The Secret of My Success

The Mistake that Changed Everything - Crystal Culp (E040)

• Erin • Episode 40

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Show Notes
What happens when a mistake doesn’t break you—but builds you?

In this episode of The Secret of My Success, host Erin Currin sits down with nurse Crystal Culp for a powerful, honest conversation about mistakes, burnout, boundaries, and what it really means to live a fulfilling life.

Crystal shares her journey from a wide-eyed nursing student who nearly quit after a serious error, to a seasoned professional who learned that perfectionism is not the goal—presence is. Along the way, she reveals how reflection, authentic communication, and gratitude helped her rebuild passion in a system that often leaves caregivers exhausted and undervalued.

This episode is for anyone who:
• Feels burned out, overworked, or emotionally drained
• Is afraid a mistake defines their competence or worth
• Struggles with boundaries at work or in relationships
• Wants fulfillment without chasing perfection

In this conversation, we explore:
• Why mistakes are inevitable—and how to learn from them without self-punishment
• The hidden cost of burnout and “just pushing through”
• How honest communication builds trust (and why softening the truth backfires)
• Why reflection is essential for growth and emotional resilience
• The role of boundaries, gratitude, and self-awareness in sustainable success

Crystal’s story is a reminder that fulfillment doesn’t come from doing everything right—it comes from doing the work with awareness, integrity, and humanity.

🎧 Watch the episode and listen to the rest of the story.
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More about Crystal Culp

Crystal Culp is a retired senior nursing leader whose decades-long career has deeply fulfilled her through caring for people, mentoring new nurses, and advocating for system-level change to make nursing better. 

For Crystal, nursing isn’t just a profession — it’s been a lifelong calling and a core part of her and her family’s identity. Now, as a speaker and advocate, she’s helping nursing leaders think differently about how they support their staff, with a focus on retention, culture, and creating workplaces where nurses feel valued, supported, and inspired to stay.  
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Connect with Erin Currin
Life Coach | Reiki Master | Host of The Secret of My Success

Helping women redefine success, reclaim their time, and live aligned lives.

👍 If this episode resonated, like, subscribe, and share it with someone who needs permission to stop being perfect and start being real.

Want to learn more about exploring what it means to live a fulfilling life?
Subscribe to the YouTube channel here.

Crystal Culp:

I do remember one event that happened to college that devastated me. I gave medications to the wrong patient. I was like, Oh, my God. Is it going to kill this person? And right then and there, I thought, oh my god, I should just quit.

Erin Currin:

Hello and welcome to the secret of my success, where we explore what it means to live a fulfilling life. I am your host. Erin Currin, thank you so much for joining us today. If you have not already, please subscribe to our channel, and if you enjoyed today's conversation, give us a like so today, I am having a conversation with crystal Culp. Crystal Culp is a retired senior nursing leader whose decades long career has deeply fulfilled her through caring for people, mentoring new nurses and advocating for system level change to make nursing better. For crystal, nursing isn't just a profession, it has been a lifelong calling and a core part of her and her family's identity. Now as a speaker and advocate, she is helping nursing leaders think differently about how they support their staff with a focus on retention culture and creating workspaces where nurses feel valued, supported and inspired to stay. Let's welcome crystal. So today we have crystal on the podcast. Crystal welcome.

Crystal Culp:

Thank you. Erin, it's really nice to be here, and I'm looking forward to our discussion today.

Erin Currin:

Well, I am, too. I know that you're really passionate about what you do, so I won't delay. I always start our conversations by asking my guests if there was a challenge in their life, or a paradigm shift that they experienced that they'd like to get us started with. So where do you want to dive in?

Crystal Culp:

I think, because most of my life has been involved in nursing, I just retired from a 38 year career in nursing, and it really was very, very fulfilling for me. And it was sort of a really like a fluke. It happened on a fluke. I'm going to say, I was in high school, graduated grade 12, didn't have an idea of what's next kind of thing. And I just happened to have a conversation with my guidance counselor, and he kind of asked me a few questions, you know, and I answered them, and he said, you know, why don't you, you know, why don't you try nursing? And I thought, Hmm, that's a really good idea. And so I put in my applications, you know, to all the colleges got in to to college in the north. So Northern Ontario is where I started. My nursing journey was a three year course, first time away from home, very, very homesick for the first few months. Oh my god, I was actually thinking of quitting and going home because I was so homesick. The three years was a challenge, but also blessing, because it really made me think outside the box, and it really made me realize that I can do hard things. I up until that point, I really didn't have any challenges right in my life, everything kind of came fairly easy. High school didn't really have to do much studying. Totally different. When I hit college. Second year was a little bit better. The third year, you know, I had fun and was able to balance college at the same time. I do remember one event that happened to college that devastated me. It was giving medications, and we had to learn all the medications that we were giving to our patients, and we would get kind of grilled in the medication room by our instructor before we went out and gave the pills, gave the medications, and we did all of that. And I went in and I gave medications to the wrong patient. I was like, Oh my God, you know, because I took it really super seriously, thinking that, Oh my God, what are the side effects going to be? Is, you know, is it going to kill this person? And, you know, all of this. And right then and there again, I thought, oh my god, I should just quit, because I'm not, you know, I'm not the nurse. For doing this kinds of things right. My instructor took me aside, and she had a conversation with me, and she said, look, it it was a mistake. Learn from your mistakes. You really you know. You know where you went wrong, so just prevent it from happening next time. And she said, the medications really weren't that not important, but they weren't that strong that they were really going to affect that patient. So don't worry about, you know, doing any harm to the patient kind of thing. So went, got over that, graduated, got my first job in the small town that I lived in. I went back home. I've been working there for about 13 years. And because of hospital restructuring and the government restructuring, healthcare into the tier system, because we were a small hospital, we lost a lot of our services. So we lost our surgery, we lost our labor and delivery, and those were the areas that my unit serviced. So we went from a hustling, bustling unit to something that was, you know, very, very, I'm going to say it boring, and this is the point in my life where I thought, Okay, well, there's gotta be something out there. I'm not going to do this for the rest of my nursing career and just be unsatisfied without ever learning anything new and just servicing the patients that we're getting. It really was not satisfying for me. And I actually thought at that point in time that I was going to quit nursing, and, you know, so I started thinking, Hmm, what else am I going to do? Right? Nursing had been a large part of my life, you know, since I was like, 1819, years old. And I'm thinking, what other profession or career really gives me the same passion that nursing gave and really, all I'm looking for is for some kind of new experiences. So I thought, okay, right around that time, Brock University had a course that came out for a degree program, and it was something that I was really looking for, because I didn't want to do a part time degree and do it for years, right while I'm working. So this course, really fit into my lifestyle. I could still work full time. I was a single parent. I had three children, so I needed to work, and the classes and my job really, really accommodated me. So I got accepted, went back to school, got my degree, learned a whole bunch of new stuff about computers and APA, all of that stuff. It was a really big learning curve for me. It was challenging, but at the same time enriching, because I learned a lot of new things outside of nursing. I also learned more about me and what I could do when I really put my mind to it and stuck to my goal and just persevered. And I also met some really great nurses and professors at the same time, and that kind of reignited my passion in nursing. And I went back to my job, and I thought I was all fired up, you know, and I thought, Okay, this is great, you know. Now I've got all this, this new outlook on the nursing profession, and you know, how can I use that to make things better for my patients? And the part of it that really was instilled in me the most was that communication and leadership, part communicating with your patient and just communicating on an authentic level, because patients can tell when you're not being yourself, and you really don't Yeah, and you're really not interested in their answers to the questions that you're asking them, and so you want to build a really good bond with your patient so that they trust You. That's really the essence of the nurse, patient relationship. And the College of Nurses of Ontario had, or has, a really good sort of manifest, if you want to call it, that, standards on, you know, client, practitioner relationship. And I really got into all of those standards and really read them a lot, and formed or created my practice around those, so that anywhere else that I went to work, I still practice those. They were kind of the foundation of my nursing practice, and that kept things. Really alive for me. And even though things might have changed differently with different organizations, I worked for different areas within an organization that I worked for, things might have changed, but the foundation was still there. The concepts were still the same. I might have just practiced them a little bit differently with patients, but I have to say that all of my patients really felt that I was being sincere and authentic and really did trust me, and that became really, really important when I went north and started working in remote fly in only communities. That was the key piece there for me and and my nursing practice, to get them to trust because in those remote communities, they have so many nurses that come and go, come and go, come and go, right because they're part time people, it's hard for nurses coming from a city where you have shopping malls and theaters and, you know, just a whole lot of social stimulation. When you go to a remote community, you have none of that, right? You have the land right? So for me, it wasn't a far stretch going to a remote community, because I grew up in a really small community in Ontario, Southern Ontario, where we didn't, you know where I lived, it was like a half hour drive into town, right? So that remoteness wasn't an issue for me, but it really made me connect with communities, which was really big help with patients, and I went to events that they would have in the communities so that they would know I'm, you know, I'm participating. I'm part of the community. I'm not just a nurse, I'm part of the community, which was really quite helpful in establishing that bond and that relationship as well. Not again, not a lot of nurses when they go north, their mindset when they go north is work, work, work, work, and make money, money, money. And then I go home, right, and then I come back and I'll do the same thing. So that's the cycle of traveling nurses, but when you move and you live in one of those communities, it's totally different,

Erin Currin:

awesome. There's a lot to start with. So first of all, thank you for sharing so much. One of the things that I heard was, you know, and I can relate when I was in high school, like, everything was just super easy, and then all of a sudden you're in college, and it's like, wait a minute, who changed the rules? How did this get to be so hard? And it sounds like you really took to the idea of challenges, because it's almost like, I hear that you kind of found yourself inside of that, and you continued to look for novelty and different ways to explore more deeply. And I also heard that there was a conversation for you about, well, this is too hard. I can't do this. I should just quit and find something easy, right? I think that there are probably a lot of people who can relate, because when we start something new, very often, the first thing that I think, as a straight A student in high school is, if I'm not getting an A I must not be doing it right, when the reality is, every master was once a disaster. If it's really something meaningful, right,

Crystal Culp:

exactly, exactly, I would have to say, most of my nursing career, and this kind of has overflowed into my life, but most of my nursing career has been outside of my comfort zone. So when I started, so after I did my degree, I started looking at other four other experiences in nursing. I tried working in many, many different fields of nursing within an organization. So, for example, I worked in Hamilton. They had the first ever nursing resource team. So it was where nurses travel to different departments within one hospital, or all of their hospitals, and fill in so when somebody calls in sick, or somebody you know just doesn't show up, or they need an extra nurse, that was pulled from from our team, and I was the first nurse hired by HR, and they had a nurse in the. HR that did their hiring, and she was fantastic. So I was the first one that they hired for this resource nursing team. And I loved it. I absolutely loved the variety. It brought me back to, you know, when I would go in and work medical, surgical on that that unit, it brought me back to the foundations of nursing, and brought me back to, you know, year one in college of learning, you know, what it is to be a nurse and how to look after, you know, medical patients and surgical patients. Same with rehab, you know. So it was a lot of very different experiences, and I grew, and I learned so much from them, and it it always it didn't always go perfect, right? Nothing ever does. I mean, in nursing, you have to expect the unexpected, and a lot of times it's going to be, you know, on a negative tone, but you have to. So we're taught in school to reflect after our day, to reflect on our day, and what could have I done better? What didn't go so well? So I constantly have done that, you know, after my shift, when I'm home and I'm kind of more relaxed, or, you know, the next morning I do a reflection of, okay, what went well? What didn't go so well? What could I've done? What can I do for next time? So it's all about learning out of something negative and making it a positive. You know people, we're human people. You know people make mistakes, and that includes nurses. So when I got into leadership and was mentoring new students and new nurses, I would say to them, don't one. Don't be afraid to ask questions. Questions are always good. There's never a stupid question. And two, you know, when you make mistakes, think of it as a positive and what have you learned from those mistakes that you've made? Because for the next time you won't do it, there is always going to be a new mistake.

Erin Currin:

It sounds like you took that lesson that that teacher you had, you know, when you were doing the the medicine trial, and gave the wrong patient the medicine, and your teacher was like, Listen, this is, this is just how life goes. Something is going to fall off the edge. You're like, you you can't control it. You might have done too many shifts back to back. You're tired, you're this, you're that, somebody prescribed the wrong thing. It is your fault. It's not your fault. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, it's like, so what. Who cares what?

Crystal Culp:

Now, yeah, exactly. And I mean, you know, nurses, I think their their mindset is, you have to be perfect, right? You have to be perfect because it's life or death. Yes, it is life or death, but you gotta learn to be I was like that for many, many years, right? Nursing is, is stressful enough job. You don't need to add on top of it. You know, higher expectations than you can live up to. And you know, just embrace your mistakes. You know, when things don't go as you had planned it to go in the day, you kind of have to shift right and you have to adapt. That's what nursing is all about. And I learned a lot of adapting and flexibility when I worked in emergency rooms. You know your your unexpected patient comes in, you weren't expecting, you know they're moving patients, and you know you weren't expecting that. So you just gotta, you gotta go with the flow, and you gotta adapt and do what you can. You might not be able to do everything, but do what you can. You know, prioritize your work. It is really tough for nurses, especially working in hospital organizations, because that pressure is there from managers to senior leaders to, maybe sometimes your own partner working with you in the same kind of area that you're, you know, you're sharing with them. It's really super stressful on top of, you know, if your patient's not doing well, you know, you gotta spend more time with them, versus, oh, you you've got other things to do for other patients, you always have to find a balance. And when you work a 12 hour shift, it's not a 12 hour day. So a lot of my days were 1314, 15 hours from the time I got up to the time I did my 12 hour shift. And sometimes I was. Isn't always off on time, because, again, those unexpected things happen, and then you have your charge nurse breathing down your neck because, oh, you're you're going to put in for overtime. And after a 12 hour shift, I don't know any nurse that wants to willingly stay and put in more hours if they don't need to, especially if you're coming back the next day to do it all over again. So there's a lot of a lot of stress, but also nurses are they're just they're not treated the same as other health professions. So doctors are right there, up on that pedestal. Nurses are in hospital organizations. Nurses are looked at as you know, kind of their servants, their handmaidens, right? And you really don't need to use your brain a whole lot because you're following doctor's orders. You need to use your brain when you're looking at the doctor's orders, and something doesn't make sense for that patient, then you ask the doctor that question. Right when I was working in Hamilton, I remember there was a lot of interns, so a lot of interns and residents that the doctors were teaching, and it wasn't the doctors that taught them how to write prescriptions or orders for, for that matter, it was us, it was the nurses. And, you know, we would say, hey, that's, that's not the way you write, that's not the way you write orders. You need to go back and you need to do it like, you know, this, this and this kind of thing. So, you know, nurses are nurses. Need to be thought of as kind of the cog in the wheel, or they're really the backbone of our health system, and we've seen that plain as day with covid, right with the mass exodus of nurses everywhere, and it's not just through Canada. It's in the United States. It's all over the world. Nurses have laughed because they were pushed and pushed and pushed to the point of physical exhaustion, emotional and mental exhaustion, and they felt unappreciated and replaceable. Had I been working still in a hospital organization during covid, I would have done the same thing. I would have left the nursing profession, because nothing has changed within the healthcare system with the way nurses are treated. Nothing has changed. So I graduated in 1987 and for all of that time in nursing, it has stayed the same. This is one why they're having a problem recruiting nurses and nurses going into the field, because it's a really, really tough field to stay in and work in. Because not only are you battling the organization you're battling your own colleagues sometimes, right? Because a lot of nurses don't realize they're burnt out, and they just treat everyone like crap, including patients. You know, their fellow co workers, you know, they've just let the negative override their life, right? And you really can't see any value in their nursing career, except they need to keep working because they can't retire just yet, right?

Erin Currin:

Well, I think that that's a fascinating track that we've gone down, because I know that this is what you're passionate about. And there are a couple of points that I wanted to circle back to to fill in a little bit more my one of the questions that comes up in my mind is, it seems that you are cut for novelty. You're interested in learning something new. You like to see how things work. You want to figure out, like, why things are the way they are, and how to make things better. You're I get that you're passionate about this. Yes, yes, definitely now, and I'm imagining that that's probably an aspect of your personality. And there are people who just really want to have the vanilla kind of a life, and they want the same job and doing the same thing, and like I, you know, in my accounting career, many people think of accountants as boring and just very did it. And I'm not that I I'm a little bit more like you. I like working with small businesses directly for the owners, where I can get my hands and all out. Aspects of it, because for me and and this, I think I hear this in your story, when I can remove myself a little bit and see it from a couple of different ways, then I begin to see the patterns. And that's also where you can start to see the breaking points, right? Yeah. So if you're talking to nurses who are interested in having I just want to go in, do my job and go home and like, inherently, it's not going to be the same thing every day I get that. But there's also you adding an extra level of crazy into your life, wanting to understand different facets, because that's just how you're cut. How do you talk to other nurses about not falling asleep at the switch? Because, like you say, those nurses that tend to get that edge, they tend to become more mean. They probably don't even realize they're burnt out. Nursing inherently has an aspect or a dimension of caring about people. But there's also this crazy interplay between you've got a job to do, but it's a human being that you're doing it to or with. So how would you, how would you address that, that nurse that's maybe like, she's she's on her last nerve and and she really just needs to get stuff done, and somebody's coming down on her and like, how would you talk to that person about maybe taking the edge off

Crystal Culp:

one and this is something that everybody kind of thinks, And it's one of the myths that I talk about is that it's not the nurse's fault that she's burnt out. It's the organizational system or workplace culture that she's working in that precipitates her burnout, and it's a cycle. So she's in it. She's living it. It's a site. She doesn't even realize it. But in kind of overhearing some conversations and I have over the years, I've heard many conversations with patients, especially in the emergency room, when they're in triage, and they greet the patient, and, you know, they're all tense because it's a really intense environment, and they don't realize it, but you know, they kind of respond to the patient. You know, patient comes in and says, you know, oh, I've had this cough for like, a month, right? And right away the nurse is like, well, what are you doing coming in here now? Kind of thing, right? That's not an emergency, you know. It's just after she's done with the patient, taking her aside and just saying, you know, kind of reminding her and saying, you know, it's not the patient's fault. There's not a whole lot of education out there about attending the emergency room. A lot of patients don't have family doctors nowadays, so they have to go somewhere, and we have to remember that they're human, right? They have no idea we we know the health system, but patients don't have any clue about what goes on within the health system, right? So it's our job is to educate them, instead of, you know, kind of clapping back at them and making them feel bad, making them feel like you're they're wasting your time, right? That's not what nursing is all about. And you just kind of gently have that kind of conversation, and it makes nurses because, as I said, we are taught in school to reflect, right? It makes them think, oh, oh, yeah, I did do that, right? And, and, you know, a lot of nurses are really good at giving and receiving constructive feedback, right? Because we're taught, we're taught that in school.

Erin Currin:

Is that something that all nurses were taught, or did you happen to have a really good teacher?

Crystal Culp:

Well, I have to say the college that I went to, it was three years at the time when typical nursing programs and colleges were two. Mine was three years. I got a lot of really, really super good experience. I didn't always have the same teachers, but it was. In the curriculum of the school to have that reflective practice.

Erin Currin:

I think that's really powerful. Because actually one of the things that you had said earlier was when you would go home at night after Well, when you would go home after your shift, whatever time of day that happens to be, you would sit down and just think what went well, what went poorly, and what can I create tomorrow? And I think that that it's really valuable, and I would actually advocate that anybody do that, because I think the other aspect of what you're talking about is it really is true that nursing is one of those. There's somebody bleeding out on the table in the ER, like, you know, like, you don't have time to argue or reflect or think about anything. You've just got to jump in and do whatever you've got to do to make sure that this patient is taken care of. I can't even imagine. Well, first of all, I don't do blood, so not the one. But like that, level of stress, someone's life is depending on everything that you do, and you can either be such a ball of nerves that you're going to be having a nervous breakdown in a matter of months, or numb yourself out to such a point where no one and nothing really matters or gets past you. And then you become that person who's snapping at the patient in the ER and then the next time, when that patient is having a heart attack, he's not coming back because he doesn't want to get yelled at again by his mom,

Crystal Culp:

exactly, exactly. And you know, things like that have happened. So it's, it's pretty common where patients are afraid to come into the emergency room because they're afraid, you know that those nurses, or from their past experience, you know, they got yelled at, so they're kind of afraid like, oh, I don't know if this is something that you know I should be going in for. Oh, maybe I'll just wait, right? And so, yes, I've seen it so many times throughout my career. I've even seen it in the remote north, because we're on call, so after we do our work day, we have a first call and we have a second call. First call gets the phone calls from the community, sort of like a triage over the phone, where you ask questions and you see whether or they can wait until the morning, make them an appointment to come in to be seen, or do they need to be seen now in the middle of the night or evening, or whatever hour it is, type of thing, and I've seen a lot of nurses not being objective and not being able to stay objective. But because this patient is one homeless, or two is a drinker, they fluff them off and say, Oh yeah, you can come in in the morning, then they come in in a true state of emergency, and then it's a big deal, right? So I don't know that a lot of nurses really do as much reflective practice as I do. I like I take it really seriously, because it's helped me through a lot of difficult times in nursing. You know, patients die when you can't, you know, when you can't resuscitate a patient, or even when a patient, you know, becomes unstable, and once you get it stable, once you get them stabilized, you still have to keep going. But it's that downtime where you need to think back and reflect, because you can't count on your managers or the organization to provide, you know, organized debriefs. And then when there are debriefs, because I've, I've done some of them, the nurses don't want to talk, right? They don't want to get down deep into their emotions and feelings, because I think they're just so used to tamping down their emotions and not recognizing that, you know, what they've seen, what they've been through, is really traumatizing. Because it is, it's, you know, almost every single day a nurse is working, it's something traumatizing happens. You know, whether it's small or. Big. It's still traumatizing and it's different for everybody. Everybody experiences trauma with different events in different ways. So you can't just assume, you know, when something goes crazy and you know, you get it like a trauma patient in that stabbed or shot or what have you, and then you get them stabilized, and then everybody, kind of, you know, disperses and goes on with their day. You can't, just, as a nursing leader, you can't just say, oh, everybody's okay, yeah, because you haven't even checked in with anybody. And nobody's checked in with their colleagues either, right? Cuz nobody wants to talk about the hard stuff.

Erin Currin:

And I think based on, you know what you and I were talking about, to see if you would be a good fit for this conversation. Because what we talk about here is the opportunity for people to create those paradigm shifts in that breakthrough understanding that there, there has been an inherent breakdown in the way the organizations are structured, and recognizing that, yes, there, there do need to be some structural aspects of medical that need to be shifted. What is it that you do to support nurses? Or what do you advocate for nurses? Obviously, self reflection. What are some ways that they can calm themselves down after a shift, be able to regulate their nervous system. Get a hold of their emotions, get it out, get it expressed. Are there certain things that you would recommend for them to take part in, or do you think that there's something that can be provided for the nursing community of support? Yeah.

Crystal Culp:

I mean, well, certainly if they are provided with the opportunity to take part in an organized debrief within the organization like at work after, you know, it doesn't it's not really too good to do it immediately after, because things are still raw. So give them time to kind of digest it. So usually a debrief is done a couple of days after bring everybody together and you let them just talk, kind of get things started by asking a question, you know, what went well? What didn't go well, and how could we have done things a little bit better? If, if we could have done things better? Sometimes there isn't that. But nurses really do need to take part, an active part, in those debriefs, because many, many times they just stand there and they look at each other right, like, okay, who's going to say something, right? But if you talk about your feelings, and if you're not comfortable with that, I I write them down, right? I get everything out of my system and write them down like i i do journaling. So I do, you know, a daily entry in my journal, and usually that's in the morning, when I have a little bit of downtime, I would get up, you know, a couple of hours early, Erin, then my shift needed to start, because I have my whole morning routine. And, you know, I took some of that time to just sit with my journal and write down what happened the day before, or write down my feelings. If something, a big event had happened, or, you know, even an event that really touched me, I'd write it down, and I feel so much better because I got all my I got all my emotions out, you know, because as you're writing your your emotions are going right, and that's why people say it's not good to write an email. It's good to write the email in that time with all your emotions running high, but don't send it. Wait a few days. Come back to it. Reread it when you're all calmed down and things will look differently, right? Agree. Yes, agree, there's always that knowledge that there's a different perspective, right? You're going to feel differently from that moment in time when things are happening to a few days later, when you've had time to think about it and digest it, and even if you want to talk to a best friend you know, doesn't have to be to another nurse if you want to talk to somebody that's outside of nursing, just to get, you know, the emotions out and even just to talk about it, right? Talk about what happened. You don't have to. You know, as nurses, we're not supposed to talk about. Uh, patients. But you can talk about the event without saying a patient's name or, you know, anything like that, giving the patient away type of thing, um, but nurses absolutely have to have some kind of sounding board, because if you don't, and I've seen nurses who don't they tamp everything down, and they get so full of all of these suppressed emotions that they just become so nasty. And it's not just to fellow nurses, it's to everyone in their life, right? And they just become so negative. And, you know, life has ups and downs, right? And you and I've, I've learned this just in the last maybe 10 years, and really embraced it. Because before I was stressed, you know, my job was stressful. I go home, you know, everything, you know, I just get stressed that everything that didn't go the way I wanted it to go. And, you know, I somebody kind of said something about, you know, well, you know, life has its ups and downs, but it's the way you look at it and the way you react to it, and the way you react to those unexpected events that really changes your perspective. And I really thought about that, and I thought that is very true. So it's my reactions that are causing me the stress in my life outside of nursing, and the way that I'm viewing everything because of, you know, suppressed emotions, things happening at work, I'm bringing them home. I learned I have to what happens at work, stays at work. It doesn't come home with me. Yeah, right, which is really hard to do as a nurse.

Erin Currin:

Well, it's hard for anyone to do because we're human and living in tiny boxes and compartmentalizing everything doesn't work, but at the same time, if it's something that you can't fix, unless you're at the office or at the hospital or, you know, wherever it is, that thing is happening, then you've got no business laying in bed in the middle of the night trying to work out all of the different angles and methods, and you're not doing anybody any favors by exhausting yourself for sure.

Crystal Culp:

Yeah, exactly. It's, it's, it's a part of letting go, right? And I know on YouTube, there's a lot of these programs and a lot of videos about letting go, letting go of different things you Yeah, you just at some point in your life, and this happened to me because I got so full, and I was just like, so stressed, and became such a I became a person that wasn't me. I didn't recognize me because I was so negative, right? Because I let everything in my life just turn me negative, that I had to just let go, let go what I cannot control, cuz I can only control me and my emotions and thoughts, right? I can't change anybody on the outside. Can't change anybody at work. Can't change, you know, the whole health system, which I would love to do. I get that, no, you have to let some things go, because they're driving crazy.

Erin Currin:

Well, and at the same time, I learned a very valuable lesson about karma every single one of us. I'm a practicing Buddhist, so I don't I don't know if I've shared that with you. Every single person on the face of the planet has a certain basket of karma that they're dealing with. You don't know what that is. You have no idea what purpose it serves. You don't understand why this person is going through this kind of inexperience, it's not my monkey. It's not my circus. If I offer help and you decline, good luck to you. I wish you. I wish you the best journey of whatever sort it is that you're on. Because, yeah, so so many of the sensitive caregiving kinds of people like I'm I'm the sort of person who would work until midnight at the office to try to get the books done, and it's not appreciated by somebody who now has that expectation of you event like at first, they might be thanking you, but when they see that you're doing the same thing every month, then they don't want to hire the other person, because they know you're just going to handle it. So why? Um. And also, what is it? It's the the the curse of competence, like the person who is the most competent is the person who's going to absolutely come hell or high water make sure that it gets done. That's a very double edged sword, and so you know, what I hear inside of what you're sharing is that boundaries are very important, but at the same time, if you don't have that practice of self reflection, then you can't see where the boundaries would work, because you're not acknowledging what is yours and what's not yours, and what you can help and what you can't help. Where do you land inside of the idea of, like, writing a gratitude list, or, you know, some sort of an appreciation list, like it, reminding yourself of all of the things there are to be grateful about.

Crystal Culp:

I sort of do that. It's not a list that I make, but it's in my head, right? So it'll come at different moments. Could be throughout the day, throughout the week, in reflection, where I'm reminded, oh yeah, I need to be grateful for everything that I have right whether it's my family or it's that I've had I've I'm so grateful for the opportunity that I was able to have a career in something that I loved and had a passion for, and still do. Not everybody has that. So I'm so grateful that that happened to me, and as I said, it was on a fluke, because I really didn't have a direction where I was going after grade 12. I never even really thought about it throughout high school, right? Yeah, so, I mean, it's just I'm sort of, I'm not really a list maker. I kind of, you know, let things come to me, right? I truly believe that things happen in your life at the right time when you're able to fully appreciate and make something creative out of it to make your life better, because I've tried to rush things along, right? It doesn't, doesn't work. Just doesn't work. No, yes, I'd like to have that right now in this, you know, moment in time, but it and looking back, it wasn't the right time. I thought it was because that's where I thought I needed it. But when it comes, when it really comes in the right moment in time, it's like, Yes, this is how it works, right? So I'm a true believer in one fate, because things happen for a reason in everyone's life, and you just have to look for those moments when it does happen and appreciate that it happened, and take that opportunity to act on or to take action if you need to take action, right? And it it makes you feel really good about it, and that's where the fulfilling peace comes in, right? It's like you feel fulfilled because you're doing it. You're doing the right thing at the right time in your life, and probably with the right people involved. And that's kind of what it's all about.

Erin Currin:

Hopefully, that certainly helps. Okay, awesome. Well, it's been nearly an hour, if you can believe it. Fantastic conversation. Crystal, is there something that like a thought, or something that you would like to leave people with to have them move their lives in a more positive, upbeat direction, less stress, more joy.

Crystal Culp:

You know, I think that nurses have to look at themselves and do that reflective practice and make it sort of a routine in their life, because if you start doing it as a routine, it'll come naturally. And I think, you know, nursing is just something that I'm so passionate about. And I think for me, it was absolutely the right field to go into and build a career off of, and not just a career, but it, like I said, it's it was my calling. I still think of it as my calling. Um, it's my purpose in life, and it still is, because in retirement, I still am advocating. I'm a nursing speaker. And I'm advocating for nurses to nursing leaders about nurses being human. They're not robots, and you know, they just need time to reflect. They need a less stressful environment. You know, their leaders need to check in on them, and nurses need to know. Be truthful when somebody's truly wanting to check in with you. Be truthful if something is not working and you're you know you're starting to hate your job. Be truthful with your managers and let them know that something needs to change. Otherwise they have no idea. I tell nursing leaders really to treat their staff as human beings, because nurses really only want very little, and they want to be appreciated. They want to be noticed and recognized for the efforts that they put in, because they're very hard working, and they also want just to have an organized an easier way of working, so the system has to cut out all the double work that nurses are doing to make it easier to flow, so that they have less stress and trying to get everything done.

Erin Currin:

Yeah, very good. And I think a lot of that would apply to the population in general. So excellent. Yes, yeah. Well, thank you so much for for joining me on the podcast to share a little bit about the world of nursing and your growth over the history of your career. It's fascinating. And I really love your energy, and I love your vibe, and I love the contribution that you are to the world of nursing.

Crystal Culp:

Well, thank you, Erin, I really enjoyed this. This hour went by super fast, so thank you. It was a pleasure to be here talking about my passion.

Erin Currin:

You're very welcome. Okay, great. And thank you, dear listener or viewer, for joining us for another hour of the secret of my success, exploring what it means to live a fulfilling life. We will see you next time. Thank you so much for tuning in to another episode of the secret of my success, where we explore what it means to live a fulfilling life. I am your host, Erin Currin saying, Thank you so much for all of your support, for the comments, for the likes, for your engagement, we really appreciate how you contribute to this space, because at the end of the day, all of these stories are created for you your growth and your enjoyment. So subscribe if you have not already like the video. It certainly helps get things out there. And if you have any ideas for what you'd like to see, please drop something in the comments. We'll see you next time you.