Solocast: All About Confidence

In this brief solocast episode, Dawn Baker talks all about confidence and her experience becoming a confident person. She outlines the four elements of confidence and makes a special announcement!

Links mentioned in this episode:

• Dawn's health scare story - the diagnosis, the aftermath, the infertility
• Read more about the Lean Out Confidence Course (LOCC) and sign up to get notified when it drops here

Connect with Dawn:

• On the web practicebalance.com
• On Instagram @practicebalance
• On Facebook Dawn Baker
• On LinkedIn Dawn L Baker MD
• Buy the book Lean Out

Subscribe to the PracticeBalance newsletter! Put your email into the purple box, and you will receive a free Core Values exercise for joining the community!

Transcript

0:06

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. I have some fun interviews coming up for you in Q4, but today I'm bringing you another short solo cast and this one is all about confidence. By far when I ask clients and people who are making an inquiry about coaching, what they want, their answer is confidence. It comes up so frequently. Confidence is indeed a necessity for leaning out and finding the kind of work-life balance you want and deserve. But I'll let you in on a little secret. You are not merely born with confidence. Confidence can be learned and practiced. And this is good news because this means anyone can become competent. When I was in anesthesiology residency, I distinctly remember getting this review during one of the feedback meetings with my advisor. And it said, quote, lacks, confidence, and quote. It was certainly a blow. And at the time I felt the reviewer just didn't understand my personality. I felt like I knew my stuff, but I'm not the kind of person that puts on a big show or demonstrates a huge amount of exuberance when I do things. In fact, I'm very repelled by what I perceive as arrogance or over the top minus. But do you know what? That's not confidence. Maybe that reviewer acquainted those things with confidence. I know I did, but now I know better. Looking back. I would say that the reviewer was actually right now, I would consider myself a confident person, but back then I was not. You want to know what started me on the path to gaining confidence? Having a major health crisis. And I'm going to tell you why in this episode, It will all make sense when I tell you the four elements of confidence. So, how do we define confidence? Confidence does not equate with outward measures of success and the person who maybe appears confident is not necessarily so. In. my mind, confidence is made up of both external and internal confidence. The external part is where, you know, with a level of certainty, what the outcome will be. That kind of confidence. However, only goes so far. Internal confidence is the foundation It's often called self-confidence in the personal development space. And it's what you need in order to have true, authentic confidence. Because you can be competent in many skills, but if you don't have that foundation, then you're not going to really be confident. We all know there is a huge amount of uncertainty in this world. So how can you hang your hat on the type of confidence that involves certainty? You can get external confidence through competence in a skill. Through following all the rules and jumping through all the hoops and learning and training in a specific field. But to be your authentic self, to be able to lean out and carve your own path. You need to cultivate internal confidence. Why is confidence so hard? There's a prevailing culture that leads us to be self critical. We cannot make mistakes, especially in medicine. Because it might cost someone their life. We can not show vulnerability or weakness. Lest we be judged and told that we are unworthy. Many of us have relied on our own inner critic and inner martyr to drive us towards our career goals, but at some point you have to ask yourself, is that part of me helping or hurting? And what do I really want my life to look like? How can I have the confidence to take action and get it? So, how do you get confidence? By working on the four elements. The first element is to know yourself deeply. This involves spending some time with yourself to learn about your values, what things give you energy and what things deplete your energy. How you find flow and how you recover. What kind of elements are needed for your proper self care? Another very important aspect is self-compassion. The second element is mental fitness and there are three different parts to this in my mind. There is mental agility, which is being able to ride emotions like a surfer, being able to recognize emotions. For what they are, which is merely data and not something that needs to define you or that you need to identify with. Then there's mental flexibility. And this is the flexibility to be able to analyze your thoughts and realize that sometimes the thoughts or beliefs that you have are not actually true. So, can you be flexible enough in your beliefs to question them and then to turn it around to a thought that might serve you better. And then there is mental strength and mental strength is something that is only. Achieved through mindfulness, regular mindfulness practice is a cornerstone of having a strong mind. So the third element of confidence is embracing and practicing challenge. When you are able to embrace challenge and see that taking on small challenges, such as something like starting a new class, being a beginner in something that you've never done before and having the willingness to fail. thEy train you for the really big ones that might come up such as changing your work-life balance. Asking for a raise, stepping down from a role you no longer want to fill or changing around your work schedule and disappointing a ton of patients, clients, or colleagues. Going against the grain of what everyone else is doing is the ultimate hard thing in today's modern times. And lastly, the fourth element of confidence is adopting a journey mindset, realizing that there is no end point to finding confidence, kind of like practicing balance. It's a continuous practice and it's your own hero's journey. You're going to be going through periods of trial periods of finding mentors and gaining knowledge and then wanting to share that knowledge with other people. And then maybe the cycle starts over and you have to go on another journey or pivot to something else. Then you're the beginner again, you're in the learning mode again. So realizing that all of this is a step-by-step journey is an important part of the whole process as well. Back to how I became a confident person. I had a major health crisis and if you're new to my community and don't know what I'm talking about, I'll link back to the story in the show notes. So you can check that out. This health crisis landed me in the or involved ICU stays and a convalescent period by myself at home for weeks. It left me physically weak for months. And it left me with one of the hardest things I have ever had to deal with infertility. But during this time of my life, I learned a tremendous amount about myself. I spent a lot of time alone in stillness and reflection. I also became self-compassionate for probably the first time in my life. Before I was focused on doing on appearances and on fitting in. Instead of being my true, authentic self. I realized that my body was so strong. To have undergone cancer and surgery. And although I felt physically weak, I could bring my body back up to the strength that it was and do some of the athletic things that I had loved. Again. I learned how to deal with hardships, like living with chronic round, the clock medications. And finishing residency. When I had a lot of physical weakness, I vividly remember call nights on my last ICU rotation and how difficult it could be to get through the night. I just wanted to overcome that challenge of finishing my training. All this made me remember that I liked challenge so then I started embracing challenges with gratitude. And I took everything step-by-step I didn't worry about a specific outcome because it was all a journey and I reveled in each step and found success along the way. So there you have it. That's my take on confidence on a top level view and my journey to being a confident person, myself. I'm working on putting these elements with a lot more detail and reflective exercises into a self-paced video course right now. And it should be out this winter. I can't wait for you to see it. Go to practice balance.com/l O C C. To get more details on the course and get on a wait list to be notified for when it drops. Thanks for listening today. I'll be back next week with another inspiring interview. 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