23. Know Your Values to Maximize Fulfillment & Minimize Nurse Burnout

Discovering Meaning in Everyday Life: How Personal Values Shape Our Well-being

In this episode of The Nurses' Breakroom, Jenny Lytle, RN, dives into the power of finding meaning in daily life by aligning with our personal values. Building on last week’s theme of personalized self-care, this episode encourages you to explore the things that make life feel purposeful and deeply fulfilling. Jenny shares her own journey of identifying core values and explains how staying true to them can reduce stress, prevent burnout, and enhance overall life satisfaction.

This week, Jenny introduces the concept of the “Joy of Missing Out” (JOMO) and invites you to embrace simplicity by saying "no" to things that don’t align with what truly matters. Through practical steps, like creating a top-five values list and setting weekly goals, Jenny helps you cultivate a life that’s meaningful and uniquely yours. Tune in to discover actionable ways to bring more authenticity and joy into each day.

Grab the values exercise (and a lot more!) in my book bonus resource guide at www.jennylytle.com/selfcarebook

If you're feeling overwhelmed, burned out, or like there’s never enough time, I’ve got something just for you! Head to https://selfcareisntselfish.com to grab your FREE copy of my book, Self-Care Isn’t Selfish: The Compassionate Nurse’s Step-by-Step Guide to Personalized Stress Relief. It’s packed with simple, effective strategies to help you prioritize your needs—without guilt—so you can feel energized, focused, and ready to take on the day. Go to https://selfcareisntselfish.com 

Looking for connection with people who get the stress and self-care struggles of nurses and caregivers? Check out https://thenursesbreakroom.com

Connect on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jennylytlern/

More ways to connect here: https://linktr.ee/jennylytle

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:29

Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Nurses Break Room with Jenny Lytle RN. Today we are talking about meaning and what would make life feel meaningful. Last week we were focused on only you and the things that make you unique, the things that are important to you and the importance of personalizing your self-care for maximum impact. So if you haven't listened to that, be sure to go back and tune in. So for this week we are focusing on meaning and what it looks like to find meaning in everyday life.

Speaker 1: 1:03

Sometimes life can feel out of alignment or inauthentic when we aren't living in our values, and often we don't even stop to think about what are my particular values, my personal values? A lot of us know that our workplaces have a list of values, but I hadn't until several years ago. I sat down to really take a look at that and it has made a difference. So I encourage you to take time to determine and write down your values, and you know you can do that just on your own. Or, if you would like a little more guidance and some examples, you can find a copy of my values exercise in my book bonus resource guide and that is at Jenny Lytlecom slash self care book. So when I went through the exercise myself, I started out with several words that impacted me and then I whittled it down to my list of five values and now that helps to guide me and to focus me when I start wanting to say yes to maybe too many things. Revisiting those is important because when we're out of alignment with our values, then that's something that can lead to increased stress and just overall life dissatisfaction. And you may have heard me talk about my own story and how I ended up incredibly burned out because I wasn't focused on the things that really mattered most to me. And when we look at our values, when we know what's important to us, when we really focus on meaning, that's something that can bring us a lot of satisfaction like nothing else can. And then we don't just do things for the sake of doing them or say yes because we don't want to disappoint someone.

Speaker 1: 2:58

I know that FOMO is a very real thing and I have that's. My natural tendency is to want to do everything and to say yes to a lot of things, that sometimes it's just not the right time or it may be a wonderful thing, but it's not something that's best for me in that moment. And so I don't know if you've heard of JOMO, but I love that, the joy of missing out. And sometimes there is that joy, just that simplicity of a life where we're not saying yes to everything, because there are endless opportunities out there. There are so many things that we can go see and do. But being really clear on what is it that really matters to me can help to weed some of that stuff. That might be fun, but it's just not right for me in the moment.

Speaker 1: 3:55

Kind of things and knowing what we're doing and why we're doing it what that means to us is something that really can bring a better sense of life satisfaction and that also shows up in the way that we show up and connect with people. So think about what is it that matters most to you and are you taking the time to do those things? I encourage you to kind of jot down these questions to think about later, or pause this and just give it a little bit of time to think about right now. Some next steps would be creating a values list, so identifying the top five things that matter most to you, and then setting a weekly goal. So choose something that's aligned with your values, one thing that you've been wanting to do or meaning to do, something that would really fill your cup.

Speaker 1: 4:59

And do that, because aligning with your personal values can really help to decrease stress, and each day is a new opportunity to focus on what truly matters to you. I just encourage you to look for those little meaningful moments every day. They don't have to be big things, it doesn't have to take a lot of time. It's incorporating these little yet very impactful, especially when they add up things that can lead to really lasting, simple, personalized stress relief. Next week, we're going to be talking about intention and how you are fearlessly pursuing your dreams. And until next time, remember self-care isn't selfish. It's essential if we want to continue to care for others and live our best lives.