Life Changing Moments: Trusting your Gut, with Dr. Sheila Kilbane

For Dr. Shelia Kilbane, there’s been a long list of very important decisions she has made in her career. While research, analysis and vetting has been important in those decisions, what Dr. Kilbane has learned is to trust her gut.

And if you are having challenges trusting your gut, sometimes a trusted coach can help. Give us a call. Reach out to www.mymdcoaches.com


MD Coaches, LLC provides leadership and executive coaching for physicians by physicians to overcome burnout, transition throughout your career, develop as a leader or meet your individual goals. Remember, you are not in this alone. Reach out to us today!


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Sheila Kilbane, MD is a board-certified pediatrician, who trained in integrative medicine with Andrew Weil, MD, and is a best-selling author. She uses the best of conventional and integrative medicine to identify and treat the root cause of children’s illnesses. Her goal is to help children reach optimal health so they can thrive.

Using her seven-step process, along with natural and nutritional therapies, Dr. Kilbane helps significantly improve or resolve altogether, childhood illnesses such as colic, reflux, eczema, recurrent ear and sinus infections, asthma, allergies, constipation or loose stools, and other GI issues such as abdominal pain.

In addition to seeing individual patients at her private practice in Charlotte, NC, Dr. Kilbane gives educational lectures to parents and healthcare professionals around the globe and offers online education courses.

Best-selling Author:  Healthy Kids Happy Moms – 7-Steps to Heal and Prevent Common Childhood Illnesses may be Purchase here: www.sheilakilbane.com/book and anywhere books are sold.

Note: Links on this page may be linked to affiliate programs. These links help to ensure we can continue to deliver this content to you. If you are interested in purchasing any products listed on this page, your support helps us out greatly. Thank you.

Access the Show Transcript Here

Transcript

[0:00] But I knew it was the wheels had already been set in motion and, you know, shortly after I signed the contract, I realized that it was probably not the right decision.
It was based on the practice manager, had nothing to do with the partners in the practice.
But then you just have to make the best of, you know, whatever decision you made.
There are times in our lives that change the way we see the world.
These challenges can take insight, trusted confidants, or even a coach. Let’s explore those moments. In this companion podcast to Rx for Success, we will discover ways to learn and write our own success stories together. I’m Dr. Dale Waxman, a physician coach with MD Coaches, and this is Life-Changing Moments. Today’s guest is Dr. Sheila Kilbane.

[0:55] Sheila is a pediatrician who also trained in integrative medicine and practices in Charlotte, North Carolina.
She is also the bestselling author of Healthy Kids, Happy Moms.
Her inspirational and entertaining path into medicine story is chronicled in Rx for Success episode number 151, which you can access on the Rx for Success podcast website or in your podcast app.
Now during that show, Dr. Kilbane mentioned the word gut a few times and I wanted to bring her back to explore this some more, specifically the concept of trust your gut, which she offered as her first prescription for success.
We’ll get into that more in a moment, but for now, I’ve known Sheila for many years as our paths crossed frequently around areas of mutual professional interest and it is is a delight to have this opportunity to explore some of her life lessons a bit deeper.
So Sheila, welcome to Life-Changing Moments.

[2:00] Thank you, I’m so happy. And for the listeners, Del is one of the most amazing individuals on the planet.
We all love to be with him. And he was, you were attending when I was a resident and he was, it was always my favorite thing to see you. So thank you for having me.
Thank you, I think this could be a mutual admiration session too.
So, but it goes in the other direction as well. So thank you for that.
We’ll save that for a glass of wine later. We’ll do that. that way.

[2:28] So, Sheila, for those who were not able to listen to your really great story about your path into where, you know, all the way to what you’re doing now on Rx for Success, can you just, not so much the recurrence of that path, but what’s your situation right now professionally?
Yeah, so I am an integrative pediatrician and I, that my practice is in Charlotte, North Carolina.
It’s called Infinite Health and I do all integrative medicine.
So I see the kids who are doing what conventional medicine has recommended and what conventional medicine has to offer and they’re still struggling.
So it’s kids with eczema, asthma, a lot of gut issues, anything, it runs the gamut.
And we work with the gut microbiome, we do blood work, we use supplements, we use medications.
It’s just really, we get to combine the best of both conventional and integrative medicine and just watch them transform.

[3:27] Yeah, and the other piece about that, that’s your sort of face-to-face practice, but you also have an online presence as well, and you do some educational work with people all over the world.
Yes, I have an online course, and it walks people through the same process that we use in the practice.

[3:47] We just do it online. And I get online call with the families on that course and then my book which came out September of 2021 and that’s also it’s just the process written out in book form.
So it’s kind of the DIY form which it’s great for families and it’s also great for other, practitioners if you’re interested in integrative medicine because it’s called you know the title is Healthy Kids, Happy Moms, Seven Steps to Heal and Prevent Common Childhood Illnesses but it’s applicable to everyone.
I’m a pediatrician, so I had to, you know, gear it toward kids. Right. Great.
Well, that’s awesome. Some of the wisdom that I know that you impart to patients and their family members has to do with some of the things that you personally have experienced.
And so getting to what I wanted to bring you back for this whole concept of, by the way, you said gut again twice more just now. So that’s your, there’s a focus for you there, isn’t there?
If you either have a cup of tea or a glass of wine while you’re watching this, you’ll have to drink every time I say gut.

[5:04] It’s a drinking game. Okay, awesome. So what I’d like to do, so let’s talk about that because I really keyed in on that and what I wanna do is replay a piece from that first podcast.
Here is what was the first prescription for success that you had.

[5:26] And this is what I mentioned earlier, is that my prescription for success is follow your gut as much as you can, right? And sometimes we veer away from it and what I like to call it, it’s when we lose our shoes. But when that happens, just getting back to that place where where you’re able to listen to your intuition.
And that always means getting quiet.

[5:58] So I know you said more there, but there’s so much in there.
Just in that, those 25 seconds or so, there are three things that I picked up on that I’d like us to kind of explore a little bit.
So one is this, you know, trust your gut, lose your shoes, and then get quiet.
So I wonder if we can, can we take each of those one at a time, would that be okay?
Yeah, absolutely. Okay.
So what do you mean by trust your gut?
So it’s one of my favorite things to say in the practices is in medical school, we learn about the gut as the little brain in the gut.
When you have a physical sensation about things, we sometimes ignore it.
And if we can really listen to that, that’s when we make the best decisions.
And there’s a lot written on this in terms of books of how we make decisions.
And one of the books I can’t even remember, it’s either Click or something where They talk about thin slicing.

[6:56] We will make these snap decisions, but we can’t always articulate why we’re saying what we’re saying.
The story, I’m veering a little bit, but I think this is super interesting.
What they talked about is they had, this was out in California at one of the museums, they had, you know, a painting had turned up and they thought it was a Michelangelo.
And they had it, you know, they’d done all the carbon dating and it was all, it was looking like it was.
And then the expert flew in from Italy, and the moment they saw it, they said, it’s a fake.

[7:27] And how do you explain, and then they ended up being correct, but how do you explain that?
And so that’s one of the things that I think it is when we trust our gut, is you know, and for me, right, it’s the sensation, and it’s also, we can’t always explain it.
And one of the things, so when I quit my conventional medicine practice, I will always forget this.
One, I didn’t tell a lot of people because I didn’t want to have that, if people, I wasn’t listening to other, to input. I had made my decision.
And I had that conviction. I knew that if I started to bring reason into it, I might not make the decision that I knew I needed to make.
I don’t know why. I think I also, my family, my parents were very big, especially my dad at, and I don’t even know if he would term it, you follow your gut, but he always used to say, no guts, no glory.
But it was very much, do that intuition thing and it may not always be the most popular thing.

[8:36] And that’s something that in medicine can be really hard to go against the grain.
So there’s a little bit of sort of the sense of intuition. You’ve also mentioned a sense of body sensation, and you’ve also mentioned this, differentiating it from reason.
All right, here’s another good example of this. So I recently, so after I quit my job, that’s when I told my friends, and one of my good friends, her husband, who’s also my friend, he’s an orthopedic surgeon, and we all trained together, and he called me, and he was like, Kilbane, I just worried about you.
I just don’t know, have you really thought through what you’re gonna do, yada, yada, yada.
And literally a week ago, we had the conversation, we were talking and he was like, well, I’m really glad I gave you such good advice back then.
He’s like, I’m the one eating my words now.
But right, other people can’t see it.
And…

[9:36] At that point in my career, I would get really tired. I knew I was starting to physically get sick.
I would go home and I couldn’t get off the couch because it was the wrong fit for my system. People could rationalize and I could say, this is not the right thing.
I have a great job. Who in their right mind would leave the job that I had?
But it just wasn’t the right fit for me.
I look at it now and I look at the kids that I’ve been able to help and how I, you know, I’m just a different person than I was then.
And it was a better way for me to do it.
Right, I wanna drop back to something that you said, that this person who was coming from a good place in his heart, that sometimes when we open ourselves up to.

[10:29] And I think you, in a gut way knew, I don’t really want to entertain other people’s ideas about this because I already know this is the right thing for me to do.
When other people are giving us their perspective, we have to remember it’s coming through their own filters.
So it may not be the decision he would have made for his career, but he may not have been coming from what’s best for Sheila because he may not have been listening well to what was important to you.
And not to diminish him, but we all do that, right? We all, for people we care about, we tend to impart our own sort of wishes on those people based on what we think is successful.
For sure. The other thing too is, I know this now, I didn’t know it then in my life, but I had worked with a friend of ours, I think you may know her, Sheila Mullen, and she had just gone through some coaching herself.
And one of the things that she said to me is, when somebody says something that triggers you need to pay attention to that.
And what he said didn’t trigger me because it wasn’t even rolled right off my back.
Because I think that’s the other thing that we get hung up on is, I can’t believe they would say that, yada, yada, yada.
So it’s, if you are getting caught up in some kind of a loop because of what somebody said to you, it may be an opportunity to just take a deeper look and why is that unsettling you so much?

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[13:15] Hi, I’m Rhonda Crowe, founder and CEO for MDCoaches. Here on Rx for Success, we interview a lot of great medical professionals on how they grew their careers, how they overcame challenges, and how they handle day-to-day work.
I really hope you’re getting a lot of great information. But if you’re looking for an answer to a specific problem, management or administration challenge, or if you’re feeling just a bit burnt out, like maybe you chose the wrong career, well, then there’s a faster way to get the help you need.
No, it’s not counseling, it’s coaching.
Rx for Success is produced by MD Coaches, a team of physicians who have been where you are.
I know you’re used to going it alone, but you don’t have to.
Get the support you need today.
Visit us at mymdcoaches.com to schedule your complimentary consultation.
Again, that’s mymdcoaches.com because you’re not in this alone.

[14:17] We’ll get back to our interview in just a moment, but right now, I want to tell you a little bit about Physician Outlook.
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[15:26] Going back to sort of body sensation, I think one of the things you said even talked about this clinically when you talk to patients about they may have suppressed or may not to be paying attention to even some symptoms that they’re having.
And so, is there a way to translate that to this trusting your gut for what’s right for us in our life?
Are there some things that we may be ignoring in ourselves, even physical sensations?

[15:56] Yes, as I do this with the moms in my practice, is we’ll kind of talk about, the first thing I’ll say to them is, you know, what do you love to do?
What’s your way to de-stress, right?
And it’s either, you know, walking or running or maybe getting out with friends.
And if they’re not doing any of that, you know, we talk through that.
For me, it’s sort of like that flow, right? Is you, I, for me, it’s like a whole body sensation, that doing, I’m 100% focused on whatever I’m doing.
And you feel physically good and you have that clarity, Right, we all know what it’s like to not follow our gut, because that’s the only time you ever run into those that, oh, you know, that kind of regret or the punch in the gut thing of why is this happening?
And then you go back and you say, oh, I shouldn’t, you know, I knew when I was making the decision that I should have made a different decision.
And that has happened to me along this journey as well. And after I’d quit my first job, I had signed a contract with another wonderful, wonderful group.

[17:07] But I knew it was the wheels had already been set in motion.
And shortly after I signed the contract, I realized that it was probably not the right decision.
It was based on the practice manager. It had nothing to do with the partners in the practice.
But then you just have to make the best of whatever decision you made.
But that’s, for me, it’s getting quiet.
And it’s writing. I’m better at it now, maybe. or maybe understanding my process.
Yeah, you mentioned lose your shoes. What do you mean by that?
Is that kind of what we’re talking about right now?
Yeah, so when I say that, one of my friends would talk about this with his daughter, and he’s Colombian, and he would say, oh, no, she lost her shoes, meaning she kind of got off the rail, not doing the things that are maybe good for her.
And I now when I’m losing my shoes it’s when I’m staying up too late on the computer not taking care of myself not doing, you know maybe not doing enough things outside and because you can get you can get caught up in that and that’s where is like for me especially as an entrepreneur and having my own practice it’s easy to go down that path of work.

[18:31] Work work and that’s not that you know sometimes when you’re inspired, that’s good. But it’s not what’s really going to bring you that long-term enjoyment and happiness. When you start noticing that you are doing certain things, that’s your, okay, I’ve lost my shoes here. I’m not following my path. I’m not in that place of following my gut.
Am I getting that? Yes. Yeah.

[19:02] Yeah. So, for everybody, that’s a little bit different, you know, and so I’ll invite listeners to think what is that signal for you that says that you’re off your path, or off, you know, even temporarily off your path.
So you then said what you do is you get yourself quiet.
And it’s also, if I’m out of that state of gratitude, or if I’m in that state of gratitude, like, poking apart, you know, the ladies who I work with, or if I keep looking at all the negative things, and I’m not, what a friend of mine likes to say it is, are you making decisions from the field?
Which, meaning, you know, from your, when you’re in a place of balance.
So, that is when I get quiet, and I’ll go walk barefooted.
There’s a little, you probably know where it is, Avondale.
There’s like a little church that has a labyrinth near my office and I’ll go and I’ll take my shoes off and I’ll walk around there and I have to get myself back to that place and really like right smiling and remembering like this is life that whatever it is that I’m getting so.

[20:13] Out of sorts about, does it really make a big difference in the overall scheme of things?
Like right now, we’re doing a big supplement sale, and I got myself all tied up around the emails and when they went out and when they, and I was like, really, Sheila, calm down.
It’s all going to, right? You’re going to sell supplements.

[20:32] It doesn’t, you know, what the emails say, you know, it’s going to be fine.
So it’s just, I’m much quicker to get back.
And then I have my touch points of people who I’ve worked with over the years who I who I might go do a couple of sessions with.
And then that will help me whether it’s right, whether it’s a counselor or a, you know, whoever it is.
So you’re quicker to observe in yourself, I’m a little off track, and then you’ve already developed a pocket full of tools to get quiet and get yourself back to you.
Yes.

[21:11] Yeah, that’s awesome. That’s really cool.
Well, you know, I love to say that it works 100% all the time.
Well it actually kind of leads to my next question and you’ve talked a little bit about dropping into your gut, if you will, reactively, like when you’re off track.
What do you do proactively? So one of the cool things that I will tell you I do, and your listeners might think I I am a little bit cray-cray. I don’t see a high volume of patients, but I read the charts the day before. I mean, we spend Mondays getting ready, but then, you know, I’ll go through them again and I literally write their names down in my journal.
And I meditate and just kind of connect so that I’m allowing my gut into this healing relationship.

[22:06] So that when I’m making decisions and it’s like magic.
It doesn’t mean everything is perfect with the child. It doesn’t mean, right, that there aren’t bumps in the road.
It’s just because I’m connecting with them on a different level, and it’s the best thing ever.
And so there are, and now I do it all the time. You know, I would have periods where I would get tired and I wouldn’t do it, and it’s, oh, and because we also always have those patients that you see their name on your schedule and you go, oh, like your whole body tenses up.
Those are the ones that I particularly do it even more for, because they’re, the reality if you believe in the way that I do, is we are all, we’re all one. And I literally think about it in terms of electrons, protons, and neutrons. And we’re more space and we’re just this mass of breathing, right? The planet and all of us of these breathing, moving particles.

[23:13] And it’s taking our ego and that conscious, if we go to the subconscious place, it always feels like a more pure connection with the kids and with the families.
Oh, that’s really neat. What a lovely image I have of you doing that.
And I would imagine that, I’m hearing the benefit that that confers to you as well as for them.
That’s very cool, Sheila. I didn’t know that that’s something that you did.
That’s pretty awesome.
Yes, and like when I switched into integrative medicine, it just brought my joy.
Because I always wanted to be a physician.
Like there was never anything else.
But I was miserable. And you know, this is a much later iteration of how I practice.
But, and you know who helped me so much with this is Bridget Fungard.
So she did integrative medicine up at one of the hospitals in Charlotte.
And one day she said to me, Sheila, you know you treat.

[24:15] The whole family. You treat the parents as well. And it was just the way, it was like she gave me permission to have a deeper conversation with the parents. And what I say now to the parents is that it’s my job to help you get your child out of crisis mode, and then we get to start talking about how do you begin having fun again, right, and living your best life. Because that’s the number one thing you can do for a kid is to be your best self. Yeah, if the parents are doing well, the kid does well. Yeah, absolutely. You’ve already kind of mentioned this earlier, and I think it’s related to this sense of self, this sense of when I’m kind of off my path.

[24:58] The idea that I’ve lost my shoes, and then what do I do to kind of get quiet and get myself back there, both reactively and proactively. In a related way, you mentioned in the podcast with Randy that, and you’ve mentioned a little bit here, that your nervous system wasn’t designed for that conventional pediatric practice that you first entered upon leaving residency.
I just wonder if you can say more about that, because I think some listeners may be able to relate to that. What did you mean by that?
So I think a lot about the way that our nervous systems are put together.
And I’m somebody, I’m very impacted by my external environment, right?
If I get cold, I cannot think.
So if I’m in a freezing cold office in the summertime, there aren’t many windows, I can’t get outside, I’m just going to be like a caged rat.
And medicine is, we are not great at designing offices that are very healing.
My first office out of residency, I was in like the back corner of an office, and zero windows.
So that’s one thing. And then doing, just another example. So right out of residency, you acquire your patients or your partners.

[26:23] Patients, right? If they have a sick visit, the kids have a sick visit and the partner is busy, they’ll come and see the new doctor for a sick visit.
So then I would see these kids and the way medical charts are, at least back then it.

[26:37] Was paper, you would have to flip through this really thick chart to figure out what was going on.
I’m like, this is insanity. How do I know when I’m going to refer you to get ear tubes if I can’t even see how many times you’ve been diagnosed with an ear infection?

[26:51] So I made the, and this is also my personality, right, is I’m going to, if it’s not making sense, I’m going to change the system.

[27:00] So I created this little visit and counter sheet, and I would write their main problems, their allergies, which the EMRs have this now.
And then I would write the date, what the diagnosis was, and what treatment they had.
So I was able to, you know, at a glance, I was able to get a much better idea of what I needed to do.
And in doing this, I started to see how many antibiotics these kids were on.
And I’m like, this is not good. And that’s part of what led me to start looking and reading more about allergies, you know, environmental allergies, food allergies, and just going, you know, wait a minute, This kid had gastroenteritis and he had strep, then he had pneumonia, then he had a sinusitis.
It’s just what’s going on? Why are these?
So I felt like we were expected to be making decisions and we didn’t have all the information, right?
With a 10 or 15 minute visit.
And once you get to know the patients, that’s a different story.
But I was staying late at night to get the charting done you know, to get the charting done and to get it ready so that I was able to better understand what was going on with patients.
And I think that’s just the way my mind has to understand the whole picture.

[28:22] Even if I’m just having to make a small decision about an ear infection, I want to know what’s going on. So that’s one thing.
And it’s also, right, like sensory. So there are some people, and I think Ayurveda explains this well, right?
Ayurveda is the ancient form of medicine that they practice in India.
And they have three, they break everyone down into three different doshas.
And you and I were saying, I know you do a lot of work with the Enneagram, and I think there are different ways to do this, but the doshas are pitta, kapha, and vata.
And it just is how you metabolize information, how you metabolize food, how are you when you’re off balance.
And I understand myself, and I have a sensitive GI system. I’m more of the Vata personality, which is more airy, so I need to be grounded.
It also plays a role in what kinds of foods that you eat.

[29:21] Then there are other people like the Vata people who, you know, they’ve got guts of steel. They have, you know, get up at the same time every morning, boom, boom, boom.
They can get their to-do list up right in the morning.
For me, I’ve got to have like, or if I have to sit down and write a blog or something, I have to have slept well, the lighting has to be perfect, I have to have the right amount of caffeine in my system. It will be phenomenal when I write it. My brain isn’t going to access that information like that. Like when I was writing my book, it was such a fun process, but I pretty much was a hermit because I couldn’t, like I knew if I had something that needed to come, I had to walk in the woods and I couldn’t start listening to a book or a podcast or anything because it would, Interrupt the creative process. I think the creative process is all part and parcel to this, To our gut intuition into what we’re doing and I think we don’t recognize.

[30:18] The things that we do that are creative whether you’re a car mechanic a hairdresser, Right a physician, you know, and you’re doing all of these things now, right?
But you prepared, you took a lot of notes, and then you, I’m sure, were still and quiet so that you were able to pick out that pattern of, right, I talked about my gut the whole time.
What I’m hearing, Sheila, is this, what’s coming up for me as you’re talking is the attention that you bring to yourself around self-awareness.
My last guest, we talked about sort of physician heal thyself, this you are a physician know thyself and know what makes me tick, what makes me, what do I need for me to be the best me possible.
And I realized that you will never get it all right. It’s a process of learning.
But if I had to put a theme to all of this is you put a lot of investment into noticing.

[31:22] And then making decisions based on what you notice about what’s best for you, for how you operate, for how you bring your best self forward.
It is, and now that you say that, part of that was so much of the entrepreneurial stuff.
I went to, I’ve gone to so many entrepreneur conferences, and they talk about that, right?
Because if you just have this blank slate, in many ways it’s easier to fit into a system because you don’t have to make as many decisions, right? you do this, you do that, everything is set up.
I had to do everything from pick my EMR to create the structure of my practice, to hire people, and I didn’t have any kind of training or anything with that.
And so one of the things, like this is just another small example of at all these conferences, they just talk about, can you get somebody to help you with food or have somebody make your food.

[32:18] Make sure that you’re getting your house cleaned, make sure that you’re…
So there are things, and I’ve had it, like all of that stuff, I put into place very quickly, right?
I’ve had somebody making me food for many, many years.
I do yoga. The world could be falling down around me and I go to yoga religiously two to three times a week, right, hot, sweaty yoga, because I don’t function without it.
And it’s not like, for me, that’s not a chore.
Like for some people sitting down to do, you know, the work that’s really hard for me, that might be super easy. Whereas for me, eating healthy and exercising is, that’s done.
And so I think I’ve been able to have the, I put the scaffolding in place early on.
And so that I, that has, that frees up a lot of brain space for me to do the things.
And I, and Russ Greenfield, right?
Our dear friend.

[33:13] He modeled saying no so well with a smile on his face and you felt like that no was the best thing you’d ever heard.
And I, right, once I was no longer drowning, I don’t schedule myself out a lot.
I just don’t because it just doesn’t, I don’t function well.
Yeah, you were so attentive to the impact that different choices that you make, different things that happen in your life and what that has on you and keeping the focus on yourself being well in lots of, in all the different dimensions of what being well means and how much that pays off, not just for you, but for your patients as well.
I think it’s pretty remarkable. I think you’re a great model for all of us and not just the listeners here, but for other professionals as well.

[34:12] Oh, well, you are super sweet. Because it’s also, right, people are, I don’t take insurance, and if I’m preaching, you need to eat healthy and do this and this and this, if I look like I haven’t been taking care of myself, I’m not gonna be a very good emissary for my mission.
Yeah, that too, that too.
Well, thank you so much for this, and I just wanted to, is there anything else kind of that’s come up for you in our conversation right now that you think that we ought to impart to listeners some wisdom that you have gained in this realm of.

[34:51] Trust in your gut, being quiet, getting yourself back on your path, reactively and proactively. Anything else that’s come up for you that you’d like to mention?
I think it’s just having the imagination. And I think this is where you can look to Steve Jobs and people like that who… I think sometimes you just can’t even fathom. And for a period of time, I couldn’t fathom what… I knew I couldn’t keep doing what I was doing, but I didn’t really know what I wanted to do and how I could get there.
And it became more clear, and I still, and it was writing. You just never know what’s gonna come out of your hand when you start writing.
And not typing on the computer, right?

[35:31] Get it, picking up a pen and paper. Something magical happens when you’re actually writing.
And I would start to write this stuff out, and I literally wrote, this was probably 2010 or 11, I actually have it in a picture that I use in some of my talks of, I wrote a picture of like a clinic and a smiley face on it.
And I wrote, you know, I want to see, my goal at the time was to only see 14 patients a day.
I don’t see anywhere near that number of patients a day now, but it was to, you know, to get to spend an hour with them. It couldn’t have been four, it must’ve been six to eight or something.
But, and that I didn’t want to do well visits. I only wanted to do sick visits.
And so I just started writing down the things that I liked doing.
I love to figure out problems, right? I love to see a kid who’s got something undiagnosed to figure it out.
And so that eventually led into my brain kind of creating something of what I did want.
And anything is possible. If you had told me 20 years ago I would be doing what I’m doing now, I would have said you are absolutely crazy.

[36:38] I never ever could have imagined that I would be able to do medicine in this way. Nice.
Nice to take some risks into unfamiliar territory to explore things to see what comes up that fits your unique path as well.
So thank you for that. And Sheila, thank you for taking time again to join me on this podcast and the MD Coaches Podcast family.
I really, really appreciate this. I really appreciate that deep dive into what do we mean by trusting our gut and kind of deconstructing that for people to be able to begin applying that in their own lives.
So thank you again. Thank you, Dale. I really love this easygoing conversation with Dr. Kilbane.

[37:29] While it was often lighthearted, Sheila offers some deep wisdom from years of practicing self-awareness and self-knowing. So here are my takeaways from this conversation.
Number one, follow your gut. Pay attention to the physical sensations that occur at various key times in your life, like when you’re confronted with an important decision or you’re in an environment that just doesn’t feel right. Sometimes the sensation is in the gut, and sometimes the whole body. We often ignore these at our peril. Most of us can remember a a time when we did not listen to our gut and the unfortunate outcome of doing so.

[38:11] If we do listen to it, many times that is when we make the best decisions.
Number two, learn the signals of when you, quote, lose your shoes, end quote, or you’re off your unique path.
These may be physical as a result of getting off track health-wise, or they may show up as persistent thoughts like self-criticism or worry. that you’re experiencing these, and…
Number three, Get quiet. Employ tools that bring you back to balance. Think about activities that have worked for you in the past or that you’re aware of can help you be reflective, such as writing, walking in nature, or meditating.
Whatever it is, be intentional about getting quiet with yourself and then listen to your gut.
Well, I hope you enjoyed this discussion. If you encounter a time in your life when you’re doing one thing, but your gut tells you another, and you wish to sort out what to do next, consider coaching.
All of the coaches at MDCoaches have been there, and we’re here to listen and provide a space for you to listen deeply to your inner voice.
You can reach us at mymdcoaches.com. Thank you for listening, and be well.

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