Welcome to my weekly blog on my upcoming book, “Thriving in the eye of the hurricane, finding our innate resilience in these challenging times.”

Today, I’m especially filled with gratitude for this year. That may sound kind of strange, but I’m grateful, especially to those who have been serving us, the first responders, frontline workers, and health care professionals, the people in our restaurants or grocery stores, all the people who are helping us to get through these times and take care of our physical health, our mental health, and all of our needs. I wanted to start with just how blessed we are to have such heroes, such courageous people willing to put themselves out with a feeling of caring for all of us who are going through these challenging times.

This last week, I was working on the chapter of my book that specifically addresses our frontline workers.

I interviewed two nurses. Their stories were very different, and yet very similar in that they both were burned out as registered nurses before they learned the principles that are in this book on resilience. And since they learned these principles, their careers got a complete reboot.

The first, who was an RN in Northern Ireland, works for the National Health Service of the UK. And in the country of Ireland. When before she learned, these principles, she was on medications for depression and anxiety, she was so stressed out so overwhelmed and burned out from her career that she had to take a two-year leave of absence. And it was during that time that she went on a search and discovered the three principles and eventually attended a three-month program with Jamie Smart in London, to add more depth to her experience. And on the first weekend that she was involved in this course, she had a very huge awakening experience. And after that time, her depression was lifted, she got off all of her meds, and got back into nursing. As a result of her transformation, she was promoted to be the director of quality care for Northern Ireland for health care. And so she works with physicians and nurses and helps them to get through these challenging times. She shared how she wouldn’t be a nurse anymore if she hadn’t learned these principles. So that was a really powerful story. And I’m just giving you a glimpse of it.

The second person was a woman in Texas who is also an RN, works for a healthcare system as a nurse in the post anesthesiologist department working with patients who are just coming out of surgery, or some anesthesia experience. And she too, before she learned these principles, was ready to quit as a nurse. She was under so much pressure with all the paperwork, the electronic medical record-keeping system all the legal requirements, etc in healthcare. It looked like her stress was coming from the system she was working in. And she was also going through a lot of stress with her family, her husband had PTSD from his time in the war. So when she found these principles, he learned them from Dr. Keith Blevins in a seminar on resilience. She was in chronic pain, as well as being burnt out and stressed. Her whole body hurt. But, after learning the principles and seeing the connection, that her stress wasn’t coming from her circumstances it was coming from how she perceived those circumstances. Through the power of thought through the power of the mind through the power of consciousness to create that experience. It was revelational for her and her pain almost immediately subsided. She started to see that connection between the body and the mind how much the stresses were really leading to exasperating her physical pain.

So as a result, one has started a nurse coaching program with another nurse because she wants other nurses to see how to not just survive in nursing but to thrive. And the other nurse is involved with starting podcasts for the whole National Health Service in Northern Ireland to teach these principles as well as other ways that they can be supportive and help people going through this.

So that’s just a little bit of what I’ll be talking about in part four of the book entitled “The echoes of mind, resilience and action.” But it was particularly inspiring, given what all the healthcare workers and anyone who’s working in the addiction field or mental health, there’s so much more demand for our energies and our time. And when we know how to tap into that wellspring of resilience, it’s always there. It’s just a thought away. It does not only transform us, but we pass that on through our healing that we give to those that we serve.

So have a very Happy New Year. a very happy holiday, however you’re celebrating, and I’ll check in with you next week.

Thanks, Joe.