Have you ever played small in your life or nursing career? Have you taken the path of least resistance or otherwise ignored the inner voice pushing you to greater heights or bigger risks as a nurse or a human being? Have you played small when you wanted to play it big? You’re not alone!

We’ve all played it small at certain times in our lives, even when we knew we needed to think bigger. Plenty of internal and external voices compel us not to take risks, to do what others say we should, and to ignore our inner yearnings and intuition.

Nurses hear a lot of “shoulds” throughout their careers, beginning in nursing school, and continuing until (and after) retirement:

You should be a doctor, not a nurse
You should get a job in med-surg

You shouldn’t get a job in med-surg
School nursing isn’t real nursing
You can’t start a business; nurses can’t be entrepreneurs
You should go to graduate school
You shouldn’t go to graduate school
There are no nursing jobs
You should quit that job
You shouldn’t quit that job

If I had listened to the naysayers, I wouldn’t have pursued my passion and followed my gut by beginning a long and fruitful career in ambulatory care, community nursing, home care, hospice, and public health. They all said I should get a job in med-surg, but my gut said otherwise. So, I followed my gut, and I never looked back.

What have you chosen not to do because others were “shoulding” on you? Where did you play it small when you wanted to play it big? What choices have you made where you wanted to do more, and you chose to do less because “they” said it was safer? When did you want to be risky and instead decided to be safe?

You don’t have to play it safe. Life isn’t always about risk aversion and avoiding uncertainty, pain, suffering, or the great unknown.

They can “should” you to death, but you can also close your ears, ignore the safe advice, and choose the road less traveled.

No one said it would be easy to go against the grain, and there’s always a risk that you’ll fall on your face. But you know what? You took a risk by coming through that birth canal and taking your first breath. You took a risk by becoming a nurse and putting yourself on the line to care for others in their vulnerability.

You don’t have to play it big — you can play small any time you choose. I’m also not going to say that you’re “less than” if you choose a safe, well-worn path as a nurse or a human being. The main message is that you can choose your path, ignoring those who project their fear onto you to hold you back.

If you want to risk it, go for it. If you want to play it safe, please do. But the main point is that you can choose your adventure and play the game by your own rules, whether those rules call for risk or simple, safe adherence to a sure-fire path.

Florence Nightingale didn’t play it safe by going to the Crimea and almost single-handedly creating the practice of applied biostatistics while transforming the care of injured soldiers for centuries to come. No, good old Florence disregarded Victorian convention, disregarded her parents’ plans for a domestic life of 19th-century safety, and she created a legacy and a robust profession that reverberates to this day.

You don’t have to be the next Florence Nightingale or Jean Watson; you must be the next iteration of whoever you want to be.

Dream it. Be it. Risk it. Choose it. And as Oscar Wilde once said, “Be yourself; everyone else is taken.”

The post Be Yourself in Your Nursing Career first appeared on Daily Nurse.