Nurses can make a difference

[dottimur]

i am reading a book by marianne williamson called the gift of change. her premise is that we have a choice to live in fear which is ego based and self centered or love based. another way to look at it is to look at things based on perception (ego) or knowledge (love). she says our society is very fear/ego/anxiety driven but doesn't need to be and that if we make a change we can impact those around us. i love her analogy about butterfly wings...

"since all minds are joined, conflict between any two of us contributes to war, and reconciliation between any two of us takes us closer to world peace. our smallest judgment adds to war, and our smallest forgiveness adds to peace....the butterfly's wing in south america affect the wind patterns at the north pole, and thoughts of true peace in idaho affect plans for peace in palestine. what an extraordinary opportunity as well as responsibility we have, to try to get it right."

what this brings to my mind is that who we are to our patients (and others we meet today) can impact many lives either positively or negatively. may i go out in the world today in love.

[NRSKarenRN, BSN, RN]

thanks for brining this authors thoughts to us!

found some of her writings here: the gift of change by marianne williamson

very applicable to nurses.

the challenge to grow

whether we like it or not, life today is different in ways we never expected. the speed of change today is faster than the human psyche seems able to handle, and it's increasingly difficult to reconcile the rhythms of our personal lives with the rapidity of a twenty-four-hour news cycle.

dramatic endings and beginnings seem more prevalent than usual. birth, death, divorce, relocation, aging, career change—not to mention the fact that the world itself seems so irrevocably altered—all seem to hail some kind of sea change. things we thought stable and secure seem less so, and things we thought distant possibilities have come strangely close. many people feel right now like we're jumping out of our skin. it's gone way past uncomfortable into a haunting sense that we might be living a lie.

it's not that our relationships lack integrity or our careers don't truly jive with our deepest soul purpose. it's deeper than that - some sense that reality is like a layer of cellophane separating us from a truly magical existence. we feel some loss of meaning like a sickness we can't shake. we would love to burst out, as though we've been crouching in a small box for a long time. we ache to spread our arms and legs and backs, to throw our heads back, to laugh with glee at the feel of sunshine on our faces. we can't remember when we last did that. or when we did, it was like taking a vacation, visiting a tourist attraction. the most marvelous things about life don't seem to make up the fabric of our normal existence anymore. or maybe they never did. we're not sure. ...

the times in which we live call for fundamental change, not merely incremental change. millions of people feel called in their souls to the task of global transformation, wanting to be its agents in a monumental shift from a world of fear to a world of love. we can feel the time is now, and we know we're the ones to do it. the only problem is, we don't exactly know how.

hopefully our discussions here and the lived experience of many 10, 20 and 50 year lpn's and rn's help each other create a new working healthcare environment along with full life!

in my state, i sense a fundamental shift to fully included rn's in all healthcare decisions. we need to seize the opportunity and get credit for the healthcare contributions we've been making for the past 100+ years!