Audio blog by Teresa Walding, Nurse Coach Instructor
Recently, Teresa attended the Texas Nurses Association Conference in San Antonio, TX on May 31-June 1 and in this audio blog she shares her thoughts and insights about the current state of nursing, healthcare, and what people are striving to do in the future.
Click to listen or read the autogenerated transcript below.
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Transcript:
Speaker: Teresa Walding
Morning.
So, I just got back from the Texas Nurses Association Conference, and I’ve met some amazing human beings. I met 2 doctors right as soon as we got there at the meet and greet who are doing coffee with fun names like DNR. The nightlife? A couple of others I can’t think of, but just really wonderful human beings who want to make a difference in healthcare. And I just love their mission. I love their vision. They want to donate 25% of every subscription to the nursing associations that are supporting nursing and healthcare professionals. I thought that was a huge, huge mission. And they were personable and nice, and have hearts of gold.
Then, I gave my poster presentation. I thought it was 2 times, but it ended up being 3 times, and every time I had people coming by, and they’re like rewriting self-care what? Tell me what this is about, and the level of openness and curiosity was so refreshing. I actually got to talk to one nurse in particular, actually 2, and she was ready to hear the deeper message of what the Self Care Plan means, and through our conversation she goes. I’ve never thought of my life like this before. I’ve never seen my thinking like this before. Keep talking. Tell me more. And I could tell through her questions, through her expressions, that it was just striking a chord within her, and she said, I love this. So I’m going to talk with her in the next week or so, and see what it is that she wants to bring to her practice where she works, and in that way we’ll bring the principals into her institution where she works, and I think it will be amazing.
I talked to another young lady. She sat next to me at lunch, and she was just very shy, very quiet, and it took us a minute to get to know each other, and we got to talking, and she’s like, “I just read your poster out there, are you, Theresa?” And I was like, Yeah, that’s me. She said, “I want to know more about that.” So we had a really, really nice conversation. She was a travel nurse in pediatric oncology, and she said, “we need this so much in that area of nursing,” and she left, and she’s like, “I am going to call you cause I want to know more about this.” And I kept hearing that same thing over and over and over.
I was reflecting on the opening message of where nursing has been, the nurses who have come before us, and have given us direction, and the fact that nursing has lost its way. And I thought, “Wow, we are less visible now than we were 10 years ago. How is that possible?” And since being in business, I realized it’s a really noisy world out there where we keep looking in the wrong place for our answers. There are a million advertisements saying, “I’ve got the answer. I’ve got the answer. Come, look at me.” The bottom line is, no one has your answer, only Youtube. And what we teach in this program, we call it the 3 Principles. But that’s just a metaphor for what’s living you, your life. How do you interact with this world? And how do you find the wisdom that you seek to build the life you want. No one can do that for you. We have these wonderful ideas that if they would only do this, or if I could have this, if I could understand that, I want a PDF that shows me, step by step, what to do, or I want a class that tickles every aspect of what I want to know. That doesn’t exist in this world, never has. The only way you find your own answers are when you decide what you want, and you look there. No one can find it for you. No one can show you where it’s at, except for you, as you realize through conversation, through, in my view, an understanding of what principles do for you in your life.
Stop being a victim of your own thinking, your own self-sabotage. It’s keeping nurses stuck in a victimhood that simply is mostly of our own making. It looks like systems. It looks like computers, hospitals, doctors, administration, other people keeping us in our place. The only one keeping us in our place is us. And I know that when we all come together with our brilliant ideas, our innovations, nurses have been innovative since the beginning. We see a problem. We solve a problem, but we never solve our own problem. It’s always for someone else or something else. It’s time we look to our inner selves, our internal dialogues, and what we’re saying to ourselves all day long every day, and figure out what it is that we want? How do we connect to our spiritual selves, to the place within us that has the answers, and it’s not us. By the way, it’s the deeper wisdom that’s running us. I think, together as human beings, as nurses, especially with a common goal, recognizing our own self-sabotage and finding answers that will help people live better lives everywhere. That’s my mission. That’s my goal. I want us to come together as human beings. I met the most amazing people this weekend, and I want them in my circle, and I want them to thrive and to serve and to enjoy the life of being a nurse.
At the very end, Rodan Devot talked to us about her experience, and with everything in my being, I wanted to go up and give her a hug and say, it’s gonna be okay. And I know on a certain level she knows that, but I could hear from her talking that there’s still so much hurt and so much anger about what happened to her, a normal everyday, starry-eyed, talented nurse. But at the very end of her presentation, she was asked, would she become a nurse again. She said, I don’t know. I never want any of us as nurses to say that, because if we do, it means we’ve allowed a society or a business or an idea in our mind to take over, bankrupt us, hijacked us with our own attitudes. Stop hurting yourself. If we want something, we can get it, and it’s up to us to do it, but we don’t have to do it alone.
So, I’d love to invite you to a webinar where we can talk about this, where we can make a plan or see what’s available for us to come together and be the change we want to see in nursing and healthcare, acknowledging that the only place it starts is within ourselves. So send me a DM. Let me know your thoughts, and I’ll talk to you later. Thanks.