Today on my way to work I almost drove off the road. Not for lack of coffee or random deer in the road but because I turned the corner and the sun was bright pink. Not a bright pink sunrise mind you, the sun itself was a giant pink orb in a solid gray sky.
I have never seen anything like it. I didn’t even know the sun could look like that. If I didn’t see it for myself and you described it to me, I still wouldn’t be able to picture it.
So here it is. With no filter.
Crazy, right?
It reminded me of something that I heard on a podcast about making your day magical. (I was actually only half-listening so I think that’s what they were talking about.) At the time, the idea struck as somewhat funny since there aren’t a lot of apparently magical things happening in the medical office where I spend most of my day. I had a moment of picturing little singing animals cleaning the exam rooms before I realized I had really gone off on a mental tangent. I returned to the real world in time to hear the coach on the podcast ask, “what if you weren’t in a hurry to get out of there?”
It got me thinking.
How much of my day is spent focusing on trying to “get through it”, to get out of work at the end of the day? How many mornings do I wake up and immediately start thinking about “when I get home from work?”
How magical would it be to not be in a rush to get out? Now of course I’m not suggesting that we loaf around and be inefficient with our time, I am a big fan of moving with purpose throughout the day. But it made me realize that when focusing on “getting out on time” I can miss the opportunity to actually be invested with what I am doing IN THE MOMENT.
What if I trusted that I would get out at the end of the day? (So far I have never had a day at work that did not end with me actually leaving, so there is some good evidence for this.) What if I gave up thinking about it throughout the day and spent that energy being intentional and 100% present with my work?
What if I could be content and fully engaged?
That would be magical.
There is plenty of literature available about living with intention, on not waiting for some outside event or time when “things will be better.” And on a big picture level, it makes sense. But what does it MEAN in day to day life? How do we do this?
Maybe it starts with shifting our focus from “it will be better after work” to “I can be better right now, at work.”
By waiting for something better, we are basically saying where we are right now isn’t good enough. And once we decide that, even subconsciously, we look for evidence to support it.
What if we decided that now is good and later will be good too?
What if we looked for ways to be magical at work?
Today I tried it. I interrupted some of the complaining by sharing some of my pictures of the crazy pink sun. As fate would have it, one of the medical assistants had also seen it and been struck by how crazy it was, so she pulled out her pictures. It changed the tone.
Taking a minute to intentionally share a moment didn’t necessarily make my patient load any easier but it did make me feel engaged. And this feeling of engagement seeped into the rest of my day. By just being present with where I was, I felt like I was doing a better job. And doing a better job, really brainstorming over each patient, gave me much more satisfaction than watching the clock and charting as fast as possible.
Be where you are.
Try it today and see what magic it does for you.
And if you have any singing/cleaning birds and mice, send them my way.
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