Lean Out Podcast

Solocast: Your Best Mind Ever in 2026

• Dawn Baker • Season 4 • Episode 1

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In the first episode of Season 4 of the Lean Out Podcast, Dawn Baker talks about the importance of mindset. She shares ways you can learn to change your mindset and a framework for figuring out how you want to spend your 2026.

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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. I'm happy to be back with the podcast for season four in 2026. Thank you again for supporting this podcast. I'm so grateful you've taken the time for yourself to listen to inspiring stories from me and other professionals on their own work-life balance journeys. At the turn of this year, I spent some time reflecting on doing the show. I have loved it, but I'm not gonna lie, scheduling, recording, editing and formatting, each episode does take a lot of time and I want to continue being mindful of how I spend my time, as well as how you are spending your time. To that end, I'd really love it if you could let me know, what do you enjoy about this show? How would you change it if you could? Do you like the length of the episodes? I typically try to make them about 30 to 40 minutes. Or for solo casts, they're usually shorter, like 15 to 20 minutes. How about the frequency of the episodes? I have been doing them for the last couple seasons pretty much weekly, but I might relax that a bit this season in order to embrace the idea of allowing myself to work on some other creative endeavors. Do you prefer the interviews? Do you prefer the solo cast or do you like that? I mix both of them together. I. Also, who specifically or what type of professional would you like me to interview on the show? This is your chance to give me some feedback and make the show better for you. I'd love it if you send me a text through the link in your podcast listening app. If you look at the show notes, it will say right in there, send us a text, or you can go to my website, practice balance.com and use the contact form to email me or just send me a DM on Instagram. I'd really appreciate your input so I can tweak the show in 2026 for both your benefit and mine on the subject of episode frequency, I started the show in 2023 publishing episodes. Whenever it struck my fancy, I really took to podcasting more than I thought I would. So for the last two seasons, I have really tried to stick to weekly episodes and I mostly did that except for. An occasional skipped week, but right now my intention for 2026 is to go back to being a little more relaxed and use a semi-weekly frequency due to wanting to have time in my days for other things I realize this might affect the show negatively in terms of subscribers and how it appears in searching algorithms, but here's the thing. In 2026. I am trying not to care so much about those things. One of my intentions is to let go of caring so much about external success metrics. And yes, I talk about this all the time in my episodes and my work, but I still struggle with it myself. Things like how many book sales, how many course sales, how many coaching clients do I have? How many ratings or reviews? What are the ratings? How many email subscribers are there, and how many Instagram followers? The list just goes on and on. And I admit that last year I thought about these things more than I really wanted to. And despite my anti hussle entrepreneur style efforts, which I have talked about before on the show, my business has really only seen minuscule growth in the last year despite trying to focus on these things. So does this matter? That's the big question for me. I enjoy the experiences I have with it each year, especially speaking at a few events, connecting with both the podcast guests and members of the community, new and potential coaching clients, et cetera. Getting an email from someone with a note of gratitude about how much a particular episode or a piece of writing or a talk or whatever meant to them is so priceless. I cherish those. And so in 2026, that's what I'm gonna try to remember. And this gets me to the topic of today's solo cast. How can you have your best mind ever in 2026? I used to be way into New Year's resolutions coming up with these audacious goals and transformations that I wanted to take place, and there's nothing wrong with that. I. But adding intentions and an overall theme can really enhance the idea of designing your year and designing your life. I still have goals, but over the past years as I've gotten older and wiser and more balanced and more knowledgeable about myself, I've started with more of an intention or a theme word for the year. If you're interested in what it means to have a one word theme for your year, the best source I can point to is happiness Expert Gretchen Rubin's Work, and I will link an episode of her podcast, happier, where she talks about. Why she does it the show notes anyway. Last year, my word was presence. Past words I can remember include, of course, balance, connection, align, growth, and create. I'm pretty sure that my word for 2026 is actually going to be practice It just seems like the right word for me at this stage because my life is about a lot of consistent practices. I've been consistently building strength and working on my nutrition, trying to eat protein and gain muscle mass. I'm consistently practicing being. Better at all of the things that I like to do and all of the roles that I play, like anesthesiologist, mom, podcaster, coach, all of those things. So I'm loving the word practice and I'm also reading this book called Essential Spirituality, where they talk about the common practices that transcend across all of the world's greatest religions. And I just love the idea of the word practice. I'm always talking on this podcast about how the things that I stress in my solo casts are continuous practices. And here's another one, and this is what I wanna talk to you about today. If there is one place to focus this year, if you can pick one thing, let it be practicing a better mindset. Mindset is defined as a mental attitude or disposition that predetermines a person's responses to and interpretations of situations. It's a habitual way of thinking that affects how you behave and respond to whatever is going on around you. And mindset can make all the difference. It's so powerful that it can affect your habits and thus your outcomes, your successes on any goals or anything that you're doing without even making any changes. I was listening to this interview with Ali Crumb, who's a Stanford psychologist that studies mindset, and it was on the Mel Robbins podcast. She conducted this research study that she described in the interview where they gave two different groups of people the exact same smoothie. It had the same calories and the same macro breakdown and everything. And before they drank it, they told one group that the smoothie was a decadent smoothie, kind of like having a milkshake or an ice cream shake. And for the other group, they told them it was a healthy diet smoothie. So after both groups drank the respective smoothies, they did blood tests to measure ghrelin levels, which is the hunger hormone. And ghrelin release increases feelings of hunger, so it stimulates you to want to have more food and promotes fat storage and insulin release. Well, guess what? The group that got the decadent smoothie, or they were told they had the decadent smoothie, had significantly lower levels of ghrelin than the group. Told that they had the diet smoothie and it was the exact same drink. This is fascinating to me. It means that your mindset can affect your physiology and. Allie gave other examples in the interview and I will link the interview in the show notes, including stories of cancer patients who have shown better outcomes when they adopted a mindset that their disease was something that they could conquer or that was manageable versus something that was just shocking in life ending and going to do them. Last year I did an interview with Dr. Corey Faucet, who is a retired surgeon and, and the author of a great book called The Doctor's Guide to Finding Joy in Your Work. And I will also link this episode in the show notes if you didn't catch it. Corey told a story either in my interview or in a subsequent interview I heard I can't remember which, where as a general surgeon, he would sometimes have these afternoons doing colonoscopies in the GI lab, and he'd go over to the center after his clinic of patients and. There would be these two different GI rooms and he had to wait for both of the morning teams to get done and for all their cases to get done before he could do his cases. So Corey's waiting in the hallway and one of the physicians. Storms out of the GI suite and looks exasperated, just saying under his breath, I hate doing colonoscopies. And then a few minutes later comes out of the other room, the other physician who walks out, uh, pep in his step and proclaims, I just love doing colonoscopies. So this is the exact same procedure, completely different mindsets. The power of mindset can be applied to anything you'd like to accomplish this year. Do you wanna change your work life balance? Do you wanna be more confident? Do you want to make a career change? Do you wanna start a business, decrease your work time switch or release some of your roles, or maybe add time for another joy project? Adopting a mindset of abundance and also indulgence, kind of like the milkshake, decadence smoothie will facilitate whatever it is you want to do. So that is why I advise starting with mindset for all of your New Year's, quote resolutions or goals or intentions, or whatever it is you wanna call them. So let's talk about ways to identify and shift your mindset using this new transition right now. The start of 2026. As a starting point, the first thing I recommend is to spend a little time in reflection of last year, think back on 2025. I found that an easy way to do this, and it is recommended in multiple different personal development podcasts and documents that I've been reading, is to scroll back through your phone's photo album. Unless you're the type of person that deletes and curates your phone constantly on a regular basis, and if you are kudos to you, then you probably have a ton of photos and screenshots and things from the last year or maybe even look at whatever app you make your photos into an album. The other option if you don't take a lot of photos, would be to look back at your calendar, but this is a little more cumbersome'cause you need to look at line items on each day. So regardless of the method, identify the high points and the low points that you experienced last year. And for each one, ask yourself a few questions. What kind of mindset did I have during the time of this event? Also, what did I learn from it? The second thing I recommend is to frame up your goals. So identify some goals that you would like to accomplish in the next year, and they can be something really small or something bigger. You can ask yourself the following questions. What do I want to continue doing this year that I was doing last year? What do I want to start doing this year? Or maybe what do I want to stop doing? So these goals can be small things or they can be longer term things. As I mentioned, happiness expert, Gretchen Rubin talks on her podcast about coming up with what she calls a 26 for 26 list, or like last year it was 25 for 25, and it's just line items. And it can be something as simple as schedule a mammogram this year, but it can also be something like big and transformational such as Quit my job, or even something. In between, like I want to have more connections with people, so I'm gonna host monthly dinner parties at my home. Once you get a list of even just a few items, I'm not saying you have to get 26, but then ask yourself, what mindset do I need to have in order to reach this particular goal? Number three is to dedicate your activities. I really like this idea. It's the idea of reframing things that you have to do. So let's say there's something you have to do that you're not particularly excited about. I really like this idea of reframing something that you have to do that you're not particularly excited about. How can you change your mindset around tasks like that? Do you remember when people used to do dedications of songs on the radio? They would request a song by calling in, and then they would say, on air, I'd like to dedicate this song to blah, blah, blah. People, I guess, still dedicate things in award ceremonies, and in the beginning of books, they dedicate them to people, but. Think about the idea of dedicating your unsavory activity or your mundane activity to turn it into something meaningful. For example, maybe you know that you should be getting more movement in your days, but it always feels like a chore, like it's a punishment for drinking wine or eating cupcakes or something like that. While getting ready to do your workout, you can make it a dedication. You can dedicate your session to a loved one like your child, who inspires you to wanna be a healthier person so you can be around to see them grow up. Another example would be for a work task that you don't particularly love doing, dedicate it to the patients or clients who benefit from your expertise every day. Reframing things in this way puts the why in the forefront of your mind, and thus changes your mindset from one of scarcity, victimhood, or futility to something that has meaning behind it. My last recommendation for working on your mindset is to remind yourself of your inner strength. You are capable of handling any challenge you would not be where you are in a highly competitive, high octane profession. If you weren't capable of that, and the way to remember this is by choosing to undergo small challenges every day and recognizing the small challenges that you do accomplish. There's a reason that Embracing Challenge is the title of the third module of My Lean Out Confidence course. Maybe it's making decisions. You make many decisions every day, but often we don't recognize them such as what clothes you will wear, what you're going to eat for breakfast, and the route you're going to choose to drive to work. Maybe it's tough to get up and to make your own bed each morning at 5:00 AM but you make your bed every day. Remember that hard or challenge is something that is relative to each person, but if you recognize and celebrate the little challenges that you accomplish each day, it can be very helpful. A good way to recognize them is to write them down in a journal or in the Notes app on your phone, because the act of putting the thoughts that are swirling around in your head onto a piece of paper helps to make them logical and to solidify the ideas that are there in your head. Working toward that shift in mindset, even more than just having a simple realization. There's so much in life we can't control, but we do have the power to change our mindset in any given circumstance. I hope this information was helpful for you today, and you found it inspiring as you're thinking about what you want out of 2026, tell me what are your goals or intentions or maybe your one word theme for this year? Share them with me by texting me through your listening app, leaving a comment on the blog post that I wrote 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