096: Nursing when you don't want to nurse anymore
Nursing when you don't want to nurse anymore
In today's episode, we dive deep into a topic that so many nurses can relate to: “Nursing when you don't want to nurse anymore”. Whether you're feeling burnt out, disillusioned, or just unsure if nursing is the right path for you, this episode is a safe space to explore those feelings and gain some insight into what options are available to you.
I have talked about creating the life you want, and I shared my personal experience of leaving a well-paying job to pursue my dreams. I encourage you to embrace discomfort and to intentionally practice beliefs that align with your desired outcomes. It is our responsibility to create the life, career, and relationships we desire.
If you're a nurse and want to explore what nursing outside of nursing looks like It's time to cut through your own bullshit and create the life you deserve.
Key takeaways:
4:04 - Self Awareness
6:17 - Self-leadership
7:50 - Breaking Free from the Golden Handcuffs
14:12 - Self-belief
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**This transcript was automatically generated using Descript.**
Liam Caswell: Welcome back to the podcast. Today we're talking about nursing, when you don't want to nurse anymore. This is a big topic and I'm excited to dive into this because this is my exact path, okay? I want to be real with you guys. I wanna make sure that you understand where I'm coming from and learn a bit more about my story because I know there is so much in my story.
To your story. So I had some really positive feedback about the nursing, my nursing story episode. If you haven't listened to that, go back and listen to it. It is a bit of a longer episode, but I had so many people reach out and just say, oh my goodness, this is exactly what I'm going through, and here's the tea.
Like we're all going through the same shit , so we may as well go through it together rather than doing it alone. So nursing, when you don't want to nurse anymore, is a complex place to be. I reckon I spent probably about eight years of my career in this place. I spent, I remember when I moved to Australia about three, four years into my career, I went, oh my goodness, I'm gonna go and I'm gonna just be a barista cuz I just don't know if this nursing thing's for me.
I just don't know. And I went and did barista work and I did some terrible sales work and I was like, no, no. I've got a degree. I can work. I can do this nursing thing. I love connecting with people. I'm just gonna do it. But then I spent literally every hour that I wasn't at work. I was on Google, like, what can I do with a nursing degree?
So if that's you, this one is for you. Okay. So first and foremost, when we think about. What can I do with my nursing degree? Like when I don't want a nurse anymore? I want you to hear that there are so many options. Okay. And that being a nurse is not your identity. Having a nursing degree is just like having a Bachelor of Arts.
Having a bachelor of science. It's a broad degree. Yes, it's focused on humans, but it's a broad degree and any degree offers you a skillset where you can actually go out and do pretty much anything. Have you ever met somebody that did like a bachelor of psychology and now walks in? I don't know, like engineering or something like that.
You know, the world is your oyster. You can do whatever the heck you want. I think the reason why we find it so difficult in nursing is because it's a calling. It's a vocation. We come into nursing because, you know, this is our life's work. We want to help people, we want to heal people, we want to serve the world.
And then when we realize and we start looking around and we're like, hold on a minute, is that my path? Started question everything. I'm like, no one told me about that. No one prepared me for putting somebody in the mortuary fridge. Like, that's horrible. I absolutely hate that part of nursing. You know, no one told me that I'd have to break bad news.
All of these things that we are not made aware of suddenly start happening and we're like, hold on , is this what my life's gonna be? And we have a right, you have a right as a human to question that. But then what You don't have a right to do, and this is my opinion. You don't have a right to then beat yourself up and keep yourself there for years, upon years, upon years, because I did that.
And guess what happened? I got burnt out, depressed, very anxious. I overrate, I over drank and there was a hot mess. So please avoid at all costs. . Please do not follow my path and that's why I do what I do. So the first part of what do you need to do when you're nursing, you don't want a nurse anymore, is just awareness.
It's the awareness that maybe this is not serving you anymore, right? Maybe just starting to ask yourself some questions around like, if I could do anything, what would I do? . If there's anything in the world that I would be good at that people say I'm good at, what would I do? What path would I take? What is available to me?
What else is available to me? Right. And your brain's gonna like totally hate this. It's gonna be like nothing. You're a nurse, you can't do anything. That's what my brain does to me. It's like, no, you literally could do anything. You could do anything, right? Just sit with that. Be like I can do anything.
You chose to become a nurse. I choose it. You can totally unchoose it. You can choose something else. Okay? Now I know some of you're gonna say, Liam, you shouldn't be telling people to leave nursing. You can do what you want. Okay? take this episode and do what you want with them. But I think it's important to show people that they have options cuz I, for so long, like believed, genuinely believed I had no options.
So I can. I even do it now in my business. I'm like looking at different things. I'm like, oh my God, I'd love to do that. I can't do that. Like why can't I? Somebody else does it. I can do it. I'm pretty smart. If I can do this, then I can do that, right? The same rule applies to your nursing. So awareness is a first step.
Just get aware of the thoughts that you have about nursing and really be honest with yourself. Are they true? Cause I have a lot of thoughts about nursing that are not true, that don't serve me. Okay. And some of those examples are like when I was a nurse, I'd be thinking like, I can't do anything else. This is it.
I'm stuck here. I've gotta put up with this. I've gotta tolerate being bullied. You don't have to do any of that. Don't lie to yourself. The first part, awareness is about raising awareness to our brain's, subconscious beliefs about what we're doing, and then just being like, mm, how true is that? This is hard work.
This is why most people stay stuck cause they can't even do step one cause they just choose to suffer instead of get curious and explore online, challenge their beliefs and go, mm, I don't think this is true. I don't think that it's true that nurses have to stay in a job that they hate. How is that true?
It's not true. Where can you find evidence to support that? It's not true. So awareness is a first step.
The next step is self-leadership. You gotta manage yourself. No one else is. , coming I plead and begged with my nurse unit managers as I built my career. I would ask people all the time, what would you do? I'd be like, at the nurse's station, like, what would you do if you could do anything in the world?
Like what would you do? I was trying to get ideas for myself. I didn't care about them. Trying to find out like different ways, or anybody that I met, that was a nurse that I'd made a pivot. I was like, oh, tell me, what did you. do and then they'd be like, oh, I did this. I did. And I'm like, I'd be so enthralled with that.
Like pay attention to that kind of behavior that you might have and don't beat yourself up. Like, oh, curious. Oh, that's interesting that I do that. Yeah, but take the self leadership step into leading yourself cause no one is gonna give you permission. No one. And I use this analogy or this, teaching all the time.
Like when I was a nurse unit manager and I demoted myself to educator, everybody around me was like, what are you doing? like, are you crazy? Why would you do that? And I was like, I just know me better. I know me better than you know me. And I just know that I love educating and I love creating, and I love systematizing and I love doing all of this stuff.
And I love, love, love empowering nurses. And I just as a nurse unit manager, I could do that, but only at our local level. I wanted to do it across the. I'm like a weirdo like that. That's what I like. So I knew myself better. I led myself into that opportunity instead of just waiting for somebody to tar me on the shoulder and say, Hey, by the way, do you think you know what you'd be good at educator.
I didn't do that, right? I took charge of my own career and I moved forward regardless of what everybody else said.
Now, the next thing that I want you to think about is a few of you, especially if you're more senior and seasoned in your career, you're gonna say, well, I can't. I just can't, like it's all good for you, Liam.
You know? You can just up and leave. You've got no kids. All of the things. I just can't get really curious about that belief. Like you just can't, okay, like, I've got a mortgage, I've got this, I've got all of those things too. All of them. I don't have kids. I've got pet rabbits that are not here in Paris. But I have responsibilities, right?
We all have responsibilities, varying levels. But if you are telling yourself that you can't do something cause of the golden handcuffs, right? You're getting paid a hundred grand a year and you don't know that it'll be any better on the other side and you know you're not gonna make the same money. And when you really question like whether or not that money is actually worth putting yourself through that for the next 10 years.
Because for me, I was making 165 K and I was freaking miserable. I was so miserable. I was not happy in doing the work. I couldn't stay there. I didn't last three weeks in that job. Did not last three weeks from that job. So I was chasing the money and I was thinking that that was gonna solve all my problems.
It wasn't. I needed to find out more about myself, so I had to take off those golden handcuffs, break free from that so that I could go and find a thing that was really gonna light me up. And I've never made less money. Let me tell you this right now. little exclusive. I've never made less money in my life.
Than I do right now running my business. Sometimes I question myself. I'm like, is this a charity ? Because people treat it like a charity. People come to me, they're like, oh, Liam, can you do this? Can you do that? Like, my daughter's struggling with her nursing. I'm like, okay. Like I didn't know that this was an ngo.
No, I can't. Thank you. It's great that you reached out to me, right. . Like I shook all of that off. Like I could go and take a job tomorrow and get paid really good money, but I don't want to, it's not in my path. I'm not binding myself or you know, making sure that I have to stay in a job because of the money.
I'm not putting myself in that situation. And you can choose to do that too. You can find a job that pays you the same money in a different sector, different area, different specialty, different organization. You can do all of that. Don't lie to yourself that you can't. You can. You just gotta actually take the action.
You've gotta just put yourself out there. Don't sit and believe what your brain tells you to be true, which is, oh, there's nothing. There's no one. There's no jobs. It's not true. It's a lie. It's a total frigging lie. If you're a nurse and you're making 120 K and you say, I see this in Facebook, wild West to Facebook all the time.
People say making 120 K a year. I just can't. I can't take the pay card. Who said you had to take a pay card? I didn't see you had to take a back account. Did you know that? Most people that come work with us get a pay rise even when they move into a different specialty. Like one of our nursing on your terms clients she went from being a GP nurse into a public health change management nursing role.
And it was not clinical. It was based Monday, Friday. She got a pay rise we had somebody go from floor nursing to nurse unit manager. She got a 35 grand pay rise. We had an EN go to nurse unit manager. She got a 35, 30 25, 30 grand pay rise who said you have to take a pecan. Now some of you will take a pecan, but then the long-term benefit is that you're happier on your work.
So just get really curious about the golden handcuffs and you choosing, like if you're gonna choose to stay, don't make it about the money. Don't make it that you're staying because you need the money. That's horrible. That's a horrible way to treat yourself, right? It's just unpleasant. You're kicking your butt to go to work every day.
You resent the shit outta your work. Go to work because you enjoy doing what you're doing. You're at work for so much of your life. Do not go there just for the money. Oh my goodness. It just makes my skin crawl cuz I did it for so long and just can't convey that message enough. Okay. Make sure that you break free from the scolding handcuffs and create them for yourself.
There are people online that make millions of dollars selling pictures of their feet , right? Like, are you kidding me? You can do whatever the heck you want. ,
now, I want you to recognize that when you do think about nursing and you don't wanna be nurse anymore and you want to pivot, whether you wanna go clinical, non-clinical, or different specialty, you wanna move up the chain, down the chain, whatever you want to do, right?
I want you to acknowledge that it's a change process. and that your brain, we love our brains, but it hates change. Okay? Our brains do not like change. And there's this theme in nursing where directors of nursing and that would say, oh, nurses hate change. No, humans hate change, . And actually it's because we're really bad at change management healthcare.
That change doesn't stick. . That's why it's not that we don't like change or that we're change fatigued. That's rubbish, right? The world is changing. Every day we don't watch the news and we're like, oh my God, I've been suffering change fatigue. Because the world's changing. The world's changing. Every fricking microsecond.
We have to acknowledge that. We have to acknowledge that as humans, we just hate change. . We're not wired for change. We love comfort. We love safety. We love just having predictability, right? Notice that in yourself, and when you're thinking about leaving nursing, guess what? It's not safe. It's not comfortable.
It's not predictable. You don't know. In my business as an entrepreneur, I don't. It's the biggest thing that I have to navigate and manage is my brain. Cuz it's just like every day it's like, just take a job, Liam. Just take a job, get a regular pay, just take a job. And I'm like, no. I have to sit with the discomfort of not knowing.
Right? You maybe don't wanna be an entrepreneur, but maybe you want to explore what options are available to you. You have to open yourself up to not knowing and you have to be able to sit with a discomfort to be able to get to the other side. . You can't just expect it to fall in your lap like I did for eight years.
You just can't. It just doesn't come. And the funny thing is that when you start embracing change and you go, hold on. hell to the, yes, I understand. This is gonna be painful. This is gonna be a little bit uncomfortable. By the way, when I say this, painful, uncomfortable, it's cognitively painful. Cognitively uncomfortable.
Maybe for three weeks I'll have to shop at Audi instead of calls like, whatever that is for you. Maybe I need to stop getting my Botox, or maybe I need to stop buying this bag or whatever. Like I don't need to go to the Harry Styles concert. Whatever that is, allow yourself to go through that because you know the reward at the other side is much greater.
then what it would be if you just got the Botox right and you were stayed in a job for like, I mean come on, . So acknowledge that change is part of this process. Yeah. That's totally normal. Yeah. Oh my God, of course. I'm experiencing this. Let's just normalize feeling all of that discomfort and gifting yourself the opportunity to grow and to move forwards.
Now the other thing that's gonna come up, and it comes up for me a lot, and it comes up for our clients in every program that we teach, is self belief. Because when things are uncomfortable and when there's no clarity, and when you are in a position where you're like, what is happening? Am I gonna get a job?
Am I not gonna get a job? Am I gonna find the thing? Am I not gonna find the thing? Is this the right thing? Is this not the right thing? Do I start up a business? Do I not start up a business? Do I move to clinical, non-clinical? What if I lose my skills? All of these things. are Totally normal. And anytime that you get a question, anytime your brain offers you a question, you are obliged to answer the question.
Don't put it in a Facebook group. Step away from the phone. Don't ask your partner, answer it yourself. What do you think? Use your tap into your own wisdom. Okay? A big part of this is building self-trust, self-confidence, and self-belief. Now, we've covered self-confidence in the podcast. Go back and listen to that episode.
If this resonates with you, go and listen to how we build self-confidence. But it's really about building the belief in yourself. And here's the thing about beliefs. What you believe to be true right now is just a collection of thoughts that you've practiced believing over a period of time. Yeah. So if you wanna change your beliefs, you just have to change the thoughts that you're practicing to believe day to day.
So if you believe that you're not gonna be able to get something new or something that pays you the same money that nursing does, then guess what? You're not gonna create that. That's what you believe. You practice believing that that's what you're gonna see. That's what you're gonna create, and you're gonna be stuck.
It's how the world works. If you want to change that belief, you have to practice believing something new intentionally. Cause you've gotta remember your brain's practiced this, maybe it's practiced it like mine for eight years and you've gotta uncondition and unlearn that and you've gotta explore that and start showing your brain collecting evidence that new possibilities are available to you, that you could choose to think something new, that you could create a new belief and you just practice believing it over.
An example of this is my business. I practice believing that my business is hugely successful, and that I fill a huge gap in the nursing industry. I bridge the gap. I help nurses manage their emotional and mental wellbeing whilst building an amazing career. I have to practice believing that. Cause if I go back to what I said earlier and all the people that say no to me, all the people that say it's too expensive, I'm not worthy of that investment, all of the crap that people's brain offers them, then what would I choose to believe?
My brain wants me to be like, well, you should just shut it down. Right? Like, my brain's like, you should just shut it dangly and people don't want it. But I'm like, no, because I know there is such value in this, and I understand the human psyche, and I understand that even investing in yourself, whether it's a dollar or whether it's $10,000, is always a huge decision to make.
And that you have to get over your own shit in order to pay that money, right in order to join something. So building self-belief in your abilities to succeed is your work. It is our life's work. We have to commit to doing it as nurses. Because here's the thing, if you don't believe in yourself to be able to leave the industry, you're just not gonna create it.
Okay? And I want that for you. I want you to see that you can do anything. , I don't even know you personally. Thank you for listening, . But I know that you can do that. How do I know that? Because other people have, and there's one thing that I've learned to be true, is that if there's somebody else in the world that's doing that, something that you want, you have a journey to go and fulfill that.
You can do that. And here's the thing, if they're not doing it and you can't find any evidence, create that. I've told this story before, but when I started my nurse career coaching journey, I was. Talking to my business coach at the time, and I was like, oh, I'm gonna start this nurse career coach. And she was like, incredible.
She was a career coach and she said to me, Liam, I don't think there's anybody doing this. And I was like, I can't find anybody. That's why I came to you. You're a non-clinical, you know, you're just a a career coach, you're not a nurse. And I think there's a huge need for this. And then I created it. And then of course, what happened?
The whole world showed me that there was no career coaches everywhere. Now, in that moment, I had a decision. believe in myself, believe in what I had to offer, believe in the experiences that I've had to be able to shape and help other people navigate their careers and keep pursuing it or stop because somebody else is doing it.
Off, like there's 9 billion people on the earth. I'm just gonna do my thing. I'm gonna choose to build a self-belief in myself. Okay? This is a daily practice. There are days where I'm like, this is not working. People don't get it. Coaching is new to nursing. They don't understand it. They think it's mentoring, they think I'm a charity.
And then there's other days where I'm like, I'm gonna revolutionize the. And I'm gonna change the shit out of healthcare, and I'm gonna be in hospitals, and I'm gonna transform culture, and I'm gonna show nurses what is possible in their career. I'm gonna show nurses that you can build a business.
I'm gonna show nurses that you can build amazing careers, that you can choose to love nursing. When I believe those positive thoughts and I practice. , I see tremendous results in my life, in my business, my mindset, my cognition, my all of the things. When I choose the opposite. I'm no good to an entity, no good to myself.
I don't go to the gym. I have an extra glass of wine, . I overindulge all of the things, right? This is a full circle. I talk about this all the time. Our thoughts create our feelings. Our feelings drive our actions, or inactions our actions in inactions create our results. It's how the world works. Okay? So when you choose to build your self-belief and you really practice believing it, and you surround yourself with people that encourage you, if you're not a member of our Facebook groups, come and join them.
Cause it's full of people that will encourage you and you need to surround yourself with these people that are doing big, big things. If you're a entrepreneur that's listening to this and you don't have a coach, a business coach, you need to come find yourself a business coach because you need to be surrounded.
I find that the more that I surround with people that are straight ahead of me. The more I learn, the more I grow, the more I become the version of me that I want to be, the more I become the future version of me. Yeah. When you don't have that belief in yourself, it is so much harder to navigate all of the shit that comes up when you make a change.
Okay. This is a huge change. Our brain thinks that it's like end of the world, like you are gonna like lose your house if you choose to leave nursing. I hope that I've committed you today that that's totally normal to think that, that that is true. It's not true. , your job is to collect all the evidence to prove to yourself why it's not true, and then you've just gotta go out and start exploring the number of people that come to me and say, Liam, I want to do something else.
I dunno what I'm gonna do. I'm like, have you looked no like, no or maybe I've been on seek. You have to be active. You have to consciously rewire and refocus your. , right?
So we've talked about self-leadership. We've talked about breaking free from the golden handcuffs. You know, if you do have mortgages, things like that.
Maybe sit down and do the work and go, okay, what would it look like if I chose to take six months off where I did agency, or I explored different pathways, or what would it look like if I took a pay cap? go there. Like, don't just fail ahead of time and think that it's not gonna happen and that you can't afford it.
Actually give yourself the data, right? Your brain will always tell you, you can't until you prove it that you can. And maybe once you've done the numbers, you don't like it, you don't like a reason why, and that's totally fine. At least you know, instead of cognitively beating yourself up and indulging in confusion for long periods of.
Dive in, get the data, and then make a decision. Okay? Data is so important for decisions we're gonna take the next step we're gonna explore. We're gonna acknowledge that. It's a huge, huge change. It was not easy for me to decide to leave that job paying me 165 K a year, but I just knew that I had something more to give.
I just knew there was something bigger and better out there for me. I just had to follow that calling. I didn't know what it was. I had to sit with a discomfort. Embrace that it's part of the human experience. If you think it's gonna be rainbows and daisies, you are gonna be stuck for the rest of your career and build your self-belief build like this is just a given for life As a human.
Start practicing intentionally what you want to believe about you. , your life, your career, your relationships, all of the things. I have coached people on everything. I can't get a part now. I don't make enough money. You know, I don't think that I can't do the dating world. Like all of the things your brain will give you all of the reasons why you can't do the thing that you want to do.
And it is your job and your job only to go out there and disprove your brain's bullshit. Your job to go out there and to create the life and the career and the worlds that you. It's your job to find the partner of your dreams. It's your job, right? Sounds a bit preachy, but I think we forget this. If you're anything like me, I forgot it.
I did not know this. I knew it at a deep, unconscious level, but I wasn't practicing it. Okay? It's your job to find a manager that doesn't treat you like shit. It's not their job. It's your job. It's your job to create the life that. Okay. It's totally possible for you too. So nursing, when you don't want a nurse anymore, is a complex, complex process, but of course, it is totally worthwhile.
It's worth you investing in yourself to get to the other side and to create the life that you want. I'll tell you what happened for me when I did this. My relationship with my partner. much, much better. I was not bitching, I was not cardio. I'm still a bit card , but I wasn't bitching, I wasn't complaining whining as much nearly as much as what I used to.
I would come home from work and I would feel much better, and I would be like, feel like I made an impact. My relationship with myself was so much better. I wasn't beating myself into submission. I wasn't indulging in these negative thoughts. I wasn't resenting everything that I was doing. I wasn't trying to decide ahead of time how he or she would beat me up or, you know.
Tell me that I was not good enough. All of the things with myself changed. I looked after myself better. I opened new doors. I began to see what was possible. I cut through my own bullshit. All of this is available to you too. So if you're a nurse and you want to explore what nursing outside of nursing looks like, book in a call with me, they're free.
There's no obligation to do anything. If I think I can help you, we'll talk about that. But otherwise, come and just chat. A lot of people come and talk to me. I love connecting with nurses. I love hearing what, what they're going through. I love normalizing that what they're going through is. Part of the, the human nurse experience and the love equipping them with some tools to move forward.
And if you think that it's a good fit, then we can work together and we can explore what that looks like. Okay? But the links in the bio, give yourself permission. If you're a nurse and you don't want a nurse anymore, don't nurse anymore, or learn to love nursing again, but in a different way, it's all possible.
I'll see you in the next one.
