Hello, it's Jon Murphy here, psychiatric nurse practitioner. Welcome back to another episode of Survival Notes. It's been a while since I recorded one of these, and there's a reason for that. I'm going through a full creative shift. It's a renaissance of how I'm working, thinking, showing up personally and professionally. I'm proud to say this, but this podcast is now part of the Compass Point Institute podcast network. Right now we're hosted on transistor.fm.
You can find that at cpipodcasts.transistor.fm. They've been solid and behind the scenes. I've made some big operational changes. I've stripped away a lot of the friction, especially the kind that was draining my time and energy notes, documentation, the electronic health record, administrative clutter, all of that is being delegated because that's not why I got into this work. I'm here for the real stuff, talking, listening and connecting, survival, lived experience.
The reason I'm able to help people is because I've had to figure this stuff out for myself. Okay, let's rewind. At 22, I was making $10 an hour opening doors at a psych hospital on the South Shore, Massachusetts. No plan, just showing up day after day. That was the job that set everything in motion. Fast forward to 2017, and now I have my master's degree. Graduated from Boston College and starting my first role as a psychiatric nurse practitioner in Portland, Oregon.
I showed up overdressed, hung my diploma on the wall. And I felt the full weight of total imposter syndrome and the first day, my first prescription, what happens? They couldn't pick it up. I didn't even know what a billing code was. Think about that. Six years of higher education and not one real world lesson about how healthcare actually works. It's when I realized there's theory and there's the system.
And if you don't learn how to navigate the system, it doesn't matter how well you understand people or medicine. Over time, I've learned to think in systems. I encourage my patients to do the same. I've also learned the power of incremental change. That's one small thing. One really tiny, itty bitty small thing instead of nothing. We get to the same outcome. Don't think about it. Don't wanna do it? Don't think about it. Do one little itty bitty thing, then don't think about it.
That's been true in my clinical work and my healing, and now how I've run my business. Delegation used to terrify me. When I first started, I wouldn't even let a secretary send a fax for me. Guilt, people pleasing over responsibility ran the show, but I worked through it slowly, deliberately. The version of me that operated like that doesn't even feel like me anymore. So the shift is real, and it was most noticeable when I went no contact with my mother.
My mother has narcissistic personality disorder of a very malignant variety. I've done a lot of healing, taken full accountability in my life. I'm 40 and I don't wanna live in pain or worry. I want peace. I want structure I wanna create. So I'm building a life that supports that for me, but most importantly, the people I serve, this is what I've spent the most time doing. Our greatest asset is our lived experience, our wisdom.
Not everyone can do everything, so therefore we have to turn to others for the wisdom and apply it to ourselves. We can learn from other people, especially those that have life experiences that we weren't fortunate enough to have, are different than ours. The more I reduce friction, the more present I am, and that's where I can offer the most value.
For anyone out there starting something, especially business owners, the lesson is simple reduce resistance, build momentum through one small step, accept that the system is the system. Learn it, navigate it, but don't let it break you. And if it's going to, maybe there's another way through it. I've stopped asking for permission to speak. My voice matters. The realization came when I found creative flow through music, songwriting changed everything.
Once that part of me came online, everything fell into place. So here we are. I'm speaking, using this medium, my voice, podcasting. To do what humans have always done, tell stories, reflect, connect. There's more to come. This show, Survival Notes is my place for unfiltered reflections, personal, professional, integrated. Over on YouTube, James and I are building out the Compass Point Institute, content educational, structured clinician focused. We've also launched a separate series, Toxic.
It's where I talk about real stuff, toxic relationships, healing, boundaries. If you're here and you're listening, thank you. Reach out, leave a comment, let me know what you want to hear more about. I'm always open to taking this conversation in new directions. So until next time, this is John Murphy, Psychiatric Nurse Practitioner, until next time.