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In this reflective piece, nurse leader, ICU nurse and contributor for The Nurse Break, Rachel Longhurst explores leadership, burnout and the quiet rediscovery of inspiration.
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Searching for Inspiration
I recently attended my son’s year six graduation, a beautiful night of celebration. The formal part of the evening involved a presentation of completion certificates to students. As each child was called up to receive their certificate, they read a quote that they had chosen for the night, something that resonated with them, something that inspired them in some way.
The next day at work, as I walked by our medical director’s office, a shared office with the consultant-on-call, I noticed that he had printed off a collection of leadership quotes and hung them on the office wall. I stopped for a moment to read the collection, and I commented that it was a nice idea. He told me that he wanted to inspire the people who sit in this office, who visit the office, of their role in leadership, and ultimately their impact on culture. Funnily enough, I returned to my office feeling more inspired than I had in some time.
The year 2025 has been one of the most challenging years for me, both personally and professionally. It has been confronting in many ways and has taken huge emotional energy for me to navigate. I have felt uninspired and ineffective. I have felt sad, overwhelmed, exhausted and a little bit lost at times. I have felt failure. As the year draws to a close, I feel myself naturally starting to reflect on the year and those feelings, seeking closure for some things, letting go of other things, but creeping in there, is a sense of hope in the fact that this feeling of ‘being inspired’ has not left me forever, as I have recently feared.
Inspiration by its definition has a couple of different meanings in the contemporary English dictionary. The first is ‘to take a breath’ or ‘the act of drawing in, specifically air’, an act necessary for our survival. The remaining definitions are centered around the notion of ‘being inspired’ by something or someone – an agent of influence or purpose, an idea, an awakening, one that tends to be powerful in nature. Historically, the word inspiration has its roots in the Latin word inspirare (“to breathe or blow into”), which was applied both literally to the act of breathing, and figuratively, often in the religious context, to divine or supernatural power influencing or occurring within people.
It made me wonder: does this figurative and sometimes elusive concept of inspiration matter? Is it still relevant? I started reading and reading some more. Much like the physical definition of the word (we need it to survive), the psychological application of the word inspiration is also hugely important, with some studies showing that feeling and being inspired can take us beyond our ordinary experiences and limitations. It correlates with motivation and engagement, helps us to set and achieve goals and to be more creative and productive. It can also contribute to positive well-being and that this can be a self-perpetuating cycle.
Nursing, by its nature and by healthcare design, and okay, some of my own personal traits, has made me vulnerable to a state where inspiration has felt somewhat unreachable recently. I find myself cynical at times and wondering if I’m really now this person. In searching for some understanding of how and why this happened, I found a great quote from Jean Watson, an American nurse theorist and nursing professor, who said “Nurses are a unique kind. They have this insatiable need to care for others, which is both their greatest strength and fatal flaw.” Well, that was an ‘ah huh’ moment for me both personally and professionally in so many ways, and it turns out that knowledge really is power.
There are lots of things one can do to feel inspired, or to get re-inspired in my case, and I suspect what works for people varies depending on their unique make up. I’ve always been both an avid reader and writer. I’m inspired and seek to inspire others by using words. Two activities, that upon reflection, I’ve done less and less of in recent years. So, with 2026 in mind, and a desire to continue to feel inspired, a desire to be more inspiring in my many life roles, I’ve recommenced reading and writing, and to start I’ve assembled my top ten resonates-with-me quotes for a positive and powerful entry into the new year:
- The first one, spoken by my son at his graduation, phrased by John Spence: ‘If you really want to do something, you’ll find a way. If you don’t, you’ll find an excuse.” A useful way to help re-align priorities and set goals for the year ahead.
- “If you just set out to be liked, you will be prepared to compromise on anything at any time and would achieve nothing” – Margerat Thatcher. A reminder that people (including my children) are not going to like me all the time and that is actually okay.
- “Integrity is choosing courage over comfort” one of my all-time favorites from Brene Brown, that ties in closely with number four.
- “Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak. Courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen” – Winston Churchill. One can assume that wisdom is knowing when you need to do each of those things.
- “Just one small positive thought in the morning can change your whole day” – the Dalai Lama. It’s easy to get caught up in negativity, which is both infectious and damaging, sometimes to entire teams.
- “Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world” – Nelson Mandela. A re-affirmation that the work I do has value.
- “We don’t learn by doing, we learn from reflecting on what we have done” – by John Dewey. This is another of my favourites and a reminder that making mistakes is often how we learn best.
- “The greatest leader is not necessarily the one who does the greatest things, but the one that gets people to do the greatest things” by Ronald Reagan, which is echoed somewhat by the more contemporary Simon Sinek’s statement “A leader’s job is not to do the work for others, it’s to help others figure out how to do it for themselves, to get things done and to succeed beyond what they thought was possible” .
- ‘There’s a moment where you have to choose whether to be silent or stand up’ – Malala Yousafzai. A safe culture is essential in our workplaces, and it just takes one person to speak up, to question something, for others to start to do the same.
- And to finish I’m sneaking in two quotes that I can’t choose between, a little reminder to be grateful for what I have: ‘Enjoy the little things in life, for one day you may look back and realise they were the big things’ – Robert Brault; and ‘Having a place to go is home, having someone to love is family, having both is a blessing’ – Donna Hedges.
I think I’ll print some of these off and hang them in my workspace too. I hope you’ll do the same – find your top ten quotes that resonate and share them with your teams, because I can’t help but feel there are others out there, like me, that need a little boost into inspired, and there’s a strange power in words.
