To celebrate the launch of her course, You Can Do Hard Things, created as part of the No7 x AllBright SHECovery Collection, we spoke to the hugely inspiring mindset sage, crisis specialist, best-selling author, and CEO of Lifework; Sophie Sabbage, on everything from changing the narrative around ‘battling’ illness, to finding creativity in times of crisis.

To say Sophie Sabbage has many strings to her bow would be an understatement. Having worked in the field of mindset transformation for that last 30 years, Sophie has worked with thousands of people and numerous leading businesses to help them focus on transforming mindsets that stifle creativity, authenticity and results.

As well as describing herself as a mindset sage, Sophie is also known as The Cancer Whisperer, having lived with terminal cancer for the last six and a half years. Having penned a bestselling book of the same name, her response to her diagnosis put her on a global stage. She is now a renowned patient activist and crisis specialist, working closely with cancer patients and helping people to unleash their creativity in crisis situations. As Sophie told AllBright: “I’ve been helping people bring their best to their worst moments for my entire career”.

Here’s more from our inspiring and incredibly insightful conversation on why she – and you – really can do hard things.

Tell us a little about the journey that led you to where you are today?

When I was diagnosed, I would say there were a few things that saved my life – including medical attention - but one of them was that I had 25 years of experience in teaching other people to deal with fear, rage and grief. That expertise became literally lifesaving for me. I was given a few months to live in October 2014 and told that I wouldn’t see my daughter’s fifth birthday. It was completely blindsiding, as I didn’t really feel ill, I had just one symptom that led me to get checked out.

I noticed that when they told me I was going to die, I started dying within 24 hours. It was fascinating. I said to my husband, ‘I’m dying of fear and shock, because they’ve put this belief in my head that I’m going to die in a few months and now I’m dying. Right on queue!’ So I spent the early weeks working on my fear, and getting myself out of it, because fear never makes wise choices. I treated my mind while they figured out how to treat my body. Because I did that, I made some really smart decisions that I don’t think I would have made otherwise. Part of my story is that I deeply went to work on my own mindset. And I realised how profoundly missing that was in the world of cancer. Nobody asked me what I was feeling, or if I needed counselling. And I thought, ‘what is this like for cancer patients that don’t have the tools that I have?’ So I wrote my book, and put myself forward to help patients navigate the psychological aspect of receiving a cancer diagnosis.

We love that you champion changing the narrative around ‘battling’ illness to listening to it. How did you develop this mindset?

I kept encountering this battle language being used about cancer – and it drove me bonkers! I found it extremely disempowering. It was like the ones who survived cancer ‘win’, and the ones who die, ‘lose’. In literal terms I get this, but it discounts the extraordinary mental, spiritual and emotional victories that cancer patients have as they go through treatment.

The battle language also puts you at war with your disease, which creates stress, and fuels the problem. Cancer is not an enemy, it’s an illness. And like all illnesses, it’s pointing to what’s out of kilter in our minds, hearts, bodies and spirits. If I can relate to it that way, and take cancer off the battlefield and into the classroom, then I might learn, grow and transform – and even, heal more – than if I go to war with it.

I really became a voice of challenging that language in the whole cancer world. It’s still very strong in the media, but there are now signs – even evidence – that the battle language is detrimental to patients. So, I take a little credit for that!

How did you find the strength and motivation to go out and share with others your learnings around approaching life and it’s challenges?

Fundamentally, what I’m interested in is authenticity. For me, living an authentic life, and being your authentic self, is one of the top goals you can have. If we can succeed in being authentic, then we have succeeded as human beings. It’s not an easy thing to be, and equally, if we can achieve being loveable – being able to love and be loved - we’ve succeeded. So, these are my life goals. To be authentic, and loving, and human.

For me, every challenge we are thrown – every crisis, every life-shock – is an invitation to become more authentic, if we know how to engage with it. My strength comes from trusting in what life has thrown at me, and knowing that if life throws me another crisis, there is an opportunity to be more myself and more of service. When I trust in that, a strength rises in me that I simply don’t know I have, that comes from something bigger than myself. I’ve felt incredibly held in my darkest hours. I deeply trust that in times of crisis, I’m going to become more authentic, which is one of my purposes in life. 

You’re known for talking about creativity in crisis. Could you tell us a little bit more about what you mean by this, and how we can all remain creative and nimble in the face of adversity?

Some might say that I’m a serial crisis-responder! The human mind is capable of remarkable imagination, both destructive and creative, so all of my work is about liberating the creative from the destructive. We’re either in a reactive, fearful state of mind, or we’re in a state of responsiveness, connection and untold possibilities.

So, when we shift out of our fear, our creativity is liberated. It’s not something you have to learn or do, you just find yourself seeing possibilities that you simply can’t see when you think you’re not good enough, unworthy, mediocre, stupid, too much etc. When you’re in that state of mind, creativity dies, but when you get out of it, there’s this orchard of possibilities waiting for you.

It’s about freeing yourself of fear and unleashing your creativity in response to crisis. All of my work is about helping people see the possibilities at hand, and bring their creative best to whatever comes their way. When I was diagnosed, once I was through my fear, possibilities appeared that I wasn’t even looking for. When I was bought to my knees, I rose to a destiny I couldn’t possibly have planned.

What I’m really talking about is unleashing your innate creativity in the face of hard things.

Your course with No7 x AllBright is centered around turning ‘I can’t’ into ‘I can’, which is something we all struggle with at times. Why is mindset so key to a positive outlook and progression in our work and personal lives?

Firstly, we are currently in the midst of many hard things, including the impact of COVID-19. A tsunami of hard things has struck in the past 12 months. Not to mention that we’re in the midst of multiple other global crises; climate change, racism, rape culture, extreme poverty – the list is long, and it’s getting longer – because we’re not paying attention.

Everyone is talking about going back to ‘normal’, but to me, that would be the worst thing we could do, because it would mean we haven’t learnt anything from what’s been going on. But it’s important to consider that how hard things are depends on our mindset, and how we perceive what’s happening. So, a lot of the course is about how do you shift out of the mindset of ‘I can’t handle this’ into ‘actually, I really can. And I can be creative and make something of this, rather than just survive it. What if this is an opportunity for me to become more myself, to find out what I want to be doing and what I’m really made of?’

It’ll introduce the questions of how we can make hard things easier. How do we bring our creativity to our most challenging moments? And how do we find the possibilities that we can’t see when we we’re in fear and victimisation.

Finally, how can we apply your inspiring mindset going forward - as we move out of the pandemic - but also, as we approach hard things in future?

It’s important to remember that ‘I can’t’ is a belief, not a truth. It’s a belief rooted in self-doubt, that you’re not capable or strong enough. Essentially, ‘I can’t’ equals ‘I’m giving up’.

But a lot of the time, if you really look at what you’re doing, you are already engaging in the things you think you can’t do. You will show up. When you connect with the notion of ‘Actually, I’ve got this, I’m strong enough to do this, I’m flexible, I know how to adapt, I’m a powerful woman and I’ve faced a lot of hard things in my life’, then you just remember how much you can achieve, and you take the next step. ‘I can’t’ is almost always a lie, it’s just something you think. And the moment you think it, you’ve taken your own power.

Feeling inspired by Sophie's mindset? Head over to AllBright Academy to explore the No7 x AllBright SHECovery Collection course, You Can Do Hard Things, now.