You’re a healthcare professional wondering what comes next. How can you get a handle on your personal life when you’re working so many hours? What should be your next career step? Goal setting can be difficult when you’re not happy and confident in your daily life. 

I want to help you step into the fearless, strong, beautiful soul you are meant to be! Let’s get started. 

First off, self-love is at your fingertips. Even if you are feeling overwhelmed and burned out, it is possible to have a loving relationship with yourself. This isn’t about a momentary reprieve from negative thoughts like a bubble bath or a cocktail, but about building a real and loving connection with your inner self. 

Our relationship with ourselves starts with our moment-to-moment thoughts. These thoughts build our world view, how we see ourselves and others. By committing to changing our internal conversation from negative to positive, we can start to build a healthy habit that will cause self-love to blossom. 

It is always in our power to be positive and kind to ourselves. The more you do it, the more ingrained the habit will become. You can start right now by reminding yourself that you deserve love just the way you are. You are enough. And you are in charge of how you view yourself.

Meditation can calm your mind, give you a chance to destress, and can even help cultivate self-love. Taking just a few minutes a day to press pause on the business of modern life can make all the difference for our mental health and internal relationship. I know as a healthcare professional you have a packed schedule and important work to do — it is just as important to keep yourself well so you can be the best at your job.

Meditation is a healing prescriptive against imbalance and stress. Make a conscious effort to repeat kind and loving words to yourself during this time, even if it’s a simple saying repeated in your head like “I am worthy of love” or “I am confident in my decisions” or “Thank you body for allowing me to move and work”.  These internal conversations lay the groundwork for a compassionate relationship with yourself. 

What does self-love have to do with goal setting? Well, self-love is going to make your life better because it will be a boost to your mental health and overall happiness. It will also allow you to expand in any direction you choose. Whether you want to grow financially, professionally, relationally, or spiritually, self-love can help. 

Without self-love, we look at goals to improve something about ourselves. Because we believe we are lacking, our goal setting revolves around “fixing” or “changing”. Only once we fix some flaws can we be beautiful, successful, loved, happy, etc. 

This is backward thinking. You don’t need to fix yourself, you need to love and support yourself! This shift in mindset will change how you look at yourself and how you look at goal setting. Instead of thinking we have to fix this and focusing on our deficiencies, we can celebrate our accomplishments on the road to a goal. We can be excited about further improvement while acknowledging our successes. 

Think of it like this: self-love is a friend that supports you and helps you get to where you want to go, while the lack of self-love is a bully that tears you down and limits your growth. 

You are a nurse, doctor, physician’s assistant, therapist, or other healthcare professional. Thank you for your work! You do amazing work and probably aren’t used to saying “no” to requests. But self-love means that you have to prioritize your needs. Sometimes that means saying no to people. It’s all right, in fact, it’s crucial, to set boundaries. This can mean saying no to social events, overtime at work, volunteer commitment, etc. Sometimes you need time to recharge, and it’s up to you to give yourself that time. In terms of goal setting, this means setting a goal and working towards a reasonable work-life balance. 

Your goals don’t have to be like anyone else’s. It’s not important that you can label an IG post #goals with a picture of a fancy vacation if that’s not what you want. You have to figure out what is important for you and making sure you get that. This could be anything that helps inspire you and foster self-love, from seeing live music to writing in a journal to spending time with friends. Your self-love is unique. 

As I said, self-love is completely unique. It’s not a static one-and-done thing. You don’t say “I love myself!” one day and it’s over. It’s a lifelong journey with yourself, and it may change over time. Just as loving a partner over the years can change and evolve, it’s the same with loving yourself. Your internal conversation is going to change over the years, as is what is important to you. It can be really helpful to keep a journal to help with goal setting and tracking your progress.

Goal setting isn’t simply saying “I want to grow my career over the next five years”. The process begins with what you believe you can achieve and your internal dialogue. By infusing self-love into goal setting, you can stop seeing all the issues you need to fix and instead direct your energy into your next success.