Solocast: Design your life

In this solo episode, Dawn Baker shares a reading of the final conclusion chapter of Lean Out: A Professional Woman's Guide to Finding Authentic Work-Life Balance. She also shares some stories from her homestead and talks about what it means to live a life by design. 

Relevant links: 

• Leave a review for the show on ITunes - scroll to the bottom past the episodes to Ratings and Reviews, and click "write a review"
• Leave a review for the show on Spotify - click on the three dots near the show title, and then click "rate"
• Guest post for The Menopause Menu - Don't Wait to Design Your Life

Get in touch with Dawn: 

• Website - practicebalance.com
• Instagram - @practicebalance
• Facebook - Dawn Baker
• LinkedIn - Dawn L. Baker, MD
• Buy the Lean Out Book
• Buy the Lean Out Confidence Course

Transcript

0:01

Welcome to the lean out podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Don baker. Are you looking for a new approach to finding authentic and sustainable work-life balance? You've come to the right. Place. For inspiration. information. and a community. community. of like-minded. Professionals. Let's get to the show. Hello. Hello. Thanks for being here. So I've shared before on the podcast that as relatively new landowners on a homestead journey. We have some animals and they include chickens. A new micro flock of babies this year, some orphan lambs, three to be exact, and our new puppy. So you can imagine that this brings quite a bit of chaos and some funny moments to the homestead. Like recently, there was a time when all three of us human beings decided we wanted to go for a walk, which we do every day, at least one time. But our daughter had to bring a chicken on the walk because she likes to hold a chicken. She's very into her chicken care duties. The puppy, of course, came on the walk and then all three lambs decided that they were going to follow us on this walk too. Our puppy is a herding dog, and so he constantly ends up playing with the lambs and nips at their heels, and it's just really funny. They have headbutting matches and he, chases them around like mad. They're way bigger than he is. He's only like 15 pounds and four months old. And one of the sheep when we were on this walk happened to run into the back of my legs and then run through my legs to get away from the dog. And they are quite big. So I had shorts on and the sheeps happen to have all of these pepperberry burr type things all over their. Their wool right now because they're everywhere on our property, and they scratched me to the point where my legs started bleeding. It was crazy. I mean, I guess it could be worse because I remember seeing someone who had blown out their ACL. They were at my work for a surgery because they're huge. Labrador retriever ran into them at the park, so at least it wasn't that bad. The other funny thing that's going on funny, not funny is who knew that introducing new chickens to an existing flock of chickens would be such a pain in the ass? I had no idea. Our new baby chicks that we got in May, we want to get them to live with the existing flock of chickens that are a little bit over a year old, and it has been a huge pain. Now, mind you, I tried to veto getting these chickens, but I was unsuccessful. So now I am reminding my family of my original veto because chickens are like high school girls. They're very cliquey and they don't want to let these new babies into their group. So there are squabbles in the pasture and the big girls shoo them away from the food in the water. So they're kind of outcasted Now we're trying to get them to get into the big coop at night. Like all the big girls do.'cause we had them in their own little separate brooding area where you need to heat them until they get to be a certain age. But they're past that age now. So in order to get them to go into the coop, like the other ones do, we have to catch them by hand in the pasture each night, which is no easy task. And then force them through the coop door and they want to get out. So one person needs to try to guard the door and then other people catching the chickens. My daughter thinks this is the most fun, amusing thing in the world, but you can guess how amusing I think it is as it's getting darker and colder by the minute, and I'm tired from the whole day. I hope the babies learn how to get themselves in there each night, and hopefully they can get along, uh, because soon we need them to be doing that on their own. So it's never a dull moment on our homestead. Onto the topic at hand. The other day, one of my coaching clients said to me, I'm accepting that my path can look different than I envisioned. She said, when she was a young adult, she had this mindset that if she didn't meet the vision she had for her life, she would be a failure. She would be failing at what she thought she was supposed to be doing. It is taken her many years and life experiences to let go of that rigid thinking. Recently, she has had a handful of friends and colleagues of a similar age and life stage go through some career transitions that she never thought would be possible. And she has watched these people navigate their changes and be okay with them and maybe even be happier for it. So this was a whole shift in mindset for her. These people served as examples for her. They're doing the things she thought wasn't allowed. And this is precisely why I started this podcast, why I continue to do it. I want to give you examples to show you that it's possible to have a joy filled life as a professional, to have an unconventional life, or maybe even just to have a different life than you originally imagined as that young adult who was envisioning yourself where you are now as a professional. I hope you're finding inspiration here, and if you are, will you please go share that inspiration with others by leaving a review on iTunes or Spotify? It greatly helps the show by bumping it up in rankings and allowing other people to discover it. Today I want to bring you the last reading of the book. Lean Out a Professional Woman's Guide to Finding Authentic Work-Life Balance. The conclusion chapter of the book is called Design Your Life. Life Design is about looking at your life like a sculpture. One where you are the sculptor, you're not living by default, letting the elements design the sculpture. And you're not letting other people design it either. You are in control of the design, but that doesn't mean your original vision for the design can't ever change. It doesn't mean you can't undo the sculpture or change the sculpture. Work-life balance ebbs and flows in seasons, and it inherently involves experimentation. You try on solutions to what's zapping your energy. You experiment with the addition of an activity you think might bring you more joy, et cetera, but these things might change over time and that is perfectly okay too. In this short chapter, I discuss some of these concepts along with sharing more stories of women who've experimented with other lifestyles despite continuing to work as professionals. I'm gonna also shamelessly confess that I love the way I ended this book. It's just the way I started it with a story from my mountain property that continues to inspire me every single day. Again, thank you so much for listening, and I hope you enjoy this final chapter called Design Your Life. Conclusion, design your life. I hope you find whatever balance you seek with your eyes wide open. Cheryl Sandberg. This quote was taken from Sandberg's famous Barnard College graduation speech. She then followed it with, and I hope that you, yes, you have the ambition to lean into your career and run the world. Maybe you do want to run the world. Maybe all you want is to live a life of meaning. Either way, I agree with her. Lifestyle design is something you do with eyes Open Intention. Apart from the culture that is celebrated by Sandberg's, very words, it's possible that after reading this book, contemplating the questions and attempting the exercises, you end up with a work-life balance that looks very similar to Alina and Dee. My client, Asha, is a great example of someone who after evaluating her options in light of her core values, chose to transition to a work path that could possibly involve more work time than her previous situation. That is perfectly okay, as long as you're consciously choosing it. It's also possible that you will take that first step off the treadmill and it will open even more brain space for reflection. Once my client Rebecca C, chapter five. Negotiated a decreased schedule with her anesthesiology group. She was able to see other aspects of her work situation that she hadn't noticed before. Her group had been pigeonholing her into doing specific case types due to her subspecialty training. While she wanted a broader practice, she also realized she desired to work in a less cost-driven medical model. Thus, a few months later, Rebecca left her group and began arrangements to join an international practice in New Zealand. Which also aligned with her family's values of travel, close connection, and adventure. Rebecca was no longer scared of making a mistake. I'm making a pivot, and I know now that I can make a different pivot and the world won't fall apart. She said the Asim Tote work-life balance is a term that gets a bad rep. This comes from the impossibly perfect imagery of a woman spinning plates in the air with eight arms. The word achieve also often comes before the balance part in contradiction. Authentic work-life balance is a practice. It's not something that can be achieved. There is no such thing as perfection and there certainly is no end point. Like the slow, consistent progression of strength that happens when you exercise. Balance is not easy and it's not fast. It's the antithesis of a quick fix like my client, Heather learned. Leaning out can take time. She spent several months doing coaching and introspective work in between. To get to the point where my prompt about needing permission, jolted her into action. Further, it's possible to stall in your personal discovery and growth. From time to time, life happens and we must occasionally deviate our focus to tend to family issues, a move or any other sort of upheaval. This is perfectly acceptable and part of being human. In an interview with Tim Ferris of four Hour Workweek slash Body slash Chef fame, Brene Brown PhD cautioned, there is no four hour self-awareness law medicine, and many other professions require continuing education as part of maintaining a license. This makes sense because new innovations and research emerge as time goes on, and there are always things to learn and skills to hone. The term practice is therefore fitting. There's always room for improvement and new learning. There is no end point where you've become a complete master of your work. The same is true about mastering your life. Life flows in cycles, and the story of the moment is a hero's journey. It starts with the ordinary, the status quo. There is a call to adventure and an initial refusal of the call. Mentors offer advice. A pivotal moment occurs where there's no turning back. There are tests, allies and enemies. The challenge culminates and the hero returns with newfound knowledge and transformation. Then it all repeats. When you take the hero's journey of designing your life, you first depart from the familiar world of lean in culture. You question how you got stuck on the treadmill of achievement and identify what is not working. You venture into the unknown to learn who you are at your core. You investigate what you really want out of your life and how you want to define success. You come across challenges along the way, and with the help of others, you overcome them. You then return to the familiar world ready to apply your own set of rules to your life without apology, and at some point in your future, your journey will start again. Claire's journey with every step. It's okay to be in the moment and think. I know what I want. I don't know how this looks long-term, but these are the goals and the values that I have. Claire is a physician, mom, creative, and athlete who constantly reinvents her work-life balance with three babies in toes. She began her professional career in a very busy production oriented OB GYN practice. After working long hours, dedicating herself to developing close patient relationships and being on call for deliveries every day. She realized her personal values were not in line with those of her group. She lamented the precious time she was losing with her young children. This was not sustainable for me. She said when the CFO told Claire, she would likely not make partner because her numbers weren't high enough. She asked to cut her work hours. The group did not approve her request, and at the time, laborists and hospitalists were not yet a thing. Given her level of burnout in her specialty, she pivoted to something completely different, a boutique primary care practice with very limited hours as her children entered high school and college. However, she felt herself again drawn to the more robust clinical work in OB GYN. She spent the hours and money necessary to retrain in the specialty. At this time in an international setting, Claire then became one of the only obstetric specialists on the island of Sipan. She later took on more work assignments in Bangladesh, Kenya, Chad, and other countries, travel and adventure have always been a part of Claire's value system, and she has now been to every continent in more than 100 countries. The work was very rewarding, but also very grueling. Witnessing numerous poor birth outcomes due to lack of basic resources like blood and oxygen, took an emotional toll on her. In 2018, she took a chance and decided to leave clinical medicine altogether. In addition to physical and emotional exhaustion. Claire's decision was based on other motivations. She grew up as an only child with parents who were not hands-on. I kind of raised myself. She said she knew she wanted to be highly involved with her children. Not only during critical times of their development, but also when they launched into adulthood. She has helped one of her sons with a business and travels to most of her Nike athlete daughters running races. Her current remote job as a hospital administrator gives her the flexibility to travel between coasts to be with her adult children. I can whittle down my hours because I'm a great communicator. I can be anywhere in the world. I can explore and I can sleep at night. She said. I. Despite always being an avid exerciser. Claire was a certified yoga instructor and marathon runner. She knew she was missing a huge portion of the key to longevity sleep. I realized, I want to age well. I want to have peace. She said, going from clinical work to hospital administration had some costs. Claire misses the rewarding patient relationship she experienced as an ob, GYN. She took a substantial pay cut in transition to her nonclinical job, but I have time. Wealth. She said it's the one commodity you can't make more of. I love being time wealthy. Aside from exercise and travel, Claire has a passion for videography and drone mapping. Her drone projects sometimes take her to exotic locations, but she's still able to do her hospital administration work remotely. She holds ongoing contracts with universities and the National Park Service as an FAA licensed drone pilot. Although Claire took the traditional path for a while, she knew she wanted more. She has played the long game of lifestyle design and continues to create a life she loves. Her. Best advice for other women designing their lives is to spend time finding out what's most important to you. Don't move too quickly. Have a plan that motivates you even if you don't end up sticking to the plan. She also recommends looking to professional Facebook groups and other networks for inspiration, mentoring, and work options. You may not have considered reversible experiments. Designing your life is like cooking. Sometimes you will improvise when resources are limited. Sometimes you'll experiment and that experiment might not go as well as you'd hoped. If that happens, the effect will either be of low significance or the effect can be reversed to some extent. People are often scared to make changes to their work situations because they think they can't go back. On the contrary, you often can go back, maybe not to the same exact position, in the same exact location, but you'll likely be able to recreate whatever it is you're missing. Cherie C, chapter eight has conducted many such experiments. She has been surprised every time at what she's learned changes to her work-life balance that seemed like no-brainers were not always as great as she expected. In contrast changes she wasn't so sure about. Sometimes surprised her. I was wrong about myself so many times. She said, you must experiment to find out you must risk and sometimes experience failure. Jen since said, the only failure is quitting. Everything else is just gathering information. A few years ago, a colleague left her position in academic medicine to move to a different state. The family members who had served as her trusted childcare needed to move, so she moved with them on top of her clinical and research duties. She served as the head of a subspecialty teaching group and as a single mother to two children, she needed reliable help at home. At the same time, the weight of these work roles was causing tremendous stress. She would lash out at the trainees and she frankly, was not the friendliest person to work with. A year went by in her new position with a private practice group out of state, and the same family babysitters. Despite having her trustee childcare team, she just wasn't happy. In her new situation, she missed the academic environment and her old hometown. She negotiated to return to the department, but her previous role as group leader was not available anymore. She found a new nanny, but it turned out that she needed less flexibility in her childcare. Now that her job was a little different, simpler, this return with a twist brought back the calm collected coworker people had remembered from years before. The amazing thing about the human penchant for the hedonic treadmill is that it works both ways. Our happiness returns to baseline even after we achieve more money, possessions, awards, et cetera. Alternatively, when bad things happen, like failures, setbacks, or even loss, our happiness levels also return to steady state Over time, allow yourself to experiment and know that you might make some mistakes. It will be okay. You are in control. Our professional paths are filled with complexities often beyond our control. Patient load, mandatory meetings or trainings. Client needs the operating room schedule. The madness of tax season Simultaneously, we are immersed in a culture that deters us from being our authentic selves at work. Assuming the mantle of changing external factors or culture is not an easy task, but there is something you can do right now. You can lean out from hustling to feel worthy. You can lean out from subscribing to inauthentic metrics of success. You can lean out from living to meet others' expectations. In turn, you can lean into your authentic voice as it tells you what you really want your life to look like. One thing is certain you are in control of how you design your work and life. With the tools presented in this book, you have the ability to activate your self-awareness and clearly envision what you want. Your new self-knowledge will give you the confidence to take the steps, place the boundaries, and ask for what you want. If your asks and boundaries are not met, you'll explore alternatives with curiosity. Balance does exist and you deserve to have it. What does it look like for you? On a late fall afternoon, I peer over the edge of the bank at the stream bed below the yellowed grass is darkening. As the sun begins to hide. Behind the pink cliffs above the surrounding valley, I'm holding hands with the child. I struggled for years to bring into this world. The child. I so desperately wanted more than any degree, certification or accolade. She is the child who inspired me to gradually lean out more and more at work so I could know her fully. She's the reason we're standing here after making this shift to a rural off-grid existence. The sound of the water flowing in the stream reminds me of music. There are other sounds too chirping, birds snapping grasshoppers, and the distinctive quaking of Aspen leaves. It's like a miniature orchestral ensemble performing just for us. Yesterday I treated patients at a nearby surgery center, so a colleague could take a vacation. Tomorrow I'll meet with a coaching client and film an inspirational yoga practice in the meadow to share with other professionals in need of some moments of mindfulness and flow. Tonight I'll read a bedtime story to my child before working on a wellness talk for an upcoming medical conference. Today I did a little homeschooling, a little playing and some hiking, and a whole lot of loving in this quiet and beautiful place. This is my balance. If you enjoyed this book and would like to read more about the topics presented herein, please consider signing up as a subscriber to my blog newsletter and the new Lean Out podcast@www.practicebalance.com. If you found this book helpful, please leave a review on Amazon, share your thoughts on social media, and consider gifting this book to another woman who needs to hear this information. Thank you. Thanks for listening to the lean out podcast. If you find these conversations inspiring and useful, please forward them to a friend and also leave a review on iTunes or Spotify so that other people can find them easier. If you want to get in touch with me, you can find me at my website, practice balanced.com, where you can subscribe to my newsletter and get updates regularly about new podcast episodes, blog posts, speaking, engagements, and coaching services. You can also support my work by buying my book, lean out a professional woman's guide to finding authentic work-life balance for yourself, a friend, family member, or coworker. Have a great day and we'll see you next time