Inner Peace for Nurses: Daily Regulation Practice

What if the exhaustion you’re feeling isn’t because you’re doing life wrong—but because you’ve been carrying too much internally for too long?

In this episode of Default to Yes, we explore the idea of spiritual hygiene—the daily, gentle practice of caring for your inner life with the same intention you bring to your work as a nurse.

For nurses and healthcare professionals, peace is often outsourced to circumstances: the schedule, the unit, the next day off, or the next season of life. But true regulation doesn’t come from outside control—it comes from inner authority, presence, and nervous system safety.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• Why nurses often feel depleted even when life looks “manageable”
• How fear, shame, and unprocessed emotional residue quietly tax the nervous system
• What spiritual hygiene looks like as a daily practice, not a belief system
• Why presence regulates more effectively than pushing, fixing, or forcing
• A simple, nurse-friendly practice to restore steadiness and clarity
• How scripture supports inner regulation and peace without bypassing reality

This is a conversation about cleaning from the inside out.
 About learning to tend to your inner world with honesty and care.
 And about remembering that peace is not something to outsource—it’s something to practice.

Transcript

0:59

Welcome to another extraordinary week. I wanna start by saying that I've noticed over the last, couple years that we're at episode 140, I think, and. As this work has evolved, it started out originally intended for nurses and healthcare professionals nurses were saying that they didn't think nurses would listen to a podcast specifically for nurses because they just wanted to get off work and not be invested It would seem more professional, one more thing to do to listen, or that, would I talk about things that were of institution or feel more like a job. But as this work has evolved, I've noticed that who keeps showing up and saying this feels like you're in my head, and Who this truly serves, and it's been nurses and healthcare professionals. So while this space will always be welcoming, I'm choosing to speak more directly to those of you who carry care, responsibility, and regulation for others, often at the cost of yourselves. I think nurses need this space. I've realized that nurses and healthcare professionals face a unique kind of nervous system load, one that isn't fully understood unless you've lived it. Now, that's not saying that every, the, the things that we talk about, you'll be able to relate to them. If you are not an nurse or a healthcare professional, and you've been hanging with me all this time and not interacted with me to tell me you're out there. I wanna let you know that, a lot of the topics are, are still gonna be for you if it was for you before, it's gonna be for you now, but, but because of that, I'm gonna choose to focus my coaching and teaching and content a little more intentionally on those in healthcare. that is my experience, but I have not been, super intentional in that way. the principles I share about regulation clarity, spirituality, mindset, mindfulness, aroma, cognition, these all revolve around human truths. the application will speak more directly to those who carry that clinical responsibility, the emotional labor, and the high stakes decision making every single day. So I just wanted to say that upfront so that if, you're somebody who listens every week and you notice a little shift. That's where it's coming from. I want to welcome you back to another extraordinary week, we're gonna talk about how to regulate, restore, and lead from the inside out. Today I wanna name something that many of us feel, but rarely say out loud, and that's you're exhausted, but you're not weak. You're exhausted because you've been carrying too much internally for too long. what that looks like is we start with a morning meeting. We interact with patients who are anxious and scared and angry. We manage their emotional load as well. we have to be professional and we want to serve them and we serve them well. So we carry all of that internally And then somewhere along the line, many of us were taught explicitly or subtly to outsource our peace. That means to wait for the shift to end eventually, we'll have a weekend or a couple days off We'll wait for the schedule to change or for someone else to regulate before we do. We'll wait for changes to happen in our leadership. maybe we'll look for another job and that will bring us some peace I can't even tell you how many conversations I've had We have a really good conversation and the response is, well, I have to wait until life calms down first. Well, the time to access that piece is when you are having the thought that life should calm down. But peace doesn't work that way. Peace is not granted by circumstances. It's something practiced from within. There's a powerful concept called spiritual hygiene, just like our hands and bodies, our inner life needs daily care too. it's not dramatic healing and it's not fixing everything at once. It's not becoming someone new. It's not just deciding one day I am going to have an attitude of gratitude. It's not attending a resilience workshop and coming out on the other side, having all the answers, and knowing exactly now how you're gonna show up. It's that cleaning from inside out and sometimes that is done over time and it's done over consistent practices many of us feel that congestion on the inside, not because we're doing anything wrong and we're not doing life wrong, it's because what we're carrying old wounds that never had space to heal. Unspoken resentment or grief, self protected stories that once kept us safe. Sometimes we're not even aware of those. There are some subconscious rules like, don't rock the boat, keep it together, or I'll rest later. The don't rock the boat thing is, we're gonna talk about that more in a little bit. I've already started drafting the episode and talking to people about that because it seems like there's This unwritten, rule that if you verbalize the problem, you are the problem and now you're responsible for it, it lodges in your subconscious that maybe you should not rock the boat. Let's just take it as it comes and you don't have to say anything and you don't have to call it out just. Go with the flow. These inner rulers, fear, shame, unforgiveness, hyper responsibility. They quietly shape how we show up and how we decide and how we relate, and over time, that's very draining. There's a scripture that reminds us of inner work so clearly. Proverbs four 20, it says, above all else, guard your heart for everything you do. Flows from it. Guarding your heart doesn't mean hardening it, it means tending to it. as healthcare professionals we're trained to look outward, to monitor, to assess, to intervene, to evaluate, to stabilize, And that skill saves lives. But when we apply the same approach to our inner world. We often default to push through override, ignore and numb, True regulation, comes from presence, not force. neuroscience supports this. The nervous system calms not when problems disappear, but when the body senses safety and honesty. We see that in our patients, when we care for other people, we can walk them through breathing exercises. we can do practices with our patients That stimulate that vagal nerve and activate the parasympathetic nervous system. We know how to do that. It does not change their circumstances. They're still going to have that treatment or surgery or face those questions. Peace is an inside job. Jesus said the kingdom of God is within you. I've always found that mysterious and wondered, why isn't it just as easy as that? Why do I have a hard time accessing that? sometimes it's just a matter of trusting it and not getting in our heads about what we should be able to handle, And, that push through override, ignore, and numb doesn't bring that out. so peace is not outsourced, it's not delayed, and it's not dependent. And that's really good news. So let's make this really practical, here's a daily spiritual practice that you can use anytime before a shift after work, or even in the middle of a hard moment. And I need to get better at this. I need to do this sooner. I have a tendency to ignore or push off in those busy times. Say you're given an assignment or dealing with a difficult situation and you can feel already in your body, you know, the moment you can feel your stomach tighten or your head hurt or you start to get hot. All those physical symptoms should help, to serve as a trigger, to tell us that we are in trouble and we need to take that moment in the middle of a hard moment and put these practices into place. Like I said, I need to get better at first trigger, first sign of trouble doing this, then not waiting until it's obvious to everyone that I'm struggling. so first, pause and breathe. Place a hand on your chest. Inhale slowly through your nose for four, and exhale through the mouth for six. Inhale and exhale. Inhale and exhale. I'm gonna do that about three times and then ask one gentle question. Not what's wrong with me, but what am I carrying that isn't mine to hold right now? No fixing, just noticing that might be somebody else's fear, somebody else's anxiety, somebody else's problem. It's not yours to hold right now. What am I carrying that isn't mine to hold right now? No fixing, just noticing and then releasing with the truths. Just silently saying, I release what no longer serves my piece. You could put this in your phone so that as soon as you notice this, you're going to set a timer. I have a note in my phone that automatically triggers this process It'll automatically set the timer so that I can breathe. I go take the time to breathe those three times through, ask myself the question, and then I release what no longer serves my peace. You might even imagine setting it down. You might pair this with a calming scent, lavender or frankincense, whatever signals safety to your body. I like to carry a calming oil in my pocket at all times. And right now I carry, a woodsy oil. people tend to like those smells. And I can also pass that along a little bit. I have one that's called Shin Yoku, and that literally means forest bathing. So that feeling you would get if you were walking in the forest. I wanna bring that into this moment. Just small, consistent, and regulating. Mother Theresa once said, not all of us can do great things, but we can do small things with great love, and that is the intention with this practice pause and breathe. Placing one hand on your chest, inhaling slowly through the nose for a count of four, exhale through the mouth for six, and then do that about three times. then ask yourself, what am I carrying that isn't mine to hold right now. Again, just noticing. silently say, I release what no longer serves my peace. So I encourage you to either use this exact ritual and put it in your phone, on a automatic timer. This is something that you can have with you always. You always have your breath with you, and you probably always have your phone with you too. take your phone and set a timer for three minutes and Name that timer, the release ritual, and you can even put the notes in there. Pause and breathe. What am I carrying that isn't mine to hold right now? And then I release what no longer serves my peace. as soon as you recognize the first sensation you know that, Oh, here it comes. I'm starting to get a little worked up. I'm starting to carry things, other people's anxieties, problems, fears, urgencies. I'm starting to carry those and I need to put them down. Pull out your aroma if you have it. I have some nurses that we've developed rituals around the smell of coffee. maybe if you have time, a coffee or a tea, that aroma. And then that will trigger this sense of inner peace as you, do this more and more. healing doesn't require perfection, so you modify that ritual, however it serves you, but make sure you do it. Healing doesn't require perfection. Peace doesn't require your life to be resolved. It doesn't need to change the circumstances, it just needs to change how you are, how you're regulating. Regulation doesn't require you to become someone else first. You don't have to wait for this. It requires willingness attention and care, and that is something they don't tell us in these workshops. I went through a resilience workshop and while a lot of it was beautiful and I did learn a lot, One of the suggestions they focus their most time on is to make a contribution to serve. And what that meant is get involved in a committee. And that was not going to help me. That was not gonna help me in those moments. It was just going to lead to carry more guilt because I wasn't willing to do that. And I had an attitude about that, that made me feel bad. And of course I kept it to myself at the time, But defaulting to, yes, to yourself, to presence, to daily, tending to daily practices that serve you is how we reclaim our inner authority, without force and without bypassing. Now, if this episode resonates, I want to invite you into deeper support. I encourage you to share this with whoever else you think might need this, but the deeper support would be in getting on the, default to Yes newsletter. this is where I share weekly mindset shifts, simple nervous system rituals. Scripture anchored reflections and practical tools for regulated living as a nurse. No overwhelm, no pressure, just steady encouragement to keep moving forward, aligned, grounded, and whole, you can sign up through that link in the show notes. All right. Until next time. Remember this, that you did not need to outsource source your peace. You're allowed to tend to it daily gently and with intention as you go out every day and default to yes, your extraordinary self.