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Sharing Burnout Experiences with Charleston Edwards · Lean Out Podcast

• 0:01
  Welcome to the lean out podcast.
• 0:03
  I'm your host, Dr.
• 0:04
  Don baker.
• 0:05
  Are you looking for a new approach to finding authentic and sustainable work-life balance?
• 0:10
  You've come to the right.
• 0:11
  Place.
• 0:11
  For inspiration.
• 0:12
  information.
• 0:13
  and a community.
• 0:14
  community.
• 0:14
  of like-minded.
• 0:15
  Professionals.
• 0:16
  Let's get to the show.
• 0:23
  Hello?
• 0:24
  Hello.
• 0:24
  Thanks for being here.
• 0:26
  Today I have a special episode for you.
• 0:28
  That's different than my typical shows.
• 0:30
  My guest is Charleston Edwards have own your five to nine.
• 0:35
  Think about the name for a minute it's just genius.
• 0:39
  Own your five to nine is an organization committed to freeing families of the rat race and burnout.
• 0:45
  Charleston had a hard driving career for decades as a corporate event planner, when he experienced burnout and health challenges that caused him to reevaluate his work life balance.
• 0:55
  He and his wife, Kelly are proud parents to three girls and long-time licensed foster care parents.
• 1:01
  They're based in West Virginia, but they engage in frequent world, traveling and world schooling.
• 1:07
  This episode is more like a conversation than it is an interview.
• 1:11
  And Charleston shared it earlier this month on his own podcast, which is called work-life you biosis.
• 1:18
  We have a lot in common and we each share our own stories of burnout and health challenges.
• 1:23
  However we have vastly different careers.
• 1:26
  We talk about how we worked our way out of burnout.
• 1:29
  To find our own paths in our professions and also differences in burnout between different types of work.
• 1:37
  Different families, men and women.
• 1:40
  Because this podcast episode is a little longer than my normal shows.
• 1:43
  I'm going to leave you with the conversation and not do any takeaways at the end.
• 1:48
  Some of you know, the story behind my work-life balance journey, but you'll hear more details in this conversation.
• 1:55
  Charleston also talks about the method that he used to move beyond burnout and craft a life as an entrepreneur with his family.
• 2:02
  I hope you enjoy this special conversation with Charleston.
• 2:08
  Dawn: Hi, Charleston.
• 2:08
  Dawn: I'm happy to see you again.
• 2:10
  Charleston: Likewise.
• 2:11
  Dawn: So let's start by talking about our current work life balance.
• 2:16
  Dawn: Tell me what your work life balance looks like these days.
• 2:19
  Charleston: Well, I have to say that I have found the sweet spot of work life balance over the last few years.
• 2:25
  Charleston: A lot of people say it's not possible, but I have found it to be a journey and not a destination.
• 2:33
  Charleston: I'm currently juggling two careers, one as, an event producer, which has been what I've, done for the last 25 years.
• 2:41
  Charleston: And over the last three years, I am a work life balance coach.
• 2:46
  Charleston: Also I'm a husband and a dad of three girls, and we homeschool.
• 2:51
  Charleston: So, I have found that work life balance, even with all that's on my plate.
• 2:58
  Dawn: We have a lot of things in common.
• 3:00
  Dawn: Some of the things that you just mentioned, but we have very different career paths.
• 3:04
  Dawn: So you have a long history of working in this event planning industry.
• 3:10
  Dawn: And can you talk about that?
• 3:12
  Dawn: how you got to this sweet spot.
• 3:15
  Charleston: Absolutely.
• 3:16
  Charleston: I got into event planning, right out of college, uh, and over the last two decades I have, moved from, various organizations and then to the non profit world and I've moved up into the executive, C suite and was doing executive producing for about 10 years.
• 3:33
  Charleston: And in 2019, I had a panic attack after, um, one of my events and, I took an extended vacation and eased my way back into work after that panic attack, but, I was beyond recovery and I knew something needed to change.
• 3:51
  Charleston: I also knew it wasn't a new place to work, that I needed a completely new path and being in my mid 40s at the time, I felt like it was a midlife crisis.
• 4:03
  Charleston: So, in 2019, I didn't leave my job, um, but I started to rethink what my work life could look like moving forward, and then the pandemic happened, um, and on top of that, I had a few health scares and I was having major heart palpitations, again, following an event, and I just realized that the stress, was really impacting my health.
• 4:25
  Charleston: So.
• 4:26
  Charleston: My wife and I, went on a retreat and we did a life plan together.
• 4:31
  Charleston: Or both of us to really define what our health was going to look like, what our family would look like and what work could look like.
• 4:39
  Charleston: Coming out of that, we, Put the plan together and it took another year to, leave my full time job and to go into redesign.
• 4:47
  Charleston: And the rest is history.
• 4:48
  Charleston: We've, we've been on this road for the last 3.
• 4:51
  Charleston: 5 years and we are thoroughly enjoying, where we're at.
• 4:56
  Dawn: That's great.
• 4:57
  Dawn: I hear so many important concepts for figuring out what you want, what you need, and how to redesign your your work life balance, basically.
• 5:09
  Charleston: Yeah, absolutely.
• 5:10
  Charleston: And, you know, 1 of the other contributing factors, from a burnout perspective, there are definitely a lot of demands.
• 5:20
  Charleston: In the workplace, but, there were a lot of demands at home.
• 5:23
  Charleston: Our family has three neurodivergent kids and what we realized is that, because of their neurodivergency and, our lifestyle choice of homeschooling that we needed to pour more into our Children.
• 5:36
  Charleston: We needed a better rhythm to, really just connect with them at a deeper level while also providing for their educational needs.
• 5:47
  Charleston: So I'm interested on how your story plays out and what are the similarities between our stories?
• 5:53
  Dawn: Yeah.
• 5:53
  Dawn: Well, one thing is that we both homeschool our kids and we both live an intentional life where we are.
• 6:02
  Dawn: balancing our original profession that we chose and then doing something else.
• 6:09
  Dawn: And that is for both of us, helping people to have better work life balance.
• 6:16
  Dawn: So I am a physician.
• 6:19
  Dawn: I have been out of my training for 13 years and my specialty is anesthesiology.
• 6:26
  Dawn: And I am currently leading a work life balance where I tend to average one to two weeks per month of clinical anesthesiology, and then the rest of the time I am doing my non clinical business, which is writing, speaking, podcasting, and coaching for women professionals, and also doing the homeschooling and homesteading because in the last few years, my family has made a big move to a rural Alpine homestead.
• 7:03
  Dawn: And so there are, as you can imagine, lots of projects.
• 7:06
  Dawn: Uh, to do, and we have a garden, we have chickens, we have lots of water projects, things like that.
• 7:15
  Dawn: So that's what my work life balance looks like now, but I will say that it's been a huge evolution I was an engineer in my early adult life and I craved finding a job that had a little more freedom and flexibility and ironically I went into medicine because a lot of people that are in medicine don't find it to be very flexible.
• 7:38
  Dawn: However, I saw it as something that could give me location freedom and time freedom if I chose the right medical specialty.
• 7:45
  Dawn: And so I went to medical school with that in mind, but I got lost on my way.
• 7:52
  Dawn: To that vision.
• 7:53
  Dawn: Now I'm back to that vision.
• 7:54
  Dawn: But in the middle there, what happened was I really got stuck on the treadmill of achievement.
• 7:59
  Dawn: That's what I call it, which is that someone tells you you're really good at something, or, you know, you get certain accolades, you have certain achievements, and all of a sudden you need more and more and more in order to get that same dopamine hit that satisfaction, and I was in my specialty training for anesthesiology and it became clear that I was very adept at a certain niche specialty in anesthesiology that has to do with ultrasound and echocardiography.
• 8:33
  Dawn: And so I started doing research in that area and got pretty crazy on, on that train.
• 8:40
  Dawn: And if I had continued on that, it would have pegged me to be in that same geographical constraint type of a situation that I felt like I was in before I even went into medicine.
• 8:52
  Dawn: But I was on that path.
• 8:56
  Dawn: And started to experience symptoms of burnout and at the same time had a major health scare.
• 9:03
  Dawn: And it turned out that some of my symptoms were not just burnout, but they were a full blown brain tumor that was causing compression of my optic nerve, causing me to have all sorts of hormonal disruptions and a very deep depression.
• 9:17
  Dawn: And so I had that operated on and that was the wake up call I needed to go back to the basics and go back to my original vision for my life.
• 9:25
  Dawn: I ended up not doing that very subspecialty path in anesthesiology and ended up just doing general anesthesiology for a number of years and then have just designed my life through the time period of having a child and changing geographic locations, moving with my family.
• 9:47
  Dawn: And.
• 9:48
  Dawn: Working a little bit less and a little bit less to the point where I am now.
• 9:53
  Charleston: Wow.
• 9:53
  Charleston: What a story, Dawn.
• 9:55
  Charleston: Um, you had mentioned that you were seeing signs of burnout prior to the health scare.
• 10:03
  Charleston: Can you give a little bit more detail of those signs that you were seeing?
• 10:08
  Dawn: Yeah, well, as you know, burnout has a constellation of symptoms of things that you experience.
• 10:16
  Dawn: And some of them are related to energy management, like fatigue, sleep disturbance, um, having difficulty regaining your energy.
• 10:27
  Dawn: So I had those, but they also can be attributed to having cancer.
• 10:34
  Dawn: Uh, then I had definitely some of the psychological symptoms like depersonalization and a feeling of reduced effectiveness and efficacy at your job.
• 10:47
  Dawn: And I was suffering academically.
• 10:49
  Dawn: So that was the first time that that had ever happened to me.
• 10:53
  Dawn: And I think it was related to.
• 10:56
  Dawn: the hormonal situation that I had and some of the things that were going on inside my brain.
• 11:02
  Dawn: But at the same time, it was also situational because in medicine, there's just a lot that you have to know and a lot that you have to do.
• 11:11
  Dawn: And one of the main things that I think is a real contributor to her brain, burnout for us in medicine is a huge loss of the feeling of control.
• 11:22
  Dawn: And I had that.
• 11:23
  Dawn: It feels like your schedule is not your own and that you never really have a moment to regain or a moment of free time because you just don't even know when you're going to go home each day.
• 11:35
  Dawn: And that makes it hard to even like schedule a doctor's appointment.
• 11:39
  Dawn: I delayed my own medical diagnosis because I was too busy to get some of the tests and things that were recommended to me when I was having problems.
• 11:48
  Dawn: And so that's part of the issue as well.
• 11:52
  Charleston: Similarly, part of my health scare first started from a mental perspective and having the panic attack.
• 12:00
  Charleston: And then in, 2020, I just realized That I had some gut issues as well.
• 12:06
  Charleston: And, and with the high demand stress, it was just magnifying other issues that was happening throughout my body from the heart palpitations to, um, pre diabetes, but, uh, one of the core things was having to go back and reset my gut.
• 12:26
  Charleston: And just taking the time to address it.
• 12:28
  Charleston: I delayed like yourself, appointments and it just finally got to a point where I needed to choose my health first and then come back with intentionality of eliminating the stress.
• 12:41
  Charleston: And just redefining my use of time and making sure that time wasn't aligned with my values.
• 12:48
  Dawn: Yeah, and it's interesting that you point out the physical manifestations.
• 12:53
  Dawn: I think with burnout, that's part of what can be experienced, but then there are these other psychological things, and so all of them are very non specific.
• 13:07
  Dawn: You can attribute them to many different Many different things, you know, you can just be like, Oh, I'm gaining a little bit of weight because I haven't been eating as well.
• 13:16
  Dawn: Or I've got insulin resistance because I'm getting a little older or something like that.
• 13:21
  Dawn: And so that's why for some people, it's really, really hard for them to realize that they're experiencing burnout.
• 13:28
  Dawn: Um, I'm wondering what you think about how burnout is different between men and women.
• 13:36
  Charleston: I'm glad you asked that.
• 13:37
  Charleston: You know, my 1st response is that everyone is different.
• 13:40
  Charleston: And every family is different.
• 13:42
  Charleston: And I, I take the lens of looking at families because right now, part of what I do is helping families out of burnout.
• 13:50
  Charleston: Um, who's bringing in, money to pay the bills and if both parents are working.
• 13:58
  Charleston: Society has changed a lot in the last 50 years.
• 14:01
  Charleston: We've gone from, the industrial revolution to the informational revolution and it's normal for both men and women to work.
• 14:11
  Charleston: And to climb the ladder.
• 14:12
  Charleston: And now we have devices that makes us even more accessible.
• 14:17
  Charleston: and it creates blurry lines between work and life and boundaries.
• 14:21
  Charleston: And that's a huge contributor to burnout for both men and women.
• 14:26
  Charleston: From a family perspective, it comes to a point in our careers or at the peak of our careers.
• 14:32
  Charleston: Um, It's easy to go from personal burnout into professional burnout because of the demands of home and pending the industry and pending our own background and beliefs.
• 14:43
  Charleston: Burnout is going to play out in a unique way for, um, that man or that woman, and you know, one other point I would say the, the pandemic exploited this phenomenon for both men and women.
• 14:56
  Charleston: The great resignation, um, is proof that something was out of alignment with our relationship with work and life.
• 15:05
  Charleston: and we had a chance to evaluate our, our use of time, what that time looks like in our value system.
• 15:11
  Dawn: Yeah, that's a very good point.
• 15:13
  Dawn: And the thing that's interesting in the physician space is that physician coaching blew up.
• 15:23
  Dawn: Around the pandemic, it wasn't even a thing that was talked about and you're more in the executive world.
• 15:28
  Dawn: And I know that coaching has been around for quite some time, but both men and women in the physician space are now well, in the last few years, Um, and it's really turn on to the idea of coaches and having them help, to figure out what the gaps are, um, where the direction can go, um, thought processes that aren't serving them and those kinds of things.
• 15:52
  Dawn: And before we go on, I did also want to go back to the idea of the men versus women, because I love that you pointed out that.
• 16:01
  Dawn: Burnout does not discriminate, and especially in today's marketplace of women and men working in equal roles, pretty much.
• 16:11
  Dawn: But I think one of those keys that you really pointed out, because honestly, when I asked you to think on this question, I, I was like, I don't really have a great answer for it.
• 16:20
  Dawn: But, um, I think the idea of the breadwinner is really interesting because that adds a huge load, to whoever it is that is the breadwinner.
• 16:29
  Dawn: And it can be a man or a woman.
• 16:32
  Dawn: And I have had coaching clients where the woman is the breadwinner and that's becoming more of a thing nowadays than it used to be, you know, even just like 50, 60 years ago.
• 16:43
  Dawn: One thing though that I will note that women do mention, and I think this is not, A hundred percent across the board, but is the idea that regardless of if the woman or man in a relationship is the breadwinner or the person that works more hours, women feel this additional mental load of what they call a second shift where like they come home from work and then they have a plethora of child care or household duties that they have to do.
• 17:17
  Dawn: And.
• 17:18
  Dawn: It might be that there's just a lack of communication and that the male counterpart in the relationship, if there is one, is just not understanding that they need to be doing that.
• 17:30
  Dawn: Um, but that is something that is talked about a lot in the female physician space is the idea of this extra burden of all the other things that have to be done outside of work.
• 17:42
  Charleston: You're, you're absolutely right.
• 17:44
  Charleston: And I don't believe that is isolated to only physicians.
• 17:49
  Charleston: This is a phenomenon across all industries of, co parenting and co working and, um, I believe, you know, that with some intentionality and conversation and being on the same page.
• 18:03
  Charleston: Of finding that balance, even at the demands of home, that that 2nd shift.
• 18:09
  Charleston: Um, as you said, I've never heard it phrased that way, but it's brilliant.
• 18:14
  Charleston: It is a 2nd shift because we define work for what we get compensated for, but, know, the demands of home is just as.
• 18:23
  Charleston: important and it's just as hard work to, children to be a, great spouse to take care of the needs of the home.
• 18:34
  Charleston: It requires just as much of attention, outside of the normal quote unquote working hours.
• 18:40
  Charleston: So, um, you know, for my wife and I, this is where we did a lifestyle redesign to be able to, Equally pour into our home and into our work and just really getting Intentional on what those rhythms would look like for both of us
• 18:58
  Dawn: Yeah, so you mentioned that earlier when you were talking a little bit about your burnout trajectory and how you found your way out of it.
• 19:06
  Dawn: So this is obviously one of your big go to tools for For getting out of burnout.
• 19:12
  Dawn: Can you talk a little bit more about what you guys did?
• 19:16
  Dawn: Because you went on a retreat and then did some inner work there.
• 19:22
  Dawn: Describe it to me.
• 19:24
  Charleston: Absolutely, and, for the record, we still do retreats.
• 19:27
  Charleston: This, this was not a 1, 1 time lifestyle redesign and everything's perfect.
• 19:33
  Charleston: Uh, we continue to,, tweak, on a quarterly basis and an annual basis, but, in 2020, we went on a life planning retreat.
• 19:43
  Charleston: And our goal was to.
• 19:45
  Charleston: Establish a mission, vision, and re clarify the core values for our home.
• 19:52
  Charleston: It took a couple of days of just really doing some, husband and wife workshopping, of really looking at our passions, looking at our skills, looking at our career capital, our network capital, And also assessing the needs of our kids.
• 20:07
  Charleston: Um, so not just looking at from a professional endeavors, but looking at our personal endeavors and what we wanted for our home.
• 20:14
  Charleston: And what came out of that was absolutely amazing.
• 20:18
  Charleston: We, we, both my wife and I fell back into our passions, essentially finding our identities again of how we wanted to contribute to this world.
• 20:26
  Charleston: but also what we, how we wanted to show up for our kids and wanted to be present for our kids and really embrace, life schooling, world schooling, homeschooling, um, and integrate that into a life of entrepreneurship.
• 20:42
  Charleston: And what's come out of that was, better communication, for my wife and I, being on the same page more often, and really taking out the surprises and you mentioned this earlier, for your burnout story as a physician of not having control of your time.
• 20:57
  Charleston: Well, I, I feel strongly that, our relationship with time is a major stress.
• 21:04
  Charleston: contributor and we, when we don't have control of it and you don't know when you're coming home or when you're going to be able to focus on the home, it adds so much more pressure and stress to the family dynamic.
• 21:18
  Charleston: So was foundational for us to really design a way forward, and it hasn't been easy by any means.
• 21:26
  Charleston: We had to redefine our, our own definition of achievement and really start releasing what achievement looked like.
• 21:35
  Charleston: Um, and, by doing that, it's, it's.
• 21:40
  Charleston: It's we're, redefining our relationship with money, and really putting a focus on being more time rich than monetary rich.
• 21:50
  Charleston: That was the start of our, our redesign.
• 21:52
  Charleston: And so what that looks like now is.
• 21:55
  Charleston: Still doing an annual retreat where we revisit our big goals and then at least on a quarterly basis or semi annual basis, we're looking at our mission, making sure that we are living to our core values, and we're looking at the rhythms of our children.
• 22:11
  Charleston: In our work, and we even sabbatical for the last 2 years, we've chosen a month, um, up to 6 weeks where we unplug completely, and either go on a vacation elsewhere or do a staycation where, where we're not tethered to, work and we're in that work now looks like, uh, of investing in each other and investing in adventure and investing in our kids.
• 22:36
  Charleston: Um, for that 4 to 6 week period in each year
• 22:39
  Dawn: Yeah, I love those things.
• 22:41
  Dawn: You guys really sound a lot like my husband and I, we are a little bit less on the planning front.
• 22:50
  Dawn: I would say we do all of those same things, except that We don't really have any formal meetings or quarterly times where we map it out.
• 23:01
  Dawn: It seems to be something that we discuss on an ongoing basis organically.
• 23:06
  Dawn: And I think we've just always been that way.
• 23:09
  Dawn: I know that the meetings and doing like what people call money dates or family planning, dates, With spouse is very, very helpful for so many people, and I definitely recommend it to clients, but in my own life and in my own practice, I don't know.
• 23:26
  Dawn: There is another way.
• 23:27
  Dawn: Um, and it's, it's just kind of more of An organic process that is, revisited on a, maybe a, maybe a weekly or a monthly basis, depending on what it is you're talking about.
• 23:42
  Charleston: You're right.
• 23:42
  Charleston: Those conversations can be stressful.
• 23:44
  Charleston: It's like having a business meeting at home and, uh, when you.
• 23:49
  Charleston: Talk about finances and schedules.
• 23:51
  Charleston: Those are two, very high touch subjects for a family.
• 23:56
  Charleston: my recommendation is, mix pleasure in with that business, those business conversations that, um, take time to unplug, take time to enjoy each other.
• 24:08
  Charleston: And intersperse these goals and dreaming and, budget conversations, time, budget, money, budget conversations into, some of that pleasure as well.
• 24:19
  Dawn: Yeah.
• 24:20
  Dawn: Yeah.
• 24:21
  Dawn: For me, one thing that you didn't mention in your burnout journey that I wanted to point out to the audience.
• 24:29
  Dawn: And I don't necessarily think that this has to do with being in medicine versus not being in medicine.
• 24:35
  Dawn: I just think it's dependent on the individual.
• 24:38
  Dawn: Is that a huge part of of getting out of burnout for me was doing a lot of personal development and mindfulness work to turn my self hatred into self compassion.
• 24:51
  Dawn: Because I feel like when I was in the throes of that treadmill of achievement, the burnout, and being sick and not even knowing it, I did not like myself.
• 25:04
  Dawn: And I thought, what is wrong with me?
• 25:07
  Dawn: Why can I not hack this when everybody else in my residency class is able to deal with it and stay fit and stay attractive and, you know, whatever, whatever it is that you are seeing and comparing in an outward basis, and you don't even know what's going on with other people, but, you know, you just, see a certain thing and you think, well, why can I not measure up to that?
• 25:28
  Dawn: And I remember feeling that feeling of I don't like my life.
• 25:34
  Dawn: I don't like myself and those sort of things.
• 25:37
  Dawn: And it really impacted my relationship.
• 25:39
  Dawn: And for a little while, my marriage suffered and I was going through this burnout when I was married, but, and we had been married for several years, but we didn't really know if we wanted to have a child or not.
• 25:50
  Dawn: Um, I think we were still in that stage.
• 25:53
  Dawn: At least I was kind of like, are we going to?
• 25:56
  Dawn: Stay together, or are we going to not?
• 25:59
  Dawn: Are we gonna go our separate ways?
• 26:01
  Dawn: And a lot of it was my own lack of self compassion and lack of self awareness that was driving that.
• 26:13
  Dawn: And so I had to work on doing a lot of journaling, really, a lot of reflection, and Developing self compassion through mindfulness practices, through trying different meditation techniques, through gentle movement and taking myself out of the go, go, go, athletic, I have to work out type mode, which is what I had been in as someone who was an athlete as a young adult.
• 26:42
  Dawn: So.
• 26:43
  Dawn: That was really pivotal for me, and I also echo what you said as part of your journey, which was number one, having some downtime, whatever that looks like for you, but extended period of downtime, and then also revisiting and looking at your values and trying to figure out what your core values were.
• 27:04
  Dawn: So I did both of those things as well.
• 27:09
  Charleston: for sharing the internal journey, Don, because it is, very important.
• 27:16
  Charleston: Um, It raises a question that I want to put in front of you that from an identity perspective was part of your journaling and reflecting was it going back to identifying who you were at the core.
• 27:31
  Charleston: And I preface that with the fact that we, we do live in a society where.
• 27:37
  Charleston: Our identities are typically attached to what we do or what we have achieved and was part of your work getting back to answering that question of who are you regardless of their achievements.
• 27:53
  Dawn: Yes, 100%.
• 27:55
  Dawn: And I'm really glad you brought that up.
• 27:57
  Dawn: This is something that I talk about over and over in my work.
• 28:01
  Dawn: In fact, just before we got on this recording today.
• 28:06
  Dawn: I was finishing up an interview that I had recorded, you know, a couple weeks ago with someone, and I was talking about how one of my takeaways was the idea that you are not your achievements, you are not your board scores, you are not your grades, you're not your job or your salary, you know, all of those things, and yes, I had to learn that, and one of the things that really turned me on to understanding that is reading Eckhart Tolle's work, and I had read it before I had my health scare and my burnout crisis, but it was like I had kind of forgotten.
• 28:48
  Dawn: It had.
• 28:49
  Dawn: Gone into my brain, and it was just sitting in the background, and I wasn't paying much attention to it.
• 28:55
  Dawn: But I re read those things.
• 28:57
  Dawn: Um, I can highly recommend the book A New Earth, and also The Power of Now.
• 29:02
  Dawn: Both of those are by Eckhart Tolle, and they talk a lot about for instance, we'll just give another example.
• 29:10
  Dawn: If you're a supermodel and you were to get burned, does that make you a less worthy person?
• 29:16
  Dawn: Somehow all of a sudden your identity of being this quote, outwardly beautiful person being a model, getting paid for the way that you look, that is stripped away from you in a second.
• 29:28
  Dawn: What does that mean about you?
• 29:29
  Dawn: Well, it honestly means nothing about you.
• 29:32
  Dawn: You're still a human being.
• 29:33
  Dawn: You're still a person.
• 29:35
  Dawn: We're all still connected.
• 29:36
  Dawn: And in some ways we are all still equal.
• 29:39
  Dawn: And that is a concept that is just very important.
• 29:44
  Dawn: And especially for people that are in these high octane professions.
• 29:48
  Dawn: We have to remember that.
• 29:50
  Dawn: If we weren't doing this job, we'd still be a person that's worthy of happiness and of having the kind of life that's fulfilling.
• 29:59
  Charleston: I couldn't agree more.
• 30:02
  Charleston: And, I think that leads us to, where we're at now.
• 30:06
  Charleston: Because we have going through this journey ourselves.
• 30:10
  Charleston: We are both helping others, but, you know, the need is great.
• 30:16
  Charleston: Um, there's a lot of data out there.
• 30:17
  Charleston: And, 1 of the.
• 30:20
  Charleston: Biggest piece of data that I look at that just really breaks my heart is that 70 percent and in some reports up to 80 percent of all workers.
• 30:30
  Charleston: Or at risk of burnout because they're all disengaged.
• 30:34
  Charleston: That's staggering.
• 30:36
  Charleston: And I think that is an opportunity for, platforms like yourself.
• 30:41
  Charleston: To really send the message out there that, there's inner work that we can all do to get back to our core values, our core identity to realize who we are, so we can show up and serve.
• 30:57
  Charleston: Our communities that serve this world in the way that we are designed.
• 31:03
  Dawn: Yeah.
• 31:04
  Dawn: Well, to answer your question, when I had my health crisis and I was nearing the end of my training, I decided to start a blog back then.
• 31:16
  Dawn: And that was, And I started it with the intention of helping other physicians and professionals to learn more about themselves and find strategies for making their lives as simple and fulfilling as possible and avoiding burnout.
• 31:36
  Dawn: And I still have all of those articles on my blog, but my work has definitely morphed over the years.
• 31:42
  Dawn: I started doing public speaking and have spoken mainly at medical society conferences and other CME type medical conferences on wellness aspects, sometimes on burnout prevention, on moving beyond burnout.
• 31:58
  Dawn: But then I have started also talking about Living a medical life less ordinary is what I would call it, which is like holding on to being a physician if you really enjoy being a physician and not falling into that trap of all or nothing thinking where if you can't be the golden child, the perfect surgeon, the, you know, perfect person, in your medical specialty that you need to completely quit medicine and go do something non clinical, a lot of people fall into that trap.
• 32:31
  Dawn: And I'm living that example of working part time per diem as an anesthesiologist, still doing the clinical work I love.
• 32:40
  Dawn: And I love it even more because I'm not doing it too much.
• 32:44
  Dawn: And then, um, Doing other things the side that I really enjoy.
• 32:49
  Dawn: And so I do that.
• 32:50
  Dawn: And then I added in, in 2020, the coaching arm of my business.
• 32:56
  Dawn: And I coach mainly female professionals that are stuck on the treadmill of achievement.
• 33:02
  Dawn: And want to find their own unique work life balance through learning more about themselves and gaining the confidence to ask for what they want and to even just know what they want, because a lot of times they haven't really thought about it for many years.
• 33:17
  Dawn: And so now I have a book on that subject and it's called Lean Out, and it's a refutation of that book Lean In by Sheryl Sandberg.
• 33:26
  Dawn: But the byline of the book is A Professional Woman's Guide to Finding Authentic Work Life Balance.
• 33:32
  Dawn: And then I have a podcast by the same name where I share people's experiences and inspiring stories of professionals who have, carved out their own unique place in medicine, law, accounting, finance, tech, other areas.
• 33:51
  Dawn: And then sometimes I put in my own solo casts where I talk about a certain mindset subject or, you know, something that's been on my mind or a problem that I've recently dealt with for myself.
• 34:03
  Dawn: So that's what I've been doing.
• 34:06
  Dawn: What about you?
• 34:07
  Dawn: Tell me a little bit about the things that you are offering in this space.
• 34:11
  Charleston: Ironically, our stories are so parallel.
• 34:16
  Charleston: When I did my career reset, I.
• 34:18
  Charleston: Didn't know that I would be going back into event production part time.
• 34:23
  Charleston: And I find it so enjoyable.
• 34:25
  Charleston: Now that I am doing it independently and consulting for other organizations.
• 34:31
  Charleston: A lot of overhead for any organization when you're internal, but being able to take a step outside and contribute in niche ways, um, has been so gratifying to be able to do that.
• 34:46
  Charleston: And then.
• 34:47
  Charleston: When I'm not even planning, I am helping other families out of burnout.
• 34:51
  Charleston: So, um, last November I launched, um, my first publication, it's called Who's Home, a strategic planning workbook to protect your family culture from the rat race.
• 35:04
  Charleston: And that workbook is a model of what we were talking about earlier.
• 35:08
  Charleston: It's the, Parental retreat, to get away somewhere.
• 35:12
  Charleston: And there's 10 guided exercise to redefine the family's mission, vision and values.
• 35:18
  Charleston: And not only to redefine and clarify that, but to then put an operational and strategic plan together using calendar templates and family meeting agendas.
• 35:31
  Charleston: And, and if your family has kids in the home, it gives a model of also doing a strength based, approach to observe your kids on, their interests, their passions, and then to put a plan together on being able to, give some self directed.
• 35:50
  Charleston: Education and activities to pour into your kid's life as well.
• 35:54
  Charleston: So, that workbook is available, on Amazon and on my website.
• 36:00
  Charleston: And like you, I, I do have a library of content on my website.
• 36:04
  Charleston: And I continue to put out inspirational articles every Sunday called the work life, you biosis, um, you biosis is a Greek term for harmonious balance of the gut, which that's symbolic for me.
• 36:18
  Charleston: It's symbolic of reminding me of where my burnout came from and, the aspiration to have harmony and balance, not only physically in my body, but in every aspect of my life.
• 36:29
  Charleston: From spiritually, physically, mentally, and emotionally.
• 36:34
  Charleston: I do have other aspirations for, devotionals and books and future products, but it's all secondary because the family still comes first and daily, I continue to fight, you know, what achievement looks like, and having to choose, service, instead of achievement.
• 36:53
  Charleston: So, um, hopefully as time moves on, own your five to nine, which is the name of my business will continue to evolve.
• 37:00
  Charleston: But, right now I am continuing to enjoy the balance, the balance of, and the beauty that comes with parenting and, working as a solopreneur.
• 37:11
  Dawn: I so resonate with the idea you just mentioned that work life balance is really a constant practice and that everything will happen in time and that you're not in a huge hurry, because that's the same way I feel about the future endeavors and visions that I have for what I would like to do, I would really like to make a workbook as well that corresponds with my Book lean out and gives.
• 37:36
  Dawn: exercises for people, kind of like a guided journal.
• 37:39
  Dawn: And then for this winter 2024 2025, I'm working on what I call the Lean Out Confidence course.
• 37:47
  Dawn: And it will be a self guided, video course that explains to people how to gain confidence.
• 37:55
  Dawn: And it's in four major modules.
• 37:57
  Dawn: So that's currently what I'm working on.
• 37:59
  Dawn: But you know, just the other day, I had someone ask me, how do you do all these things?
• 38:04
  Dawn: You're doing this and you're doing that and you're on social media and blah, blah, blah.
• 38:07
  Dawn: And I said, I really just am not in a hurry to do any of it.
• 38:11
  Dawn: I kind of do it.
• 38:12
  Dawn: When I feel like it and I don't push myself too hard and I remember why I'm doing it.
• 38:18
  Dawn: I'm not doing it because I have to or because I'm trying to make a million dollars or something like that.
• 38:24
  Dawn: I do it because I really like it and I grow and learn when I'm making this content and sharing these things with people and connecting with other people and I like to help other people.
• 38:36
  Charleston: I like what you just said.
• 38:37
  Charleston: When you can detach and release the expectations and outcomes, meaning the, usually the, the accolades or the money that
• 38:47
  Dawn: The money.
• 38:48
  Charleston: it, it really, um, takes the pressure off and puts the joy back into what you're doing.
• 38:55
  Charleston: So I so appreciate your mindset of.
• 38:59
  Charleston: how you're serving your community.
• 39:01
  Charleston: And, this course sounds amazing because you are really hitting on, uh, one of the biggest, I would say challenges, and this is an internal challenge of going from a place of burnout to a place of purpose.
• 39:16
  Charleston: And that's confidence.
• 39:18
  Charleston: And really having to get over the fear factors and really detangling where that fear is coming from.
• 39:25
  Charleston: So there's clarity on how to move forward.
• 39:27
  Charleston: So I can't wait to hear and see more about this course.
• 39:32
  Dawn: Thank you so much.
• 39:34
  Dawn: Well, let's share with people where they can find us.
• 39:39
  Dawn: What is the best place to get all of your information, Charleston?
• 39:44
  Charleston: For me, you can visit ownyour5to9.
• 39:48
  Charleston: com and there are many links to my library of articles or signing up for my newsletter, which I've mentioned earlier, it's called the Work Life eBiosis.
• 39:59
  Charleston: Or if you're interested in the workbook, um, there's a section under books and you will find the Who's Home workbook, um, under books, all at ownyour5to9.
• 40:10
  Charleston: com.
• 40:11
  Charleston: How about yourself, Don?
• 40:13
  Dawn: Yeah.
• 40:13
  Dawn: So mine can all be found under one location as well.
• 40:17
  Dawn: It's my website and it's called practicebalance.
• 40:20
  Dawn: com.
• 40:21
  Dawn: And it has More than 10 years of blog posts, as I had mentioned, there is a way to link to my book and to my podcast to subscribe to my newsletter.
• 40:35
  Dawn: And if you do that, you put your email into the purple box, you get an instant download of a core values exercise that you can do for yourself to figure out your core values.
• 40:46
  Dawn: And then I'm also active on Instagram and my handle is practice balance.
• 40:53
  Charleston: Fantastic.
• 40:54
  Dawn: Well, thanks so much for having this conversation with me.
• 40:57
  Dawn: I love that.
• 40:58
  Dawn: We talked about the different overlaps of our stories and hopefully some of the things that we said today can really help explain to people that.
• 41:09
  Dawn: There are ways that you can still do your chosen profession and also be happy and fulfilled in the process and it doesn't have to look like the status quo.
• 41:20
  Dawn: You don't have to be doing things like everybody else is doing.
• 41:25
  Charleston: You're absolutely right.
• 41:26
  Charleston: We have choices, and I think if we can be more purposeful and intentional with how we use our time and, hearing content like this and just realizing there are options of how to do a redesign without burning up the career, but, keeping and staying within your profession.
• 41:47
  Charleston: So I appreciate the conversation, Dawn, and hearing so much more about your story, and I look forward to future conversations.
• 41:56
  Dawn: Likewise.
• 41:59
  Thanks for listening to the lean out podcast.
• 42:02
  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.
• 42:14
  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.
• 42:30
  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.
• 42:42
  Have a great day and we'll see you next time