252. What If You Didn't Wait for a Crisis? A Physician’s Path to Redefining Success with Dr. Dawn Baker

Healing Medicine: Mindfulness, Mindset & Physician Well-Being

A powerful and deeply inspiring conversation with Dr. Dawn Baker—an anesthesiologist, author, yoga teacher, coach, homesteader, and fellow mindful healer.

Dawn shares her journey of pivoting from a conventional medical path to a multi-passionate, deeply aligned life grounded in freedom, purpose, and self-awareness. Her story is extraordinary and relatable, offering a roadmap for anyone longing to redefine success and live more authentically.

Dawn's life took a profound turn after a serious health diagnosis during residency. What followed was a journey of healing, questioning long-held beliefs, and learning to trust herself again.

Through microsteps, mindfulness, and courage, she built a life where she practices medicine on her terms, homeschools her daughter, lives off-grid in the Utah mountains, and empowers other women physicians to live more fully through coaching, writing, and her podcast, Lean Out.

Pearls of Wisdom:

• Clarity and alignment often come from stillness—and sometimes from unexpected crises. Creating space to know yourself again is essential to any life pivot.

• Redefining success based on your own values, not societal or professional expectations, is a courageous and liberating act.

• You can do hard things—and more importantly, you can do different things. Embracing change is a mindful act of self-trust.

• Locums, lifestyle design, and nonclinical work are legitimate, fulfilling, and creative ways to practice medicine and live well.

• Confidence and courage are not personality traits—they are skills you can grow, especially when you pause, reflect, and reframe the narrative of your life.

Reflection Questions:

• What might you discover if you paused long enough to truly listen to yourself?

• What values are guiding your current version of success—and are they truly yours?

• How might your life shift if you approached it as the hero of your own unfolding story?

Don’t wait for a crisis to step into your own less ordinary life, consider working with me through mindful coaching or joining me on retreat.

These are the sacred spaces where clarity, courage, and transformation truly begin: www.jessiemahoneymd.com/coaching and www.jessiemahoneymd.com/retreats.

If you’d like to bring this conversation to your team or community, I would love to support you with a workshop, retreat, or talk on mindful living and leadership: www.jessiemahoneymd.com/speaking

To learn more about Dr. Dawn Baker’s work, you can find her at www.practicebalance.com or follow her on Instagram @practicebalance. Her book, Lean Out, and her podcast of the same name are thoughtful resources for anyone seeking alignment, clarity, and courageous living.

To explore mindfulness-based speaking, retreats, and workshops, learn more about Dr. Ni-Cheng Liang’s work at www.awakenbreath.org. She brings breath, presence, and healing to teams, institutions, and communities.

Nothing shared in the Mindful Healers Podcast is medical advice.