Lean Out Podcast

Solocast: All About Trust

• Dawn Baker • Season 3 • Episode 35

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In this episode, Dawn Baker talks about trust: the foundation of any relationship, including the relationship with yourself. She discusses why trust is hard, how to cultivate trust with others, and regular practices that can help develop your self-trust. 

(NOTE: I apologize that the audio is not excellent quality on this recording. I had to record it in my bathroom for various mom-ing reasons, and there was quite an echo - which my sound mastering program interpreted as me having a cold!)

** The Revitalize: Physician Renewal Retreat is coming next spring! ** 

Physicians: If you sign up for the retreat throughthis link, I will gift you a free 60-75 min post-retreat, debriefing coaching session to identify your biggest takeaways and help you integrate them into your life going forward! 

(I failed to mention this in the show, but use the coupon code INVITE200 and get $200 off registration!)

Relevant/mentioned links:

Lean Out Podcast past episodes - Nature with K Kay Moody, Solocast: Why You Need a Retreat, Passions with Mary Wilde, Solocast: All About Confidence

Get in touch with Dawn: 

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's episode is just going to be a short solo cast because I've not had much time to edit all the interview conversations I have banked, which are going to be awesome by the way, but due to a recent clinical work assignment and then a retreat that I'm just returning from, I haven't gotten to editing them yet. And I'm also preparing to give a talk on imposter syndrome and igniting inner confidence at the Brave Enough Women's Conference, in Scottsdale at the end of this month. So that's coming right up. I just recently came back from this small intimate women's retreat in the Riverside wilderness near Olympia National Park, Washington. It was at my friend KK Moody's Glacier Rock Wellness Ranch. We discussed her beautiful property in the episode titled Nature by KK Moody, which I will link in the show notes if you missed it. And at this retreat, which is the second of. Two that we have done. We had a ball of a time. Most of us were return attendees, and we've really started to grow close together. I cannot emphasize enough the beauty and power of the connections you can make at a retreat like this. It's almost Q4 of 2025. I encourage you to seek out a retreat that you can go on yourself within the next 12 months. So by Q4 of 2026. Try making it a goal of finding and attending a retreat. You will not regret it. I will be both attending and speaking at the revitalized physician renewal retreat in the Zion National Park Wilderness of Southern Utah. Again, this coming spring 2026. I attended last year and talked a lot about how amazing this retreat. It's hosted by my friend and colleague, Dr. Mary Wild. Mary has also been on the show before, and I will link her interview in the show notes. It was called Passions with Mary Wild. If you're a physician, please consider attending this special retreat. It's both for female and male physicians, and CME is included. I would love to connect with you there in person. If you register through my affiliate link in the show notes, I will gift you one. 60 to 75 minute debrief coaching session after the retreat to discuss your insights and how you can integrate the retreat into your own life onto today's topic. The other day I was doing my clinical work and I was doing my normal Q and a and anesthesia consent with a patient who was about to have surgery. And after I finished, as I always do, I asked, do you have any questions for me? And the patient said, no, I trust you. And it got me thinking about the concept of trust, and that's what I'd like to talk about today. Okay. As an anesthesiologist, the most challenging part of my job is actually the doctor patient relationship. The patient interactions that I have, people underestimate this and they think we don't really talk to our patients. But the challenge is that we must get our patients who are almost always strangers to trust us with their lives. In a period of about 10 minutes, trust is a very important thing. In the other work that I do as well, coaching, when I do an initial consultation call with a prospective client, that person is divulging sometimes sensitive information to me over the phone, and they don't actually know me. Trust is truly the foundation of any relationship, whether it be personal, professional, family, or intimate relationships. However, trust is a difficult thing for us because our brains are wired to be skeptical, to recognize danger. We're biased towards negativity and scarcity. Lisa's son in her podcast in confidence. Talked about a trust pyramid, and I will link the episode in the show notes. The pillars of trust are like an iceberg, where some of them are above the surface and some of them are below. So often seen above the surface with trust is reliability and congruence. Do you act with integrity? Do you do what you say you're going to do, and do you live your life in line with your values? We are not gonna really focus so much here today. And instead focus on what, what lies beneath the surface. The other pillars, which are acceptance and openness. These encompass my foundations of lasting true confidence, which I've talked about on the podcast before. And if you miss that episode, go back to the solo cast titled All About Confidence, which I will link in the show notes in short, true lasting inner confidence. Which forms a foundation for self-trust and for others to trust you is made up of self-knowledge, mental fit, mental fitness, the ability to embrace, challenge, and a change in mindset from outcome based to journey based. We all want to enhance our relationships. We know that relationships are at the heart of better balance, health, happiness, and longevity. So the question is, how is the concept of trust showing up in your life now? How can you get more people to trust you, and more importantly, how can you learn to better trust yourself? So when I do my anesthesia consents, I am always trying to strike a balance between exuding confidence and expertise with showing sincerity and humanity. It's a very fine art. I'm also always reading the patient for cues that I'm either giving too much or not enough information and that they're understanding what I'm telling them. Occasionally patients have a very specific request related to anesthesia, and I'm always a very active listener in those situations because I really wanna understand their motivation behind it, and sometimes it's just related to a past negative experience they had, or maybe an experience that a loved one had. And sometimes it's a very deep fear they have based on something that happened to them or a family member or a friend. So those are very important opportunities for me to practice active listening, which is a huge tenet of trust. It is also an opportunity for me to educate them and to dispel possible myths. In one particular instance, I had a patient who was adamant. That she received absolutely no opioids during her anesthetic. I asked her if she could pl explain to me why, and at first she was very stern in the fact that she just didn't need them and she didn't seem to wanna talk about it. But I probed her further and she ended up tearfully admitting to the fact that her son had died from taking a pain pill that was laced with deadly amounts of Fentanyl and. What I did then was I slowed way down in my movements and in my talking, and I knew this was gonna take more time than your typical anesthetic, consent. So I sat down on her bed next to her and I looked straight into her eyes and explained to her the difference between her surgery situation, the kind of drugs that she was going to receive and what had happened to her son. I talked to her about how. Sad and how horrible it was, what had happened to him and how frustrating it is to hear about as a physician working with those medications. And, and I just apologized to her and I was just quiet as well. And, I knew that she, by the end of the conversation, that she had great trust in me. She understood why I wanted to do what I was going to do and how it is very different from the situation with her love family member. We underestimate the art of listening, but it is the heart of being able to gain trust from others in any type of relationship. It's also at the heart of feeling like you're trusted. If you don't feel like people are listening to you, then it's very difficult to trust them. Here are my tips for good, active listening. Try not to focus on the next thing you want to say, which we are all guilty of, and instead, focus on listening to the exact words of the other person. Try to put yourself in their shoes. You don't need to be in a hurry. Using eye contact is really important in face-to-face conversations, but if it's on the phone, obviously that doesn't apply. However, a small pause after the other person has said what they wanna say goes a long way. And when I'm interviewing people for this podcast or I'm talking to prospective coaching clients, if I think of something that I wanna ask them about while they're giving a long story, maybe I'll actually write a single word on a piece of paper I have in front of me to help me to remember so that I don't feel like I have to keep trying to think of what I'm gonna say. You don't wanna finish other people's sentences for them either. No matter how tempting that might be. When responding to a lengthy comment or a story, I try to summarize what the other person is saying by using the phrase, what I'm hearing is dot, dot, dot. And then I summarize what I heard them say, and then I say, is that right? The other thing I often do during interactions, both clinical and nonclinical, is acknowledging the tone of the situation. You can do this without co-opting the other person's emotions. You don't have to say, you must feel so scared or proud or sad or happy, that's co-opting. You can instead say what it would be for you. You can say, wow, that's really hard, or, oh, that's so exciting, or That is very special, or That is a really important thing. In terms of surgery, I make sure that I point out to the patient that we know they don't have surgery every day, and it's a really big deal, and it's understandable if they're nervous. I do often follow that up with a reassuring statement, like, our team does these kinds of things every day, however, and we know that you don't. The more you trust yourself, the more you create space for others to trust you. So how can you learn to trust yourself more? First, you can let go of being perfect. I have talked about this before on the podcast. Mistakes are something we all try to avoid like the plague, because they hurt. They cause shame and embarrassment and that sunk cost feeling. But when you trust yourself, you know that mistakes are an essential part of life that constitute important learning moments. Be willing to take risks starting small, so you realize that you can brave the negative feelings that come when something doesn't work out. If you struggle with making decisions because you don't want to make mistakes, consider identifying every single decision you make every day. Take one day and write down in a journal every single decision, and you'll be surprised at how many you do make. There are many you make without even thinking about them. Like the decision to get out of bed, to brush your teeth. To eat a certain food for breakfast and things like that, or maybe the route that you take to work when you point out all the decisions you make in a day. Even the small ones, you become comfortable with the idea that you're good at making decisions that you know how to make them without fretting the consequences. Which then translates to being more comfortable with bigger decisions. As always, knowing yourself better is key to many things, including self-trust. Spend time with yourself each day to reflect on your needs, your wants, and your energy flow. Practice noticing things like. What is going on in your gut? Your reaction to certain situations, how you feel at work, or maybe when you're outside, when you're doing your favorite activity, when you're with a certain person, either someone that you love or someone that rubs you the wrong way, notice how you feel in your body. And I can't remember what podcast I heard this on, but the guest also talked about practicing, noticing how you feel when you do something backwards or differently than you normally do. So like use the wrong hand to open a jar or stand on one foot while cooking instead of both feet. Doing something unusual. And being a beginner, again, can foster self-trust and also confidence at the same time. So that's what I have about trust today. Thank you so much for listening, and I hope this little solo cast was helpful to you. What do you think, do you have difficulty trusting other people or do you struggle to trust yourself? How do you deal with that? Share your thoughts by sending me a text through your podcast listening app, leaving a comment on the blog post associated with this episode@practicebalance.com or sending me a DM on Instagram. I'm practice balance. 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