After years of being a nurse, I would say that I've learned many interesting lessons the hard and painful way. It was tough when they happened, but I am grateful for these lessons now as they have made me so much stronger!

If you want career clarity and career fulfilment, you will need to learn these lessons at some point in your journey. Let me save you some time, heartache and money!

After all, I want my hindsight to be your path forward.

Here are some of the hardest lessons I had to learn:

●    That I and I alone would have to fix how I felt about nursing.

I realised that after too many shifts crying in the toilets and with sheer exhaustion at the end of these shifts, it became clear that it was up to me. 

The truth was that the system sadly isn’t ready (yet!) to be able to properly look after us. This was a tough realisation but it also paved the way for me to take control.  

● I had to embrace failure. 

I realised this meant that I had to acknowledge that what I thought my future was and what my previous work choices were, had not been right for me.

This made the biggest difference when I realised that once you acknowledge a mistake, this is an important step in not repeating them. It can be difficult to accept responsibility for failures. I get it. Go slow. 

● If I wanted things to change then I had to change. 

This was a natural progression which came from spending time increasing my self-knowledge. It was difficult and took me too long to realise I had to be more intentional and conscious. 

 What I tried was bringing it all back to me. I like to think of it as positive selfishness and it worked!

Can you relate to any of the above lessons?

I just really don’t want you to focus a lot of time on just trying to love your work. I really hope that you can start focusing purely on you and you will go far. 

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Also are you new to nursing or starting to feel the pinch of burnout? Check out our Love Your Work Course. A 4 week email based course to give you the basics of burnout, compassion fatigue and self-care. Click here for more information.