Nursing is great, but it is a very stressful profession to be in. As a nurse, we are consistently being pulled in different directions. Everyone seems to think that we have the answer to all their issues and problems, and usually we try our best to service everyone, every department or physician who seeks our assistance.

At the end of a long day or stressful week, it is not uncommon to find many us complaining about the job or the profession. I have been a nurse for over 17 years, and I have never known a time we were not facing a nursing shortage, which is one of our biggest issues in nursing today. The chronic shortage is the cause of a domino effect of an endless list of problems such as the working condition. As nurses we usually work long hours on our feet with very little time for lunch or bathroom breaks, we are always being ask to work over time or extra shifts and the list of issues can be endless.

With all the issues that we face in the profession, I believe that the biggest enemy of success or happiness can be rooted to the degree of your negative attitudes or emotions that you develop over the years. Your negative attitudes have the power to hold your career back, tire you out and rob you of all your joy in nursing. If you want to start enjoying this great profession, one of your goals this year should be to free yourself of negative attitudes and emotions such as fear, self-pity, envy, jealousy, feelings of inferiority and anger. Once you make up your mind to replace those negative emotions with more positive ones, I believe that your career will start to move up to a whole new level.