Then I got up at 4:30 for work…

As I prepared for work and then drove the 45-55 minute commute I couldn’t help but think of how much I didn’t love my life. Reflecting on what was going on that evening just a day or two before, I thought about what I was feeling. As I did, it occurred to me that what I was actually feeling was love for my family, not my life.

I love my family

I love my family more than I could possibly explain on this page. I have not been a perfect father, but I must have done a few things right because our son still wants to come over and still enjoys spending time with his dad. My son is 23 years old and still calls me daddy, even in public. I must have done something right.

But, it’s not just him. As parents, we hope and pray for our children to find good spouses. Our son certainly did. His wife has felt like part of the family since the day they started dating. She was able to handle us from the beginning and, if I’m honest, we are a lot to handle. Together, they have brought us our first grandchild. If you have grandchildren, you know what I’m feeling. If you don’t, just trust me, it’s pretty cool.

Our daughter is pretty amazing. Like so many girls, she is daddy’s girl. Even as a teenager, she’s still sweet. She may be fulfilling the contract that she signed for me when she was like 8 or 10 years old, but whatever the reason is, I’ll take it. 

No discussion of my family would be complete without talking about my wonderful wife. I like to tell people that we are basically a Disney movie. We met as teenagers and are living happily ever after. She was my high school sweetheart. I was 15 and she was 14 when we started dating. I really do feel like something out of a Disney movie, or a Hallmark Christmas special. Our relationship is not perfect and hasn’t always been easy, but it is really pretty awesome.

My life… not so much

I don’t hate my life, by any means. But, if I’m honest, there are a few things in my life that I don’t like. 

As I thought about this during my 45-50 minute commute, I realized that much of where my life was today was not by design. I had allowed most of my life to just kinda happen to me. 

Sure, there were parts of my life that were designed. After all, you don’t collect college degrees like Ash Ketchum catching Pokemon, by accident. Yet things like my physical health, finances, and even, for a large part, my relationships were pretty much on autopilot. The results have been kinda messy.

BUT THERE’S GOOD NEWS

The great thing is that my life ain’t over and, so long as I’m breathing I have an opportunity to change. In the 6 Pillars of Life, you and I can make a difference, no matter how far we’ve gone from where we want to be. If you’re not familiar with the 6 Pillars, check out this blog post, or go deeper with my book, The Restored Nurse, available on Amazon.

It really isn’t too late to get started building a life you’ll love and I’d love to help.

The post I Love My Family. My Life… no so much. appeared first on Restoring Nurses.

I can still remember standing in the woods near the church we were attending at the time. As tears streamed down my face, I looked to the sky and yelled these exact words, “I just want to love being a nurse again.”

I had been a nurse for 19 years and had always loved it. But, I didn’t anymore.

It wasn’t nursing I hated

Looking back, I can see that I still loved nursing, but what I didn’t love was the place I worked or the way I was treated there. Still, I was ready to leave nursing completely. If I had any idea of how to support my family in similar way to how I was able to as a nurse, I probably would have left nursing.

Now that a few years have passed, I’m glad I didn’t leave.

I determined that I would build a life I loved

From this moment, under the trees, I began a journey to build a life I loved.

This started with getting out of the terrible job I was in and finding something that better suited me. Taking time to look back on my career I realized that I had always been teaching. This was true not only in my job but also in many of the things I did outside of work. Not only had I always been teaching, but looking back, I realized that I loved doing it and that I was really good at it.

This started a journey that took me to complete my BSN, and then go on to get my MSN-Ed and spend the years since then working as a nurse educator in hospitals and universities.

It’s not just about work

This story starts with me wanting to leave nursing. I know that many nurses have felt the same way. I found that changing my specialty and where I worked was enough to reignite the passion for nursing that I thought was gone forever.

If you’re considering leaving nursing, I’d encourage you to consider changing where you work, the specialty you work in, or some other change before you leave completely. It may be time to leave, but a change of scenery could change everything for you.

In a recent Podcast episode, I discuss this very topic:

​Is it Time for You to Leave Nursing?​

If you need someone to talk to, my inbox is always open and I promise, I will not try to sell you anything.

Matt Norman

P.S. The Companion Workbook for my book, The Restored Nurse, is now available on Amazon.

The post I just want to love being a nurse again appeared first on Restoring Nurses.

Driving a wagon on a road with deep ruts means picking a rut and driving in it. Once in such a rut, you are pretty much stuck. You’re going where that rut goes. Sure, if you need to take a turn that the ruts don’t take, you can, but this change in direction will take effort as your horse works to put the weight of the wagon and all its contents and passengers up out of the rut.

Traveling through the ruts is easy. Changing direction to go to a place the ruts are going, takes work.

Ruts in Our Brain

The pathways in our brains are like roads that our thoughts travel along. For things that we think about often, our brain creates ruts, neuropathways, to get us to those thoughts more quickly. This is why something that you had never heard of as a nursing student becomes something you can bring up without even thinking about it later in your career. This is why going over ACLS algorithms repeatedly, or working through scenarios and mock codes helps us not have to think about what to do next when the time comes.

Ruts can be good

When our son was about 18 months old, he and I went to have lunch with his mother. She was breaking up pieces of a hamburger for him to eat. Things were going great, till they weren’t.

MY SON WAS CHOKING!!

My wife screamed my name, picked up our son, and handed him to me. Without even thinking, I flipped him over and did the sort of back blows they teach in life-saving classes. I had never done this on a child before, but I had practiced it so many times that my brain had created ruts that quickly took me to what I needed to do. After a few blows our son coughed up the meat. We quickly asked for our check and left. Lunch was over, but our son was ok. He now has a wife and a son of his own.

In another instance, we were having Christmas dinner at my in-laws’ house when my mother-in-law started choking. Again my wife screamed my name. I jumped up and, again, did what I had been trained to do. After a couple of abdominal thrusts, she coughed up the food she was choking on. I had never done this either, but the ruts that my training had built in my brain took me to the place I needed to go to save my mother-in-law’s life… not sure if that was a good or bad thing. (Totally kidding, my mother-in-law is great and I’m very glad that she’s still here.)

Ruts can be bad

In the above instances, the ruts in my brain were good. However, that is not always the case.

Some years ago I experienced what I was convinced at the time was a nervous breakdown. I talk about this in the Mental Health chapter of my book, The Restored Nurse. Or you can read it HERE. Through that experience, my brain developed some new ruts. When I woke up the next morning, I was afraid of things that I had never been afraid of before. I was afraid to fly. No biggy, lots of people are. But, I had flown on multiple occasions before this and loved it. I was afraid to ride in elevators. Again, this is something that lots of people are afraid of, but I had never been. I was afraid to start IVs. I had been a nurse for close to 15 years and had started hundreds of IVs. Not only had I started hundreds, I was good at it, but the things I had experienced that night made me afraid to do something that had become so familiar to me.

This experience created ruts in my brain that ran straight from flying, elevators, and IVs to FEAR! I mean I couldn’t even take the elevator down one level that next morning, even though I had ridden on that same elevator hundreds of times before this. Unlike the life-saving ruts I spoke of above, these ruts definitely were not helping me or anyone else.

The ruts in your brain

In addition to the ruts I’ve mentioned already, many of us have ruts in our brains that steer our lives in directions we don’t want to go. Perhaps you have a rut that leads you to overeat when you’re stressed, sad, or even happy. Maybe you have a rut that leads you to spend money you don’t have or at least money that you shouldn’t be spending. I don’t care what the internet says, “shopping therapy” can be a really bad thing.

These ruts in my fantasy novels, steer the wagons where the ruts want to go, with no care for where the wagon or its driver want to go. Sometimes the ruts in our brains are the same way. The good news for the characters in my books is that they are not stuck in the ruts. They can pull out of them and go in a direction other than where the ruts are going. We can do the same thing. We don’t have to be slaves to the ruts in our brains. But, just like in the books I read, getting out of these ruts requires two things: intentionality and work.

Where are the ruts in your brain taking you that you don’t to go?

You can join the conversation on my TikTok or leave a comment below. If you’d prefer to keep your ruts private, shoot me an email. I’d love to talk about it.

The post Trapped by the Ruts: How Brain Pathways Shape Our Lives—and How to Redirect Them appeared first on Restoring Nurses.

Nursing is a mess right now. Maybe messier than it’s ever been. At the same time, the issues we see are getting more attention than they ever have.

So, this raises the question, is it time for you to leave nursing?

In this episode, I address the question of whether or not it’s time for you to leave nursing as well as give you some things to think about that might help you love nursing again.

Resources from this episode:

• My NEW coaching program
• My Healthy, Happy Life Assessment

The post Is it Time for You to Leave Nursing? appeared first on Restoring Nurses.

Recently my office was moved from a hallway to a patient unit. Like across the hall from my office now, are patient rooms. Last week I was sitting in my office, doing my thing, when I heard a physician walk by and call out, “Who has room 19?”

I kinda chuckled.

What I wanted to do in that moment was to do what I had done a few times with physicians in the ED. I wanted to walk him over to the whiteboard where the assignments are listed, and “introduce” him to it. In this case, I didn’t really know this physician and didn’t think it would go over very well, but still it was funny.

As I thought about it a little longer, I was struck by how similar the things we face in nursing are, regardless of where we are. You see the ED where I would “introduce” physicians to the whiteboard was in a different hospital, more than an hour from my current hospital. Oh, and more than a decade has passed since I last worked in that ED.

This is important for us to understand because it reminds us that we are not alone. The difficulties that we face are being faced by many other nurses around the country and the world. This doesn’t make the problems go away, but sometimes it helps to know that we are not the only one’s struggling through the same sort of stuff.

The post “Who As Room 19?” appeared first on Restoring Nurses.

At least it WAS life when I was in high school. Marching band gave me the motivation and drive I needed to graduate after a pitifully undisciplined start to high school.

Marching band was everything to me. It was the most important thing I had going on. That is until I met the girl who would become my wife, but she was in the marching band too, so win-win.

They were never there

To this day I can close my eyes and see the stands of the football stadium at my high school.

I can see the image of me looking side to side as I stand in attention waiting to start our show, or having just finished it and basking in the applause.

I can also remember that empty feeling when I discovered that my parents weren’t there… again.

I can’t honestly say that my parents ever saw me march. It was the most important thing in my life and they were never there.

They had to work

I get it. We didn’t have much money and they had bills to pay. So, they had to work.

Still, you’d think they could have been there occasionally. You’d think that I’d have some memories of them being there, but I don’t.

Many of the nurses I’ve worked with are in the same boat. They are trading the opportunity to be with the people who love them for a job that never will.

I don’t say this to make anyone feel guilty but rather to make us all think.

It’s hard, but it doesn’t have to be this way.

It’s possible to have an amazing life and career, while still being there for your family.

Our son was in the marching band in high school, the same marching band my wife and I met in. Our daughter is currently in that same marching band.

We are there for everything. For the past 7 years or so, the band’s trailer has seen almost no miles that didn’t happen attached to my pickup truck.

This is possible when you start building balance in your life.

If you’re ready to start building this kind of balance in your own life, comment BALANCE to be added to the waiting list for my upcoming workshop, Building a Balanced Life.

The post The Stands Were Empty appeared first on Restoring Nurses.

As a child, my parents worked very hard. Unfortunately, this meant they missed many events that were very important to me. I’m not mad at them, but the reality is that it affected me. Early in my career, I swore that I’d never be like that.

Yet somehow, it happened.

It was a slow fade.

Looking back, there was never a moment when I chose to prioritize my work over my family, it just kinda happened. Little by little, my priorities drifted from my family to my work.

For me, I recognized this slow fade and corrected it while my kids were still at home. This meant that I got to be at all my kids’ stuff while they were in middle school and high school and still very present for my son as he had gotten married and will be welcoming his first child, and my first grandchild, in a couple of months.

You’ve got to be intentional.

I hear you. Some of you work the way you do because you have no choice. Your life requires that you work as much and when you do. In the short term, I would encourage you to be intentional about the time you have to spend with your children, spouse, or partner.

In the long term, I would encourage you to start building a life that allows you to focus more on family and less on work.

Your work should fit your life and not the other way around.

I know that this may mean making some difficult choices. I drive a 13-year-old Chevy Silverado that is paid for. Sure, I’d love to have something newer, but I’m not willing to give up the time with our teenage daughter or with my wife in order to drive something newer.

So, are you working too much?

I can’t answer that question other, but here are some questions that might help you in answering that questions:

1. Does your work cause you to regularly miss family events?
2. Have you built a life that requires you to work more than you want to?
3. Do you have a specific goal for the money you make from working extra?

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this. Leave a comment, or shoot me an email at matt@restoringnurses.com and tell me, Are you working too much?

The post Are You Working Too Much? appeared first on Restoring Nurses.

Most of us are willing to admit that if we don’t do better at caring for ourselves it will, at some point, affect how we care for everyone else. And, yet we don’t do it.

Some time ago on TikTok, I asked nurses what their biggest barriers were to self-care. You can watch that video and read the responses HERE. While there was a wide range of answers, there were some common themes.

So, here are the top 10 reasons nurses don’t do self-care along with some quotes from the comments. Some of these are truly heartbreaking.

1 – Guilt

• “Being time poor and mom guilt”
• “Fear of letting others down”
• “Guilt for spending more time away from my family.”
• “Guilt. Being told I was selfish for doing anything I enjoy for me.”
• “Guilt. Away from family so much already, I feel bad wanting more time away.”

2 – Time

• “Definitely not enough time. Work is mind-consuming even after I leave.”
• “Don’t have time. Work 12 hours for 7 days straight, then having to be mommy and wife, soon exhausted.”
• “Not enough time in the day and just plain exhausted when I do have free time.”

3 – Exhaustion

• “By the time I have a day off, my brain and body don’t work.”
• “Exhausted with people. Want to isolate when I can.”
• “Exhaustion sneaks up on me. Taking care of everyone else.”
• “I am so tired and exhausted from dealing with my job. I get home and can barely eat, shower, and fall in the bed.”

4 – Depression

• “Depression. It took me a while to make peace with the idea, but I finally got help.”
• “Depression. I have my first therapy appointment on Wednesday.”
• “Depression!”

5 – Money

• “Money, hands down. I have money going to just live.”
• “Time, money, family, juggle.”
• “Fatigue, depression, and money.”

6 – Knowledge

• “Not knowing where to start.”
• “For so long I thought sleeping in on my days off, lying in bed all day was self-care.”
• “I don’t think I know what it even means.”

7 – Prioritization

• “I prioritize myself last, dead last”
• “Everyone else takes priority.”
• “Forgetting that I DESERVE to take time for me”
• “I have been programmed, probably by myself, to put others first.”

8 – Motivation

• “Lack of motivation, probably from a combination of depression and exhaustion”
• “Lack of motivation.”
• “Time, money, motivation”

9 – Laziness

• “Laziness”
• “Laziness” (yes, more than one person gave this exact same answer)

10 – Distractions

• “TikTok, LOL”
• “Carrying things on my mind that I wish I would have charted or said differently.”
• “I think the biggest barrier is the constant feeling that I should be doing something productive.”

Do you identify with any of these quotes? I certainly do.

In the coming weeks, I’m going to address each of these items in upcoming blog posts.

In the meantime, if you are ready to take the first step towards taking back control of your life, including taking better care of YOU, my book The Restored Nurse, is a great place to start.

The post 10 Top Reasons Nurses Don’t Do Self-Care appeared first on Restoring Nurses.

Anyway, where was I?

In the first Tobey Maguire Spider Man movie there is a scene where they are at a museum. Peter Parker and his close friend Harry are looking at one of the spiders. Peter explains, to a very disinterested Harry, that some spiders can change color to match their environment. He then says, “It’s a defense mechanism.” 

Recently I was reminded of this scene while at work. As I often do, I walked through the halls, smiling and joking with my coworkers. As I returned to my office and the door closed behind me, all semblance of a smile disappeared. Despite the smiling and laughter, I wasn’t feeling it. 

So, why do I do it?

That’s when the scene I mentioned earlier hit. I could see the scene in my head and thought to myself, “It’s a defeat mechanism.” That’s it, I was using the smile and jokes as a defense mechanism. 

But what am I defending against?

As I sat alone in my office pondering this, I realized that what I was defending against was people knowing what I was truly feeling inside. But, why? Why didn’t I want people to know? Well, for starters, I didn’t think they cared. Truth is, most of them probably don’t. Not that they are uncaring, they’ve just got their own concerns and I’m just some random guy that happens to work in the same place as them. But, it wasn’t the fact that they might not care that made me want to block them out. Rather it was simply that I didn’t want them to know. I didn’t want anyone to see what was really going on inside of me.

If we’re honest, I think many of us are doing the same thing. We are building walls to keep everyone out. We are afraid of what people might think if they knew what was really going on inside our heads. 

Walls are good. 

The walls of our homes serve to keep bad things out. Living in Florida, I have ridden out my share of hurricanes sitting inside my home. I can tell you that I was very much grateful for those walls. With our homes, the walls have openings. Windows let light in. Doors let us enter, but they also let the people we care about enter. 

Oftentimes, the walls that we build around ourselves, or our hearts, have no openings. They have no windows or doors. Without windows, the walls around us can’t let in light. Without doors, we become unable to let in even the people who love us the most and whom we love.

Somewhere along the way we’ve learned that to protect ourselves, we must build impenetrable walls. I would disagree. Even as we need and count on the walls of our homes to protect us, we need walls around our hearts. However, we need to work hard to ensure that these walls, much like the walls of our homes, have windows to let in light, and doors so that the people who do care have some way to get in. 

Open your doors, carefully

Whether you are a nurse dealing with burnout, anxiety, depression, or just struggling under the weight of life, I would encourage you to open your doors. The unfortunate truth is that some people will take your openness and honesty and use it against you. We can’t, however, use this as an excuse to block everyone out. So, I encourage you, to open your doors, but do it carefully. 

The post It’s a Defense Mechanism appeared first on Restoring Nurses.

Truth is that this is an extreme example. With almost 20 years in the ED, this extreme circumstance only happened once. But, there were many other difficult days when I wondered if I should have ever become a nurse, or if I should begin to consider other options. If you’re currently a nurse and have not felt this way, brace yourself, it’s coming. If you are not yet a nurse, go into it knowing that there will be days like this. As these days stack up, it’s no wonder that nurse burnout is such an issue.

How do you come back?

After having 3 patients die in 4 hours, it’s really hard to get up the next day and come back to work. Certainly, there was some financial motivation for this, I mean the mortgage company wants to get paid every month and my kids want to eat every single day. But, this sort of motivation can only keep you going for a short time. After all, if it’s just about money, there are other ways to make it. Heck, there are many things that will actually allow you to make more money than being a nurse. The money is important, but it’s not enough.

So, what does keep me going?

For all the really difficult moments and shifts, there are some truly beautiful ones. I’m talking about things more beautiful than even what you might see in a TV medical drama or the chick flicks my wife makes me watch. (Ok, maybe I like them too.) These moments stand out as sources of light in your day and in your career. When things feel dark, it is the light from these moments that keep you going. I have often thought about some of these bright moments when walking through some of the darkest days of my life and career. This is what keeps me going. I think it will also be what keeps you going.

My challenge to you

I wish someone would have told me this many years ago. I really think that this would have helped me so much on some of those dark, difficult days I’ve been talking about. My challenge to you is to do two things. 

First, start a journal

Not like a “dear diary” kind of thing. Not a journal that you write in every day. No, this journal is just for the shining moments in your nursing career. This is for the stories that make your job worth it. In over 20 years as a nurse, I have so many of those stories. Unfortunately, since I didn’t write them down, it’s hard for me to remember them all. There are some really powerful ones that I can remember very well, but I know that there so many others that I simply can’t remember. So, whenever those moments happen that really make your job worth it, write about it. As soon as possible, write that story in your journal. Include as much information as you can, without violating the patient’s privacy. When you get an email from your manager or someone else talking about the gratitude that a patient or visitor expressed to you, write that in your journal.

Keep every card

Nursing is often a thankless job. This is especially true in areas like the ED and OR, among others. In these areas, patients are generally sent somewhere else to get better. By the time they get to where they are feeling better and start to say thank you, they have long since left the ED or OR. Still, there will be cards. There will be notes. There will be emails. There will be things that people give you to show their appreciation for the care you give. KEEP THESE. Get a box now. Start putting these cards and notes in that box. If management posts a card or letter about you in the department, ask about making a copy of it for your own records, then put it in the box.

Open it on your dark days

On those days that make you doubt your qualification to be a nurse, open these things. Open your journal and read some of the stories. Open your box and read some of the cards. Trust me it is these stories that will keep you going. I certainly have enough of them to keep me going, but how many more could I have had if I had been doing these two things for the 20-plus years that I’ve worked in healthcare?

Need help?

This sort of habit is a part of good self-care. Want help knowing where to start, I wrote my book The Restored Nurse to do exactly that, to help you know where to start. Pick up your copy on Amazon today!.

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