Saskia Lightstar thought she was playing big when she enjoyed the party girl lifestyle in South Africa. It turns out she was actually playing small as she was dealing with eating disorders and self-image issues. Then her biggest test came when she learned she had breast cancer. During that pinnacle point after beating cancer, she learned the true meaning of how to be your best self and why her journey was only beginning. It starts with self-love and kindness.
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In this powerful Passion Struck podcast interview, John R. Miles and Saskia Lightstar discuss how you can be your best self. For Saskia, it started by her understanding her self-narrative and that it needed to change. Why she considers herself a cancer misfit, and how that has completely changed her outlook on life.
What Does Your Best Self Mean?
To be your best self is to be the best version of yourself you possibly can become. It involves analyzing all areas of your life to understand your brutal reality.
Once you understand that brutal reality and can face it, being your best self becomes about how do you optimize all facets of your life. This includes shifts in mindset, a focus on personal growth, visioning what your future can look like, and ultimately becoming that person.
To be your best self starts with you accepting and loving yourself for who you are and the journey that got you to where you are today. It is having the self-confidence to know you are good enough to take on any challenge and never turning back to the previous life that you left behind.
Learning to Be Your Best Self
In 2013, following her treatment for breast cancer, Saskia found that she was struggling to adapt to her new life. For her, the emotions that were put aside during her breast cancer treatment returned, and she felt stuck in a no man’s land, overwhelmed with remorse, fear, and sadness. Saskia Lightstar felt like a cancer misfit, healed physically but still struggling mentally and emotionally with the trauma she’d endured.
She had survived the hell of treatment, but she couldn’t escape the misery of her past. That is when she started to take action to turn it around. This culminated in two years of self-discovery where she realized she did not like the person she was back then and longed for change.
Saskia used the teachings of Louise Hay to start and turn her life around. Louise’s mirror teachings became her daily ritual as she learned to love herself again. This started by her finding that genuine kindness begins when we are first kind to ourselves. Through this experience, she made it her life purpose to ensure that no other cancer survivor would feel as alone and lost in the darkness after treatment as she did.
Saskia Lightstar found that to be your best self and most beautiful self was not the person she was before her cancer diagnosis, but the person she is today. She discovered that she became even more potent because of the misery she went through and that the most remarkable chapter of her life is here and now.
The Journey to Writing The Cancer Misfit
Saskia wrote the book The Cancer Misfit because she couldn’t find a book about what she went through. So from her experience, when she was diagnosed with cancer, her life went into automatic. She went into survival mode. Her emotions shut off. She became almost like a robot. And did what she had to do. Those around her would say, “God, you’re so brave.” And it wasn’t that she was brave. It was just that she was numb and wasn’t feeling anything.
And then the treatment ended. And the doctor said, “right, the treatments over, you can go back to normal.” So she tried to go back to normal, but there’s no going back after cancer, and there is sure as hell no normal after cancer.
So her battle was, after treatments, she’d lost sense of who she was. She didn’t know how to move on. Her life had been cancer treatment for two years. It had revolved around that suddenly, that was gone. And it was like, no doctor tells you what comes next. Nobody prepares you. Nobody says do you listen? You might suddenly get overcome with emotion.
Out of this self-reflection, The Cancer Misfit was born and became the guide for cancer survivors to navigate their life AFTER treatment.
It is a journey because most people (doctors included) seem to believe the cancer journey ends when the treatment does, but for many, that is when they struggle the most.
How to Be Your Best Self Show Notes
- Her party girl superficial life
- Why do we self numb
- Learning she has cancer
- How she learned to look within
- Why she wrote the Cancer Misfit
- Discovering you can heal your life
- Louise Hay mirror work
- Why she loves boundaries
- Expecting instant gratification
- How she connected to herself
- What it means to be kind
- Her belief in moderation
- Why there is no normal after cancer
Saskia Lightstar Quotes
“I used to live in hell, and now I live in heaven.”
“The First person you have to be kind to, is to yourself.”
“I literally am head over heels in love with exactly who I am.”
“It’s so essential that you integrate something into your life every day.”
Saskia Lightstar quotes about how to be your best self
ENGAGE SASKIA LIGHTSTAR
*Website: www.saskialightstar.com
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*Barnaby LeFrench: https://www.instagram.com/barnabylefrench/
ENGAGE WITH JOHN R. MILES
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