As I shared in my original post, ‘Words of Wisdom: The Best Nursing Advice Ever Received‘, my intention is to highlight nurses who have helped, inspired, and shared great wisdom with me along my nurse entrepreneur journey.

Today I introduce you to my friend and colleague, Erica MacDonald. Erica is an entrepreneur and educator. As a clinical nurse, Erica received a bachelors and master’s degree (nursing education). Her nurse educator experience included Nurse Academic Coaching and Childbirth Education.

In 2012, Erica launched her first website. She blogged as “Self Employed Nurse” to inspire & educate nurse entrepreneurs. She says, ‘that site was a huge learning experience’ and overtime her business, blogging, and social media experience grew. With her new and various interests, she has re-branded herself and can be found at ericamacdonald.com. Here she teaches other entrepreneurs the online skills needed to run a successful business.

I have personally received a whole lot of wisdom, advice and support from Erica over the years we have known each other. For example, I can email her with a question on sponsored blog posts and know I will receive an honest, thoughtful, and helpful response. Erica has always shared my programs, books, and events via social media and it is a joy to work with her upbeat personality and friendly smile.

I found this piece of advice on Erica’s site and it really struck me. She says:

[Tweet “”I believe that people are happiest when they ‘work to live’ instead of ‘live to work’.””]

Since this post is about the best nursing advice ever received, the above quote from Erica MacDonald speaks volumes. I had to reflect on this for some time, but here are three ways this piece of advice touched me:

• Our work needs to be meaningful and provide value. The nursing profession can be a tough one to journey through. We go into work for one reason (typically to provide service, healing, help and compassion to other people) and realize during our day-to-day jobs this just might not be as easy as it seems. If you have found yourself loving nursing, but disconnected to your work- I invite you to reconnect to the nurse within. My bestselling book is about rekindling the fire inside so that you can thrive as the best nurse you can be.
• We need to enjoy and love what we do. This is a biggie for me. The day I realized that I no longer enjoyed patient care was the day I decided to leave. Doing work that is dissatisfying, exhausting, and even painful actually puts others in harms way. We spend so much of our time at work (the majority of hours in our day) that we need to enjoy our careers. As a nurse entrepreneur myself, like Erica, I teach other nurses how to apply non-nursing skills in their careers with the goal of shifting an adequate j-o-b to an awesome love of work!
• When work feels like play, it’s easy to do all of the time! Finally it’s time for some fun- my number one value. If you don’t wake up in the morning, jump out of bed, full of energy, enthusiasm and excitement for what you do- maybe it’s time to take a real close look in the mirror. When we are passionate about our career, it never has to feel like work again.

So let’s hear from you. Reflecting on Erica’s advice above, what does her words of wisdom mean to you? Do you enjoy your nursing role or is it time for a change? How can you find your joy loving the work that you do? Leave a comment below and thanks for reading.

About the Author: As a speaker, workshop facilitator, and Reiki Master, Elizabeth partners with hospitals, organizations, associations, and nursing groups to help transform the field of nursing from the inside out. As the  host of the Your Next Shift Workshop, Elizabeth is guides nurses and nursing students to a change in perspective, helping them make the inner shift needed to better maneuver the sometimes challenging realities of being a caregiver.