't agree with so he decided to change the story and moved from Kansas to California to live a bohemian lifestyle in a beautiful place. After a couple of turbulent years dealing with the diagnosis, someone suggested to him that he should become a life coach, something he didn't know anything about. Initially it didn’t appeal to him, but he found a way to teach the dulcimer in a meditative style and become a life coach in his own way using spirituality and science to talk to people about understanding life, dropping stress and creating a life that they really love.

As a child Kevin was very musical and played piano by ear. At 13 he heard the Appalachian Mountain dulcimer and fell in love with the sound of it and learned to play it. In some places it is still seen as a traditional folk instrument but because Kevin didn’t know about its history he played it like a guitar or piano and came to be seen as a very innovative player. Being seen as doing something different helped in him getting his first record deal with Folkway Records.

Kevin feels that music teaches resilience. Its hard to make a living as a musician and in a business sense music teaches us how to create something out of nothing. It also helps us recover from making mistakes – how do you come back from a bad gig when people don't applaud?  In jazz there are no mistakes just improvisation and often what we class as mistakes are just someone else’s judgement. Kevin also feels that music should be taught in schools like maths and science, the more people who are artistic or musical the better. Everyone can be artistic and the more artistic skills you teach, the better people will be able to do their jobs.

When he got his cancer diagnosis Kevin thought he was in in good health. He now feels that it was the stress in was under the three years prior to the diagnosis that caused it. Stress and inflammation can have a really damaging effect and we have to know how to handle stress and what to eat in balance.  When he was diagnosed Kevin had to think about what was really important  – I only have two years to live so what do I want to do? The fame and fortune didn’t matter anymore what he wanted to do was make music, spend time with his dogs and move to California. He rejected the diagnosis. They removed a lymph node to see if the cancer had spread and then waited a year to see if it had come back and it never did.

Kevin never thought he was going to die, he changed the story. When you realise that nothing lasts or matters and everything passes, you get out of the story of ‘I hate my job or partner and don’t like this or that’ and then when you change the way you look at things the things you look at change. When he had the diagnosis Kevin said he was going to go and watch surfers in California, and wasn’t going to live the rest of his life in a cancer ward. We create stories every day. When we wake up it can be a good day or a bad day. If you’re in a really bad mood and the phone rings and it's a friend you haven’t heard from a while then suddenly you’re in a whole other dimension. All the drama that was ruining your life is gone. When you look at mindful awareness and take the time to contemplate it you realise you that you really shouldn't get upset about very much. The story is the story. Learn to live in balance.

Every day we create a different story. When Kevin wakes up he says this is what I want to do and feel today.  Of course there is a need to eat the right things, to rest and exercise and do some sort of meditation but we need to get out of the illusion that money buys happiness. We also need to recreate our life on a daily basis. We need to retune ourselves through the day. Many people don't know how to sit in silence or be comfortable with themselves any more.  They have lost who they are and are addicted to stress.  We need to drop a lot of the things going on in our heads, be nice to ourselves and give ourselves a break. We have an inner voice that will talk to us if we are quiet enough to listen so we can replace what doesn't work with what does.

There is a balance between planning for the future and learning to live your life now. When you figure out what matters and why, everything else falls into place.

You can listen to the podcast in full and find out further information here. Our upcoming guest list is also available along with our previous blogs.

You can find out more at Kevinroth.org

From adversity to emotional wellness

Rosie Mankes is a two-time cancer survivor. In 2008 she was diagnosed with Stage One Lung Cancer and had 10% of her right lung removed. Then, in 2015 she was diagnosed with early stage breast cancer but tested positive for the breast cancer gene so ended up having a bilateral mastectomy and reconstructive surgery. After her second cancer journey decided she wanted to be a life coach to help serve others and she is also a speaker and author of a book

In her book Rosie writes about how she moved from significant adversity to emotional wellness in the space of one year. In 2015 as well as her breast cancer diagnosis she also had to transition her Mother to an assisted living facility because of her progression of her dementia. Her Mother had always lived in New York so was very fearful of leaving the only life she had known behind so she could move closer to Rosie and her family in New Jersey. Then, when things were just starting to settle down, Rosie’s 58 year-old brother died an accident.

Rosie felt cursed and didn’t know how to get out of bed and attempt to be herself. She needed to find out how to move from that place of despair and find a way to emotional wellness and healing. She wanted to find joy in everyday living again. Rosie used to think before that year that it was all about the big picture – if you can just do one big thing you can fix it but she found that when she was in that place it was a series of smaller things that created the change. It was more about grass roots foundation building, digestible bits of information because when you are really down you cant comprehend more than a little bit at a time.

Rosie wasn’t happy so one of the first things she did was to define what happy was. She decided to write down five day-to-day things that made her happy but she ended up with a blank page because she wasn’t happy. She then took a side step and wrote down five things that could make her happy. She came up with a very basic list – sitting with her dogs, watching a sun rise or set, taking a walk – but it wasn't a list of what made her happy so she turned them affirmations and read them constantly until she felt strong enough to integrate them into her life.

She also took a look at the things she had given up during that year. One of the things she had stopped doing was listening to the radio because of the connection she felt to the lyrics. But music was a large part of Rosie’s life so she worked on bringing it back in to her life. She had also stopped exercising partly because of the surgery but she then suffered from crippling anxiety. She didn't really want to go back but she did and she then realised that she needed to look at her gym buddies and visulise who they were, what did she want from her encounter with them and what did she want share. Once she had visulised this at home, she had prepared herself for the encounter and made it easier for her to push through it

As a life coach Rosie feels she has most value when she is working with breast cancer sufferers, helping them deal with the personal things - feelings and emotions that go with losing part of your body. Having been diagnosed with lung and breast cancer Rosie feels breast cancer is far more personal as the body changes are very hard to deal with so the experience that she has been though can help other women express their emotions and fears and help them get through their journey.

Rosie also works with families who are having to transition their parents into assisted living or memory care facility from home. When she was transitioning her mother she felt a lot of guilt because she didn't ever think her mother would ever need to go into a facility. However, her mothers care level needs were high and Rosie’s ability to look after her was low due to her breast cancer. Now Rosie likes to help other people deal with the denial of needs, the guilt that might come along, the preparation of question you need to ask and generally be as knowledgeable as possible so you are better able to cope.

You can find out more about Rosie at Rosiemankes.net Her book is Find Your Joy and Run With It,

You can listen to the podcast in full and find out further information here. Our upcoming guest list is also available along with our previous blogs.

Cycle of Lives – Emotional connections with cancer

David Richman is an author, public speaker, philanthropist, and endurance athlete whose mission is to form more meaningful human connections through storytelling. He competes in Ironman triathlons and a wide range of endurance athletic events and has recently completed a solo 4,700-mile bike ride in 41 days. This was to connect with the people who contributed to his book Cycle of Lives, which shares the interconnected stories of people overcoming trauma and delves deeply into their emotional journeys with cancer.

David’s career working for a Wall Street firm was incredibly stressful. During the financial crisis he was managing up and down and things got very tough. He suffered from both external and self-inflicted stress – was overweight and a smoker, did no exercise and had four-year old twins, as well being in a relationship with an abusive alcoholic. He needed to make a change but it wasn’t until his only sister was diagnosed with terminal cancer that he started to change his life around.

He says it was like a light switch going on. His whole life he had been trying to be an overachiever for other people – a good kid, a good student, keeping his boss happy, impressing his employees. Whatever it was doing he was looking for external gratification. Eventually he understood the concept of having to do things for yourself and when he realised this, he took control of his life.

David combined the thought that his best days were ahead with forgiving himself for his past mistakes. He stopped smoking, lost weight and become physically active. He stopped worrying about what other people thought about him and his work and instead concentrated on what he thought about himself and his work. He feels it's very freeing to accept the idea that nobody is watching you and nobody cares about what you do. Everybody has their own problems and own life to deal with. We believe other people are judging us but really they’re not.   When David started doing endurance athletic events he soon realised that no one was taking any notice of what he was doing, what training he was undertaking and where and when he completed an event - he was just doing it solely for himself.

David grew up not wanting to upset his mother and he realises now that is where not doing things for himself or learning self-sufficiency or forgiveness started. Everyone has difficulties so it’s important not to compare yourself to other people. Your life is your life and some people are going though unbelievably traumatic experiences. He talked with his sister through her end of life journey and then went on to do an endurance event to raise money for the cancer centre that had cared for her. Through the contacts he made he realised that many people have great difficulty communicating the emotional side of trauma and cancer.

He decided to write a book that could help people deal with the emotional side of cancer such as how trauma affects the cancer or how we can better relate to someone going through cancer. He found a number of people with a wide range of emotional responses to cancer - doctors, nurses, patients and relatives - and talked to them about their stories. When the book was finished, he wanted to connect with the people he had worked with so organised his bike trip to meet them all. All the profits from book go to charity. Each of the participants came up with a charity they had an affinity to and the proceeds of sales will go to those charities.

As well as raise money, David’s aim is to start the conversation. He feels we all need to try to live our best life but do it because its what we want to do. What matters is the state of happiness that we choose to surround ourselves with and the emotional connections we make with people in life!

You can listen to the podcast in full and find out further information about David here. Our previous podcasts, upcoming guest list and previous blogs also available.

You can find out more about David here.

Pulling the gems from adversity. Mindsets and tools to rebuild, inspire and dream bigger.

The latest episode in our Resilience Unravelled series has now been released, Resilience Unravelled - Pulling the gems from adversity. Mindsets and tools to rebuild, inspire and dream bigger.

Susan De Lorenzo is an author, speaker and certified transformational life coach who focuses on helping women who are emerging from life-altering adversities. As a survivor of invasive breast cancer whose marriage dissolved as treatment ended, Susan draws on her personal journey as well as her training as a life coach to give clients, readers and listeners the mindsets and tools to rebuild their lives in alignment with their deepest desires.

Susan works with her clients to build a mindset where, no matter what has happened, you believe you can create something even greater through a higher platform of awareness to give inspiration to dream bigger and go for more.

Although her mother was a breast cancer survivor, when Susan had her breast cancer diagnosis she was shocked.  She never imagined it would happen to her and the diagnosis unravelled her. The first diagnosis was not the most serious. During a check up her oncologist asked if anyone had spoken to her about the lump in her other breast. At the time Susan was working full-time, had an 18-month old son and a new house that needed a lot of work and she found that she was very angry. The diagnosis was very hard to digest and she was very resistant to it and didn’t even want to do chemo.

People sometimes describe cancer as a battle but Susan thinks we need to develop the relationship we have with ourselves which is what gets us through. When adversity hits us we need to ask what can I do with myself to make it OK - I know it’s not going to be great but how can I keep my awareness that I’m not alone and am connected to life. Knowing that can be the strength by making it real for ourselves and our centre or eye of the storm. We are the centre of our own experience. Families often don’t know what to do to help and we end up comforting them. They don't have the skills to help or they have their own thoughts and feelings about what you’re going through. We need to remember that's their experience, I have mine.  

In the US divorces relating to couples where one is going through cancer are higher than the national average. Susan knew her marriage was going to be problematic but was determined to get married and have a family. She grew up with a parent who suffered with depression and this was something Susan’s partner suffered from as well.

Susan had 4 surgeries and 6 months of chemo and radiation but was then told she was cancer free. She found she had a new love of life. She wasn't going to play small anymore and was at a higher level but her partner was in depression. Susan felt they should work at their relationship but her partner wanted to be alone – he couldn’t deal with how happy Susan was.

When we go through adversity and start to come out the other side we sometimes find that we are going at a different speed to our partner. The other person is still where they were and unless you move together it becomes a challenge

The model of marriage is very romantic but the idea of staying together is impossible unless both people are growing. We need to remember it’s OK to let go if the other person doesn't grow at the same level. People move ahead and change. It takes something fundamental to change. We need to re-engineer relationships and remain interested in growth and what’s going to be next. We need to have something to look forward and to stay real by talking about the elements of life, what’s happening in the world and what’s happening to friends.

Susan works with clients coming out of life altering adversities.  The first thing they learn is to understand is that it’s not just other people who overcome adversity and that they can too. They need to be open to the idea that this is for me too so how can I design my life so it gets me to a place where I love my life.  This needs building and learning to overcome beliefs and conditioning – the not good enough syndrome.

Susan now spends her time between Rhode Island and Florida. Later this year Balboa Press will be publishing her new book Pulling the Gems from Adversity where she shares the five stages of working through adversity to come back even stronger.

You can listen to the podcast in full and find out further information about Susan here. Our previous podcast episodes and upcoming guest list are also available.

Our full blog archive is also available.

You can get in touch with Susan at https://SusanDeLorenzo.com or at her Facebook page