Episode 7: Living Your Purpose

This transcript was generated automatically. Its accuracy may vary.

Cara Lunsford

Oh, hey, nurses. Welcome to the Nurse Dot podcast, giving nurses validation resources and hope. One episode at a time. Oh, today on Nurse Dot podcast.

Chris Recinos

I literally remember running up to her and crying and everybody was like, What the hell is going on? And I was like, You, it's your fault. You're the reason I'm a nurse.

Joining us today, Dr. Chris Racine is a former chief nurse executive at a hospital in Southern California, founder of the Nurse Leader Network, mother to five incredible kids and mental health advocate. Chris shares stories of how she went from foster kid to nurse executive of a major health system and what she learned along the way. I'm your host.

Kara Lunsford registered nurse and VP of community at Nurse Ecom.

You are one of my favorite people on the planet. Chris Racine, us.

Chris Recinos

Kara, you're one of my favorite people on the planet. I think because we're equally like, insane. And we both have the audacity and we pull that audacity on a regular basis.

Cara Lunsford

Yes, Yes. 100%. You also have a much cooler nose ring than I have. Mine is like a traditional, you know, like, just like the good old fashioned, like through the nares.

Chris Recinos

Yeah, like a bull. So I was like, let me let me get. I actually have wanted this piercing since I was like, you know, 20 years old, But I was always in nursing positions and was like, this is not appropriate. And then, you know, when the pandemic hit and I was like a chief nurse executive, I was like, Yeah, I'm wearing a mask.

24 seven And they will not know what is under the mask. And so as a chief nurse executive, I went in, pierced my nose, and then just kept covered with my mask.

Cara Lunsford

Yes, you did. I don't think I knew that part of the story. I just, like all of a sudden one day saw you and was like, Hey, look at that nose ring. Yeah.

Chris Recinos

And your Toro tattoos, right? Like, I had to go with the whole person on it right now. So we're good now.

Cara Lunsford

That's something you and I have in common. We both have a lot of tattoos. You actually. I think more than I do. First of all, how many tattoo? How many tattoos do you have?

Chris Recinos

Oh, I don't count them. When you have, like, sleeves and you just don't even. I don't even know. Already covered, though.

Cara Lunsford

Why you wanted the sleeve.

Chris Recinos

It doesn't count. You just have a bunch.

Cara Lunsford

You just have sleeves. Yeah. Like, that's it. Like, you can't really count them because they all kind of blend in to one another, and. And there's no point. You're just sleeved at that point.

Chris Recinos

And then we would have to start talking about cover ups. Like, how many do we count the cover ups or do we not count the cover ups? Because most of them are cover ups of maybe people's names that I was married to or not married to? I don't know.

Cara Lunsford

Maybe. Maybe that's true.

Chris Recinos

So we have to get really technical here because, you know, we are technical people. And so, you know, that just depends. The question depends on the actual answer. I answer depends on the specifics of the question.

Cara Lunsford

I think what what our listeners are learning at this moment is that anybody can end up being a chief nurse executive or a VP of community for that matter, that, you know, it could be you.

Chris Recinos

It could be you. And, you know, I remember when when I first was thinking about going into administration, I was kind of like, you know, you have to fit like a certain mold and all of the people that I saw in executive positions were, you know, like late fifties. They had certain backgrounds. They had worked in hospitals. They all kind of fit a similar mold.

And I was like, I'll never fit that mold. I'm just girl group and foster care. Super rough around the edges like drops F-bomb entirely. Too much probably is inappropriate at times, and I just don't know that I could rein it in enough to, like, keep it together. And then I got to the top and realize we're all a hot mess.

Every single one of us is a hot mess. They are hot messes in disguise. That's that's what it is. So, I mean, I think the hotter the mess, like, the more controversy you can bring in, the bigger perspectives you can bring to the organization. And so I don't know. I feel like, you know, I thought there was a type and there's not really a type.

We all kind of bring something unique to it, and it's kind of cool to see that you could, you know, come from being a foster kid and having a kid at 14 and like basically do whatever it is that you choose to do. There's no like limit. You are your own limit.

Cara Lunsford

You dropped into that message very casually. I will say that you are a foster kid. You grew up in that system. You also had a child very young. So lots of growing up in ways that are maybe a little unorthodox or nontraditional, as they might say. And maybe that's a good thing to kind of kick you off with, because I am going to have you dive into everything that you have done, which is remarkable in and of itself.

All the things you're passionate about, the work that you're doing for nurses, and a big focus of today's episode is all of that stuff that you do that breaks the mold, all the things that you do to be relatable and how you take that and how you help nurses to sustain this practice. I'll just go out there and say, like, we went on to this call and we actually had no idea what we were going to talk about.

We're like, You know what? Let's wing it because you and I can do that.

Chris Recinos

We can do that. And anytime we talk, we always come back to like the root of, you know, what is our purpose in terms of how we show up for others and how to help others find their own purpose in a way where they're not self-destructing. Right. And so I think we just kind of came on like it's going to work because it always works.

And, you know, sometimes when you're underprepared, you're over preparing or over preparing and underprepared. I don't know what the thing is because we're really close to Christmas and I'm thinking about my Christmas gift right now. So, you know, we are here and we just have, you know, so much to kind of share, I think, with folks. And so we were like, okay, we're not going to like pick just one topic.

We're going to talk about all the topics, every single one of them, maybe not every single one of it, because we could be here all day.

Cara Lunsford

But yeah, but there's a lot of personal stuff you and I have both been through that has also allowed us and helped us to work with other people, mentor them and truly come in and be a resource to this community that we both love, which is the nurse community. Tell me and tell our listeners a little bit about who you are, how you grew up.

Like School of Hard Knocks, right? Like that brought you to where you are today.

Chris Recinos

Yeah. So a lot of that about me. My name's Dr. Christmas Ninos and I, you know, like I shared, I kind of grew up really rough and rugged and started off in foster care and had a baby at 14 and kind of the story I share with people around why I chose nursing was back in that time, and it might even be happening now.

Who knows? You know, you were a foster kid and when you had to be hospitalized, you were dropped off at a hospital. And then they said, give us a call when they're discharged. And so you didn't really write. There's no parents to sit with you. There's no nobody. Right. And so I get dropped off and, you know, I'm told, well, you know, you're 42 weeks pregnant.

And I was like, whatever that means. And they were like, So we got to induce you. And I was like, Oh, whatever that means. And you're the baby's going to come out like, okay, cool, let's do this. And so, you know, I go in for this induction. You know, at the time I was 15, I got pregnant 14 or 15 and had zero clue what was going on right.

And the person that was there with me was my nurse. She literally was like, okay, we're going to be doing this and we're going to be doing that, and this is how it's going to feel. And I was like, Oh my God, this really hurts. Like you put some stuff on me and I'm having contractions and effects and like I wanted to stuff, right?

And so she did all of that. And then I was like, okay, this is great. And then, you know, she, I was just like, wow. Like, I really want to make people feel the way she made me feel. And then it's even crazier because then I go back into the foster system and they have a nurse at my foster home.

It was a group home and this nurse literally taught me everything. Okay, You got to believe I was giving my baby a bath on the carpet, literally, like did not know I was afraid. I was in a diaper in the tub and I didn't wanna give her a shower. And so I just put it on the carpet and I was pouring water on my kid, you know, at like three days old, whatever it was like, didn't.

No, not, not, don't get them. They didn't know anything. And so this nurse name is Jennifer. She showed me everything. She showed me how to breastfeed at 15. She told me why it was important to breastfeed. She helped me give this baby like the baby was impacted. At some point, she literally taught me like how to be a mom.

So this woman did this, and I was like, That's what I do and become a nurse. And part of the story was once I became a chief nurse executive, like I had just started the job and I was giving a speech to congratulate this unit. And they had done this, you know, phenomenal work on patient experience and things like that.

And I'm giving a speech and then I look over and I see this person and she's looking at me and I'm looking at her and she's like about to start crying. And I'm like, Oh, I worked with her. Like, I know I worked with her and like, I'm trying to pinpoint like, if we go to school together, like we're doing work for her.

And then I think it hit us both. She was that nurse. She was Jennifer. I became, you know, her her boss and Central's chief nurse executive and literally remember running up to her and crying. And everybody was like, what the hell is going on? And I was like, you, it's your fault. You're the reason I'm a nurse. Like, I did this because of you.

And so it was like, beautiful, was really cool. Like she was like I had no idea the impact they had on you. And I had no any of this. Right. But it was just took that little thing for me to become what I became. And like, when you're thinking about what you do every day as a nurse, like you really don't understand a little tiny detail that you think is just like your day to day job and how you are influencing other people.

And so anyways, I've kind of like my background story, full circle kind of thing, but I, you know, graduated and after I got my bachelor's, I was like, okay, that's not enough. I won't be able to prescribe. And I got a master's. And after that I was like, I actually want to research and I kind of wanna be called, you know, Doctor, I want a Ph.D. after my name and ended up going and doing that.

And, you know, it was just kind of a crazy roller coaster. I became a nurse executive in my thirties, which at the time was unheard for at the organization that I worked for and just kind of had a lot going on. And, you know, I participated in this nurse hackathon. And if you are not aware of nurse hackathons now, I'm going to do the commercial.

I'm not getting paid by this. I don't need to do any type of sponsorships or anything. But if you have not heard of Nurse Hack for Health, I highly recommend that you check it out. But I did this nurse hackathon where I was able to come up with this idea around a suicide prevention act because I had lost my daughter to suicide a couple of years prior to that.

And it just launched everything. It launched like my idea for the app. It launched my idea for becoming a nurse entrepreneur. And at that point, pandemic was happening. And it was just time for me to say what really is my purpose and my purpose was to do things that were bigger than just being entrepreneurs executive at one location.

And so I now have a business nurse leader network and a podcast Newsline. Eric, where I teach other nurses how to lead, and that doesn't need to be a formal type of leadership. It can be any leading from where you are. But I also teach people how to lead organizations, and I teach nurses how to become entrepreneurs and make money so that they can fulfill their purpose to So and it all happened because I had a baby at 14 and had this terrific nurse.

And so I'm like, Shout out to her again, Jennifer, I love you and I hope you're listening.

Cara Lunsford

What I also love about you is that you can fit about an hour's worth of a podcast into the first 10 minutes, which is amazing. When you invite Dr. Chris Pacino's on your podcast, you get a real bang for your buck. I'm basically going to get like four podcasts worth of information all into like this 30 minute segment for sure.

Chris Recinos

Absolutely. Hundred percent.

Cara Lunsford

Hello nurses, I'm your nurse dot com girl Are you tired burned out listless are you looking for peer support? The answers to all your problems are in this little website Nurse dot com News.com contains community allies, resources and education with nurse dot com you can browse your way to health. It's so easy too. So why don't you join the millions of thriving nurses who have their nurse life all in one place and check out nurse dot com today.

That's nurse dot com. Oh first of all I'm going to say when you mentioned about being in the foster system just last night, I had a gentleman come over to the house. He had done a post on next door saying I will do any kind of work anywhere for any amount of money and I am a single foster dad, He's in his thirties.

He's fostered seven infants in the last two years. He's currently fostering a ten year old and he's like, All I want to do is just be able to give these kids what they haven't had. And so he came over and we were trying to find things for him to do so that he could make some money. And this morning we bought a Christmas tree and a Nintendo switch for the ten year old.

And first of all, he had never had a tree. Wow. And the only thing he really wanted was this Nintendo switch. And this guy who is just this beautiful man, he's part of the LGBTQ community, he just wants to do something wonderful in the world and contribute. So he has like just dedicated his life to taking in these foster kids.

So when I was hearing you talk about your foster experience and then having this experience with this guy last night and and everything, I just I don't know, my heart kind of swells a little bit. And what I like to think of is that the impact that you have or can have on someone's life like this nurse had on your life set you on a path to become a very successful person.

And the fact that you lost your daughter, the very daughter that we speak of in the beginning of this podcast, that you lost her to suicide and you actually were the one that first told me, and I have since used this all along, that we don't say committed suicide. I think that's a huge learning experience for me because I did have a friend who died from suicide and I now am very, very conscious of how I say that.

Can you actually tell just tell the listeners really quickly, like why you don't say committed suicide?

Chris Recinos

Absolutely. So So I actually didn't know this myself, right? Even when my daughter died, I remember like going to grief groups and I was like, oh, my daughter committed suicide. And I just kind of was like saying that. And then I took a mental health first aid class and they let us know that we shouldn't utilize that type of language because it's very stigmatizing.

So you commit murder, right? You commit rape, you come in all of these terrible, horrible things. But when you die of suicide, we treat it negatively as if you have done something that is to commit. Right. Something that is, you know, worthy of going to jail for versus treating it like something that is curable because suicide is preventable or versus treating it like somebody who has an issue such as cancer or something like that where, you know, it's a medical condition.

When people decide to take their lives, it's because they see no other option. And so we don't want for them to not only not see another option, but also feel stigmatized and guilty about having these feelings. And so it's really important for us to start the communication around like, you are not bad because you have these thoughts. One in ten kids between the ages of ninth and 12th grade have had thoughts of dying, or they've created a plan of dying or they've died of suicide.

One in five people has a mental health issue. It's so common. But we hide it in, hushed it, and say things like committed. And then we just reinforce the fact that you're bad, you're wrong, you're doing something wrong versus really supporting people that are in need that we would never see committed death by cancer. And so why are we doing that with suicide?

So it's really inappropriate to say things like committed suicide and instead we should say people died by suicide. We shouldn't also say things like they were successful in their attempt at suicide. It's never a success when somebody dies of suicide. And so we want to say things like they completed suicide versus they were successful in their attempt because a successful attempt is not something that's successful.

Cara Lunsford

Part of what we do in this in this podcast is validation, resources and hope one episode at a time. That's our thing. And for me, a big part of validation is speaking your truth, putting it all out there for everyone to see, including yourself. Because when we do that individually and collectively, I think we start to realize that we're not so alone for sure.

We start off with that validation of, you know what? Life is hard. Sometimes we have to overcome obstacles, and many times those obstacles that we overcome are what make us who we are. We would really not evolve as a human race if we did not have obstacles to overcome. Right.

Chris Recinos

There's there's a really cool TEDTalk on and at one TEDTalk. But it talks about like people wanting to be happy. Right. And like, not being sustainable or happy as an emotion. Right. And it'd be very inappropriate to be happy all the time. Right? We can't be happy, right? Like if somebody dies, however, that's what we are striving for.

I want to be happy all the time in this relationship. I want to be happy at my work. I want to be happy all the time. And the reality is that we really shouldn't be seeking happiness or even joy, but we should be seeking meaning. Because when we find our meaning and our purpose, that is what carries us through and keeps us resilient through the times where we can't be happy.

Right? Because it's not a purpose to be happy. However, your purpose and your meaning are usually derived from a time of challenge and tribulation. And so we say we want to be happy, and then people go chasing these superficial things to be happy, right? I'm looking at my lips and I'm like, Cute. I'm going to go get this degree.

I'm going to go get this title, whatever it is, superficial and then wonder like, I woke up one day as a chief executive. I'm not kidding. I literally like towards the end I had a son who was struggling. I was working like 60 to 80 hours a week during that pandemic. And I literally pulled up to work and I started crying on my steering wheel.

And I was like, I hope none of my nurses see me. And I just I couldn't do it anymore. And it was because I had looked for getting those gold stars. I want the five gold stars to be all the best. I want the body and I want the nurse exact title, and I want to be able to help all these nurses and do all these, do all the things.

And I wasn't taking care of me and I wasn't fulfilling my own purpose. Right? My purpose really was being a mom to my kids. It was not missing their PTA meetings. I wasn't filling my purpose and I wasn't living my values. And so we have to really start reflecting on not chasing happiness because happiness is fleeting but really chasing purpose.

And if you don't know where to start, you need to go back and look at where were the times of trail in my life? Where were the times of challenge in my life? And by having these challenges, you really can find your purpose and it's going to make you feel so much better than you could even have ever imagined in comparison to happiness.

Cara Lunsford

I could not agree with you more. I find that when people ask me what is the feeling that you are looking for the most? And it's usually contentment. Usually when I feel content, right, it's when I'm doing the things that fill me up that are really feeding my soul and I am living my purpose.

Chris Recinos

Yeah, you know, a quick way to check, to see, you know, like, am I doing the thing for, like, happiness or is this something that's bringing me like, maybe contentment or meaning when we're looking for things that are going to be happy, it's usually things that people do for us. So, you know, I get a job or I get a degree in something and then, you know, like now I have a title that people are going to, you know, respect me more.

Whereas meaning usually is something that you are doing for others. And so and sometimes I want you to not think that you're always self giving and, you know, giving, giving, giving. Sometimes by doing something for others is by saying no to them. Because you need to say yes to yourself because you can't show up as your best self for them if you are constantly giving.

And so, you know, check like, am I doing things that are in alignment with being happy or am I doing things in alignment with fulfilling my purpose?

Cara Lunsford

I think what you just said is so important setting boundaries for yourself. It sets an example for someone else. I know that when my friends who have great boundaries will set a boundary, I'm like, You know, I want to do that. Like I need to be like that. Like it feels good on my side to have friends around me who have really incredible boundaries.

Why? Because then it takes a lot of pressure off. You are being good to yourself and it is so refreshing as the person on the receiving end of that boundary to know that if I ask you to go out to dinner, it is because you absolutely want to go to dinner with me and because there is nothing else that you have promised yourself that you are going to do and you are not putting those things aside to do something else.

And so I just I think that that's really refreshing. And I appreciate the fact that when we set boundaries, we're we're doing it for ourselves, but we're also showing people how to do it.

Chris Recinos

Yeah, for sure. And it's something I think that a lot of nurses struggle with because we're in a caring profession and we always give and give and give. But, you know, when I have nurses come to me and they are like, I'm not getting the results I want or, you know, completely burned out, I remember hearing it as a nurse.

Exactly. I keep my staff are like burned out, you know, And I tell them the same thing that my therapist told me when I was like, why are there no good men on the planet? Like, all these men suck like hell. What did I do? Like, where's the cute guy? Where's the good guy that And she's like, Chris, you know the common denominator.

You're not the one that is setting the boundaries around what is acceptable and not acceptable. And that is the same thing I tell the nurses, You're stressed on your burnout because you aren't controlling the things in your life that are controllable. You're allowing other people to control them. And so then you feel the burnout. We talk about burnout and health care.

Yes, the staffing is always going to be short. In short, since before our birth, the issues are always going to be there and you need to control what is within your control. So, yes, we can get involved politically. I recommend that I do that. But before you even do that, you put the mask on yourself, before you put the mask on anybody else.

And so what can you control about your situation? There's a lot. But people give up their control or don't realize, right? I remember somebody telling me, you know, I have like 10,000 emails getting all like I like 30,000 e-mails a day or whatever, right? And I was like, and guess what I do? I tell my staff, I only check emails twice a day.

So you send me an email. Do not expect to get an urgent response. If you need something urgent, you send me a text and I empower you to make a choice. If it's not going to kill somebody and we can fix it, make the choice and come back to me and let me know how you learned or how you didn't learn.

I empowered people. And guess what? My emails dropped by like 70% because people knew I didn't get on email. It's not important. It's not a priority for me. And if you have a priority, there's other ways that you can communicate with me so that I'm not wasting my time on email. Right? Bam. Solution. I am no longer spending 6 hours a day trying to go through emails when I should be doing other things right.

So it's all about mindset and about like really controlling what you can control and not giving that power away to other people.

Cara Lunsford

So yeah, I would have I would have worked for you in a hot second, but also I probably would have been like that person who came to you and been like, Let me tell you about this thing I did.

Chris Recinos

And I want to know about the thing you did, because that might be something, right, that we can share with others and increase some, you know, satisfaction or efficiency or whatever. Right? So, I mean, but that frees you up from doing things that is not the right work for you to be doing, and that's going to contribute to your burnout.

Cara Lunsford

I think what some of the nurses are facing right now is that maybe they don't have that type of leadership, the type of leadership that you just explained that you used to do, which is empowerment. You empowered your managers, your staff not micromanaging and not being a control freak, not needing to be the most important or the smartest person in the room is a true sign of leadership.

And the fact that the results that you got were less emails to you. And I would venture to say probably more action on behalf of your your staff that they were actually doing things instead of asking to do things.

Chris Recinos

Yeah. Have you talked to any burnout expert or any any expert on employee satisfaction at all? That that's how you create employee satisfaction is by letting them take pride in their work, by letting them get invested in their work and by letting them own that work.

Cara Lunsford

And that trickles down to nurses at the bedside and empowering them to be able to do the work that they signed up to do. I've interviewed a lot of people recently, and one was a nurse who'd been a nurse for like 40 years. She said, You know, that's one of the main differences that I see between when I was a nurse 40 years ago and what nurses are doing today, She said.

Even though part of my job was giving up my seat to the doctor and going and running and getting coffee for him and emptying his ashtray because he was smoking at the nurses station, she's like, My main job was to hold space for my patients, to be there for them and to truly be a nurse. And this was during a time when taking blood pressures was considered crude, way outside the scope of practice for a nurse that how dare they think that they can take a blood pressure.

That's something only a doctor does. But the work that she was able to do was to actually be there at the bedside, holding hands, talking to them, explaining what was going on around them, even though maybe the doctors didn't think the nurses knew what they were talking about behind closed doors. Those nurses were explaining to those patients what was happening and they were smart and they were helping to navigate from maybe this very subordinate position.

Right. But they were silently creating a safe space for patients. And I think that that filled them up. They were doing meaningful work.

Chris Recinos

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there's so many factors. God, we could talk forever. Yeah, we can talk about charting. We can talk about just complexity, right? Like all of these different complex issues that are we're just not seeing, like what we would traditionally see in med surge before, Right? These patients are getting discharged, right? You're getting your like or I have at home, like, whatever it is I'm making it up.

But whether it's 40 years ago or it's today or it's 50 years from now, you got to take responsibility and accountability for the things that are within your sphere of control. Then you need to also remember that the reason that nursing, you know, is not as vocal as some other organizations medicine, even though we're in the millions and medicine is in the hundreds of thousands, is because we do not band together.

We just don't. It's her job. No, somebody else is going to do it. Nope. There's some blue haired lady in the capital that's going to take care of everything for nursing, and that's just not the reality of things, right? So we need to remind ourselves that it doesn't matter that you're 20 years old and right out of nursing school, you can literally become a mayor of a city or whatever and really take that city under control and get it into where it needs to be When it comes to homelessness and health care, population and management and all reimbursement, there's just so much that you can do as a nurse and we tend to sit back

and say, Now somebody else is going to do it, right?

Cara Lunsford

Yeah, it is our job to show the true nature of how things are. The organization, the hospital is not going to truly understand where their deficiencies are until you start using your professional boundaries, putting them into effect so that the hospital or wherever you work can have a true understand ing of where they stand.

Chris Recinos

Yeah, absolutely. And to add on to that, closed mouths don't get fed, so get annoying. Get annoying because those are the people that get listen to. Right? And so those are people that make a change, right? We think about people who have just made significant change in the world and they weren't the people that stayed quiet and took no for an answer.

There were people that ruffled feathers. And so sometimes you just got to open up perspectives a little bit. And you can do that by letting your voice be heard and not taking no for an answer.

Cara Lunsford

Perfectly said. Oh. Coming up in our next segment.

Chris Recinos

All the faculty are going to hate me for saying this, but your number one priority is not school. Oh.

Cara Lunsford

Welcome to a segment we call the DOD spot, where you will hear more of your voice and a little less of mine. You can visit nurse dot com forward slash podcast to share stories, feedback and requests. As a valued listener, you will also receive discounts on nurse dot com courses and C use by using code nurse dot at the checkout.

So today on the dot spot we are featuring registered nurse Sarah Warren from Don't Clock Out, a nonprofit organization founded in 2022 in response to the tragic suicide of registered nurse Michael O'Dell.

Sarah Warren

Don't clock Out is working to be able to build a national peer to peer support line for nurses, nursing students and seniors. We're hoping to be able to complete that within the next year. We also work on anti-stigma campaigns for all health care workers, and our messaging is to create a culture of community and peer support in health care so that people remember that they are not alone.

They deserve support. And overall, you must remember that you are your most important patient.

Cara Lunsford

If you are a nurse experiencing burnout crisis or just could benefit from peer support, don't Clock Out is working to build a digital platform and provide evidence based peer support. In the meantime, if you or someone near you is experiencing a crisis, please go to your nearest emergency room or call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at one 800 2738255 to get support during a crisis or text the word home to 741741.

I think the major thing that we take away from this is that we lean in on our hard times. We learn from them. Those are the things that are going to provide us with tools and resources. And sometimes the harder your life, the more tools and resources you've ended up with which you know can help you in a lot of ways to grow as a person.

Honoring yourself. Research, getting yourself, valuing yourself and everything you do in life, putting it up against those things and saying, you know what? This thing that I'm about to do or this thing I'm about to say yes to, am I already resentful? And I haven't even said yes yet.

Chris Recinos

Yeah, I teach at a university and that's exactly what I teach my students. I say, okay, guys, listen, all the faculty are going to hate me for saying this, but your number one priority is not school. You are a PI composed of a variety of different things. And if your dog is sick, if your mom is dying, if your priorities are going to shift while you're in school.

And my expectation is that you just communicate what those things are so that we can get you to nursing school. But I really take this pleasure when we try to tell nursing students that school is a priority because the reality is and they're going to take that into the workplace and then their work is going to be pride in and that's why they're burning out.

And we have one in three nurses leaving nursing profession after graduation. So it's not it's really not the priority priorities are going to shift based on what's going on in an individual's life. And and I would even go a little further, you know, where you said when you're looking at like your values, does it resonate with you? Sometimes For some of us, we do.

Let's say, for example, somebody asks you to do your shift. We are going to say yes because it creates an anxiety within us. And so we get immediate relief by saying yes and hunker that anxiety down, even though it's not giving us the satisfaction or getting us to where we want to go. Right. So I want to be with my family, but I need to immediately get rid of that anxiety and have that immediate relief.

So sometimes when you're doing that, values check, you will get that initial satisfaction, right? That doesn't mean that it's the right thing to do. And so it can kind of be kind of conflicting. You have to really hunker down and say, okay, is this behavior what I'm doing? Maybe it is giving me any satisfaction, but is it getting you know, is it getting me to where it is that I'm trying to go?

And if the answer is no, then you need to sit with that that uncomfortableness and take the decision that's going to get you to where the satisfaction is. So something I've recently learned.

Cara Lunsford

I feel like this is going to be like part one to like three parts of a podcast. But I know that you have to like run off if you have to pick up your kids, but I just want to say thank you for sharing your personal stories.

Chris Recinos

Yeah, I mean, I think the biggest thing, like if you took nothing away from anything that we talked about or if you just like skipped through all of the middle and you're like, I just want the five last 5 seconds. Like, what's going on? I would say that a lot of us talk about like work life balance, especially in the United States.

We are trained to, from a very early age to fit our things that matter to us around work or around school. Right. And then that leads to us not living our values or not being where we want to be. And I challenge you to think about what life or work balance would look like. I challenge you to sit down today and really think about what do you want your life to look like?

You know, if you had Cinderella's fairy godmother come and tap you on the head and you're like, Where? You know, where do I want to go? What do I want to be? I don't think about the job, but think about like, what would you do? What do you want on your headstone to be remembered by? What is that meaningful purpose like?

What do you want that one liner to be? I remember Chris Pacino's four blank. Like, what do you want that to be? And then I challenge you to start designing your life because you can take control of so much more than you really think that you can take control of. And once you do, you're going to be living this life that you could have only imagined, right?

You're like, Oh my God, I thought it was only on Instagram. Like, No, you are going to be living a life that really brings you so much joy and so much peace because you have designed it and only you know what's right for you.

Cara Lunsford

Make up. And that's a wrap, my friends. Thank you, Chris. I am so happy that I had you on today and I'm so glad that we just ran with it. It was so fun to just like riff with you, be like, You know what? It's all going to come out. It's all going to just unfold as it is meant to.

And it did. And so and I think that that's your alarm saying that you need to go.

Chris Recinos

It was great to be here, Karen. Thank you. And thank you to all the listeners. You know, I think they just got a peek into like when we go out to dinner, what we talk about and the things that go on in our mind. So, you know, it is just great to be here. I appreciate.

Cara Lunsford

It. I appreciate you, man. I.