I received lots of positive comments on a column I wrote about living our priorities. While the concept is simple, it isn’t always easy, is it? How do nurses handle family, nursing career and taking care of one’s self? It can be a challenging task.
My hubby was way ahead of me on making our marriage a priority. When the kids were little, he insisted we have a date night once a week. It turned out it had to be on Thursdays because that’s when the high school babysitter was free. But the night of the week or the place of the date didn’t matter. During one lean period, we could only afford an ice cream cone at Dairy Queen but the conversation and love were delicious.
Living your priorities as nurses can be gestures as simple as that. Kids are often our best teachers.
A friend of mine was hurriedly packing to catch a plane for a business trip when his four-year-old son came into the room and asked, “Daddy, can I tell you something?” He said, “Sure, buddy, if you can talk fast.” His little boy said, “That’s okay, Daddy. I’ll wait ‘til you can listen slowly.”
Were you shocked to learn that the average parent and child in this country spend twelve minutes a day one-on-one, six of which are negative? How does that happen? Too often, people invest their time and energy on things that are going well for them and they divest it, take it away, from things that aren’t going so good. So if things aren’t going easy at home or with the kids, they invest their time and energy at work where they see they can make improvements. In doing this, they are frequently taking themselves away from the very thing they claimed to be their priority. I don’t believe this happens on purpose, but they hardly recognize it. So, you have to make sure that being in a nursing career and being a parent does not have negative effects to your family and children.
Like the story you may have heard about a frog. If you place a frog in a vat of boiling water (don’t call the ASPCA, we wouldn’t really do this!), it immediately jumps out to save its life. But if you put a frog in a vat of cold water, and very slowly turn up the heat, it gets hotter and hotter and hotter and the frog dies there because the change was so gradual, it didn’t sense the danger.
Nurses, are there negative changes happening to your commitment to priorities? If so, turn down the heat.
If partners and kids aren’t your chosen priorities at this time in your life, remember, these principles still apply. If your priority is your self-care as a nurse, your extended family or your community work, are your devoting your time and attention there?
It’s important to remember we are always juggling balls of responsibility in our lives. It’s crucial to determine which of these are rubbers and which are glass. The rubber ones which are often all our “stuff”, our committees and even our jobs, if they are dropped, they can bounce back or be replaced. The glass ones which are usually our health and those we love, if they are broken, they are irretrievably broken.