Learn how I prepared for my preventative double mastectomy, structured my whole year around it so I can live my best life, removed any fear and anxiety around it and felt calm and grateful even at the operating table. I’m sharing the mindset hacks and manifestation practices that helped me reach that mental state so you can do the same.
Tune into the episode below:
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Show Notes:
- What’s a mastectomy and how it works
- Why I’m having it and why now
- Choosing to believe empowering thoughts and reprogramming your subconscious mind
- How I used the power of gratitude to remove negative emotions around the surgery
- The first time I was offered to have the surgery, and how I changed my mind a year later
- The first steps I took once I knew when the surgery will be
- Why I detached from the outcome
- The main thing that created pressure for me and how I removed it
- One big daily habit I changed to make life after surgery easier
- How I turned my mastectomy journey into a personal growth game
- What I did the night before surgery that made me close the old chapter of my life and start the new one
Transcript
Hello everyone and welcome back to the show. If you’ve been here before, you know this is not the usual topic I cover. I teach business but also mindset and personal development and manifestation and love how all these fit together to help us live our best life and serve our purpose. But today things will be a little different around here.
It’s because I’m about to have a preventative double mastectomy – and by the time this gets published it will already be done – but I just really felt like sharing how my prep period was.
I’m not gonna go into detail about the surgery, feel free to do your own research. But in a nutshell, it’s for those who have a family history of breast cancer and have tested positive for the BRCA gene. That means they have a gene mutation and are more likely to also have breast cancer at some point.
The preventative surgery is what can bring the chance down to a minimum and it consists of removing the breast tissue and replacing it with implants. The sooner you do that, the better. Many women all over the world do it in their early 20s. I’m 30 now so that’s a good moment.
There are a few different methods for this surgery such as under or over the chest muscle. Mine will be under which means it has to be stretched enough so the implant can be placed under it. There are 2 ways to do that too, one is with immediate reconstruction, which means you put the implant and are good to go. The other one, which is the most common one, is to first put an expander under the muscle and slowly fill it with liquid over the course of a few weeks or months until it reaches the size you want your breasts to be. Then you stay this way for a few more weeks after which you have a second surgery – the reconstruction. Then they replace the expanders with the implants. That’s it.
Why I’m Having a Preventative Mastectomy Now
But as you might guess, this changes many, many things about your lifestyle. The pros are that you won’t need to keep going for check-ups all the time and worry about having cancer. Or have it later in life and let this hurt others in your life and drain you mentally. Another benefit is that all this is free in a country with a good healthcare system, and that you might look really good especially if you don’t like that part of your body now or were thinking of eventually getting implants.
The cons, though, might be many and that’s why most women either never do the genetic testing, or don’t have the surgery even if they know they have the gene mutation.
I’m not here to give any medical advice or change your mind or even encourage you to have any sort of surgery. Not at all. This is the first surgery in my life and I had the privilege to think about it, choose to have it, prepare mentally for nearly 2 years, and see it as an opportunity for growth.
It’s also happening during a convenient stage in my life when I don’t have a family, live alone, am self-employed and don’t have many responsibilities. It’s okay for me to disappear for a while and just focus on recovery.
That’s not the case for most people though and I always keep that in mind, am deeply grateful for the lifestyle I’ve created that allows me to make these big changes, and truly wish you the best with whatever happens to you.
But if you’re about to have any surgery this or next year, just wanna hear what mindset and manifestation practices I have to share with you or want to learn more about preventative mastectomy from someone who is positive and empowered about the whole experience, then this is for you.
The first part of my personal challenge is achieved – the days prior to surgery and especially the day before, I felt on top of my game, was getting things done, checking items off my list, smiling, dealing with other things without letting them affect me too much, doing my practices daily, and being excited about surgery.
I’ll only be able to confirm what mental state I was in right before and after surgery once it’s happened of course, but I’m curious how that would be because there’s a chance I might surprise myself. Let’s see.
That’s part of my attitude, by the way. Taking action and preparing for the best, trusting the process and my abilities to go through this and recover quickly, but also not being too hard on myself and knowing that if it doesn’t work that way, that’s totally fine and things would still be exactly how they are meant to be.
This attitude can save you in all aspects of life. I highly recommend it.
So, about this episode – I decided to structure it in stages and steps. Each group of factors I’m about to share is something I worked on separately and for a different period of time, but they all contributed to the big picture, how I felt, and how things went. Let’s begin.
1. Changing my beliefs
If you know me, my content or my courses, you know that mindset work is the foundation of anything I teach. Change starts within, we gotta reframe the beliefs we have on a subconscious level first to truly believe something is possible. And then turn those into our dominant thoughts so we can keep taking inspired action and actually transform our reality.
The main mistake most people make is that they change a thought only on a conscious level. But that means you don’t truly believe it, your soul and heart and brain don’t see this as reality. The old belief is still there and it drives your thoughts and actions, so you probably won’t see your dreams coming true anytime soon.
You’re operating from the state of mind that got you to where you are now. You’ll need a whole new state to create the reality you envision. You gotta live as if till you accomplish what you’re after.
And so I decided what new beliefs I want to instill in myself over the course of a few weeks or months. I knew very well that these weren’t things my subconscious mind currently thinks and it might take time to get there. But even if there was a little progress in that direction, it would help me tremendously the closer surgery day comes.
So, I wrote down 18 different affirmations on sticky notes and placed them at home. I started doing daily practices to keep those in mind, to add feeling when repeating them, to think them in bed right before falling asleep and visualize feeling calm at the operating table, and so on.
I practiced immersion. Just like what works best to learn a new language is to immerse yourself in it, which means to listen, hear and speak it daily so it can become your second nature, so does immersing myself into the idea and vision of the perfect surgery outcome and how I’d feel can help me achieve it.
I actually want to record a separate episode with those affirmations as they are so powerful and they really changed the game for me. There I’ll also talk about how exactly you can use yours for maximum effect. So stay tuned for that. Now I’m just listing all the different things I did to prepare for surgery and overcome fear and anxiety, this was just one part of it.
How I Practiced Them
The main point is that those affirmations became a big part of my morning and evening routine. Once I knew them by heart, simply looking at where they were placed at home evoked the strong emotions I feel around them. And that’s only powerful emotions such as confidence, 100% conviction that things will be okay, trusting the process and my body’s ability to heal. Taking full responsibility by making this choice, and knowing I’m equipped with anything necessary to endure this and come out stronger. And so on.
For any aspect of this, I’m taking my power back and owning it. No outer factor can bring me down. That’s how important, specific and empowering those new beliefs were.
I practiced them actively for some time, mornings, evenings and often a few times during the day. It’s like a fun game. I have other practices already so including these is a no-brainer.
Soon I knew that my mind is starting to believe these more and more. And any moment doubt managed to creep in, I could feel it, take a moment to observe it, and remind myself why this negative thought is simply not true and is my ego speaking, which is only trying to protect me.
Then I’d replace this with an empowering belief again and get back to my high-vibe state. The goal was to be in that state as often as possible. When it became 100% of the time, I no longer needed to practice the new beliefs.
By the time I went for surgery, I could walk inside the hospital with my head up, keep these on my mind, and be absolutely calm and confident till the moment they sedated me to start the operation. And I gotta tell you, those practices paid off.
2. Gratitude
The next thing I wanna talk about today is gratitude. There’s a whole episode about it and you can go back and listen to it later on. There I talk about the transformational power of gratitude. If that sounds cliche to you, chances are you’re underestimating it or simply not using this emotion right in your life.
The thing is that you can’t be sad, scared, worried or anything else if you’re grateful. These 2 just can’t exist inside of you at the same time.
And did you know that it takes less than 20 seconds to switch your emotional state?
Whatever it is you’re feeling that you don’t think is helping you, hold the emotion of gratitude or joy or excitement for 17 seconds, and you’ll turn things around.
The more you do that, the better you manage your emotions and the more positive your main state becomes.
So, over the course of a few months I actively practiced gratitude for the chance to be able to choose this surgery. That’s something millions of women in the world couldn’t do. They already had cancer, and even though they had mastectomy after that or could choose reconstruction, it’s just not the same.
Also, all the women in my family tree who suffered from that didn’t do it for different reasons. Generations ago, they didn’t have the knowledge, the resources, the access to any of this. Then, some didn’t dare, didn’t live in a country that could give them quality healthcare, and so on.
So I’m fucking privileged. Knowing this, how can I feel anything else other than grateful?
This was helping me in the moments of discouragement.
Also, I’m a freedom lover. It’s been my main theme in life – to structure things so I can be free of anything I don’t want, to have location freedom, time freedom, creative freedom, financial freedom, emotional freedom, and any other type of freedom you can think of.
For me, the simplest way to define freedom is this: it’s to have options. I chose the option of having the surgery and I chose exactly when to have it. Which brings me to the next point.
3. Decide when to have the surgery and structure your whole year around it
That’s what I did. The first time I said to my doctor that I will be having it was November 2021. Exactly one year after she asked me if I’m going to have it and I looked at her shocked.
That first year was about me considering it and coming to terms with the fact that I won’t breastfeed my children one day, I’ll be the girl with the implants forever, I’ll either be dating a man during that period or start dating after it, and in both cases it might be weird, and so on.
I not only came to terms with those but accepted them and saw them as great things. None of them meant the end of anything. Things would just look a little different than average. But I don’t do average anyways so it actually fits the profile even better.
Each November is my annual breast MRI scan so that’s why these meetings were happening then.
So, November last year I told her I’m up for it and asked what the next steps are. I was even thinking to have it in February of 2023 when I turn 30 as it sounded symbolic and it was still pandemic and I wasn’t missing out on much. But for a few good reasons I didn’t.
In January I met with both surgeons that were going to perform the surgery to ask questions and make my final decision. I then told them I’d like to have the surgery in September 2022. They agreed and we didn’t need to meet any time soon. They’d only call me in the summer to confirm and share the next steps.
First steps
So, I was done with hospitals for a while and could focus on anything else. Such as slowly telling the most important people of my life, talking about the surgery with them as it’s the most normal thing in the world (and eventually it became a super easy conversation), doing my research, imagining life after surgery and even getting excited about my new chapter.
I also started living more consciously than ever and had an amazing time and said Yes to much more than I normally would. My personal growth reached an all time high simply because most things now seemed easier than the surgery so I might as well stop avoiding them.
In the summer, I did a big trip in July, then in August – the month before surgery – I wanted to be in my city, live more slowly, meet some people for the last time, dive more into mindset work related to surgery, wrap up some projects with work, and so on. It all worked so well.
And here’s the next big part of the equation.
4. Detachment
Maybe you’ve heard me talk about detachment in business. A good example is when you’re launching. You open the doors to your course, have set a goal of how many students you want in or how much you want to earn, and then what? Energetically, you detach from the outcome because it can only limit you.
You put no emotion into what number of people actually enroll and on which day, you surrender to things out of your control and believe that anything is happening in the most perfect way and you don’t always know why that is perfect yet.
That detachment allows you to keep showing up, to not give in to negative thoughts, to not define yourself by the success or failure of a launch, to stay calm and grateful and humble regardless of whether you had 0 sales on day 2 or crossed the $10K mark in profit and more people keep signing up.
The magic is to be in the same mental and energetic state in both cases. And that’s no easy thing in the beginning as our ego is speaking loud, our fear tells us to change our strategy in the last moment, our doubt makes us hide from social media or send fewer emails, we compare ourselves to others and might give up on the whole thing and never launch again.
I’m still learning that in business. But for surgery, I sort of nailed it.
I detached from the end result, I surrendered. I was preparing for the way I wanted things to go and had a beautiful vision in my mind and was excited for my life after surgery, but I didn’t limit myself by that to the point where I’d be disappointment if it doesn’t go this way.
There were many factors involved here and the mastectomy journey is different for every woman. So no one can know in advance.
But I can trust, I can keep being excited, I can feel good every day, I can get ready, I can practice my new beliefs, and I can let go of anything that’s not serving me.
Detachment is a form of art, it’s a special skill that once learned, can help you 10x your results in any area of life. So if you’re feeling stuck somewhere, give this a chance. There’s nothing to lose.
5. Removing stressors
Only you know what would create pressure for you around surgery, but for me it was other people. And in particular, their expectations. So I had to set some boundaries, be clear and do it on time.
When I last visited family in my home country this year, which was before the summer, I told them not to expect me till 2023, not even for Christmas.
Later to friends, any time someone would mention a plan for the final quarter of the year, I said ‘don’t count me in because of the surgery’.
If they’d ask how long recovery would take, when it is exactly or when I expect the whole process to be over, I said ‘I don’t know but I’ll just disappear for a few months.’
In the final meetings with close friends in August and September, I even told them I’ll text when I feel good after the surgery but it might not be any time soon.
I also said this not from a victim mentality, I was assertive. I got the emotion out of it and simply let them know what to expect.
With this, I created freedom and gave myself the option to not see anyone and not even respond to anyone for as long as I feel like.
Social things can create a long of pressure for me so this was something I had to take care of in advance so no one bothers me right before and after surgery.
Whatever has the same effect for you in your life, do something about it sooner rather than later.
6. Daily habits
I waned to make my life after surgery easier by doing something now, when I’m fit and have the time and space for it.
The first one was to change my sleeping position. I was a stomach sleeper but it was a habit I eventually wanted to break. Now was my chance as it was a big No after the procedure.
A whole year before it I started practicing this slowly. There was resistance but eventually I got there. I don’t remember the last time I slept on my stomach.
The next goal was to minimize sleeping on the side. I only started practicing that 2-3 months before surgery. Again, in small steps. This was a bigger challenge but I knew how much easier life would be later.
After surgery, I only wanted to sleep on my back. And even though it’s allowed to be on your sides a few weeks after it, I didn’t want that to be a weakness for me or something I crave.
The goal was achieved and with every next week I was more and more resistant to that. Right before surgery, I got to a super disciplined state where I simply didn’t allow myself to turn on the side even during sleep.
It became such a rule that if I’d wake up in the night or first thing in the morning, I immediately remembered to check and confirm I’m laying on my back.
But please keep in mind all this wasn’t unpleasant for me. I enjoy this. I enjoy the habits I consciously decide to build. And every new challenge makes me more resilient.
Another habit I ditched was drinking coffee. I was thinking about it for a while, was relying on it way too much and had a few cups per day, but it simply wasn’t necessary and wasn’t good for me.
It was one more weakness in my day and in my mind and I didn’t feel good about that. So I thought ‘My body will go through so much during surgery and to heal later on. I might as well go to the hospital as my fittest self. I never had a better reason to remove caffeine.’
So I started having only one cup per day, then only a few times a week. And before I knew it, I was having energy the whole day without caffeine, but I felt better about it and stronger.
It happened faster than I expected. I guess my coffee journey was coming to an end anyways.
Thanks to stuff like that I actually became more grateful for the surgery. It gave me a good reason to finally make some changes and show myself I can do anything.
7. The game
I decided to turn the whole thing into a game. I am into personal growth as you might have noticed, it’s what I’ve devoted my life to, and progress feeds me. But it needs to be seen and felt. And after surgery that will mean any little thing I’m able to do with my body for the first time will feel like a milestone I hit.
Some examples include:
- waking up from anaesthesia
- leaving the hospital
- the first walk I take
- getting the drains out
- doing my morning routine
- the first shower
- the first time I lift my hands higher
- getting my motivation for work back
- setting new goals
- going out with friends
- doing groceries
- practicing self-love for my new body and actually liking what I see in the mirror even when it’s technically at its worst, etc.
But also bigger things for a month or two after surgery such as:
- training lower body at home
- being truly excited about the future
- planning how things would be after the second surgery
- creating a vision board for the next summer
- planning something bigger – it’s so important to have something to look forward to
- getting back to business and being all in
- working on a new project
- doing more and more with my hands
- shopping for clothes that look good on my new body
- dating my partner – and if you don’t have one, it could be going on a date with someone new or taking yourself to a date. These are equally powerful experiences.
You can create different levels of your game, or just have a list of milestones you want to hit. You can have deadlines if that doesn’t create pressure but you can also just take a step when you feel ready. This is how you feel accomplished at the end of the day and week and month and can look back and review what you got done, how you felt about it, what challenges you overcome.
You can do a weekly or monthly review to analyze the progress and what you can do better in the next period. If you’re more of a planner and goal setter and want progress, this can keep you going and encourage you to keep living your life even during the recovery process – because after all, that’s why this surgery is done – to live your best life for as long as you can.
8. Spend the evening before surgery in the best way you can.
For me, that meant being in my energy and as my mom was staying at my place so she could take care of me after surgery. There would also be other outer factors and people involved, such as my dad calling, my partner driving me early in the morning, etc.
I decided this is just not the time to think about others or deal with anyone else’s emotions other than my own. I plan to walk into the hospital empowered and smiling in the morning, so that meant getting everything I need done the days before and then taking myself to a hotel. The hospital I was going to have the procedure in is outside of my city so I booked a room in a nice hotel right next to it. Being outside of my city actually would help a lot with detachment, focusing on the main things and keeping my mind clear and my energy high.
But it wasn’t just about that. I also wanted to do my practices, to take myself on a date and appreciate my body the way it is one last time, to take pictures but just for myself, to say goodbye to it. This is a period of shredding old skin and rebirth, and I wanted to do it properly.
I’m not taking my laptop to the hotel, but will have a journal with me, will use my phone for tapping videos, podcasts I might listen to, hypnoses or meditations I might do, and so on.
The moment I booked it, I got so excited about it. Everything would be on my own terms, I’d enjoy the amazing hotel room, will be peaceful and happy, no calls or texts then, and will only do the things that empower me and help me keep my new beliefs in mind.
The last things will be done in the morning, one last tapping session is sure, for example. After which I’ll walk to the hospital and detach for the hour and a half prior to surgery as they will examine me, give me instructions and so on. Then I simply need to listen and do things to prepare. After which I’ll get the anaesthesia and the surgery will happen without my knowing.
I believe that the way I approach this will help the healing process too. Let’s see.
Whatever that last evening looks like to you, go for it. Set boundaries and don’t let others stress you. This is not about them. You need to be on top of your game for the procedure.
I’m sure many of you have families to take care of and maybe you’re even in a hard situation and can’t leave the kids to anyone else and disappear for a night or can’t invest in a hotel room right now. But maybe there’s a small area at home you can dedicate to yourself, turn it into an altar and do your practices, or be in nature for a bit and journal, or else.
This is the end of an old chapter and the beginning of a new one – which makes it one of the most powerful events in your life. Go there with high energy.
Conclusion
And with that, we can finish the episode. I hope you enjoyed it. It was longer than usual but I wanted to cover all these points. They are all things you can practice for whatever it is you’re going through in life.
Let me know if you have any questions.
Thanks for tuning in today, and I hope to see you in the next episode for those powerful affirmations I mentioned.