Reclaiming Your Power in Nursing: when we understand that we can advocate and, ask for change within healthcare, but ultimately the change begins with you. We cannot ask for change in the healthcare system if we're not also willing to do the change internally.

Hello, high performance nurses. I hope you're all well today. We're talking mindset. And we're talking mindset because mindset is the biggest challenge for high performing nurses. We're great clinicians. We can do the work. We're usually overperforming, like we're doing pretty well in our jobs, but we tend to have this inner saboteur, inner critic.

At least that's what I've noticed across coaching 400 clinicians globally and coaching myself for the last. 10, 15 years of my career and as high performers, we really do struggle with that inner narrative. And what I've found to be true is that most of us actually are actively blocked by our own brain.

Okay. Blocked by your own brain. And some of you will be nodding and some of you'll be thinking, what the hell is he talking about? So today I wanted to dive back in. To self-coaching because I truly think that this is the secret sauce. It is the, thing, the one thing that if I could implant into every nurse's brain, I would implant the ability to self-coach, as if you just, did it automatically and you understood everything that I'm about to teach you today so that you could reclaim all your power.

And live and nurse on your terms. Okay. I'm so much about nursing on your own terms. Let's forget traditional pathways. Let's forget all of the rules that were just made up by some strange people. No, I'm just kidding. But rules that were made up by people that have gone before us that no longer serve us.

The world is different. And if you're ing, the world is different, the future looks different. I can't keep up with how technology is changing every single day and trying to be at the forefront of building a business using AI and technology and all of the things and what will our life look like in five, 10 years.

I think that we're, well, we know that we're having the biggest growth in human history in terms of what we have access to and what we can do. I was watching a documentary recently and it was like only a couple of hundred years ago that we. Didn't wash our hands when we were like helping patients as clinicians, right?

So it's crazy to think how far we've come, but it's also crazy to think about how far we've come, but how slowly our brains are waking up and realizing that we are in full control at all times. At least. Within our inner world, and I think at some point in the journey we've given all that power away through our conditioning, through our upbringing, through our society, through our friendships, through our career decisions, through the conditioning, within the healthcare system.

I. I think that as clinicians, we are very conditioned to externally source validation for everything that we do in our work, because that's how we're trained, right? So we're trained to go to our doctors and ask them questions. We're trained to question our own judgment and go and get a second opinion.

We're trained to always be seeking clarity from something external to us when it relates to our patients. So it would make complete sense then that nurses. As a profession. I'm globalizing and generalizing here, but it's what I've found to be true. Find it very difficult to give themselves permission to reclaim their power and to go after what they want unapologetically.

This has been one of my biggest challenges. It has been so difficult for me to put out into the world that I want something. To give myself, permission to go and do it, and to stop looking for the person that I think is gonna give me the right answer. Right? And I don't know if that resonates for you, but as high performers, if you're anything like me, which are, 'cause you're listening to this podcast, you are a high performer, but you probably feel like you're a low performer.

You probably feel like shit half the time. Like you're not doing enough. Like you're not good enough. Like you're not worthy enough. You're not capable enough. If that is you, I relate to that deeply. And one of the things that I want to share with you is a framework that will help you day to day. That is fully, you are fully in control of, that you can utilize in every moment of your waking day for you to be able to reclaim your power.

And it's super simple now. It takes practice and it takes time. And one of the questions that I always get when I coach nurses with this tool and with our tools is, you know, well I tried it for a week and then, I just went back into like my old way of being. And that's totally to be expected.

Nothing has gone wrong if that's what happens for you after you try this, and here's why that's true, because just think about it for the last 10, 12 years. Until I learned about coaching and self-coaching and managing my own mind, I was running the same story. I was recycling the same stories for years and years and years, and I kept compounding them, right?

I'm not good enough. And then I'd collect some evidence to prove that I didn't get that cannula that time, and I used to always get the cannula, so maybe I'm not good enough. And I kept building on that. Neural pathway and that pattern that I practiced believing to be true. So it makes complete sense when some stranger on the internet, Liam Caswell says, Hey, by the way, did you know that you could interrupt your neural pathways and change your line of thinking that your brain's like, hold on a second.

We were operating efficiently here, even though you felt like shit all the time. It was operationally efficient for me to keep running that pattern because what do our bodies and our brains love? Operational efficiency. It doesn't like to work too hard. Okay? It just wants to be conditioned into the patterns that quote unquote work, and it wants to just keep repeating them.

It doesn't want us to break those cycles because that takes effort. But there are things in our life, in our career that trigger these moments of questioning and challenging what we used to think was. True and possible for us. And that's such an important part of your human experience and your human evolution, right?

As a clinician. Because the minute that happens, you're starting to open up your brain and your mind, and we're starting to wake up a little bit to see that maybe the way we've been operating, we thought was efficient, is actually not efficient, and it's creating a lot of shit for us, for lack of a better word.

Right. So, I digress, but I'm very passionate about this and I want to share this tool with you now, and I've been working on it of late and it's still kind of like in its early infancy, but I wanted to put it out there and see what you thought. So as many of you know, I use the C T F A R coaching framework now.

That stands for circumstance Thoughts. Feelings, actions and results. So the premise of this coaching model is that there are circumstances external to us that happen, and we have no control over them, and they are just the facts of the world. Okay, the weather is sunny today. It's a circumstance. Okay.

It's factual. Even though it's not actually sunny. It would be factual to say it is cloudy today. Okay? Notice there's no emotion and it's just purely factual. So we have a circumstance and then we have our thoughts. So we have a thought subconsciously we have about 60,000 thoughts a day.

Can you believe that? 60,000 thoughts a day that are mostly recycled thoughts that we've just. Repeat it time and time again without really questioning them. And those thoughts arise from our subconscious brain about the circumstance. Okay? And then we have our feelings. Our feelings are generated through what we're thinking.

Now I wanna say that again. Our feelings are generated through what we're thinking, not through what's happening externally. We do not feel a way because of something that happens external to us. It's impossible. Things that happen externally to us do not cause how you feel internally. That is like the hardest thing to grasp for most people, those feelings are generated through your thoughts and your thoughts only.

Okay? Those feelings that are generated by the thoughts create actions or inactions. And what I mean by that is what are you doing and what are you not doing when you're feeling a certain way and you're thinking a certain way. And those thoughts that generate those feelings, that generate those actions or inactions create a result within your life and your human experience.

That is what I found to be true. When I first learned the C T F R model, it broke my brain. I literally felt this like awakening internally, where I just thought to myself, I have been in this hideous cycle of recycled thoughts. For my whole life that just have not been serving me. And you know when people just change and they just see something and they just can't unsee it.

This was that for me. I was like, oh my God. I keep telling myself that I'm not good enough, I'm not capable. And the result that I create when I tell myself that is that I. I'm not capable. I don't make it possible to be capable. I make sure that I'm not worthy of the situation. 'cause I keep telling myself that I'm not worthy.

Notice that none of that has anything to do with anything that anybody else does. It's all an internal process, and that's the only place that we can reclaim our power. I love thinking about it like this. We have two big circles, one outer circle, one inner circle. The inner circle is your circle of influence.

That's all the things that you can control, and there's not many of the things in there. You can only control your thoughts, your feelings, your actions, your results, and your beliefs. That's pretty much all you can control. Notice I didn't put doctor, nurse, unit manager, nursing, bully, and none of those things are in there 'cause you can't control any of them.

How the health workforce is going, the global shortage of nurses, the workload, why we're all burnt out, none of that's in there. Okay. That's what's in the external circle, which is your circle of concern, right? We were short staffed. Today's circle of concern. We can't change it. We can't do anything about it.

We can advocate and try and do things about it, but in our internal world, that doesn't create how we feel. What creates how we feel, and how we experience the thing is what we tell ourselves about the short staffing. so the C T F A R model is a very simplistic model. What was the circumstance? What thought arose?

What were you feeling because of that thought? What actions did you take from that feeling or inactions? And what results did you create for yourself? This is where self-accountability, self-responsibility. Sucks, but it's the secret to improving and enjoying your life more. I found this to be true when I coach people.

When we start uncovering and saying, well, actually it makes complete sense that you have this result in your life. 'cause look at what you're thinking. I. And what's beautiful about that, even though it stings a little bit, when you first hear that, you then go, you know what? If I can choose to think that there are 59,999 thoughts that I could also choose to think that maybe create a different result for me, right?

Are you with me? It's so empowering to see that every result that you have in your life, you have created through your thinking. Just let that sink in for a minute. Every result that you have created in your life, and you might not like hearing that, I certainly don't like reminding myself that, but when I don't achieve something or I don't get something, it's so easy for me to go and blame the external world.

But what I found is that that just makes me feel terrible and I hate being a victim. I spent most of my life being a victim, and I watched my colleagues, I watched peers victimize themselves. In always shapes and forms and sometimes we are victims, but even when we are a victim, we can still choose to think an empowering thought that makes us feel better about being a victim, but we're only a victim 'cause we believe we're a victim.

No one comes and gives you a victim badge, right? No one's like, you're now welcome in the victim club. Right? We just create that story internally. I'm a victim of this, I'm a victim of my circumstances, but we're actually victims of our own brain. We're victims of the thoughts that we choose to focus on, and there are so many other potential thoughts that you can choose to think.

So how do you use the C T F A R model in practice? Okay. I want you to think about this. I want you to think about being at work. I want you to think about the last time that something happened at work, a circumstance, something that is factual. So a good place to start is usually like the circumstance is.

I had six patients when I was supposed to have four. That's a good circumstance. It's not. I had six patients and I was pissed that I had four. It's I had six patients and I normally have four. That's very factual. Okay. Now then we want to check in with ourselves and we want to go. Okay. What was the thought?

My thought was like, I can't do this, or This is unfair. Notice that these thoughts are just subconscious. We're not judging them. We're not beating ourselves up for thinking them. We're just allowing them to be. They're there. Just let them be. Don't judge them. Don't beat yourself up. Don't shame yourself.

Don't guilt yourself for thinking that, right? You're a human with a human brain. Your brains gonna offer you these thoughts. So let's go with the thought of this is unfair. Okay, so when you think this is unfair, what do you feel in your body? What's the first feeling and pick one emotion. What do you feel in your body when you think this is unfair?

And for me, when I really tune into my body and sometimes I have to get outta my head, sometimes I just have to literally close my eyes and just feel my chest and like really sit with it and go, what am I actually feeling right now when I tell myself that this is unfair and it could be frustration, disappointment, upset.

Worry, fear, right? It could be any of those emotions, but we want to just pick one emotion and really tune into it and feel it. And we want to remind ourselves in the process that this feeling is directly caused by what we're thinking about the circumstance. Okay? So when I feel, let's say frustration, because this is unfair and I feel frustration.

What actions do I then take now, for me personally, when I'm feeling frustration, you're gonna hear about it. My partner's gonna hear about it. I'm probably gonna bitch and whine about it. I'm gonna complain. I'm gonna feel like I'm a victim, right? I, so those are things that I'm doing. What am I not doing when I feel frustration?

Maybe I'm not seeing that, you know, this is outside of my control. Maybe I'm not seeing that I could still have a great day. Like I'm not seeing that. That could potentially still be fine. I could have six patients and I could kill it, and that could be amazing, right? But my brain is focusing on those actions that are usually not serving me, bitching, complaining, you know, not following my time, scheduler, not planning my time.

Those are all the things that I'm doing. So the result that I create, When I tell myself that it's not fair is that I don't give myself a fair chance to have a good day. Can you see how that's true? Now I could continue just feeling that frustration and tell myself it's not fair that the eight hours or the 12 hours is gonna be hell on Earth.

Or I could in that moment decide intentionally and practice believing and practice repeating. This isn't fair. But I get to decide what I make this mean, or I can do this. I have six patients, I can do this. I've done it before. I can do it again. I'm not saying that we're giving the industry permission to walk all over us.

I'm not saying we give people, you know, and show them that we can cope with six, so therefore that means they're gonna get six. Every time that we come to work, what I'm saying is that this is an internal process and really the only person that suffers when you go down that subconscious thought pattern belief system and that C T F A R is you.

How do I know? 'cause I suffered for 10 years. I still suffered to this day 'cause I'm human and I use this model daily. I reframe my thinking. I decide intentionally what I want to think. I practice it. And then I have a day where I feel like shit and I'm fatigued and I don't know, like I don't want to do it.

And I feel like I'm gaslighting myself. And it's in those days that I say to myself, Liam, You know you are feeling the way that you are feeling today because of how you're thinking. you're feeling like this because you're thinking you're not good enough, or you know, this is too difficult, this is hard.

Maybe I'm just gaslighting myself. I'm feeling confused and upset or frustrated because of how I'm thinking. I want you to find evidence to prove that to be true in your life. Find evidence of when you feel amazing and tune into it and be like, what am I thinking? Get so curious. What was I thinking when I felt that emotion of like elation, joy, happiness, I.

You're probably thinking something like, I can't believe I did it. I got an interview. I can't believe I just landed a promotion. I just got an email from somebody this week that's, we've helped her land her level two, so a clinical nurse promotion. A couple of years ago she came back to us. She just landed a level three promotion, so she's now like a C N C, advanced practice nurse level.

Position. So like what do you think she's feeling when she sends me the email saying, oh my god, Liam, I did it. I'm so proud of myself. I got the job. Like I got the job. That emotion is like elation, happiness, joy. That's the feeling. What do you do when you get the job and you're feeling happy.

You go out and you prepare. You go and buy new stuff for work. You treat yourself to some new shoes. You tell everybody that you know, you hand in your resignation, right? And the result is you allow yourself to celebrate that you did an amazing job. That's the result that you create for yourself versus the opposite, right?

Let's say that person didn't get the job and they email me and they say the circumstances received a rejection email. Right. That's or received an email that said, that's probably better received an email that said you were unsuccessful. What does your brain throw up about that? Oh, well, I'm not good enough.

Clearly, I'm not good enough. I didn't do well. I messed up. I fucked up the interview. Right. What do you tell yourself subconsciously, what feeling does that create within you? Shame, guilt, embarrassment, fear, disappointment. And I'm, maybe you're just like, you feel rejected. What actions do you take when you feel rejected?

Maybe you go into self-protection mode, maybe self-sabotage. If you're anything like me, maybe you're like, I deserve a takeaway tonight because I've worked really hard and it didn't go to plan. Or maybe you're gonna have some wine or maybe you're gonna, you know, go and treat yourself and spend too much money.

I don't know. What do you do? And then what result would you create for yourself? In that situation, right? So if you're telling yourself I wasn't good enough, your result is like, you make it impossible to see what you did do really well. Because it's not factually true that every interview that you don't get, that you totally messed up.

Sometimes there's just somebody that's better on the day. Sometimes there's just somebody that's already been in the job. Sometimes there's somebody that is the numbs best mate, fine. We just don't know. So why choose to make it mean something that it doesn't mean and cause yourself cognitive and emotional and mental harm.

We don't have to do that to ourselves. It's optional. It's a beautiful thing. It's optional. How we choose to think and feel is optional, and you can choose to think and feel anything in any moment at any point of time. Versus what's just subconsciously arising in your body and in your mind? Okay, so I do have a new tool that I'm working on that is more nursing centric.

I think is gonna be such an amazing,

amazing tool for people to use in a day-to-day, you know, work life experience as a nurse, but, Using this as a clinician is so simple. You can literally write CT f a r on a bit of paper. When you're on shift and you're having a moment and you just need to check in with yourself and you can be like, what am I feeling?

I'm feeling pissed off. What is the thought? The thought is, this is unfair. Okay, what's the circumstance? Try and be as factual as you can. Sometimes it's really hard 'cause you're in the moment, right? You're in the chaos, but try your best. Maybe the circumstances, seven discharges, and they're all my patients.

That's factual. Okay. We got seven discharges to say. They're all my patients. Okay. So when I feel disappointed, how do I act? Like maybe I get stressy, maybe I increase my risk of medication errors. Maybe I do X, Y, and Z. What's the result that I create for myself when I tell myself that this is unfair?

Like I make my workloads even more unfair? I make it harder for me to succeed by. I hope you can see the connection between your thinking and the reality that we create for ourselves. It takes us a little time to sink in, but this is the power of self-coaching and I think that this will transform the industry.

'cause when we understand that we can advocate and, ask for change within healthcare, but ultimately the change begins with you. We cannot ask for change in the healthcare system if we're not also willing to do the change internally. Okay? That starts with how we speak to ourselves. How we trust our abilities to, answer our own questions, how we reclaim some of that externally validated power that we give away all the time, and how we link our thoughts, feelings, actions, results, and we start reclaiming all of our parents seeing how much control we really do have over our lived experience.

Okay, and I just want to finish on this, that I think that we, have two problems in healthcare. Globally as humans, but we have two problems. We have an overthinking problem and an under feeling problem. I think that we spend a lot of time overthinking unhelpful thoughts that are recycled, that we think we're supposed to think, because that's what we've been trained to do, and then we spend almost no time.

Actually feeling and experiencing the full spectrum of human emotion, that is what I found to be true for me. I am a chronic overthinker. I am a chronic under feeler, and I'm balancing those skills out. I'm trying my best to quieten my mind, quieting quiet, my mind, and to feel more, to really tune in more.

To do the spiritual work, to tap into my body, to listen and respect my body's needs instead of just beating myself up and running on constant chronic stress as we do as high performing clinicians. So I. This is one tool that is so easily applicable to your life and it fits in every way, shape and form.

There's nothing that can't be put into that for you to be able to raise your awareness, and that's what it is. It's an awareness raising tool for you to be able to see what is going on. In my mind subconsciously, is this serving me? What am I feeling? Recognizing that feeling links back to the thought and that I get to decide how I create my own reality.

And that starts with how I think, how I speak to myself, how I think consciously and intentionally, and how I feel consciously and intentionally. If you want to create anything in your life, in your nursing career and life, that is a result that you create and it starts in your mind. Think about it. Any dream that you've ever had, any goal you've ever had, anything you've been working towards?

It all started with a thought. Okay. The thoughts are the gateway. Your thoughts are the gateway to. Creating the life that you want to create to nurse on your terms. So that's been mindset. I kind of went all over the place, but I hope you got some value from that. I'm, trusting that you did because it's so important.

Like I said at the start, I would love to implant this in everybody's brain, but I'd love to hear from you. What did you learn from this episode? How are you gonna implement C T F A R? If you wanna book a call with me and just talk it through. Book a call. They're free. I, can't believe that people don't take up the free calls.

Like we're, our industry is crying out for help. And very few people take the free call so it's there until it's not there, go and take it. I love connecting with nurses. I love hearing about where you at. And I love helping you see that you are in full control of your nursing career. And sometimes all it takes is a 15 minute conversation.

What if the change that you are looking for lies in a 15 minute conversation with a stranger like me on the internet? I will see you next week. It's been amazing. I'll chat to you soon. And remember our thoughts, create feelings, feelings, driver actions, actions, creator results. I'll chat to you soon.