It’s nothing personal, its just business. Right?
While some people live to work, others work to live. Healthcare workers often wear fatigue, exhaustion, and burnout as a badge of valor when in fact that is nothing more than you being deprived of your mental, physical, and emotional health. This has to stop. And WE have to be the ones to stop doing this to ourselves.
For so many years, I sacrificed so much of myself and my personal needs because I thought I was doing the right thing for my patients and my team. Whether it was going in to woek on my days off, going in early, staying late and working 16 hour shifts, forgoing lunch breaks, working holidays that I was scheduled off on, and the list goes on. But what was the cost of it all?
Time.
It took away time that can never be brought back. Time that could have been spent with people who matter and will love unconditionally. In hindsight, I was mistakenly overzealous. The fact is, I’m not the only one. Nurses are selfless by nature. Perhaps this is the very reason why they become victims to the very systems they devote so much of themselves to.
Take this present moment to create a healthy separation between the work that you do and the person that you are.
Take some time to fill yourself with whatever it is that you’ve neglected within your life… because you can’t pour from an empty vessel.