Healthcare providers help people, take care of them when they’re sick, ill, or weak. Nurses teach healthy habits, advocate for the voiceless, and nurture anyone in their path. Caregivers give care: to everyone but themselves.

Frankly, I’m confused. And it’s not just me. 

I go to a non-nurse online business training once a year in Portsmouth, NH. There I am one of many entrepreneurs, only one other in the audience was a nurse this year… and she was someone I invited! So the group is non-nurse, non healthcare provider. OK?

Well, when I stand up and tell everyone what I do I wind up with a very long line of interested people all coming up to tell me how much ‘your work is needed in this world’. One woman, who just had a baby this summer said, “At all of my maternity appointments the nurses were overweight.” Another one who had been in the hospital for surgery said, “When I came to and from the hospital, I saw all of these people in Scrubs smoking outside.” Still another, “My mother was hospitalized before passing away last spring… there was this very kind nurse. She was doing everything she could possibly do and my mother loved her. But I saw her on in the cafeteria and she was scarfing down this fast food!”

I don’t get it: do we want to be healthy or not?

Now I know, the job is stressful. But guess what? Every job out there carries with it some degree of stress. And every person out there working in these jobs sees their job as just as stressful, if not more stressful than the next. So let’s quit blaming it on the j-o-b.

If we’re out there giving care to everyone else but ourselves we are the cause of our own demise. We are bringing the stress upon ourselves.

Now for the next excuse I get all of the time, and yes- I said ‘excuse’. “I just don’t have time to take care of myself.” You know what I think? That’s baloney.

Alicia-Joy Pierre said it wonderfully on the radio show this morning, (I’m paraphrasing) “You have time to know exactly what’s happening on ‘Dancing with the Stars’… Don’t tell me you don’t have time for yourself.”

So what’s happening here? We’ve got healthcare people not caring for self and we’ve got all of these busy-stressed out caregivers with no time for them. Does that sound reasonable?

Of course not!

Remember I mentioned the word ‘excuse’. I don’t believe in the concept of ‘no time’. It all comes down to choice. What are you choosing? Are you choosing to spend all of your energy on someone else? Are you choosing to sit around and watch TV during your free time? Are you spending all of your money at Starbucks?

You CAN absolutely be, do, and have whatever it is that you want out of life. You just have to choose it.

You can have the time you crave. You can care for yourself. You can have the fun. You can do it all. You can make a choice each and every day for yourself. And there my friends, is the secret.

It’s a day-by-day choice. What happens is people get so overwhelmed looking at the ‘big picture’. Setting a goal for the future is just as damning as not doing it at all.

I will call upon my friends from the Alcoholics Anonymous world for my closing point. “One Day at a Time…”

Make one choice today for you. Make one choice tomorrow for you. Make one choice the next day for you. One day at a time, one hour at a time, one moment in time. You have a choice. Choose yourself today.

I’d love to know what you thought of this post! Don’t be shy; leave a comment below. If you’d like to contact me, please do so. I’d love to help. And if you enjoyed this article, don’t keep it to yourself. Go ahead and share it or ask me how you can use it in your work! Enjoy your health today.

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