To Be or Not to Be

To Be or Not to Be

by | Jun 28, 2016 | Asian-American and Pacific-Island Nurses, Black and African-American Nurses, Black Nurses Rock, Blog, Faculty Nurses, Hispanic and Latino Nurses, Minority and Community Health, Nurse Health, Nursing Associations, Nursing Stress Management, Nursing Students | 0 comments

“ Once you know yourself, in this living stillness, there is nothing in this world that is greater than you”

One of the elements of discovery is “stillness”… I am sure you are thinking, ” What does that really mean? As healthcare professional, how can I incorporate STILLNESS into my life when I have been trained to move and move fast because it is the difference between life and death?”

Guess what, IT IS POSSIBLE! Let’s break this down a little bit more.

Many people see the word “stillness” and automatically think it means to have no movement which is true to a certain point, but from the perspective of discovery, “stillness” is the state of being or being one with yourself. Not thinking about the kids, what you have to cook for dinner, the bills you need to pay, but can’t… the job you dread, the co-worker or friend that gets on your nerves, etc. I mean you DO NOT think about any of that, just simply BE!! In the state of being is where we really and truly get to “know thyself” and not what everyone else tells us about ourselves. In stillness we allow the voice of the holy spirit, which is our GPS navigation system, to guide us through the streets called life. In stillness we learn to quiet the mind and not allow anything that is going on around us affect us. So when you are in a state of stillness, it doesn’t mean that things are not going on around you, it means that they are not going on within you. Let me make it a little clearer for you, you can be at work on a 35 bed med-surg unit with 10 physicians and 3 respiratory therapist on the unit, family all over the place, a supervisor who is screaming at staff, and a co-worker who scrolling through her social media timelines chilling while you have 10 outstanding task and not let ANY, I mean ANY of it affect you internally. The key is to create an intention of stillness which can be achieved by having some intentionality about how you are carrying yourself in a given moment and focus on what is within your control.

Now that we have what stillness means from the perspective of discovery out of the way, I can hear you saying “ Nicole I don’t have time for that”, I have to take care of my family, walk the dogs, manage all the household chores, manage the financial accounts, and I am sure that the list could go on and on but guess what you CAN practice stillness through all of this (I am not telling you what anyone told me but what I know)!! And to be honest if you want to live a life purposefully as a healthcare professional according to Gods’ will then it is a non-negotiable.

So let me share 4 tips that helped me to begin my practice of stillness and make the practice of stillness a ritual in my life.

1. Deep Breath- Yep simply deep breath! I hear you saying “and what is that going to help”? When we take deep breaths it induces the parasympathetic system and slows down your heart rate, which leads to a state of relaxation  (use this one when you have trouble going on all around you so that it is not going on in you).
2. Schedule Time to Be- Look lets keep it real we all live busy life’s that pull us in 50 directions and many us live by a Google calendar which tells where to be and when. Well guess what place your “Be Time” on there too. It has been proven that anything we do for 21 days becomes a habit.
3. Get off Social Media- Yep I said it!! Get off Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, etc. stalking pages and looking at fairytale lives that often don’t exist and practice just “ Being” (I was once guilty of this one, LOL). With the hours we spend on these sites weekly, we can really get to “know thyself” and find our purpose as a healthcare professional.
4. Find a Location that brings you Serenity- Know I know I said the state of being can happen when trouble is all around you which means we can have stillness anywhere but to get to a place where we can do this, we can get practice by doing it in areas where we find peace. So that may be by the water, outdoors with the birds chirping, a certain room in your home, etc. Practicing stillness in a location that brings you peace prepares you to be able to do it anywhere.

These tips are the very tip of the iceberg for practicing stillness because stillness goes much deeper but I wanted to start with building a foundation for you to build upon.

 

Remember in Psalms 46:10 we were told to “ Be still and know that I am god”.

Living purposefully,

 

Nicole Thomas

Keep It Up #NursesUnite

Keep It Up #NursesUnite

by | Sep 21, 2015 | Blog

Do you think the hosts on television’s “The View” touched a raw nerve with nurses across the nation?

“The View” hosts Joy Behar and Michelle Collins inspired a firestorm of outrage with their comments about Miss Colorado Kelley Johnson, who used a monologue about her nursing career as her talent segment in the recent Miss America competition.

The hosts questioned Johnson for wearing what they called “a doctor’s stethoscope” and ridiculed her using the monologue for a talent. The remarks were generally received as demeaning, although some have said the hosts were joking. To the disdain of nurses everywhere, the tone of the remarks are nothing most nurses haven’t heard before. But hearing flippant comments about how nurses jobs are “easy” or somehow not as essential as other healthcare providers from people you can dismiss as ignorant is different from seeing it splashed across national television.

Nurses are so sick of hearing this kind of nonsense and seeing someone who should have enough knowledge say something so blatantly ignorant is stunning. Thankfully, the reaction has been swift and justified. Outraged nurses started a social media campaign #nursesunite. “The View” lost valuable sponsorship by big names like Johnson & Johnson and Snuggle. The hosts’ repeated apologies and the show’s belated “celebration” of nurses have gone largely ignored. It’s too little, too late.

Nurses save lives, pure and simple. They are in the trenches, covered in things and bearing witness to events that would make most people faint. They sometimes endure verbal, physical, and emotional abuse from patients. They perform medical procedures, ease patient’s fears, and sit with them through the darkest and most fearful hours of any illness. They treat the best of people and the worst of people with the same dignity and respect they bring to their profession every day. They advocate for their patients, watching out for them and watching over them because that’s what they do. Nursing is 24/7 – once you are a nurse, you are never not a nurse. Nurses live their jobs no matter where they are and no matter what else they might be doing. And for years, nurses have been rated as having the most trusted profession.

If the hosts on “The View” don’t get that, let’s be glad the rest of the country seemed to understand and stood up for nurses everywhere.

#nursesunite

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