Speaker 1: Hey guys, it's your girl, Lorena. Welcome back to my channel. If you're new here, hi, my name is Lorena Argelado and I'm so excited that you are here. You should absolutely subscribe down below. Before we get any further into this video, I just wanted to say thank you guys so much to those that are subscribed to my channel. If you guys aren't aware, we reached 1K subscribers. You guys do not know how the little girl in me right now is jumping ecstatically. There will be a giveaway soon on my Instagram in celebration of these 1,000 subscribers. Yeah, so thank you guys so much. I love you all. So as you guys can tell by the title of the video, I'm going to be giving you guys my little tips and tricks on how I balance my work life and my social life. If you guys didn't know, I have been a nurse for a year and a half now. I am an LPN and next week I start my journey to become an RN. Super excited for that. I have learned a lot of tips and tricks that worked for me over the past year and a half and I really feel the need to share that with you guys because I have been in the position where I haven't really known how to balance my work life and my personal life and it takes a toll on you. Let's just get on with the video. First things first is finding a work-life balance that works for you. Everybody's lives look different. Everybody has different priorities. Really try and experiment different balances and see what works best for you. For example, what works for some people is working three months straight and having the rest of the year off. Some people like to work for 12-hour shifts a week and have three days off and that's what works for them. Try and find different work schedules that work the best for you and your personal life so that that way you can really balance your work life and your personal life. When I first became a nurse a year and a half ago, I went straight hands-on into work. I was working up to 70 hours a week. At first, I loved it. I was doing what I love and on top of all of that, I was making bank. I was making money that no other 18-year-old or 19-year-old was making at that time. Really find that balance because when you don't have a balance between your work life and your personal life, you will catch yourself burning out real fast and that's what happened to me at first. Nursing takes a lot of sacrifice, but it's also very rewarding when you do it right. My next tip that really helps for me is having really good routines. Now, when I say routines, I mean morning routines, night routines, skincare routines, routines that you dedicate yourself to for about 15 or 20 minutes out of your day. For me, my morning routine prepares me for my shift and my night routine prepares me to just let go of everything that has happened to me over my shift and it just lets the stress leave my body so that I can get a really good night's sleep and I can start the day fresh the next morning. You want to make sure that you are okay internally before wanting to help others because you can't really provide your best work unless you are 100% put together. You really want to make sure that you are de-stressing after a long shift. Really want to make sure that you're giving yourself that self-care in order to be your best self in the work setting. My next tip is making sure you are eating and fueling your body every day. When I was a nurse for eight months, I began picking up doubles. If you guys don't know what doubles are, they are two eight-hour shifts back-to-back. First, it was okay. I would be on my feet the whole 16-hour shift. If you are a nurse, you would know that sometimes depending on how busy the shift is, you don't get a break, which is unfortunate because when you're a nurse, there's not a set time of like, okay, you're going to be on your break from 11.30 to 12. No, you just get a break whenever you have the time and sometimes you don't have the time. Super important to take the time out during your shift and eat something because we don't want to be passing out on our assignment. What I've been doing lately is meal prepping. I'll meal prep for three days and then I'll just take three meals with me and a couple snacks every day in a good-sized lunchbox. That way, whenever I have a chance, I'll sneak in there and I'll eat something. When you are working a shift, sometimes it's very hard to leave the facility and go get food outside. I personally really recommend meal prepping and that way you don't have to leave the facility and that way you have food that's already ready whenever you have a couple minutes to sit down and actually eat something. My next tip is managing and prioritizing your time. This tip goes both ways, whether it's inside of the workplace or outside of the workplace. Inside of the workplace, you want to manage your time to the point that you make sure you have good enough breaks for you to sit down, relax, deconnect or even eat something. As soon as I get report, I like to prep my meds and I like to start passing my meds once the window has opened. Throughout the shift, you may have a fall or you may have a changing condition that you have to send the patient out and you have to do more documentation than your norms. And documentation takes a while because you want to make sure that you are precise, that you don't forget anything. I work four times a week and I have three days off. So I work four times a week. I have school one day a week, which that day I just dedicate myself to schoolwork all day. And then two times a week, I am off and I spend it with my family and my boyfriend. Live your life. Don't listen to what other people say. Everybody works differently and everything works differently for everybody. What I mean by live your life is if you are working an enormous amount of time, take that trip. Take that vacation to Hawaii that you've always been wanting to take. Take that vacation in New York. Make sure that you are taking vacations and doing things that fill your soul up. What I like to tell myself is what's the point of working so much when you can't really enjoy the money that you're making? Now, don't take it as work and spend all your money. No, no, no, no, no. Because we have to save up to either buy our house or buy that dream car that we've always been wanting. But you want to make sure that you are enjoying your life to the fullest and that you're not just working because when you just work, you get burnt out and you need those weeks off. Just make sure that you are living your life as well as working your dream job. The next tip that I'm going to give you guys is planning your weeks ahead. I personally like to have a set schedule and I work with a nursing agency. So I get to make my own schedule and I get to pick the days and times I want to work and the facilities I want to go to. What I like to do is every Sunday, I like to go onto my phone, into my notes, and just list every single day of the week and list the days I'm working and the days I have off. And then on the days I have off, I like to manage my time when it comes to family and friends, my boyfriend, and things I want to do, for example, YouTube. And I've noticed that when I plan out my weeks, it also lowers my stress because I know what I have to do and I know what I have to do ahead of time, which is the best part. Knowing what you have to do ahead of time will really decrease your stress and it will allow you to actually live day by day with less stress and you will just be overall more prepared and productive at the end of the day. So my next tip is what I said previously and it is just do what makes you happy. And this can go in all different directions. Mainly, when it comes to the workplace, work at a place that makes you happy. Work at a place where you have co-workers that motivate you, that help you, that you know that are there for you when you need assistance with something. Work in a department that you are inspired of, that you're motivated to work there. If you don't like working in geriatrics, which is the elderly, don't work with the elderly. Go to the hospital. Try OB. Try working in the pulmonology department. Try working in cardiology. You want to wake up every morning looking forward to that shift. You want to wake up looking forward to seeing that patient that you've seen that has been progressing so much in their therapy. You want to make sure that you are just motivated because if you're motivated, you put your 100% and you want to make sure that you're putting your 100% for those patients that need, that extra support, that need, that extra motivation that are going through moments in their lives where they just took a toll. You want to make sure that you're happy so you can actually really make a difference and an impact in your patient's lives. And to me, that is the most important thing in nursing. It's very important to have your head above your toes and actually just give your 100% and really be there fully invested in your patients. The next thing is leave everything at the door. And what I mean by leaving everything at the door is once you have clocked out of your shift, once you have stepped foot outside of those double doors, forget about everything. And what I mean forget about everything, I mean forget that you are even a nurse. That is the best way I can even preface it because when you step out of those doors, I have had shifts where so many things have happened or I have just gotten so upset over a situation and I've gone home, I've thought about it, and I've thought about it, and I've thought about it. The only thing you're doing is eating your mind up when it doesn't need to be eaten up. And that goes to my next tip which is journaling. What I really like to do every night once I get home from a shift is get a free write journal. You can get a free write journal either at Target or on Amazon. Basically what a free write journal is, it's just a journal with blank pages. So it gives you the ability of writing anything you want and writing as much as you want. I just like to write everything down that has happened throughout the shift because it just lets me get it out of my system. And sometimes you can't really talk about what happened during the shift because of HIPAA and you can't really talk about the patients with other people because it's against the law. So I really like journaling because a journal is like your own private best friend. You have to write everything and nobody is going to read it. Nobody can find out what happened during that shift because they can't read the journal, especially if it's just yours. That also helps me just get everything out of my system so that it doesn't drag over to the next day. Lastly, learn to say no. And what I mean by learning to say no is when it comes to picking up extra shifts. For example, this week I worked 76 hours. The facility where I've been picking up my shifts at wanted me to work a double today and I was like, no. There comes a very fine line between overworking yourself and losing your license. If you are a nurse, you know how hard it was to study for that NCLEX. You know how many times you had to take that NCLEX. You know how many sleepless nights you had in order to pass your exams in your courses. So for me, yes, I love the money. Yes, the money is amazing, but it is not worth me losing my license for an extra $500. Very important to learn how to say no and just know your limits because once you start saying yes to everything, you will see yourself in the cycle of overworking yourself and you will get burnt out. Being burnt out is the worst feeling ever because it's really hard to get out of that after unless you take a very long time off of work. So that is it for this video. I hope you guys enjoyed this video as much as I enjoyed filming it for you guys and I hope these tips and tricks actually help you guys in your profession. Not only nursing, if you work somewhere else, these tips can also be super beneficial to you. So I hope that they work. I hope that you guys at least try them out and see if they work for you. I will see you guys in my next video. So bye. Bye.