I have identified three of the most common themes that I hear from Nurses that prevent them from moving forward from a business idea or a dream.
Those 3 things?
Time
Underdog Syndrome
No plan
Time
Time is an enigma, where does it go? Can anyone explain?
The battle with time is something we all experience – not enough hours in the day, days in the week etc..
What if I told you the best way to manage this issue was much simpler than you think. This is something you do every day at work without even considering it. Planning – that’s it , it really is as simple as that! How often you do this is up to you but the more frequently the better. The thing about planning is that things change all the time and in order to be effective at planning, you also need to be flexible. There’s lots of different tools that you can use to help you with prioritising and decision making. I have adapted a famous tool called the Eisenhower matrix and the reason I’ve adapted it, is to make it simpler to understand, 4 simple categories:
Do
Decide
Delegate
Delete
However you choose to do it, planning prioritising, then re planning and reprioritising will help you to max out your time.
My other key tips are to be realistic, in fact, don’t be realistic – underestimate. One of the most demotivating things is when you don’t achieve your plan. If you underestimate what you can do you avoid this pitfall. If you run ahead of schedule – guess what you can do more and that just makes you feel amazing!
Another big piece of advice I have is to ensure that you build in what I call ‘dead time’.
Dead time is when you should be doing something but your brain is not engaging, energy levels are low, no given reason things just do not fall into place as they were meant to. Dead time is an inevitable fact of life- it just happens. You might be knee deep in a stranger’s Facebook profile or perhaps you are window shopping for a villa in the Maldives or maybe even browsing everything you needed to know about how to bake the finest loaf! The sooner you accept dead time & factor it in the quicker you will learn to recognise it when it creeps up and even use it to switch to practical no-brain-required tasks that need to be done around the home.
Then I’ll try and stop myself and do something like a brainless task that I know need to do. And so whether it’s the ironing or sorting out a cupboard or whatever it is. And that way you’re kind of using that dead time. Yeah, it’s not what you wanted to be doing and you haven’t achieved that thing, but you achieved something and it’s cut off that kind of, as I say, that rabbit hole thing where you just, especially
Underdog Syndrome
Now look, you know that this is one of my favourite topics!
If you don’t know what I mean by underdog syndrome, you need to check out my podcast!
Underdog syndrome is, I believe, something that is really, really common to nursing. It can become a blockade to progressing. So I feel that, as a profession that nurses do spend very little time on themselves and that over long periods of time, that can mean that you start to lose sight of what your own dreams and ambitions and goals are because you’re so busy looking after other people and thinking about what other people need before you, that it can diminish dreams and desires that you have personally.
Added to this, some nurses suffer with guilt around what is perceived as self-indulgence – “Should I really be wasting time on pursuing something that isn’t a hundred percent necessary, when I could be spending that time on somebody else or doing something more practical?” Feeling guilty about spending time on something that isn’t directly related to your work role, or to your home role. This can be very much tied in with the mantra of putting yourself second. Now, throw in some self-consciousness and we have “Me?… Who do I think I am?”
Our nagging inner voice, “Hey, you’re a nurse, get on with being a nurse. What else is there?”. Last but by no means least, there is our perpetual fear of failure, which everybody suffers with to a degree. “What if this doesn’t go well? What if it’s not successful? I’m going to look like an idiot. I can’t do that. I don’t want to risk that humiliation, that embarrassment.”
Nurses spend a lot of time around people that are in unfortunate situations through ill health, which gives us a real consciousness about how lucky we are as individuals, because we have a big awareness of the difficulties that some people encounter in their lives.
This gratitude is a great thing in small doses, in large doses, it can start to hold you back.
“I should feel grateful. I should feel really grateful for what I’ve got and where am I am. I’m lucky that I’m fit and well, and I’m working and I’ve got my family and I’ve got my friends and dah dah dah.” And that kind of mentality again, can almost be like a comfort blanket and a retreat from having to try anything new or put yourself out there – a really good reason not to do anything!
Will we feel less of a nurse in the want of kind of pursuing anything that isn’t seen as conventional nursing. “Am I still a good nurse? Am I less of a nurse because I’m having conversations about money or thinking I might like to do something that isn’t necessarily rule about everybody else?” And that kind of way of thinking, as I’ve said before, it’s a thing. It comes from the people around us. It comes our own selves. It comes from other nurses. It’s just this weird entrenched thing that as a nurse, we’re kind of morally superior beings in some way or something like that. And by doing anything that might kind of negate our kind of desire for beneficence and all of those kinds of things, that can make us less than us. So again, these are things that are good to be aware of and are there. But if you let them kind of really take over you, then they can be things that start to pin you down and define you, instead of you allowing yourself to define yourself.
All of these can be managed in part by use of mindfulness and positive mindset mantras. It may sound corny but it’s true! Imagine if it was your friend saying to you, “Look, I’ve had an idea about doing this.” How would you respond? Would you mock & laugh? Hell, no, you would be full of encouragement and enthusiasm. Is it too much to ask that you treat yourself the same way?
Actively turning those negative self thoughts around, “Why shouldn’t it be me? I am good enough. I work really hard. I deserve this. I can do this. I am brave.” This kind of deliberate, purposeful mind shift can get rid of that fog and the cobwebs of all those little gremlin voices.
You can also help yourself by surrounding yourself with a positive network, which is part of what EntrepreNurse is aiming to do for you. To be that supportive environment where ideas can be bounced without feeling ridiculous or feeling silly because there’s other people in the group that are having the same kinds of thoughts and ideas. Not every idea that you have might be great or might be right.
It boils down to simply saying ‘yes’. I am going to allow myself to consider that I could do something slightly out of the ordinary and just by giving yourself that kind of permission. It can change the way that you think, it can change the way that you see things around you, just open your brain, open your mind, open your heart to different scenarios for you and different opportunities for you. Say Yes!
No Solid Plan
Here, you will fall into one of three categories
- I know exactly what I want to do
- I have a few ideas of what to do
- I have no idea of what to do
Which one is you? It really doesn’t matter to a degree.
The whole point of being an EntrepreNurse and engaging in this environment is where you start the tweaking down, the honing down of all of these ideas. Maybe you do start out knowing exactly what you want to do. But there’s nothing to say that that plan might ebb and change and be crafted slightly differently as you go along, as things materialise.
Having a few ideas. Great, you can bounce those different ideas around. Some of them will be unfeasible, others won’t.
Lastly the “I have no idea.” It’s no problem, it’s why you’re here. It’s time to get creative, allow yourself to think! The EntrepreNurse community is here to help you grow and develop.
So my three main roadblocks, that I have come across in talking to different Nurses who have shown an interest in starting something up, however flimsy or however solid, I would say are time, underdog syndrome and not having a solid plan.
I’m certain by now, it’s pretty obvious, but the root of all this, it’s really just that the biggest of all the roadblocks is YOU!
In other words, all of these things are blocks in your mind that you choose, to an extent, to live by that you choose to an extent, to allow you to stop from progressing and to an extent, choose to not see that there is a way around them.
Now is the time to challenge everything and rethink your future!