Self-Knowledge Is a Superpower

This episode is a continuation of a series in which Dawn Baker reads chapters of the book Lean Out: A Professional Woman's Guide to Finding Authentic Work-Life Balance. Chapter 7 is titled Self-Knowledge is a Superpower. It explores the benefits of knowing yourself deeply and shares various methods for gaining more self-knowledge. This chapter also highlights the story of Sara, an accountant who grew up quickly but understands herself very well.

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Transcript

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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. Today, I'm continuing to share chapters from my book, lean out a professional woman's guide to finding authentic work-life balance. This week it's chapter seven, self knowledge is a superpower. Speaking of the book, if you've read it or you've been listening to the chapters on this podcast and you like the information I've shared, I'd love it. If you could go over to Amazon and give the book a review. It's so helpful for small authors like me, I've sold thousands of books now, but there are only a handful of reviews so far. So your review can really help other people to find the book who are searching in this subject area. As I mentioned, this chapter is about self knowledge. Self knowledge is such an important part of personal development. It's been the foundation of my writing, speaking, and coaching for over 10 years. In fact, the first big talk I gave at a major conference was a keynote speech about the power of self knowledge to stave off burnout. In this chapter, I expand on the importance of self knowledge and discuss ways you can get to know yourself better. I also share the story of my friend, Sarah. Sarah is an accountant who had a deep sense of self knowledge early in her life. And this came from the fact that some of her family dynamics were less than desirable. She had to grow up at an early age. This knowledge shaped her ability to craft her work-life balance and set boundaries in a way that's allowed her to focus on what's most important to her. Without further ado. Here's chapter seven of lean out. What's your favorite way to get to know yourself better? Let me know by leaving a comment on the blog post for this episode@practicebalance.com or send me a DM on Instagram at practice balance. Chapter 7. Self knowledge is a superpower. I don't even remember what I enjoy doing. I can't relax and just be at home anymore. I don't know who I really am. Do any of these statements sound familiar? How would you answer if I asked you what you like to do for fun? I've heard these kinds of sentiments numerous times, especially from professional women who've added parenting into the mix. Not only have these women had their heads down, running on the treadmill of achievement for so long that they've forgotten these things, they've often given up a substantial amount of me time for years so they can support and raise little humans. This one two punch leaves women in a state where they're used to taking care of everything and everyone. Accept Themselves. Fellow physician, author, and podcaster Aaron Wiseman, D. O. said, My life had been so consumed with achieving, doing unpaid work, looking after my kids, and stressing about everything else that I had stopped doing anything just for fun. Taking some time to learn about or rediscover yourself is of utmost value on your journey to leaning out. Businesswoman and fashion designer Diane von Furstenberg said, The most powerful relationship you will have is the relationship with yourself. In fact, self knowledge helps to increase happiness, enhance success, and optimize habits. If you don't know yourself well, you are more apt to be influenced by external forces, such as the strong ones that come with the lean in culture, and less likely to stay true to your values. How do you go about increasing self knowledge? It starts by making a priority to spend time with yourself. Go solo. Time alone affords you the space to both be reflective and mindful. Many people feel that when they're down or stressed, the best thing to do is surround themselves with friends and family, perhaps with a numbing out ceremony involving rich food and alcohol. Yet time alone is valuable, even for extroverts. Alone time does not have to be lonely. It helps you examine the constant chatter in your head and clarify your thoughts and feelings. In keeping with the high achiever's penchant for all or nothing thinking, it's tempting to believe that you have no time for alone time unless you can escape to a spa retreat for the weekend. The reality is that alone time can be long and luxurious, or it can be short and simple. If it's the latter, find a way to make it frequent. Every minute adds up. Can you take a short walk by yourself sometime during the day? Is there a period of even 10 minutes when you can sit quietly alone? An often undervalued source of alone time is the workday commute. It's an easy way to savor even just a few minutes of alone time. Most people spend their commutes either listening to the news, talking on the phone, blaring the radio, or doing more work if they use public transit. You already spend the time commuting anyway, so why not make it productive? Not in an achievement sort of way, but as a manner of increasing your self awareness. I prefer to use my commutes as an opportunity for silence. When I commuted regularly, I commonly used the time to either perform a breathing exercise or a meditation. More on both in Chapter 9. I would then use the drive home to reflect on the day. What went well today? What did I learn? What did I really enjoy about today? Journaling is a great way to reflect on your life during your alone time. If you don't like to write or you prefer to spend alone time walking, you can dictate your journal. Write or dictate the happenings today that made you smile. What aspects of your day did you really enjoy? And how did you feel while they were happening? Alternatively, you can reflect on what parts of your day you disliked. When you do this on a regular basis, you will begin to see patterns. You will recognize the elements of your work and life that are continually filling your cup. At the same time, you'll identify the draining elements you'd really like to remove. Cultivate self compassion. Another foundational element of self knowledge is self compassion, yet it is especially elusive for high achieving givers. Both lean in culture and western family culture emphasize putting others needs and desires above our own. Thus, self care and self compassion are often considered selfish and indulgent. Self compassion is also associated with settling for less. which goes against the beliefs of those stuck on the treadmill of achievement. At the heart of the perfectionism and comparison many of us experience is a lack of self compassion. It's time to challenge these beliefs. Psychologist and self compassion expert Kristen Neff, PhD, stresses that self compassion involves three elements, each of which is commonly accepted on its own merit, kindness, mindfulness, and a sense of connection to the human experience. How would you treat a friend, family member, client, or patient who comes to you with negative self talk? Can you acknowledge that whatever limiting beliefs and negative feelings you're experiencing are common, natural, and yet fleeting? When you notice yourself using the thought traps outlined in Chapter 5, or bringing up excuses as to why you are stuck in your current work life balance, how Notice your level of self compassion. You do not need to treat yourself poorly while still showing up for everyone else. Author and spiritual teacher Jack Kornfield said, if your compassion does not include yourself, it is incomplete. Assessments. Sometimes referred to as personality tests. Assessments can be another very helpful way to increase self knowledge. In the worst case scenario, an assessment tells you something you already knew about yourself after you've invested some time and possibly a little money. On the flip side, assessments can really illuminate certain traits you've never realized about yourself through objective, neutral questioning. In my writing, speaking, and coaching, I have researched and taken many of these assessments. The following list includes my choices for maximum yield of insight with minimal investment. Introvert vs. Extrovert You might think you know what these terms mean, and you may have already characterized yourself as one or the other. Before you skip to the next section, consider taking Susan Cain's quiz, adapted from her book Quiet! The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking. Cain posits that the key to understanding if you're introverted or extroverted is energy. Social interactions and inputs tend to drain energy from people who are introverted, while extroverts will strive and gain energy in the same situations. This piece of information is a cornerstone of self care. If you continue living a life that has all the features of the type that isn't you, it's bound to leave you drained, burned out, and not creative. That doesn't mean you need to switch careers, however. You simply need to be smarter about your self care time. The Four Tendencies When writing Better Than Before, author and happiness expert Gretchen Rubin, The Happiness Project, Happier at Home, Researched strategies to get habits to stick. In doing so, she came up with the Four Tendencies framework, now the subject of a subsequent book titled The Four Tendencies. When conducting her many interviews, she realized that all personalities fall into four basic categories when it comes to how they respond to expectations. Upholders, Questioners, Obligers, and Rebels. Your tendency tells you whether you generally embrace or resist expectations. both those you have for yourself and those others place on you. At last count, more than 3 million people have taken the quiz. Your tendency affects how you adopt, maintain, and drop habits, which means that certain strategies for developing or quitting habits will work for specific tendencies. The result of this quiz can inform so much about your behavior around decisions, setting, and achieving goals, and even how you relate to others in your household and workplace. Physicians and other professionals have also found it useful for their patient and client interactions. The five love languages, flowers, a quiet night at home, a foot massage, a love note, having your dry cleaning picked up. Which of these expressions of love appeals most to you? How do you tend to show love to others? The five love languages are words of affirmation, quality time, physical touch, giving slash receiving gifts, and Acts of Service. The book and corresponding assessment were originally developed for family counseling. It sounds like this assessment is unrelated to the goal of increasing self awareness, but knowing your love language can help you beyond your romantic relationships. It will help you navigate all relationships, including the most important one, the one you have with yourself. How you prefer to give and receive affection is key for understanding your and others actions. But it can also provide insight into developing the most effective self care practices for you. For example, a Words of Affirmation person can use journals, books, and mantra meditations when they need to clear their thoughts. If you prefer quality time, you can be sure to recharge by spending even a little time alone. People who gravitate toward physical touch can turn to massage, yoga, or simply enveloping themselves in a soft, warm blanket when they need self care. A gifts person could buy themselves flowers or cook a lavish dinner when they're feeling down. And finally, if service fills your cup, you can hire someone to clean your house or make an effort to schedule a much needed doctor appointment. For other assessments you might be familiar with from workplace trainings or coaching resources are the Myers Briggs Type Inventory, the Enneagram, the Big Five Personality Assessment, and the CliftonStrengths Assessment. Myers Briggs types were developed to help people understand their preferences in various work and home scenarios. The Enneagram Numbers 1 through 9 are used to characterize behaviors, motivations, and fears. The Big Five represent dimensions of all personalities in differing extents. Extroversion, agreeableness, openness, conscientiousness, and neuroticism. Finally, CliftonStrengths is designed to elucidate your leadership style. There are more assessments available, but the ones listed in this section are my favorites. The ones I discussed in detail above are quick, free, and do not require the help of a coach or a psychologist to interpret the results. Links and resources for all these assessments are provided in the resources section at the end of this book. The Gift of Self Knowledge Above all, self knowledge will bring you clarity. It will help you get in touch with your deeply held values. It will improve your relationships at work and at home. It will enhance your productivity and habits. There is not a one size fits all solution to deal with the problems of lean in culture. Self knowledge will help you see solutions that are right for you, so you can design your journey of leaning out from a place of internal value, rather than crowdsourcing solutions that might lead to not so lasting change. Exercise. Learn something new about yourself. Choose one of the assessments that appeals to you from the descriptions above. Take the assessment and then reflect on the results. How does this change your view of yourself? Does what you've learned align with your roles and the types of activities that currently fill your days? Sarah's journey. I know myself pretty well. Sarah grew up quickly because her father traveled for work most of the time. She and her siblings were forced to take care of her mother, who was debilitated from a severe case of multiple sclerosis. No judgment, but I knew I did not want to be like my dad, she said. I knew I wanted to be able to take care of my family financially on my terms and still be around, and not have to be subject to someone else's idea of how long I have to be at work. During college, she dated a man who planned to follow in his father's footsteps and become a chiropractor. Although she held a vision of balancing work and children, Sarah didn't know where she wanted to focus her studies. One day, her boyfriend's dad said, You're really good with numbers. You should be an accountant. She dismissed this, thinking it sounded boring, until he added, With the right credentials, you could be working by a pool someday. Already armed with the knowledge of her core values, that was the moment she began designing her authentic work life balance. Furthermore, she married that boyfriend. Now they have two young children and she owns her own business as a CPA. Her current work schedule is comprised of three afternoons per week in an office with one assistant, seeing clients both in person and virtually. She also teaches two virtual courses at the same local university where she attended school and met her husband. The rest of her days are filled with family time, gardening, and focusing on her own health and fitness, both outdoors and in a gym. Sarah chose to attend a virtual graduate school that helped her earn three master's degrees and her public accountant certification. Thus, she stayed focused on her goal of complete schedule control without the distraction of comparison to her peers. However, her first CPA job out of school involved tremendous work hours, especially during tax season. Within six months, they had started grooming me to become a partner, she said. Although she welcomed the experience as something to try for one tax season, it gave her even more confirmation that her original vision was the right path for her. It's just not that time of life for me, she said. When she and her husband left that environment, they both started their own businesses at the same time. We had no guaranteed income, she said. They continued to live below their means and focus their efforts on the things that mattered most to them, carving out niches in their fields that were amenable to part time hours and focusing on family. Neither of them care about fancy things or lifestyle upgrades. As part of her journey, Sarah has learned a tremendous amount about being a solopreneur. During periods of financial uncertainty, I said yes to every job that came my way. Over time, it took a little bit to learn to say no. She honed her small boutique practice by raising prices and developing a sense of which potential clients would demonstrate the level of professionalism that she wanted. I get that desire to do more. I don't scroll through Facebook. I scroll through Indeed and look at the jobs, she said. But she stays true to her practice by remembering what matters most to her, her family. This time of life seems like the time for raising kids. Sarah is an example of someone who has remained focused on her own vision of work life balance because, through adversity, she developed deep self knowledge at an early age. However, the one thing she wishes she knew as the young girl caring for her ill mother was to cultivate a growth mindset. I grew up with the mentality that life is just the way it is, but I've learned that you go create your life, Sarah said. 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