Nursing personal development

Profile by Stacy Cardigan Smith (Creative Communications, 2006)

Five years into her nursing career, Stephanie Staples was burned out.

“I was trying to be everything for everybody and not asking for help. I had the superwoman cape on, ” she says.

After graduating from the one-year Nursing program at Red River College in 1985, Staples worked as a geriatric nurse and opened her own in-home foot care business. As terrible as the burnout was, she made the best of it.

“It kind of became a catalyst because I changed my life and people started asking me what I was doing and how I was doing it.”

It was then that Staples began considering a career as – and underwent training to become – a life coach.

“I started helping other people live their lives happier and better and healthier. I started doing one-on-one coaching and then I started doing group coaching and then someone asked me whether I’d do a seminar. And then one day the Mayo Clinic called!”

Today, Staples works as a professional speaker and life coach, which she’s been doing full-time for about nine years. You might not think nursing and motivational speaking have a lot in common, but you’d be mistaken. It was nursing that set the foundation for her current career, as Staples predominantly speaks to those working in the healthcare field.

“People think what I’m doing now is so different, but it’s not. I went into nursing to help people and that’s exactly what I’m doing now. And I think the way I’m doing it now can help more people than nursing one-on-one. It was a pretty cool evolution.”

Even that assessment, however, makes Staples’ journey sound easier than it was.

“It takes a long time. It’s not like all of a sudden you quit your job and say, ‘I’m going to be a professional speaker, ’ because nobody knows who you are or what you do and nobody wants you. It takes a long time to build up a reputation and credibility. So I dabbled in it while I got my confidence.”

Although the transition may have been slow, Staples knew it was the correct choice.

“When I moved in to this career it was so instant and so right, there was no question that this is what I was supposed to be doing.”