keep your mind open and find someone to follow it would really just be. the step Find one person who is living the life that you want to, and then talk to them more about that.

Hello, and welcome back to the Hype for Excessing podcast. Today we have a returning guest from beautiful Sydney, Beth Montano. Welcome, Beth Montano.

How are you? Hey, cosa con il faccio. Hello, and thank you for having me back. Sorry.

It's the only Italian is about as good as my French at the moment, which is absolutely terrible. So welcome back to the podcast. So excited to chat. There have been so many mutterings online around people wanting to move into non clinical roles and explore all of these different avenues within nursing.

And I thought, who... Than, or who better than Beth Mondan to come and talk to us on the podcast today and explore. I don't know why I'm doing that. And explore all of the things relating to life beyond the bedside. So tell us, Beth, give us a little snapshot of your career up until this point and give us a bit of an outline of where you started and why we're talking to you today about Beyond Bedside.

okay, well I started, I did whatever, I did a grad year, started a grad year back in 2010.

Must be, whatever, something around then. And I started a grad year, I was rotating, whatever, hated it, and asked to leave at six months and got a job in a chemo suite, and I can go into why I hated it later, or whatever. And then I worked there for, I don't know, three ish years, and then I moved into clinical trials nursing and then I had a baby, and then I went and worked for a pharmaceutical company, As a clinical nurse educator.

That was really fun. Traveling Australia educating all quite tired and disinterested nurses at the start of their day or at the end of the day. That was a great challenge. And then I had another baby, went back to clinical trials, nursing, and now I'm a nurse. I don't know, care coordinator, consultant working fully remote from home for patients that live all over Australia on, you know, doing like phone assessments and helping manage them from afar.

It's great.

I love it, I love it. Who, like, everybody's ears just perked up when you said, fully remote, working from home, and people are like, jaw drop, is that possible in nursing? Yes. So, let's talk more about all of that, but I'd love to dive into why initially you chose to leave that graduate year, because we have so many grads that listen.

I think it's an important conversation to have. You're in your grad year, you've got the dream grad, you're like, I've made it, you know, I've phoned in every town, you folks, I've made it, I've made it, I'm here, got my big break, and then all of a sudden you're like, I don't know, this is not for me. Talk us through that.

I only applied for a grad year, which I think like everybody else, I felt pressured into doing a grad year because everybody else was doing a grad year. I remember I did like my last placement and I was in intensive care. I was at neuro intensive care at RPA. And this lady was like trying to teach me all this stuff.

And I said to her, it was just quite brutal. I said, I'm going to be a community nurse. So don't like bust your gut with me. And I, cause I just knew that was never going to be my environment. And I think she appreciated my. Honesty. and then, but I still took a grad role at RPA and it was like hundreds and hundreds apply.

I don't want to talk myself up and there was only 60 spots and I got one of them. And so I, felt, I don't know, fortunate to receive it. As you said, I thought I'd made it. Then I started and night duty is hell. It just didn't work for me.

And as you know very well, I don't like any minor inconveniences at all. So having to sleep in the kitchen, because it was the darkest room in the house. torture, just being tired, torture. I didn't want to do it. I also had a new boyfriend who is now my husband and I hated our schedules were different and he worked whatever property yada, yada.

And so we weren't really seeing each other and I hated that too. And so I went to the grad coordinators and I knew, I was never going to be bedside because my parents were nurses and I knew a lot of. nurses that weren't just bedside nurses. I had a wider idea through, through no education from anyone else, the hospitals nor my training of what was possible, but got it from external sources that I was never going to do bedside.

So I said, I want to leave the program. And then, so then they helped me get a job in a chemo suite. Because I had been on a hematology ward. So I went down to chemotherapy ward like day center and just was there. Yeah, I feel very lucky cause I think a lot of people just think they have to stick it out.

When you really don't just have to stick that stuff out. And if you go, I went to my grad coordinators with reasons and a plan. Not just it's all too hard, which you know what? I think a lot of people start their grad and think it should be easier. But that, you know, we're all in a learning role at the start.

But I went, yeah, as I said, with a plan, I said to them, could I do this? So, yeah, you don't need to do a grad year, but I think you need to have, seek out what is possible. People aren't going to come to you, and I think, I know you say this a lot as well, is people can't just wait. for people to come to them, offering them their next step.

People have to be really far more proactive in finding out options, which is where, you know, you and I do so much. We put so much out there to educate nurses on all of our options. Yeah. I think nurses need to be a little bit people that don't want to do a regular grad year. That's totally fine. They need to seek out someone like yourself for mentoring to talk them through what's possible.

I believe.

Yeah, I love that. I also think it's worth noting that like what I'm starting to learn more about is I'm doing a training at the moment in nervous system resilience and stress and it's fascinating because I think that what I'm starting to see now is that even when you finish your three years as a graduate nurse, as a student nurse, and you get into the system where you've done your ENs or your RMs and you join the system, through those three years you have spent three years in fight or flight.

And then all of a sudden you've got to apply for 10 different graduate programs, and you've got to apply for, you know, and do all these interviews on top of your assessments and your internships. So it makes logical sense, right, that the industry does preach. Like, I've never seen it through this lens before, but it makes logical sense that they preach, go and do the grad program.

It's kind of like your one stop shop. It's the easy route, yada, yada, yada. But in, when we're in that prolonged fight or flight stage as a student We also lose access to all of our ability to critically think, right? And this is common across the nursing career spectrum, right? If we're constantly in stress, a stressed mind, a stressed body, cannot house logical thinking, right?

That's why when we go to interview, like we're a hot mess express. Now that's not to say that you're bad at interview. You're just in a fight or flight stress response. And your brain is like shutting down your prefrontal cortex because it's like, hold on, like, we're not safe here, we're not safe. So the reason why I bring that up is because I think it's worth pairing the two points together, that when they finish their degree, the grads and the students, they then move on and they're in the state of flight, right?

And they're just like, oh, it's an easy option, I'll take this. And then like you say, they start to create a bit of safety in the job as they build their skill. And then they start questioning and going, okay, this is not for me. So if you're listening to this and that is you, nothing has gone wrong. You're not broken.

You are worthy. You're capable. And you have like 3 million other job opportunities available to you. In fact, Beth and I look every week and there's about 20, 000 jobs on seek that you can apply for this week alone at time of recording. So do not allow yourself. your brain to tell you that you cannot do it.

You can. You just have to find the evidence and create the opportunity for yourself. Just like you would go into a doctor with a plan, you would never go to a doctor and say, hey, what's wrong with this patient? You might, but you go, hey, what's wrong with this patient? I'm thinking that maybe this is happening.

What do you think? Right. It's that kind of element of critical thinking, but just to know that is not available to you until you create that safety for yourself within the graduate program or within something like the GCLP. Now I'm not pitching that intentionally, but that's what we do in the GCLP is we create safety and that's what you do in your offerings.

It's so important because without safety, you don't have the ability to think. And that's so, so important for all aspects of nursing careers. I love, love, love what you talked about there. And I love that permission to just go and do it. Sorry, were you going to say something?

Well, no, the only thing I was going to, I've started having this, I don't know, constantly thinking about it and I'm just not sure how to best determine it, and determine it here over it.

I just have realizing now our training. So whether, you know, RN or EN all nursing training is where due to the shortage. I, it could be total conspiracy theory, but I feel like we're trained just to be hospital employees. That's all we're trained. They don't particularly want us to be too independent and too informed about our choices because the healthcare system, who works in largely in cahoots with, you know, universities, etc.

They want us to be filling these roles. Not going out and, you know, working for private businesses, yada, yada, yada. There is, I'm beginning to see now we are, and you can see in our nursing training, it's all clinical training, all of it. We have nothing, I believe on planning out work, you know different types of, career skills that you would need if you weren't having distant for a career bedside, you're just not taught the right skills, right?

We're taught to be. Hospital employees. Yeah, totally. I'm trying to work in a far more eloquent way to say that, but that's my raw thoughts on the topic. And people, it's not through no fault of their own, they believe that too, because that's all we're taught.

Yeah, yeah, like we are so conditioned for that path.

We're just conditioned, like that's it, that's your option. So I love the work that you do with Autonomic Nurse and your Avanci membership. covers all of this. It's so awesome and we often joke and laugh and we send messages back and forth about these roles and non clinical options and all of the things behind the scenes.

So let's dive into talking about what it would look like to apply for a non clinical beyond bedside role as a nurse. Now just for everybody listening we're going to do two episodes here. We're going to just Brush over the top of kind of the main things in this episode and the next episode we're going to dive into like what that looks like strategically for each of your application documents because that is a little different as we move forward.

So one thing that we see a lot online Beth is like people are saying, Oh my goodness, I really want to get a nonclinical role. You know, I'm fed up with this shift work. Like you mentioned earlier. I hate the night. I want my weekends back. All amazing. I want more money. So talk to us through, like, your understanding or your experience of why having the right motivation is important when you're moving from , clinical to a non clinical, non bedside role.

Well, I think the first point is I always like to go, and I know you've done a lot of this work as well, is sort of more of that life design. I don't want to see people, that's what people should be thinking about. I think it never works out very well when people just change jobs because they hate the job they're in.

Right. That's a huge risk of disaster because they often take the same problems and mindset and they end up with the same everything just in it with a new bunch of people to hate.

Yep, new job same rate. New job same rate.

So what people need to have a think about because for some people, Bedside work is, right for them for that time.

So people just need to be, I believe constantly thinking about and assessing and thinking about their life design and how they want their life to look as opposed to how they can fit their life in around the, you know, the role they, they already have. I think nurses need to flip how they approach.

Life, even from like a grad, you know, what I saw online the other day, I thought it was great. I should have screenshot it. Someone was just in the comments of someone on Instagram who was saying they were a graduate nurse, but they had taken on a part time graduate nurse role and then keeping their other role, which was I think retail or something to work a couple of days, retail couple of days grad, because they wanted to ease themselves into the transition.

And I thought that's actually not. An entirely bad idea. She said, I've seen so much of this people starting and getting burnout so quickly. Yeah. And that was just there. She had, that person had obviously put some more thought into the decision as opposed to just saying, I don't want to do this.

What else can I do? I think people need to put a bit more into where they want to go before they start just looking and applying and accepting any job.

Right. Yeah. And we say that from lived experience, right? Like that was our experience. Like I just took jobs because they looked good on paper and they paid well.

And I was like trying to climb the ladder. Right. Whereas instead now, like I even think about that in my business, I think, okay, how do I want my day to be? I really get intentional about like, what would my. ideal perfect day B. So if you're thinking of moving from bedside to non clinical non bedside roles, you know , it's a whole shock to the system, right?

Nevermind transition shock, like your whole self concept and identity shifts. You are not the same version of you, and you have to create some space for that. And just even if, if it seems too difficult to You know consider or even go out and look for what that would look like. Just imagining, just allowing yourself to imagine what would a perfect day look like for me and my family if I was to take a non clinical bedside role, because your brain will start doing stuff subconsciously where it'll just go to the place and it'll be thinking about it when you're not actively thinking about it.

And you'll start attracting those opportunities and seeing those things out in the world and seeing that it's possible. So I would say like to add to what you said there, it's really about giving yourself permission to just explore is the first. step, and really getting curious about the reasons why you're exploring.

Now, it's not a bad thing to leave bedside because it's a shit, shit, hot mess, okay? Like, it's not a bad thing. Like, you do you, and you do you. And we say, new job, same brain, but we say that with love and kindness, and it's more of an awareness thing. It's more like, okay, well, yeah, we can change the environment, but we still take our whole being with us, so we can't escape the work.

The work will find you at some point. There's no escaping it, unfortunately, and I think that that's why we both do what we do today. So, getting clear on our motivation, getting curious about what's actually possible out there and exploring the opportunities available. Now, a lot of people, to move on to the next point, a lot of people think and I've thought this in the past.

I don't have enough transferable skills. I don't have enough depth and diversity in my skills to be able to move to a non clinical, non bedside role. So, Beth is rolling her eyes because I think that even maybe Beth had that thought at some point as well. But let's explore that. What's your take on Nurses kind of like globally undervaluing what they have to offer in a non bedside, non clinical role.

I think it's a huge issue and it's one that comes up again and again for people that are within my membership where I share the roles with people. They're just not applying because they quickly glance through the, you know, roles and responsibilities yada yada and then they just think, oh I don't, I can't do that.

But with that, I always like, a good question for people to ask themselves is to like to, I don't know if it's a question, it's more of a statement, find the evidence. So people like, it's very easy just to look at a job ad and dismiss it. But if you actually force yourself to, to look at, you know, each line and say, like, and actually think through it and find evidence for evidence against, at least you're starting to think about your skills in a wider way.

And then that in turn, as you said, you know, sometimes when you just ask one question, it will your brain is such a funny little thing. It'll ping off another question in your mind. And then you. Might in time find, you know, actually I, I can, so I just think being more critical of job ads, as opposed to just reading the byline and the job title and saying, no, I can't do that.

Being a little, I mean, what are we taught at uni, if not critical thinking, but people don't seem to be using these critical thinking skills enough outside of work where they can really be beneficial.

yeah, and based on like that, the nervous system stuff I was talking about earlier, oh my goodness, I am starting to see the impact, personally and professionally, of my nervous system being dysregulated for so many years.

And that impacting my ability to think, I genuinely think this is like the missing piece, like I feel like I've uncovered this little nugget of gold, and I know autonomic has probably like got some connection to the nervous system in some way, some shape, some form, but I just think that. You're right, because we have been conditioned to come in and be in a hypervigilant hyperactive state as clinicians, pretty much our whole careers, it makes complete sense that we don't have access to that critical thinking, creative thinking all the time.

So then it comes back to us creating that safety for ourselves, because what I see is that A lot of us, including myself, were waiting for permission to critically think and to explore and to get creative about our careers. And I was sitting there waiting and no one came, right? It's like that whole Mel Robbins talk, like, no one's coming!

No one is coming, you must, must, must do it for yourself. So I love that you mentioned that there, and I think that that activity of sitting down and looking at the job description and looking at each essential criteria. And I think sometimes we think we have to be a hundred percent. And I think that's a hypervigilant, hyperactive stress response.

we think we have to be a hundred percent good enough to be able to go for something. But I want people listening. To think about, okay, what if I was just one percent capable of this? What if there was just like a tiny little micro shift available to you in your creative thinking? For example, like, let's say the job ad is asking you, like, demonstrated ability to, I don't know, like, communicate with the sales team in a non clinical role, right?

Or like the pharmaceutical sales team. Okay, like, can I communicate? Yes. Can I talk to people that work in sales? Yes. Do I have some insight into pharmacy? Yes. Okay, like maybe I could do this. I think it's worth everybody listening to recognize and to acknowledge that we do not need to know how to do the thing before we get the job.

I hear this time and time again. We do not need to know how to do the thing. No one knows. Breaking news. No one knows. No one knows when they apply how to do the job. They learn when they get into it.

Something I was saying in I just recorded a little like a mini workshop for my members. And one thing I said is You can, even if you don't feel like you've had the experience that they're asking for that particular thing, you can always use the, the line, like, I will, and talk about what, so you may not have done it before, but you can describe how you will do it in the future.

You have the knowledge and a plan and a strategy for what they're looking for, and that helps bridge a little gap between them and you. I think that little line, I will. I

love that. And it,, this whole kind of section acknowledges that as clinicians, as humans in general, but as clinicians in particular, we're not very good at looking at what we have gained, what we have built within our careers.

We're so good at looking for the gap because we've been trained to look for the gap. We have been trained to look for, Oh my God, are they between the flags? Right. And they're not between the flags. Let's find the problem and solve it. That's what we're trained to do. Beth's laughing. She's like between the flags.

But that's kind of like a really great analogy to think about our careers, right? It's like, we have been trained to operate like this, so let's start like that deconditioning. And every person that comes to work with me, and I'm sure with you as well, they start on that deconditioning pathway. It's really about like, okay, well this is what I learned to be true, but it's not serving me.

I'm crashing and I'm burning, and now I'm here, and I now need to be able to build up my capacity to receive these opportunities, right? I don't believe that we can get these non... bedside non clinical roles, or any kind of promotion or job, from that place of lack. We have to adopt some form of abundant thinking and see how amazing we are and how much we've created.

And I love taking people through the exercise, and you guys listening can do this at home, which is... Just thinking of your graduate self. I want you to go back to day one of being a graduate nurse and I want you to embody that version of you and then think about what they would think about where you are today.

And every time I do that activity with somebody, they're like, they get really emotional. Cause like, holy shit, I have done so much. If I think of little graduate nurse Liam, he's like, what, you live in Paris? What are you doing? Like, and you run an online business? Like, are you drunk? Like, what has happened?

And I think, but there's such awe and such curiosity when I go to little Liam. Versus presently, which is like, Oh, I've got so much to do. I've got so much work that I need to get done, which is such a nerve. Like, I feel like it's such a clinical stress, hypervigilant energy that does not get me closer to my goals.

Right. What do you think about that?

Yeah. I love that. I, something I also like to think or I don't know, ponder on, and I've asked a few people, this is when you think back to who you were on, you know, Day one, week one, whatever, first few months of your grad year or your first year out you're so excited.

It's like all these sweet little students that are just so excited to be, you know, clinical nurses there at the bedside. And then you see them like a year in and like what happens in that, time, how do we lose that hopefulness and excitement so quickly? Yeah. I find that really, and I just don't know how you somehow need to constantly be working on yourself and within yourself to keep that going.

Right. I find it really sad how excited people are for their careers and then how quickly we lose it.

Yeah. Particularly in this. Yeah, like, and I think that's a beautiful segue into what we talk about a lot, which is it's not necessarily what happens in the world, it's you, you coined this and I love it.

It's what happens in your mind. And I know some people would like. A cognitively maybe turn off at this point because they're like, Oh, here they go in that mindset. But it really does come down to that because our mind, and our thoughts, our feelings are the only things that we have any control over.

Right. And I think that it's worth acknowledging that in the system as it stands, and this is not generalizing or globalizing because there are amazing places to work with amazing humans that do exist. I maybe just haven't worked in them. So I come from my lived experience lens. And I was listening to a podcast recently with a neuroscientist and she was also a physician.

She was talking about how stress is actually contagious. Stress is infectious and that you like literally just being in the vicinity of somebody else that's experiencing a fight or flight stress response will leak into your body and you will adopt some of that stress because we mirror, we mirror the people that were around.

So when we're in that environment, we've got six nurses on shift and it's a shit hot day, like there's so much happening. And one person is kind of like a little, you know, the vibe, the energy is so different, right? So I think that that's what it is. We start really well off and we're so excited. And in fact, I've been following this, a guy on TikTok, who his name is Nurse Hamish.

He probably doesn't listen to the podcast, but he is hilarious. And I love watching him. He's Australian. And he goes out and he's like, Hello girlies, like I'm off to my shift today. I'm so excited. And did you know I'm a registered nurse? And I love it. Like I just got like emotional watching it because it reminded me of me years ago.

And I thought to myself, Oh my God, there are people that absolutely eat it up and are so proud and love it. And our grads in the GCLP are the same. But I think what happens is we get into the system and. We become like the outsider because hold on, everybody in the system is a little bit like, nah, like it's good for a day.

We become a little bit jaded.

Yeah. And it feeds back to the nervous system work you were talking about as well is then so we start and then we get like a, I know for me, like, And when I was a grad, we had someone like a young girl, like 19 die on that shift. And then, you know, I just have to leave the room and then go into the next and like nothing had happened.

And so they, those sort of emotional hits, we just, they knock us, knock us, knock us. when they were doing anything to like mop it up or save ourselves or help ourselves. Yeah, so that's what happens.

Yeah, and I think that I'm part of this part of this course is that I'm learning about the impact of trauma.

And when, when I was learning about primary and secondary trauma, not trauma as in like trauma, hospital trauma, as in like cognitive you know, psychological, moral injury trauma. Oh my goodness, I thought to myself, we are literally like little trauma banks. We are little trauma banks where we store these primary and secondary traumas.

And you know, in my career, we're deviating a little bit, but this is important to talk about. In my career, I really first noticed the impact of trauma when I was not in ICU, when I was an educator. And when I was walking into the ward every day, and I was hearing and seeing secondary, so I wasn't seeing it directly, but I was seeing care that wasn't meeting the standards and I was seeing nurses not being able to deliver the care because of staffing and the situation in the workplace and we were all suffering secondary but that's when I started to really compound that level of trauma and it was unresolved because I had no one to talk to about it.

My manager didn't want to talk to me about it, no one wanted to acknowledge it and these were really traumatic events like you said, like cardiac arrest, people not knowing what to do, how to respond. And that all builds up and if left unresolved you crash and burn. I literally think that this is why we are in the situation that we're in in healthcare.

We're burnt out, we're jaded, we're kind of misaligned because we focus too much on what's happening on the wards and we don't focus enough and pay enough attention to what's happening in our mind. So, in navigating a non clinical shift in Korea, from clinical to non clinical, what would you say is the most important thing for people to explore within their mindset?

seems very clichéd, it's just confidence. Self, like, self belief. Belief that, you know, they can, that they can do it. It seems to just be the same issues. There's this real desire for people to leave, people have the, you know, bedside experience and then they want to see what else their career can do for them, but then they're not willing to make any changes because they don't believe they can do it or they're not ready for the life changes.

So they just need to have that confidence in themselves. I know it's a little bit woo woo, but I think people need to realize that things will come to them when it's their time to hear it. Right. If they're hearing like us talking about this. I think you and I both on the same belief that we draw this sort of like what we need to us or we, you know, we listening for it and we hear it.

So they need to know it's their time to use their skills now to leave, but they need to believe. That they can, that they can do it. And for me, doing exercises like looking at the job ads and looking at it properly and saying, could I do this? If I break this down, could I do it? And, you know, sometimes with someone there was, I said, you know, discard the roles and responsibilities.

Just think about, you know, the job title and a brief summary. Could you do that? And now, and then, you know, once you just take away that, that sort of detail that you're like. Yeah, I could do it. And then they make themselves out reading the list. Yeah, I don't I don't need everything. I can't do it. I also think people are so like a hyper stimulated and they don't have that executive functioning left that they don't can't properly go through and do those assessments that we're talking about when looking at job descriptions.

It just seems too much, too much work. Yeah. Which is why you and I both know people think they just need a new job, but what they really need is to work on how they approach everything in life, including, including their career choices. So it was a long winded way of saying self confidence.

Yeah. And I think that what I, what I teach about self confidence is that self confidence is like a hundred percent available to you all the time because it's got everything to do with yourself.

The word self isn't there, right? So self confidence is not something we go out and find in a job advert, or getting a new job, or a pay packet. Self confidence is derived internally, right, from how we think about our capabilities. So that's why we've really got to show people, we've really got to show ourselves, not people.

Okay, when I first started as a graduate nurse, I didn't think I could do it, but now I have three years of evidence that I've done it. So, okay, that's one. And then when I became a parent, I didn't think I could do it. Now I have seven years of evidence that I can parent. Maybe that's questionable, right?

But we have to put our brain, we have to put our brain to work to collect the data. Okay. And then I love this idea of like separating the data out from the drama. Okay, my brain is so dramatic, my brain is so, so dramatic so it will go and find all the reasons why I can't do something and it's just worth acknowledging that nothing has gone wrong and your brain is not messed up.

That's how we're designed to operate. That's exactly how we're designed. Your brain loves safety, it loves being in the cave in a little comfort blankie, but sometimes we get to a point in our career where the comfort blankie is no longer comfortable. And you will have those signs and symptoms in your life and career.

So then it comes down to that, okay, can I make a 1%, even a 0. 05 percent shift in my thinking, not jumping from, I'm not capable to, I'm amazing and I'm the best, because people really struggle with that. Of course you do, because it's, you're gaslighting yourself. We want to move a micro shift, and then we can go, you know what, maybe I can do this.

And then find all the reasons why you can, and remember that your brain will show you all the reasons why you can't, and that's okay too. Yeah. Right, we're never going to have 100 percent belief, it's never going to be 100 percent at the right time, and we've just got to start that process of just slightly incrementally building it up, okay?

It's like, if we had a patient that was like really hypothermic, would we take them from like 33 degrees to 37? Hell to the no. Like it's, we know that there are physiological things that happen when we do that. So let's just take them to 33. 5. And let's move them up and follow that process. And I think that that's what we both offer in our coaching is, Okay, you are making micro shifts in your life and your career because your identity is shifting.

And it's a beautiful thing. This is a growth opportunity. It's a healing opportunity. It's an opportunity to see that maybe you have been operating in fight or flight for your whole career. And now it's time to reclaim that power and to have life that you want on your terms.

It's so, so possible. One thing that comes up that you and I talk about a lot is this idea of when I leave bedside, I'm going to lose my skills. So what do you think about that? And I can understand why that comes up. I understand that because when we go to non clinical roles, we might not use all of the skills.

My take on it is that you're not, you're not going to need those skills. So that's okay to lose them. You know, no one ever worries about losing their bike riding skills when they haven't rode a bike for 20 years, right? Like, no one thinks about that, but within nursing, it's become this thing and it's something that people actively say to other people, which I wish we could just wipe out, which is, well, if you leave, you're going to lose your skills.

It's like, but I'm leaving for something that is better and more aligned for me. So the skills that I do need will come with me. What's your take on that?

I also think people need to remember that. If you learnt them once, you'll learn them again. If you do, if you do forget it, whatever, learn it again. But it's also, it's, that's sort of very small minded.

I don't know, fixed mindset. Something mindset, because what about all the other skills you're going to learn wherever you're going? And often you're wanting to leave jobs where you require those skills. For a job where you don't require them. And I think people that say that, that's just a nice little line.

Well, maybe I'm being a bit mean, but it's a nice little line. They say to themselves, Oh, I better not leave. Cause I'll, I'll, I'll lose all my skills. If they keep telling themselves that then it's okay, that they're not making changes and that they're staying where they are and that's how they keep themselves sort of stuck.

By these really self limiting mindsets of, I need to keep my clinical skills. I mean, why can't you learn them again, or why do you need them where you're, where you're going?

Yeah. That's my take

yeah, I agree. And the line of thinking almost implies that, like, you can't ever get them back. So it's like, it feels very dangerous.

Like, when I think that sentence, I'm like, oh, it feels dangerous. It feels like... Holy shit, I'm never going to get them back and I'm going to be less of a human without them, right? And we've got to find that evidence to prove to our brain that that's not true. Like, we can get new skills, we can grow, and like you say, we'll get so many new skills that are amazing.

I can't believe how many skills I've gained in becoming an entrepreneur. I'm like, holy shit, there's so many things. But yes, I've left my clinical skills behind. So put me in an ICU tomorrow and I wouldn't be able to function. However, That's not my path, that's not my trajectory, that's not my future, that's not where I'm going.

So maybe the challenge there is also that lack of direction, that lack of future thinking, right? Which makes complete sense. I love normalising all of this for people, because it's like, well, of course, you've been in a system that taught you to think this way, feel this way, and now you're starting to see that maybe there's more to it, right?

It's like uncovering the matrix, like, oh, hold on, maybe we're living in the matrix, and there's so many levels to it, we can start to explore it. I love that.

Yeah. I also like to think of the, I've called it second thoughts, but I think that if there's a lot of people that teach on a similar concept is yes, you have that initial first thought is, Oh, I don't want to lose all my clinical skills, but then you have to force yourself to think about, you know, the second thought is, but that's okay.

Because. Blah, blah, blah, but I won't need them, blah, blah, blah, or I, I'll be able to get them back. If you force yourself to keep going deep on a thought, ultimately, I think you will be able to, in time through repetition, mindset work, as you know, is not one and done. You do it day in, day out, and you'll be amazed weeks after or months after you start working on one thought that you feel is holding you back, then you just get an answer.

And it's like, Oh, of course, but if you just keep working, keep pushing for that second thought. That can be really helpful for some, some

people. I love it. And it's that idea of neuroplasticity, right? And that one of the privileges of being human is that we have a brain that allows us you know, engage in neuroplasticity.

And I think that sometimes it's, I'm really glad you touched on that because I tell myself sometimes like, I should know this by now. Like, I've been practicing this for ages, but here's the thing, like, if you've been told or you believe and it's become a, a part of your life, a sentence or a story that you've practiced time and time again for the last three, five, ten years, that is so deeply ingrained in your neural pathways.

So it kind of, when we think of it like that, like, let's say you've practiced that thought 10, 000 times. And you start telling yourself, I can be a non bedside nurse. You've done that once. So you've got to go to the thought gym, right? I call it the thought gym. You've got to go to the thought gym and you've got to lift that thought rep, and you're going to keep doing that thought rep until you get to the place where you've balanced out the neural pathways and you kind of like, you know, overweigh the scale on the new thought pathway and it just becomes part of who you are.

That's how we rewire. What is it they say in Europe? I think neuroplasticity, it's like what is it neurons that fire wire together or something like that. So it's so important for us to keep going with those thoughts and beliefs, even when the evidence isn't there. And that comes back to self confidence because so many people give themselves a little bit of self confidence.

They go and apply for the non clinical non bedside role, and then they get a knockback and they use that as evidence as to why they can't do it. But if you think of that concept I just told you, you've done 10 years in ICU, and now you've tried once, there's a huge imbalance. So we want to increase our ability and acceptance to quote unquote failure, right?

Allow ourselves, allow yourself to apply for more than one job and to be knocked back. The worst thing, I teach this all the time, the worst thing that can happen when you are quote unquote rejected or quote unquote fail is an emotion. a vibration in your body, shame, guilt, embarrassment, fear, worry. And up until this point in time, no one has died from feeling an emotion that I'm aware of.

Right. Maybe somebody has, but that I, that I'm aware of. Right. So we really do fear our own emotions. That's the only thing that we're avoiding. If you allow yourself, when I transitioned from any job, to a new job. I'm going to feel emotions, all of the emotions, and emotions are not scary, they are part of the human experience.

The more emotions I'm willing to feel, the more success I'm willing to create, and I will create in my life, right?

Yeah, it can be hard being knocked back for a job. Yeah. But it's also hard to stay and stand still. So you got to sort of, I know it's a very cliche social media thing, but you got to choose your heart.

Right. Like if you think, you know, you get rejected for your job. So what? And, and then like, so whatever, I'm embarrassed and you're like, okay, so what? Like you just keep, again, it's that thought Jim, I think I've never heard of that now. I love it. Is that go deeper or keep trying, keep working on what does that mean?

And then the next one. Well, what does that mean? If we keep living too shallow with our thoughts, we'll stick to those thoughts and we really have to go deeper. Right. Or higher. I don't know if we're going up or down on the gym. Yeah. Just to get to the crux of what you're really thinking and what it could mean.

Yeah. As opposed to just, I got Knocked back from the job. Because what's the, so if you applied, interviewed, and got knocked back, that means you've had a chance to juj your resume, and you've had a chance to apply and interview. So that's all experience. And then if you got knocked back, It's really, you know, you're better off for it, and then you just do the next one, and then the next one, and the next one, it's all adding together.

I totally agree. I got an email today from a grant who had got knocked back from a grant application, and then they've just done their second and third interview, and they're like, oh my god, they went so much better. I'm like, yeah, because when you allow yourself and gift yourself opportunities, you build the skill, you build the muscle.

It's illogical for us to think that the first time we'll get it right. Okay, this applies to every clinical skill, every clinical experience. The first time you lead a team, you're gonna mess up. The first time you educate, you're gonna mess up. That's what happens. And then we take that lesson, that learning, and we move forward.

I also think that like, I mean, even in any job, even when I had been a, you know, like a clinical trials nurse for six years, I was still making mistakes. So you're going to make the mistakes at the start, make the mistakes at the end. Just start. Yeah.

I love it. I

love it. I think you and I, we, we can see because we're constantly reading and trying and teaching, we can see the path is simple, but it's not easy.

So just, yeah, that's what can be so frustrating is people don't even let themselves take one step. Hmm. And that's, that can be really hard from where we are, because we know the benefits of just trying, just applying, because when you're confident, you may, you just need, as you said, like the 1 percent confidence to apply, and then the next time you apply for your next job, you know, maybe you are up at 5 percent confidence that just keeps building.

Yeah. What experience do you give yourself?

Yeah. And confidence, you know, confidence, self confidence. I have a whole episode on that. So if you haven't listened to that, go and listen to that episode because it's really interesting, the separation between the two. But I want to always acknowledge that any emotion that we are feeling comes from our thoughts.

It comes from our thinking. And often 99. 9 percent of us are running around with all these subconscious recycled thoughts that we haven't taken to the, we've taken to the thought gym. But the thoughts that we've just adopted through our lived experience, through our connection with others, through our training, through role models.

And they've gone kind of unquestioned, almost, and a thought that is believed time and time again becomes a belief, right? It's just a thought that's repeated time and time again that becomes a belief. So if you want to create new beliefs, you think new thoughts, and you think them time and time again to build the belief.

And anytime that you're feeling underconfident, anybody listening, I want you to think, okay, what am I thinking? What is my brain offering me? Oh, I'm not good enough. Well, it makes sense that I'm feeling underconfident. Normalize it. Don't beat yourself up. Don't shame yourself. Normalize that process and then go, Okay, when I think I'm not good enough, I feel underconfident.

I show up, my actions are, I don't show up, I don't apply for the job, I don't create the opportunity for myself. And then the result that I create for myself in this moment is that I prove to myself that I'm not good enough. Right, like it's so powerful when we look internal and we see that we create our own reality.

Yes, there are other things that influence that, but we are fully in control of our thoughts, feelings, actions, and our own personal experience in this lifetime. So when we allow ourselves to curiously explore, okay, I'm feeling under confident. What's going on? I'm feeling self doubt. Oh, well, I'm feeling self doubt because I've got a job interview.

No, you feel self doubt because of your thinking. Because the job interview cannot create a feeling or emotion for you until you have a thought. Between the circumstance, the thing that's happening in your life, and your emotions, is your brain. And it's so, so powerful. I love teaching people that. When the penny drops, they're like, oh my goodness, I changed all the things in my life.

Like, I'm now in full control. I'm like, you are, you always have been. You've always had the control. And that's what we do in coaching, right, is we help people see the possibility. We're not here to push you, shove you in any way, shape or form. Literally what we do is we help you create safety and then from safety, we help you make that 1 percent micro shift.

And the beautiful thing about our offerings is that we work with people until they land a job, because I understand how difficult it is and we understand how hard it is. in navigating that process, right? It's not a one and done. It's not a quick fix. It takes time, but it's time worth invested because your return on investment cognitively, emotionally, in your life, in your career, in your income, in your work life balance is tenfold.

If you do the work. Yeah, definitely. Welcome to Liam's TED Talk. Sorry, so I went on a rant there. Anyway, but I feel so passionate about it and I think we both do and sometimes the passion can come across maybe to the listener as frustration, but I think it's our own frustration from like our experiences, because we like I am always blown away by how many people come and chat to me and like I see the potential and there are disconnects there and I totally understand why that happens and what I do is just to hold space for them because I know at some point in time they've already raised their awareness that they know.

The fact that they reach out to us, they connect with us, they chat to us, they download the guides, they join your membership, that is the first step in Taking that little pivot from where you are to where you want to be. And that's amazing. We have to celebrate that. We have to have to celebrate that.

Because that's what we did, right? That's what we did when we made that shift. We made that micro shift. So, to wrap up this, episode that was supposed to be short, but Beth and I love to talk. Beth, somebody that wants to go beyond bedside. What would be your first initial step that you would offer them to take if they were thinking about doing

that today

Well, I always think it's from a confidence perspective. It's always best to seek out and find a mentor. And that could be someone like yourself or you do you know, really great, like sort of group work, one to one work, or a mentor like myself, where I just have more of like a group program.

You just need to find someone. Who has the information you need and then work with them. So it's just to keep your mind open and find someone to follow it would really just be, that's the, that's the one, one step I'm not going to overwhelm people. Find one person who is living the life that you want to, and then talk to them more about that.

I love it. So there's lots of steps. I'm going to do that one. Connect with someone that you want to be like. Yeah,

yeah. And I think that one of the reasons why coaching and memberships and being a part of a network, whether you download a free guide or you listen to this podcast or whatever you do in any way, shape or form, what you're actually doing is when you're thinking of moving and changing your job and you you don't feel safe to do that.

What you're doing by joining and connecting with other people that have done it or you know, living the life that you want is you're co regulating. You are co regulating your nervous system and you are allowing somebody else to help you in the process and the journey. That's what I've noticed in coaching is I co regulate, I help people co regulate their nervous system to help them then understand, oh my goodness, I actually have always been capable of this.

And once you've got the co regulation and you see the possibility, you can then self regulate and you can go out and do this thing on your own. It's the catalyst. So I agree with you. I think that 1 percent shift, that 0. 5 percent shift in your mindset is the first step. Play with the possibility, play with it, knowing that you don't have to do anything.

And then from there, Bob Shanko. And I'm not going to say the other one. Beth, I have loved chatting to you today. It has been amazing. Thank you so much for your time. Where can people find out more about how to work with you and all the amazing work that you do? And we're going to do a second episode.

We're going to do a second episode that's more strategic about what does it actually look like and maybe some ideas of some roles that people could explore, because I think that's a block as well, right? It's like, well, what is there actually out there? So we'll bring them to you. So where did they find you, Beth?

Yep.

The best place is probably at autonomic underscore nurse on Instagram. A website is in construction. So, I mean, it's there, but it's not my finest. So autonomic underscore nurse on Instagram is the best place. Amazing. I'm always in the DM. People can just, yeah, find me there. Ask anything they need.

Perfect. And Beth has had some amazing, like your nurses get amazing results in your membership, right? Like huge pay rises, all of the things. So I'm sure that perked your ears up, everybody listening. So if you are a nurse exploring non bedside options, why are you not in the Avanti membership? Go and join Beth's Avanti membership.

She puts out non clinical jobs across the country, I believe. Weekly, is that right? Every week, every Wednesday. Every Wednesday, every Wednesday, all the non clinical roles, like, and it's ridiculously cheap. So go and join, explore, see what is there and what's available. And Beth and I are going to do another episode to help you actually navigate that strategically.

So think CV, cover letter, jobs, availability, interviews. How to sell yourself, we're going to do that and put it out to all of you. So if you love this episode, send us a little message, share it with a friend that's looking at non clinical career options. And if you're not thinking about that right now, park it, bookmark it for the future, because at some point you might be.

And we just want to say that we love Bedside before we check off, because people often say that we hate on Bedside. We do love Bedside and Bedside gave us both so much in our careers. Have a great friend. You know, there is a time and a place where Bedside no longer serves you and that's totally fine and we're here to normalize that.

Alrighty, beautiful, we'll see you in the next one. Thank you so much, Beth. Bye.