I've got it all figured out

Not exactly.

“I don’t know what to do with my life…” - my 25 year old fingers type as I look for advice from strangers on a Reddit discussion forum last week.

I’ll let you in on a secret. When I graduated from University I felt like I was already grieving.

In high school, there was this unspoken expectation of university. So naturally in grade eleven I came to the crossroads of what to study; aka I had to choose what would make me happy for the next 50 or so years of my life. What a daunting task. How do you know what’s going to make you happy for the rest of your life at seventeen when you’re still working on getting the “N” off your drivers license?

Fast forward to first year, it didn’t take me long to figure out I hated nursing. But, my mama didn’t raise no quitter. 4 years of hard work later.. graduation rolls around and all of my classmates are pumped! No more school, no more books, no more teacher’s dirty looks (ok I had to).

I looked around and was like are y’all freaking kidding me? You're excited about this? You’re telling me I have to be a nurse for the rest of my life? I’d much rather be a student. You get a free gym membership, you LIVE with all of your best friends, rent is dirt cheap cause you’re splitting it with 5 other people and you get unlimited Nutella at meal hall.. uhh hello.. win win...win WIN. I also knew enough to know that the real world was scary. And that’s why I felt like I was grieving. I was mourning the death of the past 21 years.

Up until this point, my entire life had been building up to this moment. I worked so hard in high school to get great grades, to get into a great university, then when I found myself graduating from said great university…. I felt like it was all done, kaput. No longer a student, no longer a work in progress. I was supposed to be a citizen of the real world, a person worthy of joining and contributing to society. Ooooof. Nobody prepared me for this.

So after graduation, as you can imagine (no dramatics at all here 😉) my life was over… even though it was just beginning. I had this daunting feeling hanging over my head at a time where I was supposed to be happy and excited about my decision to become a nurse. I was supposed to be pumped about this new career that I chose for the trajectory of well, the rest of my life.

So I start working in the real world as a RN. I felt major pressure to meet quota, to juggle discharges, new admissions, new surgeries, and at the same time figure out how to safely and effectively take care of these patients I didn’t even feel qualified to look after. Most days I felt like I was drowning physically and emotionally.

But again, mama didn’t raise no quitter. I kept going. I tried different fields, I tried different provinces, different hospitals, different floors, different hours. 4 years of society telling me how great of a profession it is and don’t “throw away” your degree just yet and how I “just haven’t found the right area”, I felt like I kept needing to give it another shot. So, I did… and I still do…

The truth is, maybe I don’t HATE nursing. But I know I hate the emotional toxicity that comes along with working in a high stressed environment. I hate not being able to take the time that I need to make sure my patient is educated and cared for in the best way. I hate dealing with controlling charge nurses and managers. I hate working with mean & burnt out co-workers who often project their hurt onto me. I hate the fear and guilt that come along with being asked 24/7 to stay late, work extra, float to another unit, and swap shifts. And I hate not being able to explain to demanding patients what I’m up against behind the scenes. I also hate coming home after a 12 hour shift and not being able to explain to my friends and family what I just went through because I felt like they just wouldn’t get it and never would unless they were there.

Okay so I don’t hate nursing. Hate is a strong word. But I do hate everything outside of the actual patient care that weighs on my heart and has made me believe the lies that I’m not competent or good enough.

So ya know, that incompetency piece has poured into other areas of my life and here I am, still feeling puzzled, still asking myself the question every day: what should I do with my life..

The funny thing is, I take such pride in nursing. I know I’m a good nurse. When someone asks me what I do for a living; a question I HATE just so you know (because I believe you’re so much more than a title… see closing quote below).. I always say I’m a nurse! #HappyNursesWeek! Woo!

Don’t get me wrong: nursing is so fulfilling. I work hard to maintain my patient’s dignity through intimate moments, difficult long term decisions, and heartbreaking situations. I share in the joy of successful surgeries and cured diseases. I share in the heart break of a loved one taken too soon, a disease too powerful, a life changed forever. I assess and advocate. Sometimes (quite often) I wipe asses, I give meds, but that isn’t the extent of what I do. I know I am not alone and I appreciate all of the nurses who work alongside me. Many of them have shaped me into the nurse I am and I wouldn’t have gotten this far without them. I also know I’m a good nurse. But does that mean that nursing is for me, forever? TBD…

I recently read a book called “I Could Do Anything, If I Only Knew What It Was” by Barbara Shear. 6/10, btw… There were lots of great takeaways, but overall…. not groundbreaking. However, just simply the title resonates so strongly with me. I really do feel like I could do anything if I only knew what IT was!

I’m capable and determined and a really hard worker. But I am one of those people who always thinks I'm not doing what I should be doing - that I have a bigger, better life out there I haven't grasped yet.

The book begins by suggesting our career indecisiveness stems from childhood, and that all along we've simply been trying to be what others want us to be.

Indecision is probably my biggest weakness and leaves me feeling stuck all. the. damn. time. My sister years ago once said to me “whatever decision you make will be the right one, because even if it’s the wrong one, it’ll lead you to the right one eventually - in turn, making it the right one”. While I’m sure that’s a broken rendition of a Pinterest quote she read, those words have stuck with me years later and were reiterated again in the book.

Inner conflict with decisions is always going to make you feel stuck. But when this happens, you need to act. Endless self-analysis does nothing, where action actually gives you new information and builds new confidence. For example, if you’re struggling with indecision, take the “wrong” job. You can learn a tremendous amount about your “right” job, by doing the “wrong” job, oddly enough.

OR, the alternative is to not make a decision at all. But you have to remember: indecision is a decision itself. Indecision means you’re choosing to stay stuck.

If you choose nudge yourself into action, you’re going to uncover and demystify all your feelings of conflict. If you just start moving toward a goal... any resistance will leap out of hiding and start trying to talk you out of moving. Once you hear the little voice that is stopping you, identify the source of that little voice. It’ll be likely that your resistance is based on stale opinions of others that you’ve heard in the past. Once you see where resistance comes from, it loses much of its emotional power.

Of course, as you’re on my website right now, you can browse around and notice that it is filled with health and fitness rather than nursing. At a point in life where I felt “stuck”, I decided to try something new. I started juggling full time nursing with full time personal training in-person and online, all while traveling the world. Health and fitness is a huge job/passion of mine, however I would be lying to you if I said it didn't also bring up those feelings of inadequacy and inner conflict and wonder whether it’s even the right path for me!

The most helpful portion of the book “I Could Do Anything, If I Only Knew What It Was” breaks down our behaviours into personality types. I have an intense curiosity about a number of different subjects and apparently this is one of the most basic characteristics of a “scanner”. What is a scanner you might ask? It’s someone who is always wondering why they’re caught in the dilemma of “what the hell am I going to do next”. It’s the inability to figure out what drives me and why I’m so different from people who made their choices early and followed ONE path.. like what? How does that even happen? And most importantly - it’s always thinking “Why can't I just start working on my dreams - and stick to them?”

Our society frowns upon this type of personality trait. “If you're a jack-of-all-trades, you'll always be a master of none.” We’ve been conditioned to believe we’re only allowed to pursue one path. When we are forced to make a choice or decision, we are forever discontented. Often times us scanners don't choose anything at all.. then this of course causes the inner conflict. BUT, if we didn't think or weren’t conditioned to believe that we should limit ourselves to one field, 90 percent of our problems would cease to exist!

So… you’re probably wondering: well, what’s the solution?

The only thing we need to do is reject conventional wisdom that says that we are doing something wrong and claim our true identity. Almost every case of low self-esteem, shame, frustration, feelings of inadequacy, indecisiveness, and inability to get into action will disappear the moment you stop trying to be somebody else.

If you’re anything like me, you are constantly wondering (aka stressing) over whether or not you’ve chosen the right path. You feel like time is running out… You feel like you should have accomplished way more by now.

I think the most important thing to remember when trying to figure out what do with your life is that no action is an action in and of itself. As long as you make decisions and try things - even if you end up hating them or wanting to do something else, you’ll end up where you’re supposed to be eventually (cliché, I know).

While I wish I could give you all the help… I don’t have the answers. I’m trying (keyword: trying) to live in the present, make the hard decisions (or just ANY decision) when they arise, and keep moving forward. During my 25 years on Earth I’ve learned that every time someone asks me my long term plans all I can do is just laugh. Right now, I just keep handling the next right thing, one thing at a time. Whenever I’m uncertain (which is often, by the way) all I can do is go inside, feel around for my intuition and do the thing that it is nudging me toward.

If I just do the next right thing, one thing at a time, I can never make a bad decision or move, because it will ultimately be leading me to live my best life.

to: me

cc: me

bcc: me

from: me

“Everyone you meet always asks if you have a career, are married, or own a house as if life was some kind of grocery list. But no one ever asks if you are happy” - Heath Ledger