Evaluate What Is Important to You
Reviewing what you value as important helps to eliminate the unimportant. Evaluating and looking at your life and how you spend your time and money, helps you to identify what is truly important to you. It may be your husband, partner, family, children, or friends with whom you invest most of your time. For some it may be their life's work they may want to redirect. It may include your love of cooking, or golfing, or other favorite pastime. As you assess your life and what you spend your time doing, you may find that these things no longer suit your present needs. The realization that life is temporary may change your career goals and the importance that you previously placed on your work accomplishments and financial net worth and status.
Identifying your new life goals is step one in the process of making changes. Finding the strength to make those changes takes time, focus, and determination. Life after breast cancer treatment evolves and you set the pace. You may find that your previous job or career does not fulfill your needs or it just does not mean the same to you. You may find that your passion and drive has changed since your breast cancer experience. What was important to you prior to having breast cancer may be the same. Or it may be much the same but with changes — whether a career change, marriage, having children, or other major life events. The process of change takes planning and, depending on how you want your life to change, will determine how the change will occur. Your shifting perceptions of what you value may initially create conflict until you incorporate those new areas of change into your life.
You may want to exercise more, develop a daily yoga or meditation practice, take up a new hobby such as hiking or birdwatching, or pursue arts and crafts that allow you to enjoy living in the moment. Hobbies and other interests help you to participate and focus on the activity at hand, which rests your mind and spirit. Having a hobby or relaxing interest adds balance to a hectic life schedule and life's responsibilities.
Essential
Maybe you can pursue a hobby that you have always put aside in your life because of competing tugs at your time and other responsibilities. Many have learned new skills or developed a passion that they have always had, such as playing the piano or taking dance lessons. The possibilities are endless. However, you will have to consider your physical limitations and where you are in your breast cancer treatment during your new pursuits.
