A little over six months ago I finished my last chemotherapy treatment for something I didn’t plan for and didn’t want. Cancer creates a lot of anxiety because there is never anything definitive with it except for its presence. You don’t know if treatment will work, how it will effect you, if the cancer will spread, or if it will wait and reappear/spread after treatment is done.
However, cancer is also a life changing experience and it can provide the opportunity to make some important changes with your life. With that in mind, I thought I’d post a blog today about the lessons I’ve learned as a result of my cancer journey.
1. Fitness is important
I cannot stress enough how important fitness is. Cancer treatments wear you down and cause all kinds of side effects. A higher fitness level gives you a larger tank to start from. Maintaining that fitness level helps to minimize side effects, fatigue, and depression. It also helps you to heal more quickly. On chemotherapy days I would do cardio, the rest of the week I would lift. Even if it was a walk I did something every single day.
2. You choose how to respond
Viktor Frankl wrote a great book that I read during this experience. The book is called “Man’s Search for Meaning.” Dr. Frankl was a psychiatrist who survived for three years in Auschwitz. In the book he asks why some people were able to remain good people in that situation and why others could not. His conclusion was that you choose how to respond to severe situations.
In all struggles in life you choose how to respond to them, what your attitude is going to be like, and how it’s going to effect you. Your choice drives everything that follows. You can choose to crawl into a corner or to fight. You can choose to be negative and drain everyone’s energy or you can choose to find a way to thrive.
3. You are a role model
Nobody likes to hear this, but you are a role model. You are a role model to your significant other, your kids, your students and athletes. You are also a role model to the other people in the infusion room getting their cancer treatments as well as the nurses and doctors providing them. Who do you want to be remembered as?
4. It has to be bigger than you
The other major point behind Dr. Frankl’s book was that people need a reason to survive, and it has to be bigger than “I’m going to beat this.” It has to be things like wanting to see your kids graduate, wanting to see that violin solo, etc. For me it was to be a role model for my kids, students, and athletes in terms of how to handle tough situations.
5. There is never enough time, don’t waste it
To me this is the most important lesson and it stresses out the people that I work with because I am extremely passionate about it. Cancer teaches you, even if you beat it, that there isn’t enough time. So the question is, are you spending it the way you should be? If you are on our deathbed are you going to wish you had more time to get into that social media argument? Are you going to wish you spent more time in meetings? Or are you going to wish you were more fully present when talking to your kids and wife?
I have really taken the lesson to heart. Work does not come home anymore. I spend very little time on social media and rabbit holes. I spend a lot of time with my family, have rededicated myself to my own fitness, and do a ton of things to make myself better. I no longer go to unproductive trainings. When I’m at work I spend the entire time working instead of venting and gossiping and then needing to take the work home. I leave meetings when my contract time is done. And if I’m in a meeting and nothing is going on, instead of getting on my phone I pull out my Latin and Greek vocabulary cards and study to make myself better.
There is never enough time, and lots of people will try to waste your time. Are you spending your time the way you should?
