Trudy Boyle on Embracing Life and Meaning Despite Illness

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Do Things That Lift Your Spirits

When faced with difficult situations, we might get some advice from people, professionals, or even self-help books on things we must do to improve our situation. Seeking help or advice from others may be helpful, but at the end of the day, we are the ones who know ourselves better; and the best way we handle those situations is to be in touch with our values. Trudy discusses why it is essential to pay attention to one's self when faced with difficult situations.

Focus on ourselves

Trudy: Sometimes what happens is that there are people who go through cancer and do amazing things. They're really kind of action figures. They're amazing. 

And sometimes people who are in my workshops will say: “But I don't know how they do it. I could never be going through pancreatic cancer, having treatment and doing an iron woman.” 

And I would say: “Did you ever want to do this before you had cancer? And she said, “Well, no.” I said, “Well, why would you think you would need to do this now?” 

So we need to pay attention to ourselves a lot of the time. The culture kind of imposes what you should do when you get cancer, you should eat this, and you shouldn't eat that, and you should do this, you should do yoga, even if it makes you dizzy. 

And I'm not against any of that. I'm all for a healthy lifestyle. But at the same time, you need to pay attention to your own blueprint, who you are, and do the things that really are helpful and useful to you. And not just what the report says needs to be done.

Nick: We all know that we're the one person who knows ourselves best. And so I think if we listen to our intuition and follow our values, and take advice and process it, but eyes come back to a decision we're comfortable with, it's probably the best way to handle any situation.

Trudy: If you pay attention, you will know that but if you're not, if you're kind of just in a fog, and not noticing, and just doing what people say.

I'll tell you one quick story of a woman who was in one of my workshops, and I'm free to tell this story. She had said, during this workshop, “You know, I really have to say that I don't like yoga, and I don't like yoga music. And I feel like now I have to do this, I have to do this because I have cancer.” 

And I said, “Well, what kind of music do you like?” And she said, “I like heavy metal.” So I said, “When you go home today, why don't you sit down and play heavy metal and have a glass of red wine if you want.”

And so she wrote to me and she said, “I just had that glass of red wine and banged on heavy metal on my piano. And I haven't felt so good in months.” So you see, this is tricky, that's a slippery slope. 

When we see these are sort of the things you should do because you have cancer. They don't suit you at all. We have our medical treatments, but we have a lot of leeway in the non medical areas of what works for me or you or someone else. 

And I encourage people to pay attention to that. And to do more of those things that really do lift your spirits.

What Ikigai is For Me

Everyone has their own definition of what ikigai is for them. For Trudy, she defines ikigai as the sum of small joys in life, and it has nothing to do with career and money.

Sum of small joys in everyday life

Nick: Yeah, it's sort of evolved into several different meanings. And it's become a little bit romanticised. But I do love this angle on how it can help you live a very meaningful, purposeful, joyful life, even if you're ill. 

So when you're talking about ikigai and you're asked what the word means. How do you define it?

Trudy: Well, I usually start by splitting up the word iki and gai, and saying that iki means kind of, to live. And gai is about meaning, values, purpose. I often use the word purpose. But I love the idea that ikigai is the sum of small joys in everyday life. 

That's really my favorite. And a reason to get up in the morning and things that lift your spirits and bring a smile to your face. Things that you love. 

I get a little bit cranky with the Venn diagram. And I was delighted to see on your website, you have it with a line through and I thought, oh my gosh, like I've never seen anyone do this. 

And, and it's fine for business to co op that if they want. I just wish they wouldn't call it ikigai. Because it's not ikigai in the traditional sense, right? So I love that idea. 

Even within cancer, I love the idea of the sum of small joys in everyday life, because it moves right into where we spend most of our time. We all have the peaks where I mean, I could say the work I do, the work I did in Well Spring, the work I do now is absolutely part of my ikigai. 

There's no question, but it has nothing to do with career or money for me. I love what I do. And I also love caring for my grandchildren, as you know because you've read my book, and I love poetry, things that, you know, lift my spirits and give me strength and courage and bring joy to my heart.

I have so many of those things. And so that's for me, is ikigai, it's discovering some purpose, what are your little purposes?

Doing Something For Others

Helping others while struggling may give people some satisfaction because midst life challenges, they still manage to help and have a positive impact on other people's lives. Trudy explains why it is vital to do something for the well-being and benefit of others.

When we help other people, it helps us

Nick: This one, I think, is extremely important. Because we can often become the victim, when we are diagnosed with an illness, when tragedy strikes. And your chapter title is “Do something for the benefit and well-being of others”

And to quote the Dalai Lama, who you quote in your book, when I think he was asked by someone on what should you do when you're sick, or you receive bad news? Or you think, you're going through a really hard time. He says: “Find someone worse off than you and help them.” 

So this is probably the last piece of advice you'd want to hear. But it's very powerful. So why is it at a time when we're struggling with illness? Are we advised or should we turn our attention to others?

Trudy: You know, I'm just going to slip this in. And you may not agree with me. There's so little opportunity for me to really read in English about ikigai and the original idea, but what I've gleaned is that ikigai  goes beyond just what lifts my spirits. 

It's also something about how we contribute, right? How the impact that we have on other people in our community and, and how we can leave something to be helpful for others. And when I think of this third guideline, I still think of it as having a real ikigai impact. 

Because we're now looking at: I'm miserable, I'm sick, I'm having all of these things done to me and for me, and I'm being asked every day to do something for somebody else. And it's not, there's not a list out there of what you should be doing. 

You make up your own list, you get to decide, maybe you could write a thank you letter to your neighbour who's looking after your dog or your lawn, or maybe you could call someone, and who's also going through a bad time, and not talk about yourself, but ask about them. 

Because one of the things, when you have cancer, especially your caregiver, can be suffering from other things, but you've got cancer. And so they can't really mention what's going on for you.

Just like you didn't want to mention that you had cancer to your mother, it's perfectly understandable. But so one of the things that Dr. Itami would say is that: you do whatever you can do, if the only thing you can do this day is to actually make a cup of tea for someone you're living with, you do that, right?

Or if the only thing you can do is have a, like just a five minute conversation with somebody, that's fine. You don't have to do big things, they can be little. And there's many, just a thank you sometimes just a recognition of what it went through. 

I know that because of my spouse, who was my caregiver, and, you know, there were many things I could do and didn't always do. And I know that it makes a difference to be able to do that. 

Not only that, it gives you a medium of control in your life, too. Because we're now at the mercy of all these tests, and all this receiving;  we're receiving help every single day, even if we don't notice it. 

And so to take an active role in doing something for others, we're executing some control over our own behaviour. And you know what, we feel better? Yeah, the science shows that, right? It's why volunteers do better, because when we help other people, it helps us.

Coexisting With Your Anxiety

We look for ways to get rid of our unpleasant feelings. Thence, we tend to focus and think more about these emotions. For Trudy, she believes that people should learn to live with anxiety -- that it's natural and doesn't need to be fixed. Moreover, there are activities that people can do that will help them coexist with anxiety.

Seeing things as they are

Trudy: The good thing about anxiety and uncertainty is that we don't need to fix it. That's the first thing. And we can't fix it, we can't turn it on and off like a light switch. But to actually learn that we can live with the anxiety – that it's natural, nothing needs to be fixed here. 

We may not like it, that's a different story. But there's things that we can actually do that will help us coexist with them. And they're almost always some kind of physical thing that we do. And so that's when that other part of learning skills comes in. 

Learning to draw, hiking, you're going hiking at Wellspring, we have a big hiking program, stretching yourself, learning new things. And my favourite word: arugamama. I have to talk about arugamama. 

Because arugamama it's in my back pocket all the time. It gets me through everything. And because really, what it is, is there's no real translation but roughly translated I see it as: things as they are. 

This is the brutal facts. I've just been diagnosed with cancer. I don't have to like it. I don't have to befriend, it has nothing to do with that. But this is the way it is. I look at arugamama as really an acknowledgment of the way things are. 

I can use the word acceptance, I use active acceptance as well. But the word acceptance, you know, is misunderstood, because it's considered to be passive, or being a doormat, or, you know, and it's not that – arugamama doesn't mean being a doormat.

To me, it really means acknowledging that this is the way it is – my cancer diagnosis, there's nothing I can do about that. But now the second part, the active part of that, that I love is with these things as they are, what can I actually do here? And so I love that.

Nick: I love it too. And I've done a podcast actually on Morita therapy. And the guest essentially said the same thing. It's often misunderstood as acceptance. 

But it's more like active acceptance, or it's often described by Japanese, in the context of it's an understanding of the true nature of things. Then once you accept or not accept, but once you understand the true nature of things, you are then freeing yourself to take action.

For the full podcast conversation, go to: Living meaningfully with illness