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Fighting For Your Life A few months before Peter Jennings, the well known American television news anchor died of lung cancer, he made the public anouncement that he was going to fight the cancer with everything he had, and that he would do everything he possibly could to defeat it. Unfortunately, he didn’t win his battle, and he died just a few months later. After Peter Jennings died, many tributes poured in from his friends and co-workers, and also from many of his television viewers. As I read some of the tributes about his life, over and over I noticed a common theme. Many of his friends and colleagues talked about what a determined, competitive man he was. How he never shied away from a battle. How he didn’t want to give in to his disease. His friends said that when Peter got cancer, he took on his battle with the disease the same way he battled everything, using his fierce iron will and determination. When I read these comments about the death of Peter Jennings from lung cancer, it reminded me of another conversation I had recently, a conversation which was also about fighting cancer. Only this other conversation was about someone who took a very different approach to living with the disease. This conversation took place after a business meeting I had been attending with a man named Brian. We had been meeting to discuss some matters related to marketing. As the meeting wound down, Brian switched gears and he started telling me a very personal story of what happened when his mother got cancer. I found Brian’s conversation very thought provoking. Brian told me that when his mother was diagnosed with bone cancer, the doctors told her that she had only a few months left to live. She had a very bad type of bone cancer that kept spreading through her body. Despite the spread of her tumors, and despite the death sentence the doctors had given her, Brian’s mother lived fourteen years longer than what the doctors had predicted she would live. Brian told me, “I’ve often wondered why my mother managed to live so long with bone cancer, when a lot of my younger, health conscious friends who got cancer died of it in a matter of months”. Brian continued, “I used to be an athlete, and many of my friends are competitive athletes. Most of my friends are used to being aggressive and focused - that’s how they tackle everything – business, sports, relationships. When any of my athletic friends were diagnosed with cancer, they went at their cancer the same way they went at everything. They became aggressive and focused, and they went at their cancer like it was one more competitive battle they had to win”. “My friends tried to fight their cancer using the same mental tools they used to fight their athletic battles. Determination, courage, iron will. Lots of them wouldn’t even slow down their physical training and admit that cancer was a problem for them.” And then Brian told me, “What I saw happen with many of my friends who got cancer is that in a lot of cases, these guys seemed to burn out real quickly. In some cases they were dead in just a few months.” Then Brian told me how his mother had reacted to her diagnosis of cancer. “My mother’s approach was very different from how my friends faced cancer.” “My mother wanted to live, but she didn’t have an attitude of ‘I’m going to fight against this disease.’ She wasn’t aggressive and determined. Instead, I watched her become more and more relaxed. She slowed down her life, and whenever something was stressful in her life, she dropped it. She just got more relaxed and made a point of enjoying her life more.” Brian said his mother found that shopping was stressful for her, so she stopped shopping. She found driving stressful, so she gave up driving the car. As much as she could, she stopped doing the things she didn’t enjoy. She only kept in her life the activities she really enjoyed. Brian continued, “The way my mother handled living with cancer was quite opposite to how a lot of my friends handled having cancer. A lot of my friends kept saying “I’m not going to let this cancer keep me from having a normal life. I’m going to try live as if I don’t have cancer. I’m not going to let this disease stop me from living my life the same way I always do.” Then Brian said, “It made me think that maybe the idea of fighting for your life when you have cancer is like trying to fight insomnia when you can’t sleep.” “If you’re tossing and turning with insomnia, you can’t just grit your teeth and say to yourself, ‘I’m really tough, I know how to fight tough battles, I’m going to use my determination to fight my insomnia and I’m going to beat it. Obviously if you try to fight insomnia, it won’t work. Maybe trying to fight cancer with determination and guts won’t work any better than trying to fight insomnia .” As I mentioned earlier, I found this conversation with Brian about his mother very thought provoking. Obviously I can’t say that Brian’s mother’s approach to living with cancer is a method that would work for anyone else. There must have been a lot of other factors involved, and this wasn’t a scientific study. Still, it’s worth keeping in mind that will power and determination aren’t always the best tools to use for every problem. When we face challenges in business or in sports, these are occasions when being determined and competitive can be very useful. Being aggressive in business or sports can lead to great success and great rewards. We run into problems however when we try to use the same approach to every problem. Not every type of problem we run into can be solved by grit and determination. We need to recognize those situations where another approach might work better. For example, you may face a situation when your child becomes seriously ill. Or maybe your mate feels that the two of you have lost touch with each other. Or you might experience an episode of major depression or job burnout that you can’t snap out of. These are situations when an attitude of aggression and fighting your problem will not work. So while aggression, and drive and determination are great tools for solving many problems, they aren’t the right tools for every situation. We need to notice those occasions when a very different approach is needed. Sometimes the situations we encounter require an approach that is different that fighting problems head on. Sometimes what we need to do is to learn to relax, to open up to life. We may have to admit we can’t fix everything, that some things are beyond our control. We may need to learn to be more humble, or we may need to become more fully alive in the time we have left. I hope you have enjoyed this newsletter. If you would like to receive further issues of this newsletter in your email every two weeks, click here to sign up :
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