10 life tips from a nurse

Any nurse can tell you that a number of folks will ask, when told that you’re a nurse, how to improve their health, well-being and general mood.

Here, a list of ten ideas (suitable for printing!) on what I’ve learned in my many years of nursing:

Nurse Jo’s Tips on How to Live a Happy, Healthy Life

1. Don’t be mean. That’s number one for a reason. If you’re mean, you make everyone around you miserable. You’ll be lonely and sick and people will think you deserve it. So don’t do it. Smile, smile, smile.

Or if you can’t, at least fake it.

2. Shut your piehole and move. No great mystery here. The average person eats too much and moves too little. Get or borrow a dog and take it on runs. Play with your kids. Turn off the TV, or at least do crunches during the commercials.

3. Vegetables: the green things at one end of the grocery store. Vegetables are fun. Really. They’re interesting. You should eat them occasionally.

4. Relax. There’s nothing worth getting that upset over.

5. Drink if you like, smoke if you must. Just don’t be a self-righteous twerp. (See tip number one.) Self-righteous twerpiness goes right along with meanness in shortening your life. I don’t care what you do as long as you’re a reasonable human being. If your choices are to smoke crack or be a twerp, let me get you a lighter.

6. Water. Your body is 70 percent water, not 70 percent Diet Coke.

7. Find what you like to do, then do it. This relates both to work and non-work situations. If your passion is basket-weaving, then by all means, weave baskets. The point is to have at least one thing in which you can lose yourself on a weekly, if not daily, basis. Which brings me to the next tip.

8. Get out of your own head. It ain’t all about you, so find something that helps you remember that.

9. Act. Whatever gods are running the Universe don’t care what you think, they care what you do.

10. Recognize that life really is that funny and ridiculous.