Question: I am a recent nursing graduate and have received two different hands-on patient care job offers.

One hospital is offering a substantially higher salary than the other, but seems to come with more stress and other employees who constantly complain. I am really struggling with which job I should accept because money is very tight in my family. I just want to make the right decision for me and my family.

Torn

Answer: Why did you become a nurse in the first place? What do you enjoy most about nursing?

These truths will be spoken by the voice of your heart and will be where you find your passion, fulfillment and increased sense of confidence about what you do and who you are.

You must place yourself in a workplace where your passion for nursing will be best achieved. If you became a nurse for money alone, you should take the job offering the higher salary. It is evident, however, nursing means more to you than money or you wouldn’t be torn between the two offers.

Is your current spiritual, mental and physical state able to enter a brand new work environment every day full of negativity and stress yet allow none of that to tarnish your spirit? If so, the patients exposed to the more negative environment will greatly benefit from the brightness surrounding you as you enter into and work within their otherwise dark and dreary rooms and you should take the job offering more money.

At this time, especially as a new graduate with limited nursing experience, you may believe a new job riddled with stress and bad attitudes could potentially have a negative effect on your spirit rendering the job with less pay and less stress your best option.

Keep in mind the best job for you today may not be the best job for you in the future. Just as you need only to evaluate your state of capability today, not what you think you will be able to handle in the future, so should you only evaluate the current condition of the workplace today, not what you hope it to become in the future.

You alone will not change the overall atmosphere of place where you work because it has taken years for that organization’s culture to become established.

Small and effective changes can begin day one, but when it comes to changing overall atmosphere and culture it must originate at the top of the organization and work throughout. This major type of change will take much time to accomplish as the many years it took to establish.

Always take a job with intention to change the job for the better, not to have the job change you for the worse! The best job for you is the one where you do not risk compromising your wonderful and care-giving characteristics.

If you are unfulfilled, or lack peace on the inside, you are rendered incapable of loving yourself and others to your fullest. Think of the potential harm you could do to your family if you bring your unhappiness from work-stress and problems into their home, their safe haven, the place they should always feel maximum safety and unconditional love.

If a family has everything in the world, but has no love, it has nothing. Money is gone once spent while love is everlasting and collects interest the longer it sits in the bank of the heart.

 

Question: I have been with my girlfriend for over a year. She is the woman of my dreams and we tell each other we love one another.

I think about her all the time and love being with her. I see her almost every day and sometimes she gives me a hard time for wanting to see her so much.

It seems to me like I can’t win because her friends wish they had a guy like me, and she complains that her last boyfriend did not spend enough time with her.

On the very rare occasion I do something that does not involve her, she seems to have “a little tension.” What do I do?

 

Country Cowboy

 

Answer: You see a yellow flag waving in the distance at it reads “a little tension.” Let off the gas pedal, slow down and stay behind the pace car until the flag returns to green.

When the race of dating your girlfriend began, you were both seated behind the wheel of two separate cars positioned at the start line. The cars you were driving represent your hearts.

There was only one way to go if you wanted to start the race and that was forward so you decided to have your first date. As you continued to date, driving forward behind the wheels of your hearts, you both progressed further along in the race.

Eventually you found yourselves at an intersection with four different options, one pointed toward “marriage,” one toward “long-term, one-on-one relationship, no marriage,” another to “friendship/companionship only,” and the fourth toward “I’m not sure.”

Each of your choices include trophy cups waiting to be claimed as the prize for crossing the finish line. These trophies are however only one half of the complete cup. Another driver, who selected the same course as you at the intersection of four choices, must earn the other half needed to complete the prize. You picked a track and became very focused; small distractions were of no concern because you anticipated “the thrill of victory” and the same for her if she selected the same road as you.

Since you can see the caution flag of “a little tension” before your girlfriend, she is not running side by side to you at this moment or perhaps her vehicle is still putting off so much smoke from the recently extinguished fire of her last relationship that her vision has become clouded as she looks ahead to the future.

Could she have selected a different course? Could she possibly have received some bad fuel and has become sluggish as a result? Is it possible she is still sitting at the crossroads where she was able to pull over, get a cup of coffee and be content for a very long time?

Whatever the reason, it is time for you to make certain you both have the same goal for the end of your race, or there will be many hours wasted and much frustration accumulated as one waits for the other at the finish line holding only one half of the trophy.

When two drivers definitively select the same track expectations of each other automatically become appropriately aligned. Similar to a vehicle’s ride becoming rough and difficult to handle as its tires get out of align, so do human emotions with misaligned expectations.

Get your wheels aligned before the bumps in the road cause more damage to the vehicle of your heart.

If one of you grows weary of waiting for the other at the end of the race, why not tuck your half prize under your arm and head home. When you get tired of coming home and to opening your front door every night to a lonely space filled only by the incomplete trophy cup sitting on your mantle, it is time pick it up, dust it off and take it right back to the finish line where it was received.

There are many beautiful hearts running your same course just waiting to round the bend and to come into your sight off in the distance. One of those drivers will earn the other half of your prize and will walk with you into the winner’s circle of love with no beginning and with no end.