Celebrating Your Why: How Wholehearted Patient Care Can Give You Greater Life Purpose

Wholehearted patient care encourages us to engage “with our lives from a place of worthiness. It means cultivating the courage, compassion and connection to wake up in the morning and think, ‘No matter what gets done and how much is left undone, I am enough.’” This implies offering yourself the same humanity, dignity and concern that you do to those whom you care for every day. 

One of the best ways to access a wholehearted career is to get in touch with your “why.” Reflect upon:

• Why have you decided to commit your life to being a healthcare professional? 
• Why do you get up each morning to be of service to your community in this way? 
• Why do you feel you can make the world a better place as a caregiver? 

Your work makes a felt impact in the lives of others every day. Wholehearted patient care can deepen your purpose, your sense of worthiness and your belonging to your community.  

What is Wholehearted Patient Care?

This kind of care stems from embracing that we all struggle, that we all have a difficult story to share. When you see your own humanity in patient suffering, you open your heart to wholehearted care. 

This empathy encourages us to hold our own vulnerability with dignity. We also show up with our own self-worth and nurture courage, compassion and connection in the face of human adversity. For so many healthcare professionals, providing such care is why they’re here.

Fully Embrace Vulnerability

Embracing our own vulnerability enables us to deeply connect with patients. This honors the heart and soul of our shared humanity. Vulnerability embraced dissolves the zipped-up front that everyone is doing “fine” and nothing else. 

Daring to show up as yourself everyday to help others is vulnerability at work. In this way, your authentic self can better witness your patients’ bittersweet life journey and lived story.  

Embracing vulnerability in nursing occurs too because you can’t predict or control your patients’ outcomes. Holding that space is the beating heart of what wholehearted patient care means. After all, in life, what makes someone vulnerable makes them beautiful too.

Engage Nursing From A Sense of Worth

Worthiness is our birthright. Because there are no worthiness prerequisites, according to Brené Brown, “worthiness is an as-is, here and now proposition.” Self-worth stems from a belief that you’re good enough as you are, and that you deserve to be loved. 

The power of owning our worthiness lives in the stories we create about ourselves, especially in our childhood. “You either walk into your story and own your truth, or you live outside your story hustling for your worthiness.” It is our choice to own and share our stories or to constantly attempt to please, perfect or prove. 

As patient care providers, we are empowered by the truth of who we are and the value of our why. When we engage with a sense of worthiness about ourselves and why we are here, we infuse what we do with meaning. This makes our patient care more worthwhile in turn.   

Cultivate Courage, Compassion and Connection

In our workday, we experience so many challenging and all-consuming emotions. Too often, we feel frustration, fear, conflict or disappointment at what is occurring around us. Not being able to metabolize these triggers holds us back from fully showing up. In effect, learning to embrace these discomforts helps us to be present for ourselves and others.

Nurturing courage, compassion and connection amidst hardship helps us overcome. Rising strong from struggles is also essential because we set the tone for healing and fortitude for our communities. 

How to Discover Your Why

Discovering the reason that inspires you to show up every day motivates your career success. Knowing why you do what you do gives you reasons to believe. When you believe in a greater life purpose, you can act with the conviction of intention. Here is how to find your own why:

The Golden Circle

Simon Sinek’s Golden Circle model offers us a useful way to capture our purpose in three concentric circles. “What” is in the outermost ring, “how” is the center ring, and “why” is the innermost circle. Most of us know what we are doing and how we do it. 

But those few who are in touch with why we do something actually succeed in their purpose. Those that can think from the inside out are most primed for accomplishing their goals. Like you, patients believe less in what you do but they’d love to feel why you do it. Such shared authenticity enables you to believe more in your pursuits because you share your heart with others.

The Friends Test

Your why is who you are in the deepest part of yourself and when you are at your best. Sinek recommends using the “Friends Test” to better discern your why in life. Here, you call up a best friend you trust (but not a spouse or sibling) and ask them why you’re friends. Also ask, “What specifically is it about me that makes you know that I would be there for me no matter what?” 

Eventually, they’ll start detailing how they feel about you. They will then articulate the value you have for them in their life. When you get goosebumps from their answer, you are on to your why. And asking multiple friends typically yields similar answers.

Passion Fuels Purpose and Purpose Fuels Passion 

Consider the impact your career has on your soul and the ways that your spirit has impacted your career. As Sinek notes, “when we work hard for something we don’t believe in, it’s called stress. When we work hard for something we love, it’s called passion.” Passion is the fuel that can power your life for the best. Indeed, your passion for nursing drove you to pursue your purpose. In turn, that purpose fueled greater passion for what you do every day. 

Skillset, Experience and Industry

Before setting your intention on nursing, think meaningfully about what you’re really good at. Where do your best skills and experience lie? Would you also love being immersed in an industry that is all about providing patient care? Reflect on how that might feel day-in and day-out and whether you would find that mentally stimulating and soul nourishing.  

Values and Culture

Ensure that nursing fits within your felt values and whether the shared culture is right for you. Nursing is a very hands on experience where you are on-call during your shift for all things patient care. In the nursing context, others will depend on you, your competence and your good cheer to get things done. 

Living Your Why

Living your why means that you consistently have your reasons for being a nurse top of mind and in your heart. When we live with purpose, we believe in the power of our intentions and decisions to shape our path forward. In this way, our why gives us the focus and resolution to live on purpose.

Intuition, Intention and Integrity

Once you get honest about your why, you align yourself with your own inner voice and purpose so life responds. Living with intuition, intention and integrity requires nothing less. You begin to live your truth as a patient care professional with greater resonance. 

Why is About We

Discovering your why gives you a purpose greater than yourself. Me becomes we when we find our why. This is also how you know you’ve found it. Being of service to others makes you feel more fulfilled and in touch with greater worth, connection and belonging in your life. 

Finding Joy: Nurturing Your Authentic, Human Spirit

You have discovered your true life’s why when you work your why with joy, fulfillment and even wonder. Although nursing can oftentimes be demanding, the joy of knowing that you impacted patients’ lives has no substitute. 

To cultivate this authenticity, you have to be able to feel life’s emotions fully. Welcome joy but also hold space with wholehearted courage for struggling with sadness, fear and anxiety. In this way, nurses experience the full rainbow of human emotions so that patients do not have to experience them on their own.

You might feel you spend your life searching for the right answers. However, living your why is about savoring the questions that life offers and knowing you’re worthy enough to belong all the while. When you do so, others feel the same around you. Live wholeheartedly by celebrating your why everyday in the decisions, choices and actions you make for those you care for.

Remember, Achieve Test Prep is here to help you accomplish your nursing dreams. Call on us when you need help preparing yourself for the TEAS, HESI PAX, KAPLAN, NCLEX-PN or NCLEX-RN exams. We can also help you advance your degree path from LPN to RN or BSN, RN to BSN, from CNA or medical assistant to RN or healthcare administration. Gain the confidence of living your nursing why with Achieve Test Prep by your side.