100: 10 Lessons from 100 Episodes
10 Lessons from 100 Episodes
The High Performance Nursing Podcast has reached its 100th episode, and I am excited to share the lessons we learned from our guests in the journey from zero to 100.
I also highlighted the importance of acknowledging successes and achievements, as well as celebrating them, no matter how small they are.
In honour of this occasion, I shared my top 10 lessons learned from the incredible guests I interviewed on this podcast.
I promise to continue providing valuable content and wisdom for listeners to apply in their lives and careers.
Key takeaways:
13:01 - Self-mastery and self-care are not optional.
16:53 - Befriend yourself
22:52 - You are not your career.
26:14 - You create what you think.
32:54 - Life is 50 50.
37:40 - People, project what they don't process.
44:13 - High performance, like you and I, we're multi-passionate.
48:55 - Your brain is your best ROI
52:49 - Failure leads to more success.
55:53 - Unlearning
Thanks for listening!
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**This transcript was automatically generated using Descript.**
Liam Caswell: Your brain will always be your best return on investment. That Gucci watch, that Chanel bag, that mother Botox will still be there, but it will disintegrate.
all of those things are amazing and you should do all of them for your self care. They have a timeline on them, okay? And when you choose to invest in yourself and you invest in your brain and you buy a program because it's gonna help you become a more evolved, higher version of yourself, that's priceless, my friend.
Hello, and welcome back to the High Performance Dancing Podcast with me, your host, Liam Caswell. It is episode 100. Are you excited? I'm excited, oh my goodness. 100 episodes to me, my coaching brain. is like, Liam, you've showed up 100 times. Think about that in your life.
Like where have you showed up? Probably what, but where have you shown up for yourself retirement time again and you haven't even acknowledged it. That's incredible. cause this stuff takes hard work, right? It's perseverance, it's commitment, it's pushing through and waiting through all the mind drama. Every time I sit down to do a podcast, I'm like, what am I gonna talk about today?
And I think that it's something worth acknowleding. Yeah, I think we should really celebrate our successes in achievement of our goals are moving towards us. Because for me, when I first sat down to do this podcast back in January, 2021, I had absolutely no idea what was in store. Absolutely no idea. And I want you guys listening to just take that as permission to not know what's gonna happen and to do it anyway.
Just do it. Cause we never actually know. We never know. Well, actually, I could argue with myself there because we know that we will make the thing happen if we're really committed and we're intentional about it. But if we are somebody that is thinking about doing something and we're thinking we need to have it all wiped out, like, how am I gonna get to the goal?
My friend, please take this as permission. To just go to, just do, just start moving towards the goal with your thoughts about your success being possible and just do it cause it's heaps fun and you learn so much about yourself on the journey towards the goal. So for those of you that are, you know, maybe a little bit more attention to detail.
A little bit more. Checking and seeing. This is actually not episode 100. It is not. You are correct. It is episode 102. I'm gonna call it out cause someone will message me and tell me that I can't count. And whilst I maybe can't count it is my show and I'm calling this episode 100 I was Sick for a week after traveling.
It was inevitable. And we put out some episodes last week so that we didn't miss anything cause one of my goals this year is to show up every week. And at the moment we're showing up twice a week with two episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays for amazing Graduate Nurse Success series.
So today's episode, I have been doing a lot of thinking and I've been indulging in a lot of my drama around what am I gonna talk about today?
What am I gonna share? And I thought about doing a hundred lessons learned and I thought, oh my goodness, you poor people, you'll be here for days. So I've whittled it down to 10, 10 lessons learned from our incredible guests here on the podcast. And I really want to share my learnings, my insights on the journey from zero to 100.
cause I know some of you actually have your own podcast. Some of you are building your own businesses. Some of you're thinking about making the shift from nurse to nurse preneur and some of you are staying your jobs, but you're building in your growing and you're developing your mindset and you're starting to see what is possible for you through this podcast.
I'm hoping at least that's what your messages tell me. So I want to share all of that with you. But before I. I have to acknowledge all of you beautiful human beings that are at the end of the AirPods and in your ears, and you pick up your phone and you say, oh, Liam's really an episode this week. I wanna listen.
You have absolutely no idea how much it means to me that you guys tune in, you listen, you share, you review. You send me a message, you send me unsolicited messages saying like, Hey, Liam, I listened to the podcast and I've just taken this action and I'm moving forward and I've got a new job. And it was inspired by this one thing you said, little Liam, well, not so little, but Liam, back in January, 2021.
Had absolutely no idea how much this would impact people's lives. And there was a part of me that knew that people needed a platform like High Performance Nursing, but I didn't know what it would look like. And I guess I'm just super, super grateful to everybody listening for you, just giving me your most valuable asset.
Your time. Your time. You will never get back the time that you spent with me. So I'm hoping and being very intentional nowadays about every time you tune in, that there is something of absolute value and wisdom and nugget for you to run with and to change aspects of your life and your career should you want to.
So to the. Over 50,000 people that have listened. That is a stadium like to the over 50,000 people that have tuned into this podcast. And listen, you give me a bit of the fear, cause I'm like, there's so many people listening, but I built this from the ground up on my own with, you know, obviously I've got editing help and all of that.
But just from my brain, this is just an idea that I had and I want you to see the permission in this for you. Whatever that might be. You might not wanna start a a podcast, but maybe you want to do an Instagram, maybe you want to do a TikTok channel. Maybe you don't wanna do any of that, but you just wanna move forward in your life, in your career.
Take this as permission an absolute 100% gratitude from myself to you for 50,000 downloads. You know, it's funny cause when I first started this podcast, I was saying this to Luke, my partner the other day. I, the first month, January, 2021, I launched like three episodes and I was like, oh my God, it's gonna change the world.
And I put it out there and like all things in life, it comes back to smack you in the face. And at the end of the month, even though I was very proud of this, I had like 50 downloads and I was like, oh, this is interesting. And since then I've learned that podcasting is a slow burn and that podcasts that really focus on you know that really are trying to be educational and really help you change and empower your life are much harder to grow.
Than podcast where you just sit and talk shit, and that's fine. Like I love those podcasts. But there's something about coming to a podcast and I know the podcast that I consume are not the ones where people just come and talk crap. There's a time and a place for that. But if you're anything like me, which I'm sensing that you are your high performance nurse, you love podcasts where you can come and learn more about yourself, you can see yourself in others, you can see possibility in what is available to you.
And that's what I seek to give you here through High Performance Nursing Podcast. So 50,000 frigging downloads, a hundred episodes, thousands of pieces of content really has started my whole brand in January, 2021. So everything started then, the career coaching, the cvs, the cover letters, the selection criteria, building belief in myself, connecting with incredible human beings that have been on this podcast.
I wanted to whittle out a few of them. Because every individual that's come on this podcast has shared such vulnerability, such knowledge, such experience, and I know that that's helped you in some way, shape or form. So we started off with Rachel from icu, Rachel Long, an amazing ICU nurse educator, Christine who'd went from being an ICU nurse and then retrained to become an acupuncturist.
Like you can do whatever the heck you want. We talked to Dan Mabin, who went to uni with me back in Scotland, and he's now a NUM in he's doing much like bigger things than numb, but he is down in Victoria. We had Tommy Copley on a couple of times who's talked about bullying and harassment.
Love those episodes. We've had Ed Medical physicians come on. We've had so many discussions about self-care with El. Happiness. I love Elena with Lauren. I can't even read my own writing now. Jackie O'Connor. We had Ethel come on and talk about burn out. We've had dya, my friend, social worker, we've talked all things entrepreneurship.
Zara Lord from you paged. She's changing the landscape and recruitment. Incredible. In Australia we had Charlotte, my good friend, come and talk about aesthetic nursing. I'm gonna forget some people cause I actually genuinely can't read my own writing. We've had Beth from Autonomic, I love Beth Montano.
I met Beth through this platform through doing this, and she's become one of my closest online weirdo friends. That's what we call each other. Rory, the Ossie Nurse Educator. We've had midwives, Julie Blackburn, Liam Jackson, Donna Nair who does wound care. She's an incredible follower at good wound care On Instagram, we've had CEOs, we've had psychologists, Nathan Elman from Nurse Wellbeing Mission, like, what the hell?
We've done so much and I still have so much to cover and so much to do. I've definitely forgot some people, but I love, love, love you all, and I thank you for sharing your stories here on High Performance Nursing. You might have noticed that we haven't shared as many stories recently. It's kind of intentional.
Because also in having a podcast, you learn that lots of people come to use your platform to grow their platform, which is fine. But then they don't re-utilize any content or they don't share it. So I'm being a bit cautious about who I bring in front of you guys because you've built that no, like trust factor with me.
And I really want to protect you from people that are just using high performance sourcing as a platform to get their message out there. And, Invites every day from people across the globe that want to come on to the podcast, which is flattering, but yeah, nah, not happening. So today, let's dive in.
I'm so, so excited about this episode, and I do have notes for those of you that are watching this back on YouTube. I don't really usually have a lot of notes, but today I made some notes because there's just so much that I wanna share with you and I wanna make sure that you get as much from this as I did in going back through this.
Now I am holding my mic for the first time, so I'm hoping that this is fine. My podcast editor will probably tell me off and I have to acknowledge Camille, I have to acknowledge all the people that have helped me with the podcast actually, because I started out doing this with Nikki. She was incredible.
And then I moved on to working with. Another team of podcast producers and editors. And then we now have Camille and Camille works with me behind the scenes. She is responsible for doing all of the amazing work with the podcast, editing with the intros, the outros, with all the videos that you see.
Camille does all of them, and she's pretty patient in working with me, but she's very, very good and I love working with her and I'm excited about what that looks like moving forward. So any of the videos that you see, Camille is behind them. And I come through and, and, you know, give some feedback. But Camille is the master of technology behind the scenes, and I am truly, truly grateful.
I also have to just finally acknowledge, Luke, my partner, because I could not have got to a hundred episodes without Luke. Luke is incredible. He doesn't listen to the podcast. But I'm putting it out there as good juju into the world. Without Luke, I would not be where I am today because, you know, we talk about it.
Alon this podcast. Having people in our lives who see our potential before we see it. And I hope to be that person for you. I hope to, even if I've never met you, I hope to and we've never chatted. I hope to give you an ounce of possibility of what's actually available to you in your life and your career through this podcast in the way that Luke does with me every day when he just sees like, he's like, Liam, cut the bullshit.
You are capable of this. Move forward. Just keep going. I truly believe that we attract the people that we're meant to have in our life. So if you're here, you're meant to be here. And Luke, thank you so much. You're amazing. So today, let's talk because I've waffled for 10 minutes,
let's talk about 10 lessons from the High Performance Nursing Podcast, 100th episodes.
Okay, let's do this. First of all, you'll notice that at the very start of the podcast, I was super, like I've gotta be strict. I've gotta like represent. Because when I started the podcast, I was still working as a nu and funnily enough, I put it out there into the world and I was so embarrassed about it.
This is not number one, by the way, but I was so embarrassed about it because I was doing this amazing thing and no one wanted to know about it. That's when you know you're in a toxic job and you gotta leave because I was like, what the hell? I'm just creating this platform to help people and no one cares, not one person, and they're still to this day, don't.
So, you know, it is what it is. So 10 lessons, number one. This what surprised you. Self-mastery and self-care is not optional. It's essential. Literally every podcast guest that came on here talked about their own journey of self-discovery, self-mastery, self-coaching, and their unique process of moving through all of that.
And what I loved about every story that was shared on the podcast was that everybody's was different, but it had the same flavor. Everybody kind of overcame that initial fear. They thought they couldn't do something. You know, it's like the hero story in a film. We all have similar traits. We all think that like we all are unique and beautiful individual human beings, but we're all the same.
We're all going through the same thing. And I think that that's worth acknowledging as we move forward. And I think that for me, this has been one of the biggest challenges of having a podcast, but also in just being a nurse, is learning how to be you. In the career of Nursing, Right?, it's learning how to really take that self part and to master how you can operate as your hoist version of yourself while still being a nurse.
That seems to take so much away from us. Right? And what I love to remind people when they're coaching with me is that we're all waiting for something. Usually we're sitting waiting for the industry to change, to get better, to have more staffing. And I put out a post this week where I was talking about that and everybody's like, oh, if only I can't wait until this happens.
And it's like, oh, that's interesting cause from a coaching perspective, I want to offer you this. Whatever you're waiting for or you're needing, or you think you deserve from your career. You have a responsibility to give all of those things to yourself First to ask me, I have tried this. I've tried outsourcing it to the job and waiting for the job to give it to me.
You'll be waiting a lifetime. You will pass and you will still not have got that thing that you are looking for. Why? Because life has a real funny way of reminding us and reteaching us, offering us multiple opportunities to relearn the same thing until we actually see it. Think about that in your life where you relearning something all the time and you just keep finding yourself there and you're like, hold on.
For me it's weight loss. Now, I know a lot of you like will look at me and think, Leo, you're not even overweight, but I am bigger than I want to be. And the funny thing is I keep relearning the. And the lesson is, the less you eat, the more you move, you will lose weight. But I keep cycling through that. So it means that I haven't learned the lesson yet.
Right? So when we really lean into learning about ourselves and we really start focusing on that self-mastery, this is your only job as a human is to learn more about you. cause when you do, you will create a life that is more intentional and you will be empowered to go out and change the world in your own unique, beautiful, beautiful wing.
Okay? So if you're looking for a job to make you happy, if you're looking for things outside of you to change how you're feeling internally, your job is to give yourself all of that. Happiness does not lie in. It is an internal process and the quicker that you make that shift to start learning more about you and start coaching yourself and start calling out your brain's bullshit, as I call it, the sooner you start becoming the hardest gen untapped potential version of you.
Okay, so some questions that I want you to think about in this one is, what is it that you are looking for from your job in career and what's stopping you from giving yourself that today? You can do it right now. You want happiness from the job. You can give it to yourself right now. But I want you to think about that for yourself.
I'm gonna try and give you some questions as we move through, cause I think that as a coach that's naturally what I would be doing right, and I'm kind of coaching myself in the same breath.
Number two, this one hit me and I wanna tell you a personal story because I got super promotional when I heard this.
I was listening to a book by Brianna West and it's 101 essays that will change your life if you're high performance nurse. Go and listen to it. It's incredible and you will love it. I think as a high performer, like we, oh, I haven't even told you the one yet, have I the lesson is your job in your life is to just befriend yourself.
And this really hit me because I was sitting here on my birthday this year in Paris of all places, which again, Is, you know, I was thinking to myself, oh, when I moved to Paris, I'm gonna feel different, better. I feel the same like I did in Sydney. Funny that life has a way of just reteaching you the same thing.
So I was sitting here on my birthday and look, went to work. It's my birthday's the 3rd of January, and he was like, I can't take the day off. I'm, I'm off to work. And I was like, really? Like you couldn't have organized this ahead of time. And he was like, no, I couldn't. And I was like, really? Couldn't have internally miffed.
I was like, no, it's fine. Okay, whatever. Like I'll work it out. So I was sitting here and I'd actually booked coaching. This is when you know you're really a coach because I'd booked to be coached on my birthday, but there was obviously a part of me that knew that I would need to be coached on my birthday.
And I don't know if you're like me, but being an empath, I always get emotional around my birthday about like what I've achieved, what I haven't achieved, all of the things. So I was sitting in this exact room and I was being coached and my coaching, I presented to the coach and I was just like, It's my birthday today and I'm on my own and I'm really sad and I'm all alone.
And like my partner's gone to work and I was running all these really negative stories like boohoo, you know, woes me. And I was telling myself things no one cares. you know, like I hadn't received a lot of messages and I've moved away from my family and friends like many, many years ago.
So I have relationships that I think should still be there, but they're not because neither of us have invested in them. So I was running all these stories and I was telling my coach, and I'm a blubbering mess and like crying like, oh hashtag And she turned around to me and she was like, who says you're alone?
And I was like, well, I am alone. There's no one else here. I was thinking, she's Craig great. And she was like, you're not alone. you always have that little version of you with you. And I was like, oh my goodness. And she was like, How can you bring little Liam along with you today and how can you befriend little Liam?
Like what would he think of you celebrating your 30th birthday? And I was like, oh my God. If little Liam could see what I've created for my life at 30, well, I was 31, but like 31, he would be like, wow, what the hell? I even get emotional thinking about it. He'd be like, you're walking through the streets of Paris and you get to travel and you get to podcast and you have your own business.
What happened? You were gonna be the sea. He would be so curious and he would be so excited for me. He wouldn't be sitting there being like, you're alone, you're miserable and you're so sad. You're in Paris and you've got all the things that you could ever want, but boohoo like your life is terrible. He wouldn't be doing that.
He'd be like, can we go to a museum? Like let's go out and explore it. Let's go and buy all the pastries. So, That was a really pivotal message and moment in coaching. For me, it changed so much because what she helped me see as my coach was, That I'm never alone. And that when I choose to think that I am alone, I'm like shedding parts of myself that are always there.
That Liam's always there. And I know that because when I go to the theater, I feel him I'm like, oh my God, I'm sitting watching the show and I love theater cause it's an expression of self and it's like I've become a child. Right? Like, think about where in your life that happens for you. What does that look like?
Where do you just really let yourself go? So the lesson here is that I was hating on myself, beating on myself. And I'm really good at that. And if you're a high performer, you're probably very good at it because we've been conditioned to believe that we should be excellent and
we should never be you know, second base. Like we should always be pushing and striving and doing. And in that moment I was like, oh, what would it look like if I just befriended myself here? What if I just give myself the love, the compassion, the connection, the support, right?
the kindness, the respect that I was expecting and looking for from Luke on my birthday. So that has been a lesson and narrative that we've heard from many guests on the podcast. And I want you to think about where in your life you can stop befriending yourself. And here's the best part of the story.
I got coached and Luke knew I was being coached because I told him and he was like, what are you doing today? I'm off to work. And I was like, I'm being coached. And I was a bit like, man, bugger off. and then he came. Then I finished coaching and the door went and I was like, we live in an apartment block?
Who's knocking the door? And I thought it's a bloody cleaner or something from like the hallway. And I went out and look standing there with pastries and a bunch of flowers and I was like, What are you doing? And I was a blubbering mess. Like just picture this hot mess. Like just walk out of a hot mess.
Like seriously hot mess. And he was like, Liam, I've taken the day off and I just started crying. I was like, oh my God, I'm really not alone. Like it was like I had to learn that lesson first, to see that I have everything that I need just with myself. And then Luke was like the added benefit. It was like this extra layer of awesomeness and we went out and we had an incredible day and I ate lots of food and he took me to wine tasting.
It's just a really good lesson in like befriending yourself because I thought that I needed Luke to have an incredible day, but really what I needed was just for me to acknowledge how amazing my life is and how incredible I am as a human, and how little Liam is always there and that I'm never, ever, ever alone.
I think about that all the time now, and I'm sitting there in a moment of doubt or fear or dread or worry. I'm like, little Liam would be like, you got this. I think it's so powerful. So befriend yourself. Think about where in your life you can start being kinder to yourself.
Number three is you are not your career.
So we've been conditioned to believe from birth. We identify as our career. Think about it, right? What do you wanna be, Johnny when you grow up? I wanna be a fireman, like I wanna be a nurse. Like how many iterations did you go through of that? But how interesting. At the very start of our lives, people ask us that question.
I think it's fucked. I think that it's crazy. We don't need to know that at that point in our life, and we have absolutely no idea. But I just find it fascinating that through our life we continue to run that narrative and then we create it, right? There's. You know, it's not just a lack or chance that that happens.
You create that because for your whole childhood, you told yourself you were gonna be a vet, right? And then you do. So if you have kids, I want you to explore, like maybe not asking that question and just being like, what possibilities are available to you? Like, think about all the things that you could do little Jody, let's not box people in like before they're even five.
So we have that deeply ingrained and intertwined view of ourself. Our self-concept is kind of almost tied to a career from your childhood years. I think it's crazy. So this is something that I think we're always unlearning and unwinding. And some of the posts that I put out talk about this, and it seems to really resonate with people when I say you are not a nurse.
Like it is not your identity. And if people ask you like, what do you do? Like, who are you? You know, it's nice to meet you John. How you going? Tell me more about yourself. You're like, I'm an artist. Like that's the first sentence that comes out, Ryan. Like you are more than a nurse. And I just think that the reason why it's so difficult to remove that from our psyche and from our kind of conditioning and the way that we approach those answers is purely just because we've practiced believing it for a long time.
Right? So you've practiced believing that you're a nurse for maybe 10 years more than you have anything else. So that's how you identify. But I want to offer to you. You can identify in any way that you want. Right. And I want you to think about like, how do you want to identify? Does identifying as a nurse serve me?
Like sometimes I don't want to identify as a nurse. I'm sure you can resonate with that. Like you're at a party and somebody's been talking for an hour about their medical conditions, you don't wanna talk about being a nurse. Right? Like how could you reframe that and how differently would that feel for you when you.
And I also think a lot of the time about why do I resist identifying as being a nurse? Because I do, I definitely do, especially when I'm part of an hospital experience. Like recently with my uncle, I resist telling people even though I want to, that I'm a nurse, and I'm like, why? What am I carrying about that?
So really get clear about who you are. Like you are not your career, and you don't have to identify as a nurse. Now, I find it really difficult, don't get me wrong. When people say, Liam, what do you do? And my uncle who's in the hospital, he's like, I never really know how to talk about what you do now. And my parents say the same thing, and I'm like, yeah.
That's because I'm not probably overly explicit about it cause I am still a nurse. But I like, and I need to put a caveat in there. You can still be a nurse and not be nursing. Okay? For those that need to hear that you can do whatever you want and still call yourself a nurse if you want to, if that's important to you.
But now I'm like, you know, I'm a life and career coach for nurses. I'm a podcaster, I'm a content creator. Somebody the other day said, you're an influencer. I was like, really? Okay. But it's really interesting. Ask the people what they think your identity is and see what they say. It'll be fascinating for you.
Number four, you create what you think. So when I first learned this, this actually blew the, my frigging mind when I was studying coaching. I was at a point where I was actually really open to this. I think I have to acknowledge this cause some people are not open to coaching. I had somebody reach out to me last year and we jumped on a concert call.
I felt really compelled to help this individual through coaching, cause I could just hear they were walking the path that I walked and I was like, oh, interesting. And so I offered some free coaching on the call and we spoke from maybe 30 to 45 minutes. And I could tell in that moment that they weren't open to the coaching.
It was a really good lesson for me in really listening and identifying is somebody open to this coaching? And I truly do believe that sometimes we're just not open to it, right? We need to do more work before we're actually receptive to the coaching itself. And maybe that's therapy. Maybe that's counseling, but I will always push people in those directions.
But interestingly, that person has now had some time off. Maybe they're listening to the podcast and they didn't join one of my programs, which is totally fine. They weren't ready. 100% weren't ready. And then reached out a couple of weeks ago and was like, Hey, I've been thinking, I've been doing some thought work and I think that I'm ready is really interesting line.
So you create what you think. And I think that this is really important for us to acknowledge in healthcare and our, in our careers. Some of you will not be open to this and it will mess with your brain a little bit. That's good. Get curious about it. Don't resist. just think about it. Just get super curious and ask yourself why you're resisting it.
But I used to think really negatively, and I still do sometimes. I had a week last week where my brain was probably 80% negative, 20% positive for real. And that's just part of the human experience, right? I think a lot of us try and get to this place where we're like rainbows and daisies, and that's just not serving us.
It's just not reality, right? It isn't reality. So when we think about negativity and we think about you create what you think, most of us work in negative cultures in hospitals or clinical environments where we have bad leaders with bad thoughts, and it's hard not to be negative. Think about the world outside, right?
We have the media's negative. Mind you, in Australia, the media's actually quite fun sometimes, depending on what channel you watch. Here in Europe, it's very negative. I don't even watch the news now. I don't know what's happening in the world cause it's so negative and so tedious. But anyway until I really recognized that I was spending a lot of time, like thinking negatively, I really was just consumed with that in my day-to-day life.
Right. And it was like leaking into everything, into my relationships, and I didn't realize that I was creating my results through what I was thinking. Okay. And we have about 60,000 thoughts a day that we just recycle and reuse from our upbringing, right? And from our conditioning, from our university, from our peers.
And we can almost have a duty to interrupt them, especially if it's not serving us. And this is why we have people that are jaded and burnt out for a long periods of time because they just have these thoughts running on a loop. My coach calls it like a thought loop. It just keeps running and running and running and running until something happens.
And then we interrupt that and it's usually something pretty traumatic. Like they get bullied or they get an injury or something happens and they start questioning the life. It's really interesting in the coaching world, everybody that's become a coach that I know has had some significant event happen and it's caused them to stop and take note of where they are in their life and they're like, I can do more.
I deserve more. I can create more. And it's like that pivotal moment. It's very interesting. So, We have 60,000 thoughts. If we're just recycling them and we're not interrupting them, we're gonna continue to have negative thoughts. Okay? But what we need to do, if you're somebody that is having all of those thoughts, we gotta interrupt our thoughts.
And it's a conscious practice, and this is why most people don't do it right, because. The way that we are designed to see the world is through that negative lens. It's through what we call the motivational triad, right? Where we want to be comfortable, we want to be safe, and we want to do everything with the least amount of air fat.
So when we indulge in that and we're just operating our life subconsciously, that's what we're creating. We just keep creating the same results. There's a few, and there's our content creator, Alex and Mosey. He talks about this. He's like, you literally just relive the same six months every six months. And I was like, wow, that is, that hates heart.
Are you just living the same six months over and over and over again? You might love that. Most high performers don't. I certainly would absolutely hate that. So it's like, where can we look at your life and where can we see what you are thinking and how that's creating the results that you have? Are there results that you want?
Okay. Are you intentional about thinking so that you can create what you actually want? Okay, so some things, as an example, I used to tell myself, I still do. I can't lose weight. Okay? You might tell yourself, I can't land the promotion. I'm not capable enough. I'm always gonna be second best. I cannot find a job that makes me happy.
All of these statements are just simply practiced thoughts. They're subconscious thoughts. Part of the 60,000 that you've practiced believing over a period of time, okay? And the scariest thing is when we choose to believe those on a subconscious level, right? And we don't really think about them or question those thoughts, you create those results.
Here's how I don't lose weight. When I tell myself I can't lose weight, I don't lose weight. When you tell yourself, I can't land that promotion, you don't get the promotion. Surprise. When you're not capable enough, you don't allow yourself to be capable. You don't even try. Fine. When you tell yourself you're always gonna be second best, you will be second best.
You will create that result, I guarantee you. And when you tell yourself, I cannot find a job that makes me happy, guess what? You don't find a job that makes you happy. This is because what we choose to think and focus on, we create as results in our life, right? So you can always find this fascinating. You can always tell how well someone is thinking, how well they manage their thoughts intentionally by the results that they have.
People that are very successful manage their mind, and most of them attribute their success to being able to manage the thoughts and the emotions that they have. It's fascinating. So I want you to think about this. Where in your life can you find evidence to show your thinking? What results do you currently have that maybe you're not taking as much responsibility for?
What are you thinking around these results? How can you show yourself that you create your results based on what you. Fascinating.
Number five, life is 50 50. Oh boy. Life is 50 50. Every guest and myself included, has talked about the struggle of being a nurse, right? The grind, the shifts, the burnout, the fear, the worry, the imposter syndrome, the bullying, the missed parties, the missed holidays, the culture, all of the things.
Have you noticed that we never talk about? When you walk into a tea room and like, how's your day going? Oh, it's amazing. It's so good. Sometimes that happens, but it's rare, right? And I love to think about this in, in the sense of like, maybe there's an imbalance. Maybe we have been sold align maybe at some point in our lives or careers or childhood or upbringing, whatever.
We were told that life is gonna be better when you get somewhere. If you anything like me, I had this belief when I make a hundred thousand dollars as an nurse, my life is gonna be so much better. I'm gonna have so much more money when I get to being an nurse unit manager, I'm gonna change the world.
It's gonna be so much better. I'm gonna, it's gonna be so much like, I don't think it would be easier. I like, I'm gonna have more impact, all of these things. And then when I set up my business, I'm, oh my God, when I make X amount of dollars in my business, I'm gonna like have all of these things I'm gonna be proud of.
And here's what I've learned to be true, that at each milestone that I set and project out into the future, when I get there, life is still 50 50. It's still 50% good and it's still 50% not so good in my mind. However, that de depends on my thinking. So in my mind, maybe it's 80% not so good and it's 20% good when you to think about what does that look like for you?
Okay? cause the thoughts that we choose to think on a daily basis subconsciously and intentionally create that 50 50 imbalance when we can get it to a place of neutrality where it's 50 50 and you come home from a, a workday and you say, you know what? Today was 50% good and it was 50%. You learn to master the ability to see the reality in the world, cause it is 50 50, sometimes it feels like 80 20, but genuinely it's 50 50.
How can we get ourselves to that place of neutrality so that we can enjoy our lives better? Think about it. How many times do you go home and you said your partner, oh my God, today was terrible. Oh, this happened, this happened, this happened, this happened. Did you spend any time talking about what actually went Well, I hear this all the time in interviews.
People go to interview and they email me afterwards and they say, Liam, I totally stuffed it up. And I say, really nothing went well. And they're like, no. And I can feel the resistance right in the writing or when I'm talking to them and I feel the resistance, they're like, Nope, no, it was a total car crash.
I'm like, did you show up? Yeah. Okay. That's great. Did you wear something nice? Yep. Great. Did you go in and introduce yourself? Yep. Great. Did you answer all the questions? Yeah. Great. Did you ask them a question? Yes, I did. Amazing. Did you stay the length of the interview? Yes, I did. Did you not run away?
Amazing mine. But do we offer that to ourselves Freely do we say, Hey, you did an amazing job today. The interview didn't go as well as planned, but here's the 50 good, and here's the 50. Not so good. Do that for yourself. Offer yourself the balance of life, because when we think it's 80 20 and life is.
Life is just shit. So it's really interesting cause Jenna, people think at the end of my graduate it's gonna be easier or I'm gonna, it's gonna be different. Or like, once I get through the ground, no, if you're telling yourself these stories, I want you to start seeing that life is 50 50 and it's 50 50 here and it's 50 50 there.
You just have different problems at each milestone in your career. So when people say to me, oh, but numb is so difficult and so hard and it's stressful unlike, and all of those things are floor nursing. So then what? Why? Why wouldn't you choose to give yourself that opportunity? What are you really worried about here?
What are you really avoiding? Because it's 50 50 as a floor nurse and it's 50 50 as a nu. Just depends what you focus on. Okay? So. I want you to think about where you're placing your attention and how can you bring it to the 50 50. Can you balance it out more? It's an intentional practice and that idea of future sourcing your happiness and expecting it to be a available to you on arrival.
If you're anything like me, I have severe arrival fallacy disorder. That's not a real thing, but I'm making it real. Like when I get to 50,000 downloads, it's gonna just feel so different. I'm just gonna be like so proud of myself and I think to myself, why? Why? Why is pride not available to me now? Why could I not have chosen to be really proud of myself at 50 downloads?
What's different about 50,000? It's the same. I feel the same, for sure. Okay, so I want you to get really conscious about where you're doing that in your life. Your life will not get better. It's the same if you manage your mind, okay? And choose what you focus on.
People, project what they don't process. Simply put. Bullies are people who are suffering mentally and emotionally, whether they're in the workplace or whether your kid's being bullied at school. These bullies are full of unprocessed emotions, thoughts, and they display all of these challenges through their actions.
It's not okay. I'm not advocating for bullying being okay. I have been a victim of bullying my whole life. I grew up in a very small town in Scotland, beautiful town. Rugby was the main sport. I'm not a sporty person. I Jenna shape shifted through my whole childhood to be the version of me that everybody else wanted.
I was beat up after school. I was called
HPN 100 episodes - 10 lessons from 100 episodes: gay
Liam Caswell: poofer, faggot gay boy pussy, all of the things. Horrible derogatory words, right? For years I was pushed in a bush once. This was ridiculous. They had this thing of bushing people, ugh, it's crazy. And I was pushed, literally walking out of a class and I was pushed totally unprovoked into a bush, like a jagged bush, not just to any bush into a jagged bush.
And this was common practice just for being who you are, right? Like, just think about that. So, you know, I was being made fun of for being my authentic self. I was ridiculed, I was bullied ridiculously for being a theater kid, you know, for expressing myself and getting on stage. I actually watched back one of those performances a while ago, and I was like, wow, I can really see how I was like hiding so much of myself.
I was on stage being this character, but I wasn't. I was just like kind of dead behind the eyes. It was really interesting for me. So at the time when I was being bullied as a kid, right, I internalized all of it thinking there was something wrong with me. Thinking that these complete assholes knew something about me that I didn't know, it was confusing.
It was absolutely horrible as a kid. Just imagine that. And then you, gain, you don't want to tell anybody. Like, there's so many letters to that, but we're not here to talk about that today. But I had the same experience working as a nurse, right? I was bullied as the scene by my manager. Horrible human, hurting human emotionally.
I don't have the words. Effed human. She made me feel small. She harassed me. She told me I wasn't good enough. She subtly talked about demoting me, threatened me through her actions, and our words told me that her 21 year old niece is better than I was, right? Even though she wasn't even qualified, said horrible things to me.
Put a lot of pressure on me. What I didn't see in the moment. Was that despite all of that, she was just really hurting, and it's very, very difficult in the moment to see the other person's pain. But I want you to think about this. She had built a career on bringing people down so she could snake her way up.
You all know somebody like this. I want you to look at them through a lens of what is going on for this individual. Why are they choosing to show up like that? What happened to them? I get so, so curious about these humans because she was angry. She was so insecure. She was threatened by my presence in the room.
She was threatened by me asking questions at that time. When that was all happening. I made everything about me. I internalized it all. I let it break me. I took four weeks off and I vowed to never go back to that hospital. Even though I transformed the place, it was 10 times better of me being there versus when I started.
That's when I realized that these people never had any control over me. They never ever had. It's actually literally impossible for them to have any power over me. How could that be? They cannot have power over you. They are not in your mind, the only person that has control over you and how you feel is you.
If you hear nothing from this episode today, your thoughts create your feelings. Other people's thoughts, other people's projections, other people's words cannot hurt you. We were lied to as children. Six in stones may break my bones. No, that's true. Names will never hurt you. We were told the truth. We were told the frigging truth.
And the reason why is because when somebody says something to you, you don't feel a thing until you have a thought about it. Oh, that was lovely. Oh, that was horrible. Why did you say that? That's what makes you feel something, not someone saying something in efforts to put you down. Okay. Other people's projections cannot touch you unless you let them.
Okay?When I learned this and I saw this, and this was through a hell lot of therapy, I stopped letting them dictate my internal narrative. I stopped consuming their poisonous beliefs about me. I stopped questioning my authentic self over someone else's inability to see their own shit, right? I did not let them dictate my internal narrative.
I'd given them everything, and I took everything back. And if you are somebody that is going through a similar situation, I want you to take it all back and you can just, in your mind, you need to say, I'm not gonna let this human dictate who I am. They don't know me, and look at them through a lens of suffering.
What happened? I love this question, and you know it sounds a bit sinister, but like, wow, what's going on for you? Imagine that question if somebody was actively bullying you, like, oh, that's interesting that you said that. That's not what I believe about myself. Why would you choose to believe that? Imagine how disarming that would be.
Imagine I wrote this down. Imagine handing it back to them on a plane, detaching their shit from your shit. cause we've all got our own shit. We don't need to compound the shit from somebody else, especially a stranger that doesn't know us, Ryan. So it gave me so much relief in recognizing this. I want you think about this.
If somebody is offering you their perception of you take it with a pinch of salt, it is totally optional as to whether or not you absorb that through being an emotional sponge, right? An empathic emotional sponge. Or whether you just hand it back to them and say, I know who I am. Thank you. That's an interesting perception of me.
Are you okay? Can you imagine? They'd be like, okay. They would not. They want retaliation. They want us to give them a reaction. And if we don't, we retain and reclaim all of our power. The only person that has influence over who you are as an individual and what you believe to be true is you do not let other people's poisonous beliefs change your internal narrative.
Okay. Get curious about them and why they're suffering.
Number seven, high performance, like you and I, we're multi-passionate. I love the term multi-passionate and nearly every high performance nurse that I've spoken to around the world has so much to offer and they're always so interested and curious in so many different things.
Right. We could literally do anything. I'm not saying that from a place of like, we're amazing. We could, you could. We can't. We are. Okay. High performers in particular, I think are multi-passionate because they truly, truly believe, even though they're filled with fear and worry, that anything is possible.
And when you believe that and you think, oh, I could do that, I could do this. You look at job boards and you see all these opportunities in the, I could, oh, I could do that. And in the same breath, you feel all the fear and you feel all the worry in the dread. You, my friend, I think are multi-passionate.
Okay. And here's why I deeply resonate with being a multi-passionate, I never feel like I belong. I never ever feel like I fit. And that is just part of a story that I run that I've believed for a long time being a bullied all of the things. But I also think that it's because I am, I'm good at lots of things and most people, and I'm passionate and I'm driven, and I'm ambitious, and most people.
Or not. All of those things look around you. Most people aren't those things. And I think that it's quite difficult when you're multi-passionate to hone in on what you're really good at because you're good at so many different things. Okay. I think about my business and my podcast. I'm great at coaching.
I'm, I think I'm good at podcasting. I've built a business. I'm good at marketing. I've done all of these things. I'm good at technology, but I never, ever feel like I'm really that great at anything in particular. Okay. And I think that if you're somebody that resonates with that and you like jumping between things and you do something for a little while and then you move on.
I used to beat myself up for that. I had fif over 15 jobs as a nurse, and now looking back, I think that's because I was a multi-passionate clinician. Who talks about this? No one. I'm coining the term multi-passionate clinicians exist. We do not all fit into a box where we do one thing and we do it really well for the rest of our life and we love it.
That would drive me crazy. But that was the story that I was fed and that was a career I was building. So if you're somebody that thinks, oh my goodness, based on your past and your trajectory that you like different things, give yourself permission to label yourself and identify yourself as a multi-passionate.
I love I C U and I do. I loved map. I loved working in education. I loved working in nurse unit manager. I loved working in quality and safe, like all of the things. I left it all, but I was never really passionate about anything in part. And then I heard this quote from Liz Gilbert. And Liz Gilbert is an author.
She wrote, eat, pray, love. But this is from big Magic. I think it's her book. I've referenced it before, but I will always continue to reference it because it cha literally changed the way that I saw myself. And she talks about there being two people in the world, Jack Hammers and Hummingbirds.
Jackhammers are people that just know what they want to do. Okay? Like they came out of the womb and they were like, I'm gonna be a nurse. I'm gonna be an ICU nurse. And they do everything in their pa in their path to, to make that happen. And they become super niche and very specialized, usually going on to do like PhDs and all of that.
And they become like leaders in the field, right? They're very specialist, very specialized people. And that's incredible. But that's not me. It might be you. It's not me. We, my friends, or maybe you, I are hummingbirds and we jump from one thing to the other. Okay. We jump from one thing onto the next thing.
We explore curiously, we give everything that we can in that place and we collect everything as we go. We're collecting all the pollen as we go, and we spread our wings again, and we move on to the next flower and we collect all the things and then we move to the next one. And we collect all the things all whilst doing this.
We are cross pollinating and leaving like little drops of Liam essence everywhere whilst we're collecting the skills that we need to grow and develop. And once we've got those skills, we just move on. Okay? And then we take it to the next level and we transform the next place and we move on. I'm curious for you.
How that lands and how that would change your perception of you moving around in your career if you were to look at it through that lens. I'm a multi-passionate clinician who goes and gives and takes and moves on to the next place. I think it's a beautiful, beautiful thing. I think that Hummingbirds and Jack Hammer both have a place in the world, but I deeply resonate with being a hummingbird.
And I think that most of you too will probably. So let me know, DM me and tell me, are you jackhammer or hummingbird? Just tell me. And I love it. I love it so much. Both are amazing, but which are you?
Okay, number eight, your brain is your best roi. So I've spent over 60 grand, 60 K on becoming a entrepreneur and building my business, and it's the best money I've ever spent, and I can't wait to spend more. Why? Because I'm Craig.
Craig. No, because your brain will always be your best return on investment. That Gucci watch, that Chanel bag, that mother Botox will still be there, but it will disintegrate. All of those things are amazing and you should do all of them for your self care. They have a timeline on them, okay? And when you choose to invest in yourself and you invest in your brain and you buy a program because it's gonna help you become a more evolved, higher version of yourself, that's priceless, my friend.
That is why in every program that we deliver, our focus is on making sure that you leave and you feel like you have 10 x extra return. Okay? So when you come and join our programs, we give you life skills. Like I'm not here to just give you little thing to move you forward. I'm here to help you transform your life like I did.
I wanna make sure that you've got the skills to build our beautiful, sustainable nursing career, or to have the mind management tools to leave it and to do something else. Okay? How much is that really worth? Really think about it. How much is that worth? When I went through 10 years of pain in my career, it was all cognitive pain.
That was like, that was worth 10 years worth of my salary. Because I wasn't happy. Okay, so I want you to think about when you are buying something or you're investing in a course, I want you to think about the fact that any nurse that's made it, quote unquote made it or progressed within their career.
They've invested in themselves, they have gone out of their way, partied with their own money to become a better version of themselves, more evolved version of the human that they are. Okay? High performance nursing version of themselves. I think it's a beautiful thing and I think that when you are approaching decisions about investing in money, your money, your hard-earned money into something you should think about.
What is the return for me on this? And this is why I think that our G C P, for example, is an absolute no-brainer. Cause when you join the G C P, the return on investment that you pay us, I mean, we don't even make a lot of profit in that program for real. Like I literally have never made less money in my life ever.
Even like working as an, as a hospital cleaner, I made more money. But I do it because I'm passionate about it and I do it because there's a need for it. And hopefully someday there's never a need for it. But I think there will always be a need for coaching. But our G C P program, when you join that G C P program, you come out and you get a 65 plus k a year pay rise.
We guarantee it 65 K. So like whatever you pay at the start, the return on investment is 65. That's like a ridiculous return. Okay? Your university doesn't guarantee you that. Okay? So I want you to think about when you're making decisions about buying something, whether it's als, whether it's this, it's not a lot of money.
I see it on Facebook all the time. $500. Oh my god, that's so expensive for a course. No, it's not. That's what you think it is. You think it's expensive, it's not expensive. $500 is nothing. My groceries in Australia, like when I was in Australia, this cost me 250 bucks a Fortnite. It's 500 bucks a month.
That's not a lot of money. We feel like it's a lot of money. It's not a lot of money. We've gotta tidy up our thinking around money. Especially I think in a lot of you will agree with me here, but I get messages like this all the time in Australia, were paid pretty well. We could be paid more. I think we should be paid more.
I'll say that again. I think we should be paid more, but we definitely. Or we definitely are paid really well. Go work in the NHS and then tell me that we're not okay. Your brain is your best roi always, always, always spent. And the people that have been on the podcast and the lessons that I've learned over a hundred episodes, it speaks that truth, right?
Every time you spend money on yourself, you just become a better version of yourself. You collect more skills, more opportunities open up to you, and you can do whatever you want. The less money you spend on yourself, the more likely you are to be stuck.
Number nine, failure leads to more success. I'm gonna just say this super simply, failure is a feeling.
Feeling like a failure is optional, and feeling like a failure is crazy through your thoughts. Yeah. You didn't want to hear that, did you? I always love asking like, what do you even mean when you say I feel like a failure? Like, define failure. Hmm. Think about that for a minute. Like, why would you choose to tell yourself that you failed?
Did you succeed as well in the same moment? Because usually you do, right? It's like fear and excitement. You feel both them in the same moment. When you're going for an interview, you're feeling fear, but you're also a little bit excited. How can you make space for both? Because what we tend to do as high performers based on all our interviews that we've done, this podcast, is we indulge in the failure and we go, oh my goodness, I can't do this.
And we fail ahead of time. We cognitively create such a story and such a feeling of failure without even having done it, that we don't even allow ourselves to go and do it. Think about that. We're literally stopping ourselves from achieving success. How would your life look differently if you befriended failure?
If you just accepted that it's part of the 50 50 failure, not so good success? Great. 50% good. How can you make space for both of them? I honestly, the more that you allow yourself to fail, the more you are likely to succeed. Now, I always have to caveat out this. I don't say go to work and intentionally fail with a patient.
That's not what I'm saying. But what I'm saying is sometimes you will fail and instead of beating yourself up, I spend hours in these Facebook groups cause no one else doesn't. So if you see me in the Facebook groups, give me a like, cause I spend hours in there responding to students, predominantly in graduates who are like, I failed, I stuffed up.
I'm on a performance plan, I'm doing, you didn't fail. What if you didn't fail? Who said that you failed? Did somebody say you don't say you failed? Never. No one ever does that. Trust me, I was a nurse unit manager. People will say, you don't say, hey, like you didn't do this that great. Like, how can we do this differently?
Your brain will create the story of failure and then because of that one time that you failed, you will hold onto that story for the rest of your life and you will never show your brain all the times in which you succeeded. Do you feel seen? Because you should. Cause I do the same thing. I am you, I human, a hundred percent human right?
We all do these things. So how can you offer yourself more time to spend in the land of success, but also be like, oh, of course I'm gonna fail. If you're doing something new and you're not failing, you're not doing it right? Yeah. When we do something new, we're opening ourselves up to failure. And I think that one of the things that we need to learn as nurses is increasing our failure tolerance.
What would your life look like if you just allowed yourself to fail? What if you applied and you were like, I might fail? What if you just applied for that job that you were thinking of doing for the last three years, and instead of just setting, stressing about it, you actually just did it? Then what? And you failed then.
What happens? Nothing. You move on and you do the next thing. It's just what you tell yourself about failure. Okay, and the last one we've kind of gone through, but I want to talk about this is unlearning. Unlearning is just as important as learning. We are just a collection of recycled thoughts until we interrupt them.
Okay? Most of them got in questions. We all have thoughts and beliefs and stories that we do not question, and I think it's so, so important that we take the time to intentionally question the stories, beliefs, and thoughts that we have, especially about ourselves, but about our possibilities within our nursing and careers.
You can do anything. You literally can do anything. The only thing that is gonna stop you is the stories and beliefs that you hold about what's possible for you. So if we can unlearn them and we can challenge our brain and we can find opportunities to be like, hold on. At one point, there was a version of me that believe that to be true, but the current version of me does not believe that's true, right?
Because as we've grow and evolve, as we invest in ourselves more, as we build our self-concept and self mastery, we learn more. We have more information to pull from, we become more informed. So then we go, hold on. When I was a new grant and I was pretty naive and I was new, I believed that I couldn't do flight nursing.
But now that I'm five years in, I know that I can, because you know, I've collected evidence, I've trained, I've done this. I've built my belief in my abilities. I've built my skill. I have these opportunities available to me. I'm unlearning that story. When you consciously think about where in your life could you choose to unlearn some of these things that are holding you back, how would your life change if you chose to no longer believe that thought?
One of my coaches talks about this all the time, and she's like, your life would be so different if you didn't have that thought. Like you can just shed it. Just get rid of it. Just stop thinking it. But part of the unlearning process is that it's still gonna come up. It's still gonna be there, and the thought's gonna come up and you're gonna be like, but Liam said it wouldn't come.
No, I didn't. It's gonna come up. So if you're, for example, I can't lose weight, then guess what? Just choose a different thought. I'm in the process of learning how to lose weight, and when it comes up, you tell yourself. I mean, the process of learning to lose weight, you have to consciously manage. It's fun.
It seems fun. Those are the 10 lessons that I'm taking away from high performance nursing a hundred episodes. It's hard to amalgamate and condense everything that we've covered in this podcast, but of course you can just go back and listen to it. And that's what's so exciting about podcasting is that it's always gonna be here until somebody deletes that.
But hopefully that will never happen and people thousands of years will be like, who is this crazy Scottish man talking all this crap? But I absolutely love being here and I love the fact that you've tuned in today. So thank you for sticking around as a long episode. I know I'm not gonna recap the 10, but I would love you to personally send me a message.
Please send me a message and tell me what you've taken away from High Performance Nursing Podcast. What have you learned about yourself or about what's possible for you? There's no right or wrong, by the way, and I really, really, really would love to just hear what, what you've taken away from any episode that you've ever listened to Being a high performance nursing listener has helped you navigate your career, please, please, please share this podcast as we move towards 200 episodes. I'm so excited to see and hear what that looks like. And hopefully there's not as many mic issues cause I think I kept moving my micm, so apologies.
But please share this with your beautiful peers, your nursing peers, your students. Tell everybody about it because it only grows if you share it with people that are like-minded, high performance nurses. And it means the absolute world to me. Here's to another 100 episodes. I cannot wait to see here and experience what the future versions of us will be doing at 200 episodes.
That's like two years from now. I can't wait. I'm so excited. Let's do this. Let's make another hundred episodes. I will see you in the next episode. Thank you so much for your time listening and I'll see you next week.
