Dr. Brad Miller | The Future You Thought You'd Have

What happens when the future you've been planning for suddenly disappears?

After retiring from a 43-year career as a pastor, Dr. Brad Miller expected to spend more time traveling with his wife, enjoying retirement, and becoming a grandfather. Instead, he was diagnosed with an aggressive form of prostate cancer.

In this conversation, we talk about grieving the future you thought you were going to have, the difference between hope and toxic positivity, and why taking even the smallest action can help when life feels completely uncertain.

We also explore the framework Brad developed after his diagnosis—Action, Connection, Thinking, and Service—and why purpose often isn't something you find all at once, but something that slowly emerges through the way you keep showing up.

This episode is about the moments that force us to rethink who we are, what matters, and how we keep moving forward when life doesn't go according to plan.

In this episode:

• Grieving the future you expected
• Why humor became part of Brad's healing
• Action vs. staying stuck
• Hope without toxic positivity
• Separating identity from external validation
• Why serving others can help us heal
• How purpose grows over time instead of arriving all at once

Connect with Dr. Brad Miller

Podcast: Cancer and Comedy

Website: https://cancerandcomedy.com/follow

Connect with Yessi Sanchez

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About the Podcast

No Map Included documents the process of building stories in real time: from proof of concept to premiere.
Hosted by filmmaker and producer Yessi Sanchez, the podcast explores the work behind the work and the paths that don’t show up on IMDb.

Transcript

This is No Map Included, a podcast where we explore what happens when life doesn't go the way we imagined it would. A career ends, an identity shifts, a dream changes. Suddenly, you're trying to figure out who you are in a version of life you never planned for. Most of us only hear these stories once they've been neatly wrapped up.

This podcast is about the part before that. Some episodes are conversations with people navigating those moments in their own lives. In other episodes, I document my own journey making independent films while I'm still figuring it out myself. if you're in a chapter where you're questioning who you are or what comes next, you're in the right place

Today's guest is Dr. Brad Miller, host of the Cancer and Comedy podcast. After retiring from a 43-year career as a pastor, Brad was diagnosed with prostate cancer, a moment that completely disrupted the future he thought he was stepping into.

Instead of collapsing inward, he responded in an unexpected way, through humor. What followed was a podcast and philosophy centered around healing from hope, humor, connection, and purpose. And while today's conversation obviously centers around a much more serious life experience than the kinds of transitions I usually discuss on the show, I think there is something deeply universal here.

What do you do when life stops looking the way we imagined? How do we stay connected to ourselves during uncertainty, and how do we continue moving forward without losing our sense of hope and identity? Welcome, Brad. Yessi, it is a honor and a privilege to be with you here on No Map Included. I love what you just shared there about the spirit of this podcast.

I'm here to serve you and your audience any way that I can. Perfect. Thank you so much. So you retired after a 43-year career and then suddenly got diagnosed with cancer. What did that moment do to your sense of identity and certainty? Well, what a wonderful question, and I appreciate you frame it that way because it has a lot to do with a sense of purpose and identity and how sometimes, you know, the wheels can come off, our wrench can go into the gears, whatever analogy you wanna use.

You're cruising along, you got a plan, and then life happens, and not always the way you planned it. I retired in July of 2022, and in August of 2022, just a checkup with my doc. After several months of testing and so on, I was finally diagnosed with a pretty aggressive form of prostate cancer and just right after Christmas of 2022.

And so that kinda threw me off in a big time because basically my wife and I were empty nesters, but also new grandparents. And, we had plans to travel and do some life together, which we have been able to do, but certainly, we had to put things on hold to, to deal with the cancer. And I went from a pretty good-natured fellow and really energized about retirement to kind of a grumpy Gus because I was not happy about the whole deal.

I mean, I can only imagine. I am reading a book right now called As Long as You Need by J.S. Park, which is all about grieving. And the chapter I'm at right now talks exactly about that. He's a chaplain and so he talks about grieving the dreams and the future- Right ... that you have and that a lot of people don't really acknowledge that.

What was that shift for you? How did you go from grieving your dreams, because that's what it sounds like- Right ... grieving the life that you wanted to have, that you were looking forward to, transforming it to humor? Well, again, I appreciate this approach and the book you're reading sounds very appropriate because as a pastor I dealt with people in lots of grief situations and even in my own life.

My father died several years ago and so you have grief of a loss of a loved one. I grieve the loss of when my dogs have died, So death is one grief. I had grieved the loss of a marriage, those type of things.

But this was a grief of the loss of my anticipated future and so that was crushing. That really crushed me for a time because it's like all these plans, all this kind of thing, all this looking forward to things and looking forward to spend some quality time with my wife and our, you know, kids are growing up, that kind of thing.

Our obligations regarding the Raising our family, we're pretty well accomplished. Just basically went into a funk for several months there. And, and actually got the call from the doc two days after Christmas, December 27th of 2022, "Hey, you got cancer, and it's really bad. And if you don't have surgery or you don't do something about this, you're not gonna be with us in about three years."

I had a little bit of hope that maybe, you know, the, the tests would come out in my favor and so on and so, but it didn't come out in my favor. So I went into an immediate funk that way. But here's the interesting thing, Yessi, is my first reaction to when I got that phone call was to laugh. I just laughed out loud, and it was a nervous, kind of a helpless laugh.

A laugh to keep from crying, is the way I like to put it. So my first reaction was denial, and I kinda stayed that way in a funk for a while until some things happened with my granddaughters here a few days after Christmas, uh, that year that kinda helped me to change things around a, a bit. We landed at a McDonald's the end of the day, and I'd been participating, but my mind was lost in my own pity party for myself, Yessi.

I was absorbed in me and being just kind of this grumpy guy, and I wasn't that much fun to be with that day. But, uh, my granddaughters didn't care whether I was gonna be grumpy or not. They were gonna have fun regardless 'cause five and two, they're just having fun, and I'm sitting there in my funk But I don't know what I said to them.

Something got those two little girls giggling. And then all of a sudden, it became contagious, not only for our little table of four of us, but other people around started looking over and laughing. She pointed right at me and she said to me, "You're my fun grandpa." And I tell you what, Yessi, I get emotional even thinking about it, because all of a sudden I realized, you know, I've not been the fun grandpa at all.

And I decided right then and there, Yessi, that I did not wanna stay the grumpy old man. I wanted to be the fun grandpa for my granddaughters and having fun in the moment. This was really applicable to my own healing and wholeness for me, and I saw the power of that in terms of how I can apply that to other people.

And so I decided, my mission then became, okay, how do I take this moment and live it out going forward and apply it? And so that's what I've been working on ever since with my podcast and the other things I've been working on. And I wanna dive into that a little bit more. You created the ACTS framework, action, connection, thinking, and service.

And listening to it, I realized how much it also- Yes ... applies to creative careers. So I'd love to go through those- Absolutely ... one by one.

when people feel overwhelmed, uncertain, or emotionally stuck, why is taking action so important psychologically?

The first inclination we have when bad things happen to us, I call it the insane stage. You know, you're just confused. You're overwhelmed by, you know, whatever it is, the medical information, whether if it's cancer or if it's a divorce or, or depression, whatever it is, it's coming at you, and it's insanity.

And you gotta take a breath or two and kinda get a handle on that. But if you stay stuck there, then you're really lost. You're really lost. You hear about people use terminology like, "I spiraled downward," or, "I went to a dark place and I couldn't get out of there." Well, the first thing you gotta do is take some action, and that might be as simple as getting out of bed, or it might be simple as making a phone call to a friend.

Uh, but you kinda have to take the initiative. You have to do that, and you have to get your wherewithal and you get a motivator. In my case, my motivator was those two little granddaughters. I made that my motivation. I leveraged that, still do today, you know, three years later, about a motivator. So something, even if it's external.

Motivation might be to go out, uh, shopping. You know, that you gotta go out and buy food. You know, whatever it is. But you gotta take action. So in my case, my action was, okay, I knew my inclination when I first got diagnosed was to kinda say, was be in denial, this isn't really happening, so on and so forth.

But my inclination was, okay, two tracks I kinda went on For me, and I encourage people to find their pathway, but for my-- one was the medical track and the health track, and I had to do whatever it was and meet with the docs and all that kind of stuff. For me, I ended up having, a few months later, had surgery, which ended up being very important.

But I had to go through a whole process there because in my case, they, there was very psychological, there was sociological, there were marital issues involved with this. But I had to take the action there to take the health deal. Then I also had to do, to take for myself, kind of take the psychological and the emotional aspect of what am I gonna do about this in order to give myself some new purpose in life?

'Cause my purpose in life prior to that was, was just gonna have some fun, gonna travel, things like that. But now I saw, okay, this cancer thing has happened to me. What was my intrinsically being called to do to do something about it? And that led me into the podcast, for instance, to do something very tangible to be helpful to other people.

Now, I'd been in podcasting for some time prior to this and in radio before that, and, and in my ministry, certainly been a public speaker. But now I just kinda had a focus, and I said, "Okay, let me try to understand this better and see what I can do." Things happen when you take action

 One thing I notice in creative industries is that people isolate when they're struggling.

Moving on to connection, why is connection so important during difficult chapters?

I think there's two levels of connection. One of them is kind of is on the spiritual plane, and, and that is one where you just have to get in touch a little bit more with what is going on intrinsically in your heart and your mind, your spirit and your soul, and you just have to go deep there. In my studies, I came across a scripture that really spoke to me in terms of what I was thinking here, and that was Proverbs 17:22, which says, "A cheerful heart is good medicine, but a crushed spirit dries up the bones."

And so that spoke to me. I had a crushed spirit, but what's the alternative? A cheerful heart is good medicine. So I decided to lean into that. So that was kind of the spiritual aspect of connection. You kind of go between us and God or a higher power or whatever terminology people may want to use, but to have kind of some sort of a spiritual plane.

But just again, you gotta be a little proactive about this. The other part of this is the emotional connection with other people. In my case, I started with my wife, who was very supportive of me, but also encouraged me and sometimes kicked me in the rear to get going, and was encouraging me and, you know, also prodding me to do what I needed to do to take care of matters.

I also reached out to friends and other people in my life, some of which who had had dealt with cancer in their own right and, you know, had those connections, both interpersonally and in some cases about cancer. And then I also found myself connecting in other fields, such as the podcasting field. I went to some podcasting conferences and got connected with people.

You know, when you have cancer, things like this, you, you know, part of it, you feel like you're out of control. When you start to assert yourself with other people and with your spiritual realm, then you start to gain a little bit more contact, uh, and control. So that is where this came into play. Uh, what we talk about a lot on our podcast is healing with hope and humor, and there's, the three parts of it are so important.

Healing is the part of starting putting back together your brokenness. Hope is what you are aspiring to, what you want, that kind of the state that you wanna go to. And then, uh, humor is basically how you do it, kind of the attitude towards it. And so that's what we look to, to do. If you go into isolationism, it diminishes all of those things, and so it's harder and harder to get out.

When a marriage breaks up, or any number of things happens, or people get lost in, you know, in substance abuse, any number of things like that, they start to spiral in the downward areas and they say things like, "I've lost all hope." You know Nothing, you know, makes me smile anymore.

You know, things like that. I'm never gonna get better, you know. Those are spiraling things, and in order to break out of that, you gotta really work at it yourself, and other people can come into play, too. So far we got action and connection, and then the third thing is thinking. You talk a lot about mindset without it becoming toxic positivity.

Toxic positivity is huge for me, because I feel like it can fall into that really quickly.

How do you personally challenge negative thinking while still staying realistic?

Yeah. What an awesome question and things to approach to. 

One of the things I really like to emphasize, we call our podcast Cancer and Comedy, and what I always like to tell people is that we're not talking about necessarily comedy in terms of, you know, giggle box all the time, like my granddaughters did.

That was just a transitional moment, but it's just like having a kind of a attitude about seeing things from a little bit of a positive light. And so the attitude, then, your mindset has to do with your choosing to see things in a light that has opportunities there. That means you gotta use your mind.

Toxic positivity is going, you know, well, Sweet Jesus is gonna save me, or whatever it's gonna be, you know, or the medical doctors, you know, they're gonna come up with this m- medical miracle, and it's gonna save me, this type of thing. And that's what I kinda looked for. I went to Dr. Google right away and looked for all these things to do with prostate cancer, because, you know, I was not happy at all about the, uh, side effects of, of prostate cancer, which, you know, include incontinence, which is not fun to think about, and impotence, which I certainly was not looking forward to at all.

And so, uh, those were some of the main side effects. And so that kinda led me to being kinda insolent, which is kinda mad at the world. That was kinda my attitude towards it, 'cause I was, uh, not looking forward. So what do you do? How do you change that stuff around? Well, you gotta make some choices to do this, and part of this is what I like to talk about thinking strategically.

You don't check your brain at the door here. If you're a spiritual person, it's still you're a mindful person. This is the cognitive piece of what my process is all about. Yes, you gotta use your mind. So this is where you develop new habits. This is where you develop new practices, and sometimes you just get up and do it, you know?

If a person is going to get their body in shape or whatever, let's just use example, you don't just eat a salad one meal and say, "Hey, I've got, you know, I beat diabetes." And you don't just exercise one time and do three, uh You know, three pushups and we're good. It's gotta be a consistent thing. So the strategic part of this is you have to do the things that are practices in order to get better at things, even if you don't wanna do 'em, you know?

Even you don't wanna do 'em. If you wanna, you gotta have that bigger vision here. So the bigger vision comes into play. And so the thinking part is to use your mind and to think strategic on how you do things. Because one of the things that happens when you have cancer and things like this is you kinda lose, you know, you lose power, and you can take your power back by using your mind.

And this is mindset stuff as well. You know, some of it's just a choice that you make. The word choose comes from a root word that means, means to cut off from, which means you leave the past behind, you cut it off here, and you move forward. Not that you forget the past, but you're not living in the past anymore.

The only thing you're doing a thing about is your present actions, which then influence your future possibilities, and that's where the thinking strategy comes into play. It's go, "What am I gonna do moving forward?" Yeah, 100%. I think a lot of creatives struggle with tying their self- Mm ... worth to outcomes. I certainly do that, or I used to, or I'm trying not to do it anymore.

What helps people separate identity from circumstances?

Interesting. I think you touched on it there, 

this has to do with your own personal values and your self-worth. What is the source of your self-worth? If your self-worth is external... Now, I don't know a lot about the entertainment industry, but I know there's a lot of rejection, right?

You know, you may try out for many different roles. Yes. And you may, you know, be- get rejected 100 times before you get a positive thing. So you gotta get your head around that. And so if your only self-worth is what someone else says about them, then you got trouble. You gotta believe in yourself. You gotta believe, "I got something going on.

I got something to offer this world, whether it's in my art or in, in my case, I'm writing a book, I do the podcast, things like this. I got something to offer other people that is of value." But it starts in your own heart, in your own mind, and it goes to other things, the connection is, is so on as well. So, but your personal value has to come from your inner life and to outward rather than from the outward in.

That is definitely what happens a lot. That was what I feel like I learned from a very young age, getting the validation for my performances, so getting it outwardly and not from myself or my values where... I mean, I was so young, too, like, that my brain was forming in a way where it was like, you need to get this validation- Yeah

and you need to get the dopamine hit. Moving on to service, the last one. I think this one is really interesting because creative work is also a form of service in a way.

we just touched on it a little bit. Why do you think helping other people can become healing for ourselves too?

This is the love portion of my planning. One of the ways you can love yourself is by loving others, and then loving others almost by definition, not almost, it is by definition, it means serving other people. And serving other people means what have you got? What gifts do you have to offer to other people?

What are some other people, kinda like me, going through who need something here? From my mind, it was people who were kinda knocked off their game by a cancer prognosis, but still felt like they had life worth living. They didn't wanna give up, but they needed the tools, they needed some process in order to get through things.

When I do keynote speeches, when I do my podcast or other things, I have people in mind that I love, that I wanna serve them, help give them processes and, and ways to, to do that. B- but the thing is, this is a selfless thing to do But it still serves yourself because when I serve other people, I feel good about it.

It helps me. Uh, it gives me a positive dopamine hit when I get a, an email or a, a comment from somebody who says something we've said in our podcast has been helpful to them. Those things help me. But it has to do with an outward focus.

, It's not about me. It's not about my bottom line. I am served when I serve others. Serve first.

Do you think purpose becomes clearer when we stop focusing entirely on ourselves?

Yeah, indeed. Purpose is an emerging, 

ongoing, organic type of process, and, uh, purpose arises out of practice in a way.

Remember we talked about practice a minute ago? When you start to practice good things, your purpose begins to emerge more and more. My initial point of my purpose was, well, I just kinda wanna be a better grandpa to these two little girls here. That was kinda my first thing. But as I went on and started to produce podcasts, started to speak to other people, do other things, I saw that I'm having impact on other people.

So that began to emerge, that I have a greater purpose here. Now I have a greater purpose, and that gives me a sense of wherewithal and sense of wellbeing, and that's what I'm really all about.

I think people need to move towards, you know, to live a full life now and finish well. That's what I love, you know? That's what I help people to do. 'Cause so many people are kinda scared of the, you know, end of life and that kinda thing, and I try to help with that on a spiritual plane on one level. So one of the things that happens to you, Yessi, when you get diagnosed with cancer, It's a issue of mortality. You become aware of it instantaneously. You know, I, I'm actually, I'm sixty-seven years old, and right now, I was, uh, diagnosed when I was sixty-two, I think.

You know, I felt like I had a long life ahead of me, but the doc told me, you know, said, "If you don't think about this, you're probably not gonna be here three years from now." That kinda gave me an end date, okay? So you become aware of your mortality.

The name of the book that's coming out later this year, it's called Dancing at My Granddaughter's Wedding, 'cause I wanna be in my mid-eighties, twenty years from now, at my granddaughter's wedding and, uh, graduation and so on.

I want to not only be the guy in the wheelchair in the corner who's asleep, but I wanna be a person who's dancing at the wedding and involved and engaged and people enjoy being with. That's the kinda guy I wanna be. I do not wanna be dead weight, or literally dead but I wanna be a live and vital, be a part of things.

And so that's what I mean by finish well.

I really love that. Thank you so much for sharing that. I wanna end with this.

When life forces people into uncertainty they never planned for, what do you think helps them keep moving forward?

First of all, we're all there. We all have this situation at hand. Adversity impacts everybody. We've-- I've been talking about cancer, but adversity can happen... I call it the five Ds of adversity. There's disease, like cancer is one of them, but the others are depression, anything mental health-related, divorce, anything considered anything kind of relationship related, that kind of thing.

Debt, financial matters, and then death, which is grief, death of a loved one. It impacts everybody. No one is immune. In terms of what we do about it, leverage some event in your life or maybe even someone else's event in your life in order to give yourself some power to move forward, to take that first step.

In my case, I leveraged that situation with my two granddaughters in McDonald's. I tell this story quite often. One of, one of the reasons I'm writing the book, of which is based on that story, is so I can give it as a gift somewhere down the road. When my granddaughters are old enough, I want them to hear my story there.

But I leverage that story all the time for my own self. That helps me take that first step. Mental health was one thing, physical health is another, and purpose is another. You can't do that unless you somehow leverage some point of pain that you want to do something about.

 Thank you so much. Thank you for sharing, and thank you for your words. I think it was extremely insightful. Where can people find you, your podcast, and where can they find your book when it comes out?

The best place to go is simply to go to cancerandcomedy.com/follow, and that'll get you connected to all the ways that you can follow our podcast.

And so get on that list there, and you'll be on the list for when the book comes out. It'll probably be, like, December before it comes out. But it'll be available to you, and it'll be available all the places. It's the title is "Dancing At My Granddaughter's Wedding."

Perfect. Thank you so much, and we're gonna have it in the show notes as well, of course. Thank you so much for taking the time. This was really great.

Hey, you are marvelous, Yessi. I wish you well in all your endeavors. And to your audience I just would say this whole message that you give, what a great energy you have, and just stay with you. You're going places, and the people follow you are gonna be well-served by what Yessi Sanchez has to say

Thank you so much. That's so kind.

You just listened to No Map Included. If this conversation brought up a question you've been carrying around, I'd love to hear it. Leave a comment, send me a message, or find me on Instagram. and if you're still figuring things out too, I hope you'll come back for the next conversation