Reflections on a Career Chosen by Default: Part 4

Today is the final part of my 'things I love about my career' series.  So much has happened since I last posted two months ago.  My hiatus was filled with wonderful opportunities.  The first afforded me the opportunity to embark on and complete a book proposal for the transformational writing contest organized by Chistine Kloser, the transformational author catalyst.  The second was the opportunity to spend a full week in Ohio with family and friends, something which happens only rarely.


Both opportunities touched that part of me that is passionate about inspiring hope in others and contributing to their well being, fulfillment and satisfaction.  It is my desire to write in a way that invites you to take the next step and move your own life to the next level.  So get in touch with that still, small voice inside and learn to trust the evolutionary being that we are.  


Make a difference in your world, more of the time...and when life hands you lemons, make lemonade.  Remember everything confronting you on your journey through life has potential for both opportunity as well as crisis.  It is how we choose to see it that makes all the difference.  So, "When life presents you with a fork in the road, take it!" and navigate it to the best of your ability, avoiding crisis and maximizing opportunity.  Which is exactly what  I did these past two months.

Part of living a life of 'no regrets' comes from taking advantage of the what happens every day of our lives.  In re-tooling these posts from my original article for Angela Brooks my hope is to inspire you to spend five minutes jotting down the top 10 reasons you love your career and reflect on the inherent gifts in them, and in so doing begin your own adventure that will take you to the next level of your own life.  


Without further delay, I leave you with the final things I love about a career chosen by default.


HUMAN RESPONSE PATTERNS

Many wonderful gifts have come through my career as a nurse but one of the greatest, by far, came unexpectedly when I stumbled across the Handbook to Holistic Nursing Practice and began pursuing my certification as a holistic nurse.  Aside from my own spiritual awakening during that time, which was monumental, the paradigm shift accompanying it transformed my consciousness in a way that allowed me to see people as evolutionary human beings in an ever changing environment.

I had been using a process to develop plans of care for my patients developed by NANDA (formerly the North American Nursing Diagnosis Association) for most of my career.  To explain it simply, nursing diagnoses are clinical judgments about human experiences and responses to health conditions and life processes that help focus on methods and strategies for helping a person achieve better or greater health.

Having used them as a matter of routine, imagine my surprise in discovering those individual diagnoses such as alteration in comfort, relocation stress syndrome, etc. were actually built on something called human response patterns, 9 of them to be exact, that informed everything I knew or had intuitively grasped while caring for people.  It was like a light bulb suddenly went on in my mind and the bigger picture of human potential and growth became clear.

Those 9 human response patterns, with a short explanation, are:

EXCHANGING - physical and chemical processes/homeostasis
COMMUNICATING - sending messages
RELATING - establishing bonds
VALUING - assigning relative worth
CHOOSING - selecting alternatives
MOVING - activity
PERCEIVING - receiving information
KNOWING - meaning associated with information
FEELING - subjective awareness

From that point on, I began to understand that all patient behavior, symptoms, lifestyles, choices, etc. coalesce into recognizable human response patterns.  ‘Pattern recognition’ became my buzz word for bridging the science and the art of nursing and expanded my ability to take people from point A to point B more effectively.  How wonderful it was to learn and use a deeper, broader,  more effective base of nursing knowledge and wisdom, and how much more satisfying my interaction became with people from all walks of life.

SPIRITUALITY/HOLISM/CUTTING EDGE NEW THOUGHT

It was this path into holistic nursing that literally transformed and launched the second half of my career.  The holistic nursing program occupied two and a half years of my life and become a strong plank in the foundation I used to make sense of the spiritual awakening I was undergoing.  It formed the organizing principle behind my understanding of life and the world at large.

In 1989, a critical juncture in my personal and professional life, I was seriously considering changing careers altogether.  I had owned a small healthcare consulting business and made more money than I'd ever dreamed possible.  I was clearly at a juncture in my career but, after working a few months as a grocery checker, for which the manager pointed out I was sorely overqualified, I took a position in a rehab hospital.

I had gone to a medical bookstore for a care planning book to brush up on my clinical skills.  While  walking down an aisle in the nursing section, a large, pink volume literally fell off the shelf as I approached...The Handbook of Holistic Nursing Practice.  Now I had witnessed a number of amazing events in emergency rooms and intensive care units, things that at times seemed truly miraculous because they defied explanation.  But that day it struck me as odd that a book would seemingly jump off a shelf in front of me as if trying to get my attention.

In hindsight I know there are no coincidences and that things always happen for a reason.  Picking up that book changed my life and the journey that followed is really beyond the scope of this article.  Nevertheless, I began to see and become aware of a realm operating behind the day to day world with which we are more commonly familiar.  The health challenges people were presenting began to show me how consciousness was an emerging, expanding, transforming process occurring in each and every individual, a process in which we are all participating but which is most often seen during health crises.

Helping my patients navigate these challenges and assisting them in ‘seeing’ with a new set of eyes the transformation within their challenge taught me that health is expanding consciousness and that every health challenge brings an invitation to expand, grow and develop the next level of who we are becoming.  It  became obvious that evolution doesn't just happen over thousands and thousands of years, it happens in every moment, with every choice, in every interaction with another, and with every thing we do and think.

Nursing, once again, became the vehicle for my own next level of growth and development.  In hindsight it is easy to see that my nursing career did NOT live up to the expectations I had placed on it when I was forced to abandon my initial career choice in journalism.  But, how could it?  Those expectations were far too small for the journey.  Nursing had its own plans for me.  Bigger plans.  Better plans.  Plans I could have never dreamed.  It has taught me and shown me the depth and breadth of emotion and the heights of transcendent moments.  It has made me a bigger and definitely better person.  It has been a career that has changed me and allowed me to learn to love, to live with the unseen and to trust in the unknown mystery that always lies before us.

Reflections on a Career Chosen by Default: Part 3

As I re-work these posts from my original article I am struck by the fact that my life has been full of transformational experiences.  From the earliest days of my life I remember yearning for the next step.  Unlike many people I couldn't wait to grow up...now at 54 I still feel the same...what's around the next corner.

A mindset that is continually seeking growth and adventure is one that never gets old.  Given our short time here on earth, I want to live with that gusto as long as possible.  I've even been known to say I want to live to 120 because, after all, why sell yourself short!

Below are the next three gems I've gleaned from my career as a nurse...read them and see if they don't spark some sense of adventure in yourself.  Who knows, you, too may decide to pick up the quest again and make the most of the life you have yet to live!

SELF ESTEEM

With the discovery of my unique talents, being involved in saving numerous lives, and having the opportunity for continuous growth and ongoing self improvement, I can say without a doubt that my nursing career has directly impacted my own self esteem in a very positive way.

There were many times as a child where I felt inferior or less than those around me.  Even as a young adult those feelings plagued me.  When I was into the 'club' scene and dancing as often as I could there'd be nights where I'd look around at all the 'beautiful people' surrounding me and feel inadequate.   Now it didn't matter that I was already creating value in the world in my professional life.  The club scene was all about appearances and no one could tell by looking who I was.  It was a world that judged by appearances.

There finally came a point in my life where I had to dig deep enough to anchor the truth about my core.  It was there that I found real self esteem and it grew directly from what I had to offer the world.

So when you're feeling those twinges of insecurity, feeling 'less than' go to the mirror and look into your eyes and find the truth about you, the truth that is good and has value.  That's what I would do in those clubs so many years ago.  All it took was one look to realize I wasn't nearly as immaterial as I felt.  It's a simple strategy but it works!

ADDED VALUE

As I continue to enumerate the reasons why I have been truly gifted from my nursing career it becomes easier to see the contributions I have made to the individual lives of my patients and their families, but also to the nurses I have been blessed to work with.  I've learned from some of the greatest and most humble people on the face of this earth.

One of the most important women I've had the honor of working with was an LPN in Ohio who I credit with having taught me everything I needed for a solid foundation in nursing.  Shirley was not an easy person to work with, or so I was told.  The truth was, she was a damn good nurse and without her I may never have arrived where I am.  She was a beautiful blend of talent, hard work and fun.  She gave me a tremendous sense of self worth that I have leveraged into a career where I now add value to people’s lives.  Whether it's with a patient or a co-worker, the value is never only one direction.  The mutual relationship benefits both the giver and the receiver.

PEOPLE SKILLS/SOCIAL INTERACTION

Perhaps one of the most often cited reasons people go into nursing is to help others.  After many years in the field I began to reflect on the incredible people-skills I had learned.  Looking back, I can see how often I was picked to work with the ‘difficult’ patient or family member, and I realize how much joy I got from interacting with such diversity in the people who enter the health care arena.  That diversity had directly related to the opportunity to improve people skills and use my unique talents to make a contribution where others may have walked away because of the difficulty and challenge these people presented.

So the next time you face a difficult person or someone who challenges everything you believe in and think, pause, and wonder..."What would I do if I knew this person's behavior was driven by something so important, so incredible valuable they were willing to show up as my biggest problem?"

A little willingness to wonder sometimes opens doors we least expect and change us for the better.