Burnout to Balance: Michael Levitt on Boundaries, Resilience, and Redesigning Your Life

When burnout nearly cost Michael Levitt everything, it became the turning point for a new kind of leadership, one built on clarity, boundaries, and a redefined version of success.

In this powerful episode of Life & Leadership Connected, I’m joined by Michael Levitt, founder of the Breakfast Leadership Network and a global authority on burnout prevention.

Michael opens up about the season that brought him to the edge: a career collapse, health crisis, and personal loss, all rooted in the absence of boundaries and sustainable balance. But what followed was a journey of deep self-leadership, recovery, and a life redesigned around purpose.

This conversation is packed with wisdom for young professionals, aspiring leaders, and high-achievers who want to grow without burning out.

You’ll learn:

• How to recognize the early signs of burnout
• Why high-performers struggle to set healthy boundaries
• How to rebuild your life around values, purpose, and peace
• The role of resilience in long-term impact
• Encouragement for redefining success, especially if you're feeling stuck, exhausted, or overwhelmed

Whether you're just starting your career or leading others, this episode is your reminder: balance is not a luxury, it’s leadership.

Listen now and take your next step from burnout to breakthrough.

https://BreakfastLeadership.com

https://www.youtube.com/@breakfastleadership

Michael@breakfastleadership.com

https://linkedin.com/in/michaeldlevitt

P.S.
If this conversation hits home, and you know it’s time to align your life before you scale your success, check out my new free resource:
The eBook “The Identity to Impact® Starter Guide”
It’s designed to help you connect who you are with the life you’re called to lead.
You find the link to it here: 
https://lifeleadershipconnected.systeme.io/32644969

David Dahlén D’Cruz
Life & Leadership Connected
www.lifeleadershipconnected.com

Transcript

0:05

I was running a startup healthcare clinic. And I'd never had any healthcare experiences, a leader in that sector. I had a lot of experience over my career, but never in healthcare. So I took the role. It was a big challenging role for me. but I was really successful at it. But the problem was I didn't have boundaries around when I worked and when I didn't. So I was pretty much working 6 a.m. to 11 p.m. seven days a week for a couple years. And that is not sustainable. It just isn't. Our bodies are not designed for that. Our minds definitely aren't. When you're working that many hours, you start taking shortcuts in other areas of your life, your health, activity, spirituality, you name it. And I did, you know, I started cutting out everything out of my life just to do the work. And in May of 2009, as you alluded to, that's what I like to refer to as my year of worst case scenarios. So over a year, I had a heart attack that should have killed me. Then 17 weeks later, I lost my job during the Great Recession in the US. I'm like, okay, why was that important for you to work this many hours? What were you trying to accomplish? And just really dig into it, much like a therapist would if they were asking you a question. But I was not working with a therapist at that point. So it was more of a self-therapy type of thing. And thankfully I was able to come out of all of that and learn a lot about burnout. then went back and like said, I a new role. I was doing well with that. I was back in the same sector, the healthcare sector, ironically, because a sector that nearly killed me, I went back to it. A lot of people thought I was crazy to do that, but I was really successful. In the second go-around, I went about it a whole lot better and was successful, did a lot of great things during that time. But as I was back in the swing of things and recovered from everything and rebuilt my life, you know I was looking at my peers in the healthcare sector and this is 2014-2015. I was seeing a lot of my peers burning out okay this is not good I started to warn them going hey you do not want to do this believe me it's not pleasant so after that I said you know I'm gonna start writing about it so I launched a blog and then I started speaking at some healthcare events just kind of talk about and bring awareness to burnout again this is 2015. Burnout is the main topic of many healthcare talks now, but it wasn't back then. So, started doing all of that and then from there, what choices did I do that created this? Okay, what can I choose differently that can hopefully correct this or improve the situation? And again, sometimes that's really hard for people to do, but it takes time. And I always tell people, work with a therapist if you're struggling with something like this and they can help you kind of reframe things or get a little bit more clarity on some things so you can take the necessary steps to improve your life, which is what I want everybody to do. I want everybody to have a better life. On average, the lifespan of people is between 75 to 85 years of age. So that means we get, we'll say 75 just to be safe. So we get 75 springs, 75 summers, 75 falls, and 75 winters. When you start looking at that, like we get 75 of them. All of a sudden you start realizing that's not a lot. I'm in my mid-50s now. So I got a whole lot less to go than I've lived, you know, on average. And that's just the reality of it. I'm not upset about it, but that's the reality of it. So for me, it's like, okay, do I want the last quarter or last third of my life to be a life of struggle, frustration, challenges? If I have any control over that, the answer of course is no, I don't want it. I want it to be... the best period of my life possible. So what do I need to do to do that? Well, if I'm burned out, well, I'm not gonna be living my best life. And that's why I bring awareness to organizations and individuals of what burnout is, what it looks like, what you can do to address it, both from a personal standpoint and also as an employer, what you can do to mitigate the opportunity of burnout running through your organization. So. I'm very fortunate that I, one, survived all that happened to me, but also very fortunate that I get to help organizations and individuals deal with burnout and hopefully prevent it from happening in their lives. Hello and welcome everybody to a new episode of the podcast, Life and Leadership Connected podcast. today I have the honor to have the guest on the show whose name is Michael Levitt. Michael Levitt. Michael, welcome to the show. Great to be with you, Taylor David. I usually do, will give a short presentation of who Michael is. He's the founder something called the Breakfast Leadership Network. He's also the host of the top rated Breakfast Leadership show. also a recognized expert in burnout prevention and recovery. has experienced a life-shattering burnout. that cost him his job, his health, and almost also his life. coming out of that, he made his mission to help other leaders, professionals and teams to prevent burnout before it starts. And through keynote speaking, books, coaching, and his podcast, he has helped thousands of people to rethink productivity, reclaim their boundaries, and build lives that sustain success. not sabotage it. Today we are talking about what burnout really is and how to recognize the warning signs early and how to lead yourself and others with clarity, purpose and peace. would you say that introduction Michael? Definitely, it's probably one of the best ones I've heard, so thank you for that. Okay, great. So Michael, can you share a bit about your story? What led this work? did you become so passionate about helping others to avoid burnout? Yeah, for me, and you alluded to it little bit in the intro, I had a pretty significant bout with burnout back in 2009. It actually started building up in 2007. For a couple of years, I was running a startup healthcare clinic. And I'd never had any healthcare experiences, a leader in that sector. I had a lot of experience over my career, but never in healthcare. So I took the role. It was a big challenging role for me. but I was really successful at it. But the problem was I didn't have boundaries around when I worked and when I didn't. So I was pretty much working 6 a.m. to 11 p.m. seven days a week for a couple years. And that is not sustainable. It just isn't. Our bodies are not designed for that. Our minds definitely aren't. When you're working that many hours, you start taking shortcuts in other areas of your life, your health, activity, spirituality, you name it. And I did, you know, I started cutting out everything out of my life just to do the work. And in May of 2009, as you alluded to, that's what I like to refer to as my year of worst case scenarios. So over a year, I had a heart attack that should have killed me. Then 17 weeks later, I lost my job during the Great Recession in the US. And then a few months later, after finally finding a new job, because I was unemployed for several months, because that was during the Great Recession, So there was not a lot of jobs to be found in the area that I was in. I finally found a job. But then because when you are unemployed and you're getting a little bit of unemployment insurance, but you also have to pay for this heart medication, there was a thousand dollars a month out of pocket because I didn't have any insurance coverage on top of food for your family and everything else. It's kind of hard to make your house payment, your car payment. And you know, we worked with our banks and let them know what was going on, but Again, during the Great Recession, there was a lot of people in that same situation, so the banks exercised their right to take the car back, so they repossessed the vehicle. So after that, finally found a place for us to move because my new job was four hours away from where we lived, so we relocated the family. And then I was going back to the house that we were living in to clear out anything else that we had forgotten when we moved, and then it was going to be listed for sale the following week. when we got there and there was a sticker on the door and it said foreclosure. So heart attack, job loss, car reposition, home foreclosure, all in a year. And all those things happened to me because I was burned out. I wasn't taking care of myself, making mistakes at work, not eating right, not exercising. My spirituality was nonexistent. And all those things happened to me in a year. After recovering from that, I decided, okay, I don't want to ever, ever do that again so I need to figure out what in the world led up to all of that. And I started doing research and I was approaching it with curiosity. didn't approach it with you're an idiot, you're stupid, why did you do this, you were such a fool. I didn't do that because I was beaten up enough. Everything that happened did a pretty good job of that. So I didn't need to contribute to it. So I thought let's look at this from kind of like a childlike curiosity. I'm like, okay, why was that important for you to work this many hours? What were you trying to accomplish? And just really dig into it, much like a therapist would if they were asking you a question. But I was not working with a therapist at that point. So it was more of a self-therapy type of thing. And thankfully I was able to come out of all of that and learn a lot about burnout. then went back and like said, I a new role. I was doing well with that. I was back in the same sector, the healthcare sector, ironically, because a sector that nearly killed me, I went back to it. A lot of people thought I was crazy to do that, but I was really successful. In the second go-around, I went about it a whole lot better and was successful, did a lot of great things during that time. But as I was back in the swing of things and recovered from everything and rebuilt my life, you know I was looking at my peers in the healthcare sector and this is 2014-2015. I was seeing a lot of my peers burning out okay this is not good I started to warn them going hey you do not want to do this believe me it's not pleasant so after that I said you know I'm gonna start writing about it so I launched a blog and then I started speaking at some healthcare events just kind of talk about and bring awareness to burnout again this is 2015. Burnout is the main topic of many healthcare talks now, but it wasn't back then. So, started doing all of that and then from there, uh a good buddy of mine said, you know what? Sounds like you've got a lot going on with this. Why don't you set up a business, do it on the side, see what comes of it? So I launched, corporated the business in 2016, started doing that on the side a little bit and then... left the healthcare industry in 2018 and went full into the burnout side of things with my company, the book, the podcast, the keynote speaking and all of that. it's kind of the journey that got me to this. Now, to answer your question on why I'm so passionate about it, many reasons. One, I don't want anybody to go through what I went through. That was not pleasant. And I see it all the time. I see people fatigued at work, wiped out, they're not enjoying life. And that is such a shame, frankly, because On average, the lifespan of people is between 75 to 85 years of age. So that means we get, we'll say 75 just to be safe. So we get 75 springs, 75 summers, 75 falls, and 75 winters. When you start looking at that, like we get 75 of them. All of a sudden you start realizing that's not a lot. I'm in my mid-50s now. So I got a whole lot less to go than I've lived, you know, on average. And that's just the reality of it. I'm not upset about it, but that's the reality of it. So for me, it's like, okay, do I want the last quarter or last third of my life to be a life of struggle, frustration, challenges? If I have any control over that, the answer of course is no, I don't want it. I want it to be... the best period of my life possible. So what do I need to do to do that? Well, if I'm burned out, well, I'm not gonna be living my best life. And that's why I bring awareness to organizations and individuals of what burnout is, what it looks like, what you can do to address it, both from a personal standpoint and also as an employer, what you can do to mitigate the opportunity of burnout running through your organization. So. I'm very fortunate that I, one, survived all that happened to me, but also very fortunate that I get to help organizations and individuals deal with burnout and hopefully prevent it from happening in their lives. Yeah, wow, interesting. I wonder what was your driver that drove you to that point? Because often people are chasing something, you know, there can be different reasons for that. But in your case, what was your motivation for just keeping on, keeping on, keeping on and working those many hours? Yeah, for me, was in a small community that I was working in and they were under service. They didn't have enough physicians or healthcare uh access, quite frankly. There wasn't a lot of services there. So even though I was an employee, I treated the organization as if it was my own. And we had a board of directors and they were involved, but they weren't as involved as I probably should have had them be. And I just took it upon myself, including my staff. I could have delegated more work to them. to kind of even things out, because it easily could have been done and I could have prevented a whole lot of problems for myself, but I didn't do that. I was too worried about what would happen to them, and I was not worried at all what was going to happen to me. And you have to take care of yourself first, period. I don't care if you're a mom, a caregiver, anybody, you have to take care of you first, because if you don't take care of yourself first, you're not going to be there to take care of somebody else that needs you. It's boundaries. And I know it's really, really hard to establish boundaries in a relationship or work situation when you're already in it. If it's a new relationship, here's the ground rule. So you can establish those right away. And of course, you've got to stick to them. But if you've been behaving a certain way and people have had access to you and able to use you, however they want to and all of a sudden you say no more I don't want to do that that can create some interesting dynamics but again you have to take care of yourself first not only as an employee or a family member or a leader of an organization just everything you have to take care of yourself first because if you don't everyone's priorities are their own and they will use you and quite frankly in many cases unfortunately will abuse you if you don't say no and have boundaries around when you're available and when you're not. I usually ask four questions in this and one of them is the following. I wonder what gives you life energy Michael? What gives you energy for the work you do now? And how do you keep your energy at high levels day by day? Yeah, for me, know, I've thankfully, you know, learned how to manage my energy and also know what my energy is on a given moment or given day. And I know just based on the rhythms of my body and how I feel and when I'm productive during the day and when maybe I'm not as productive and then design my days around that where I'll say, okay, I'm not going to do heavy analytical work in the afternoon. because I'm an early riser, I get up very early in the morning, and that's when I'm usually the most primed to be able to do that type of work. And being able to do that, and I know a lot of people are saying, well, I can't do that because I work for a company, but even some of the most stringent companies in the world, when you do things, have some flexibility around when you are working on particular projects. Of course, there's some, obviously, guidelines if you work. in an assembly line or manufacturing type of situation, say, well, I don't want to plug in the bolts in the wheel until the afternoon. No, you're doing that all day. So that's different. But in many cases, we have some flexibility around when we work on things throughout the day, as long as we get the work done. it's important for me to understand where my energy levels throughout the day. I document it. You know, I do a pretty good job of journaling it and there's apps and you can do all kinds of different things on it. And sometimes you just know. But if you're not feeling good in a particular morning or something where you're not feeling the best, you gotta look back, so how did I sleep? What did I eat yesterday? There's all these ingredients that we put into ourselves, both from a physical standpoint or even information that we consume can... can weigh on us. So we have to get a better understanding of how we actually live. And I've done that. It's an ongoing thing. It's not a set it and forget it. I wish it was, but it isn't. I know it's OK if I'm going to a big meeting. I know I need to be prepared and fresh. So I make sure that any foods that I consume the day before aren't going to make me feel lethargic. And again, you have to understand how you feel. So it takes effort if you don't do it or if I know I'm going to be going on a flight. Well, I don't eat anything the day before that could potentially cause me any type of gastro issues or anything like that. Again, these are all lessons that you learn over time. And a lot of people don't think about that. say, okay, I'm going to eat the burrito or I'm going to go eat this food or I'm going eat a real heavy dinner tonight. And uh you have to understand, okay, how do I be my best? Athletes do it all the time. How can I be my absolute best to perform at my best when I have to perform? And everybody can do that in their lives no matter what they do. And if you do that, you'll find it easier to do your job. You'll feel better. You won't be fatigued. And so to answer your question, that's how I kind of keep my energy levels where they are is I just, you know, I find out what my rhythms are and I do a daily check-in. Okay, how am I doing? and is there anything I need to help or what should I do? And thankfully I have the autonomy in this type of work that I do that I can shift some things around if I need to. I don't try to do it the same day because if you have an appointment, like for example, I wasn't going to move the time slot for this. Like, you know, I haven't had enough coffee this morning, David, so I'm going to bump our call to an hour later. No, that's not it. But I can look ahead like a week from now. and say, okay, what's next Wednesday look like? And again, this is, you're basically kind of setting the table for yourself to be successful. And it takes effort, and it's different for everybody. But once you know how you as an individual operate and where your energy levels are and your motivation and everything like that, you basically put those blocks in those times where you're gonna be successful. And then what happens is you find life tends to flow easier here for you. Yeah, yeah. I'm thinking, What would you say are the biggest traps, burnout traps for young professionals today? Yeah, the biggest traps is one, again, not having boundaries in their life, and that could be a whole complete conversation, but not having boundaries, uh not taking care of yourself as we've kind of talked about before, uh not focusing on getting the best sleep. People ask me, okay, sir, like a secret sauce or one magic pill or anything like that that can help me prevent burnout. While I say there's a lot of ingredients that can create a burned out state for yourself, if you can somehow manage to get really good quality sleep night after night, that is gonna help a lot because we do a lot of damage to ourselves on a daily basis, no matter what we eat, how much activity we have, the information we consume. You have to really have boundaries around what you have access to because... You spend 30 minutes watching a newscast, doesn't matter what news you're watching, it tends to be negative and that can weigh on us and stress us out and cause us to worry and wonder how we're going to pay our bills or who's going to win this election or is this war ever going to end or any, all these things that are going on in the world. I'm not telling you to ignore them, but you have to have boundaries around what you consume because if you're constantly consuming that negative information, that stresses you out and prolonged stress is what turns into burnout. So if you can get good quality sleep, your body repairs the damage that we do to ourselves. If you're not getting good sleep, then today's damage doesn't get repaired. And then what happens is it gets piled on to tomorrow. And if it's a situation where you're not getting good sleep over a period of time, that's when you're really gonna start getting fatigued. You might start dealing with... know, ailments, might get sick, you might pick up a cold that turns into a flu or something else. You may have headaches or your cognitive abilities are impacted and all these things are related to the quality sleep you got. So focus on the good sleep, you know, and that means get the most comfortable bed and pillow and mattress and sheets and everything that you can afford. Spend the money on those and get your room. I tell people this all the time, I ask them, have you ever gone to a resort or gone on a cruise or something like that? And I ask them, what's the bedroom like? What's the bed like? And they say, oh, it's amazing. I sleep so good in those beds. You can buy those beds for your home. And you should, because you get good quality sleep. It has such a huge positive impact on everything. So that's the biggest thing of all of them. If you can get your sleep, then your cognitive ability improves, your ability to navigate around or through stressful situations is better because you're more energized. If you're feeling down and dejected, you're not doing well, and all of a sudden your boss comes in with a critique or a last minute project, who knows? Could be anything. That's going to hit you. You're going to get stressed. You're going be upset. You're going to be mad. And what does that do? That just piles more stress on what you're already dealing with because you feel lousy already because you didn't sleep well. So all of these ingredients start to pile up and that's what happens over if you don't deal with the stress, that's what turns into burnout. I wonder is your experience around good habits in this context? Well, it's again, understanding what motivates you and how you operate from being able to just focus on when you sleep. also, and this is something that I cut out of my life when I was going through that uh first journey with burnout back in 07, 09. I stopped doing things in life I enjoy doing, which is going out with friends or. going to sporting events or concerts or out to dinner with friends. I cut that out because I was working too long and I was too tired to actually enjoy it. So I just stopped it. And a lot of people say, well, I work a lot of hours. I can't go out every night. Or it's hard for me to go out hardly at all. It's like, OK. But can you carve out 15 minutes or maybe a half an hour instead of going out at night with your colleagues or friends? Could you meet him for coffee or meet him for lunch or something like that? So you're doing something outside of work. It's a break from work. If you don't take a break, you will break. I don't care who you are. ah Even if you're one of these people that sleep three hours a day and get all these things done, that will catch up to you. Science tells us that. It's gonna catch up with you somehow, some way. Now, if you're able to... navigate it and everything works out, you're an anomaly. And I know a lot of people on social media will idolize those types of individuals that always seem like they're on the go, on the go, on the go. It's like, they're not always on the go. They are sleeping. They are doing other things. They are doing things that are leisure. What they're portraying on social media is not the full picture. And that's just the nature of it is. But have good habits. Do things in life you enjoy doing. Schedule them. all the time, as much as you can. Because what that does is it can reinvigorate you. go, okay, that was fun, I feel good. Then you get back at work and all of sudden those stressful things at work, and oftentimes aren't as stressful. Because you're looking at them differently, because you're relaxed and you're rested and you're like, okay, let's look at this again. Maybe this isn't as such a big deal as I thought it would be. And usually it isn't. And you get through it. And so. make sure you do things in life you enjoy doing. Take care of yourself. Obviously eat the right foods for you and get the right amount of activity that you can. um and those can help mitigate the prolonged stress and create a better life for you. I wonder why do think people have hard time to say no and set those boundaries and limits? Yeah, so saying no is, a lot of it comes down to people-pleasing. And a lot of us suffer from that. I'm a reformed people-pleaser. I identify as such. I always wanted to do great things for people. And I kind of inherited that away from my parents. And I'm sure their parents and my grandparents and great-grandparents and all of that were all kind of in that same thing. But... you I remember had a conversation a few years ago with my late mom and she was still giving giving but also and she was like struggling with something she didn't have something but she did but she gave it away and now she doesn't have anything I said that's not the point of helping people out is to give all of what you have that's not it. I know some you know some religions and say you know all kinds of stuff for my thing is don't don't harm yourself to hurt help somebody else because no one's winning in that. It's like you're just shifting who's suffering. See if you can give and you can help people and it doesn't take away from you and make you suffer, by all means do it. But I told my mom, I usually, I said mom you got to quit cutting off your feet to give somebody your shoes. You need those feet and you need your shoes. If you can afford to buy them a pair of shoes. and it's not gonna hurt you or harm you, please do it. You're gonna help that person out in that situation. But too often it was like they would just get to the point where they were like sacrificing so much to give. It's like you can't do that. And I know, that's hard for some people. Or work, I wanna give my best, I wanna be the best employee. Okay, well you know what that is? That's ego. That's you stroking your ego because you wanna get the... you the dopamine hit of someone telling you you're doing a good job and I know some people thrive on that some people they need that and I'm not saying it's wrong you need what you need don't do it because of ego do it because it's the right thing to do or you were hired to do a job these are your tasks do them to the best of the ability that you can and hopefully everything works out well but too often We're trying to prove ourselves and we end up shortchanging ourselves and then all of a sudden we're fatigued and we're running, we're disorganized and guess what? The quality of our work suffers. So all of sudden it's like, yeah, you used to be able to oh give us great products or the reports are great, now they're not. What's going on? And you're stressed because you're like, I'll work harder, I'll work longer hours, I'll get it done. Stats have shown that the level of productivity drops. dramatically after a certain number of hours at work. So everybody's like, I put in a 12 hour shift at the office. It's like, well, good for you. You know, you were actually productive, maybe three of those hours. So the other nine were complete waste of time and energy for everybody involved. And I think it's just a lot of it boils down or boils down to a lack of organization, no planning. Maybe there's silos at work. There's all kinds of different things that can contribute to it, but You kind of have to take a step back and go, all right, what do I need to do in order to accomplish what I need to accomplish with this project, this task, this goal, my job, whatever. What do I need? Set it up, get everything set up that works well for you to be as efficient and productive as you can be and get to it. But too often people bring in their emotions. A big problem we're seeing in the US and have been for a long time, and of course it's getting worse, is consumer debt. Seven out of ten Americans are under a large amount of debt. And they're looking at the cost of everything, whether it's housing or food or inflation or the tariffs that are being implemented at the time of this recording. All these things are really hard on people and they're going, how am I going to pay for everything? And they're stressing out about that. So what happens is they come to work and they might be the best employee ever, but they're coming to work and what are they thinking? How am I going to pay my bills? And all of a sudden they get disgruntled because they look at the company saying, this company doesn't pay me for what I'm worth. Well, depending on the role, there's a distinct possibility more often than not that you're making around what everybody else in the sector or that job makes maybe a little less maybe a little bit more extreme circumstances you might be well underpaid well then you need to address that but most cases you're paid what more or less the market value of that role is so blaming your company for the cost of things and you're not being able to pay your rent or your house payment or grocery bill or anything else Don't blame your employer. It's not on them. Do you blame yourself? You don't blame yourself, but you are the one that has put yourself in this particular situation with the job you work, the money you make, your bills and expenses. You all made choices that put you in this situation. You can choose to address it and hopefully make things better. You have to understand, but pointing the finger at somebody doesn't correct or fix anything. All that does is defer blame and not taking self accountability for your role in the situation, even with my burnout. I never blamed my employer or the banks that took the car or the home. I never blamed anybody. Who was responsible for it? Me. It was me. I made the choices that set me up for those things. And if you find yourself in a situation where things are difficult, yeah, there may have been other factors involved, but you are the common denominator in this equation. So you have to take some accountability and go, okay, what was my role in this? Again, don't beat yourself up. Just figure out, Okay what choices did I do that created this? Okay, what can I choose differently that can hopefully correct this or improve the situation? And again, sometimes that's really hard for people to do, but it takes time. And I always tell people, work with a therapist if you're struggling with something like this and they can help you kind of reframe things or get a little bit more clarity on some things so you can take the necessary steps to improve your life, which is what I want everybody to do. I want everybody to have a better life. I'm reminded of principle I've learned here. ask could I? Because should, or the thinking it creates is why, why did I do that, why didn't I do that, but could I? response to that How could I? It's uh more looking forward and creating opportunities instead of blaming yourself. So I think that's quite helpful. I agree. Let's take a short break here for 20-30 seconds I will some information here and we'll come back very soon. Hi there, just taking a quick pause. If something in this conversation is resonating with you. Maybe you are in a season of transition, or you starting to ask deeper questions about purpose and direction. I want you to know you are not alone. If you would like to explore what coaching could look like, we'll just take the next step toward clarity and impact. You're warmly invited to visit lifeleadshipconnected.com. And while you're there, grab your free copy of my brand new ebook, The Identity to Impact Start a Guide. It's full of practical reflections to help you reconnect with who you are and where you are going. of this is waiting for you at lifeleadshipconnected.com Now back to the episode. Welcome back to this podcast, the Life and Leadership Connected podcast. And today interview Michael Levitt. Michael Levitt. And I'll continue with the questions here. Michael, tell me what helped you climb out of burnout? Can you give some maybe some tips here how you did it and what did you learn about yourself in that process? Yeah, for me, right after the heart attack and I had two stents put in my left anterior descending artery, and for those that are familiar with cardiology, that artery has a nickname in the cardiology world. It's called the "widow maker" because usually when people have blockages in that artery and they have a cardiac event, uh statistics show that they don't survive. And somehow, someway I did. And I'm very thankful for that, obviously; and, so I had 17 weeks after the cardiac event to when I was going to be going back to work. I was off for, you know, almost, well, that would be, you know, four, eight, 12, almost a little over four months. I had to do the math there. I should be able to do math. My original career was accounting. I should be able to do math still. But so I was off for, a little over four months. And during that time, especially the first couple of weeks after being home, my body was getting used to the medications. I was you know, fatigued and tired. And actually there was a medication that I was originally prescribed that the cardiologist removed from me because at two o'clock every day, without fail, I had about a five minute warning to where I needed to go take a nap and pass out. And I had not taken naps in forever other than maybe some fall Saturday mornings watching college football on television. I might doze off, but I was not someone that would take a nap. and also my body's going it's time to go to sleep and I literally had five minutes uh... you know I said doc uh... I'm not good with this is there some other medication and they looked at the stock and we probably don't need that one so we'll take you off of that and that corrected the situation but during that time one of the things I did was uh... there was uh... a local church uh... and I had you know I'd attended there and I was kind of volunteering a little bit with their youth pastor and just hanging out with them. I didn't do a whole lot of work. was more like a, let's go get some coffee. Let's go grab lunch. And it was just, and we didn't talk necessarily about religion or anything like that. We just talked about life. And that was one of those, slow down because as you remember, when you're working those many hours, you're constantly going. And I went from constantly going to barely moving. And that was such an abrupt shock to my system. but unnecessary one for me and another thing that is prior to going to college I'll loved reading I used to read all the time and reading since I was a little boy and during college uh... the reading switched over to reading college textbooks and all that sudden we as much and then when I got into the work world I'd you really didn't read a whole lot at all so I had time so I was able to start reading again in started picking up some books and joined a book review club where they would send me a book and I'd read a review for them so I did that for a few weeks and actually did that for probably two or three years afterwards and then just continue to read I've reached a bunch to this day a lot of its audio books especially from commuting and all of that but I'm constantly consuming different different genres and leadership books and things like that for me that's what got me out that it kind of reset things and I always say this to people because when people hear my story they think okay you completely reinvented your life and I want to I want to I want to warn people but I want to reframe it in such a way that in my experience 99 % of people that are burned out or dealing with burnout do not need to completely reinvent their life so I don't want you to think okay congratulations you you you've lived your way this way now you're gonna live your way this way completely different be a different person. No, it's more getting back to the core of who you are. What is your ideal vision for your life? What does that look like? What does that taste like? What are you doing? Where do you live? What kind of work do you do? All these things, design it. Because that's what we get to do with our life. A lot of people for some reason think we can't do that. We can. Does that mean you have to make some adjustments and maybe some sacrifices or? Invest into learning new skills for you to be able to do this or relocate or move. Yes, of course. There's going to be if you if this is what your ideal life is, where are you now? And as Steve Jobs taught us from Apple many years ago, then you work backwards. It's like, OK, here's here's my ideal goal here. This is where I'm at. What do I need to do to get there? Well, you take the steps backward. You can do the steps forward, too. But you can look and see what are all the ingredients. Because usually the exercise that I, when I do that exercise with people, they're actually a lot closer than they think. They think, oh, that's way off in the distance. I say, what does that look like? What's your ideal day look like? What are the things you do? What do you have for breakfast? What do you do for fun? All that stuff. And they list it out. And I say, okay, well, let's list where you're at now. And they list it out and they go, wait a minute, I'm already doing a bunch of those things. Like, see, you're closer than you think. It's just, it's a mindset thing. The ultimately it was a mindset change for me to approach life work and everything else a little bit differently and again, really dig into why was it so important for me to work all those hours? What was I trying to prove and and change my perspective and go okay I could probably accomplish a lot more by taking care of myself and really being focused on when I am working and I did and I did and proud of my accomplishments working in healthcare. Maybe not those first couple years, but it was a tough lesson for me to learn, but an important one. And I don't want people to have to learn a lesson that way, but sometimes it takes a significant emotional event for us to change. And while I don't want that to happen to people, sometimes that's necessary. I'm thinking what lessons or knowledge did you have to unlearn, so to speak, about your life and how things function you had to unlearn? uh Yeah, for me, I had this false belief that if you do a really good job and you work all those hours, that the employer or the company will take care of you for life and put you on a pedestal and say you're the greatest employee in the history of employees and all of that. I'll give a real life example that's not related to me. Down the street from where I live, there was a company, a nonprofit. and they had a director that was their director for 26 years. He unfortunately passed away. I don't know the circumstances, but my hunch is he had some type of chronic disease that eventually took his life. So he died on Thursday. The job post was live Monday to replace him. um I don't think they had the ceremony yet. So that's a reminder that companies are there for a reason, to make products or services for customers, okay? Thinking your company is going to quote unquote care for you, for your human needs. Now, I'm not saying there aren't. I know I've had the fortune of working with some amazing leaders that truly and genuinely cared about my well-being, to a fault maybe. But. There are many others. We're here to do business. This is our task. This is the thing we do, period. So somebody that basically helped build that company and grow it and beloved all that stuff. New job hire Monday. ah That is the, if you think you're not replaceable, you are, and they'll replace you instantly. And so, but it's not, I see that not to be adversarial towards the employer. It's a relationship and I, and we've seen this over the last five years with a pandemic and working from home and all this stuff. The dynamics of work is changing where my hope, I'm biased on this, but my hope is that it, it's a little bit more of a level playing field where it's like, we're an organization. We want to do these great things for our customers. We need resources and All-star individuals to help us with this mission and have it be more of a partnership instead of the employer-employee relationship, which is very totalitarian, hierarchical, old design that has been, you know, part of humanity for centuries. It's changing because the younger generations look at that and go, I'm not doing that. I'll work three jobs delivering food or driving people around or doing social media for somebody and cobble together an income for themselves, then go into a workplace that is very top-down approach. And we're seeing that with organizations and why they're having trouble retaining people in the workplace culture. We see it all the time. Gardner every year releases studies and employee engagement is approaching, it's in the low 30%. So that means seven out 10 employees are not engaged at work. Are you guys making anything good if seven out of 10 aren't really there? Probably not. And you and I suffer because of that. Why? Because the products and services that you and I buy, uh seven out 10 of those employees that help make that weren't really in it and it may not be the best product it could be. And we suffer for that. And I think we're gonna continue to see that. until there is a shift on how things, and I'm not saying everyone's gonna be in the gig economy and nobody will work for companies, that's not it at all, but I think changing the dynamic of what work looks like and how people are used and utilizing their skills and gifts and ideas, when you start creating those types of ecosystems within organizations, that's when you start seeing better products, more innovative products and all of that. I think it's really interesting because different generations think different. And I know that many companies, they are trying to target the new ways according to use generation X and generation Z and so on. And it's like a revolution coming soon. And we've got Gen Alpha that's coming into the workforce pretty soon, if not already, you know, in the very early stages. And it will be interesting to see what that generation brings, because I think they're going to be different than the Millennials and maybe even different than generations Z or Z, depending on what part of the world you're in. It's an interesting dynamic. I'm Generation X. So we've worked with the Boomers. We've worked with... every generation in between and from my vantage point it's a very interesting dynamic. They hate when I say this but there's a lot more similarities and differences and uh... I know millennials in particular and baby boomers as well do not like the fact that they are similar to each other they they get really upset when I bring that up but then I give them evidence of from my perspective of observations not to say you're making fun of them, you're actually making fun of yourself right now. I'm not from that point of view. It's like, you have more in common than you think. Let's cut out this noise and get down to what's important to you and why. so people can basically seek to understand. If there's anything that anybody takes away from this conversation today, if anybody said, what's your one bit of advice? Seek to understand. Do your best in every aspect of your life. Seek to understand why your boss acts that way or why the situation in the world is what it is, how your relationships are, how you feel. Dig deep. Look for, instead of that level one approach, dig deeper. Seek to understand. When you do that, you'll get more perspective on things and it may change your perspective on things or it may reinforce what you believe. whatever the situation may be, when you do that, you become more educated and I think you become a bigger part of this society than maybe the role that you're playing right now. Now we come to the second question I ask in the podcast. about your leadership Michael, of yourself and others and what challenges or milestones shaped you into the person you are today? You already told us a little bit about it but can you develop that bit? Definitely, Yeah, you can definitely uh mimic leaders that you enjoy. And for me, thankfully, I've been able to work with some amazing people, some great leaders, some leaders that I wouldn't necessarily describe as great. But you can learn from everybody. And I think you should. I had some absolutely amazing, and I referred a moment ago to bosses that cared for me to a fault. And I appreciate that because it showed, OK, They understood a bigger picture. Yes, we're working. Yes, we do this because of things, but we're all humans and we want the human experience to be pleasant. And if there's a way that this employment can create that, it helps. And, you know, I think of a boss that I had 25 years ago and I refer to him quite a bit. He, he was an amazing boss and quite frankly, he wasn't much older than me. I think he may be four years older than me. So, you basically a peer in age group kind of thing, but, he was, you know, vice president level organization that I worked for. And this was during the dot com era and it was an IT related organization. And he did so much for me, creating opportunities to grow, to thrive. He was there for me, being very flexible around a work situation. Allowing me to work remotely. I was working remotely in 2002 for a bit uh that's pioneer days and that he allowed that because there was a dynamic with where we were living and things like that and some family issues and all of that and he was... Flexibly, he said don't tell anybody quarter century from now. I'm sure people figured it out, but uh but I forever thankful for him. gave me amazing references, especially for that healthcare role. He gave a glowing reference for me, and again, that was back in 2007 when I started there. So I referred to him a lot and borrowed from his leadership style quite a bit. He was like, here's the information, here's all we need to do, here's when it's due, what do need to know from me? You know where I'm at, here's my numbers, here all this. Keep me updated as things go on, but he wouldn't micromanage. He let us do the job. Why? Because he knew we could do it. He us up to be successful. Much like a coach, sporting coach or a manager, it's like if you're the manager for Liverpool or Arsenal or Man U or anybody like that, you're not out on the field. Your players are. But you know what? coaching them and guiding them and saying designing the plays and say okay go here cover there do that because you're seeing things that the player may not be seeing because they're so focused on doing what they're doing on the field or the pitch but you're seeing it from another vantage point you can kind of see how things are setting up being so okay go over there and you see it all the time and all of sudden that player scores and then you know they do the replay and it's like oh they did this and look at this move and all that's like yeah that was the manager and the coaches that saw that. Sometimes it's the player. mean, we have the, you know, the Messies and the Rinaldos and Pelays and, know, from a football standpoint, you know, that are on there and of other sports as well. There's those, those key people that somehow know where things are going to be before it happens. And then all of sudden they're like, how do they know that? They just know they, they have this intrinsic skill. So for me to get back to your question. Leadership is one of those things where, and I see the definitions change of leadership all the time, but for me, it's creating an environment for your people to thrive and excel at what they individually do. So as a collective, your organization does absolutely amazing things and has a fighting chance to survive. Because I saw this stat the other day. uh 52 % of the online businesses that were launched in 2020 are gone. So over half of them are gone. Another stat that I share, this goes back 25 years as well, 52%, ironic it's the same percentage, I'm curious about that. But 52 % of the Fortune 500 companies in the year 2000 are gone. Over half of them are gone. It's like, it's only quarter century. These are the 500 biggest companies on the planet, publicly traded, of course. I know there's private companies that are huge, but publicly traded companies, over half of them are gone in a quarter century. And you're like, how? What in the world? But you could go down the list, and if you know anything about them, you can say, OK, they did this because they weren't paying attention to this, or they were having trouble, their culture was bad, or the product they had is no longer of interest. We see it time and time again. It was a leadership thing. And it's also a thing where those leaders said, I'm not going to listen to my people because your people are going to see things before you do. And a lot of times leaders don't listen. And that is a huge, huge, huge mistake for leaders. Listen to your people. Somehow, someway get them to feel comfortable, share what they see. Why? Because you're all on the same ship and you don't want their ship to sink. So if you're heading for an iceberg and you're the captain and you don't see that iceberg but the alarms and staff and everybody's going "there's a huge iceberg right ahead" you're like "I don't see it", they see you know you know you're grabbing lifeboats and rafters and anything else you could float on because your ship just crashed into an iceberg and don't ignore the signs if the signs are there create an environment where people can share them. Could they be wrong? Of course, but if they're right, you avoid a huge situation and then you don't become one of those 52%. You've said Michael one of your greatest superpowers is the ability to remain calm under pressure. How do you do that? What strategy do you have? Now for me, again, that's something that wasn't intrinsic in my family heritage, especially on my dad's side. Didn't notice this so much on mom's, there could have been. But on my dad's side, and my grandfather, great grandfather and stuff, a lot of them had a pretty big temper uh and could get upset pretty quickly on things. And I have that in me. And I recognized, and again, this was something that I started noticing, thankfully, before my cardiac event, but I knew, especially when I was recovering from it, it's like, okay, I can't do this anymore. I have to look at things differently. I have to remain calm in a storm. Because if you're calm in a storm, that's when you have clarity, or as much clarity as you can have. And... For me, when things are upset, the emotions kick in, everyone's going, the world's gonna end and this is that or our business is gonna close and everyone's just panicking. Panicking's not gonna solve the problem. Calm, do your best to kind of take in as much information as you can so you can make the best educated decision you can to navigate around or through the situation, mitigate it. Minimize the damage. If it's a leaky sink and you can't get a hold of the plumber, turn off the water or the faucet to that sink so it doesn't cause any more damage. Kind of basically patch it until it can be addressed. If there's ill or if you're running a school, for example, an after school program, and all of a sudden your teachers aren't in. So there's no teachers. You're administration, you're not a teacher, students are coming in, no teacher. Okay, well what do you do? Well, if it's an after school program, you know, the parents are gonna picking them up like an hour later, so they might still be at work. So what do you do? you throw the kids out of the school, and say go walk up and down the sidewalk until your parents can pick you up? No. You mitigate it and say okay, first you let all the students know, okay, we don't have any coaches tonight, so we're gonna... do things a little bit differently and give them some options, some things that they can do on or work on. Of course, a lot of them will say, I want to play games. It's like, okay, we'll carve out 15 minutes to do that where we can all play games, but I want you to do something productive. And then of course we let the parents know when it transpired, issue them a credit, because we don't, you know, that organization I'm referring to doesn't charge them. It's like, if we don't have any coaches, you're not, your kids aren't getting coached. If not getting coached, you shouldn't pay for that. So. But that's like an example of understanding the situation. What are some protocols we can do? Sometimes there aren't any protocols. It could be something brand new. Okay, what happens if the power goes out? What about this? Standard operating procedures is something that a lot of organizations, especially startups, don't have. Or it's in the owner's head. There's nothing written out. Take the time to roll those things out. Sometimes it's as it happens. Ideally it'd be better if you did it before it happens, but there's gonna be situations you're not gonna be familiar with that happen. Well, you learn from it, you create a procedure around it, so if it happens again, you're better prepared. You have to remain calm in all of those things, because calm and clarity both start with the letter C. And if you're calm, you can be more clear in the decisions you can make based on the information you have. If you're frantic and going, You might pick the wrong decision or say something to hurt somebody. Who knows? There could be all kinds of things. So I learned that and developed that over time. And I found it has saved me every time. Anything's going on, I'm like, okay, let's see what's going on. Because what happens is when everyone's frantic around you in your calm, there's a gravitational pull for them to get closer to being calm themselves. It's like a calming force. And that's what I do. Like when I go into organizations that are stressed out and frantic and all that stuff, come in and I say, I feel better and we haven't even started yet. Like, well, just, let's just kind of calm down a little bit, you know? And let's, and I don't say calm down. That's a danger phrase if you say it, especially to your spouse. Never say calm down to your spouse. That's a pro tip. Don't do that. That, yeah. uh You will be viewed instead of seen. You can figure out the math on that one. uh But when you can do that, it helps. That doesn't mean necessarily that I'm internally feeling calm. I might not be. I might be anxious and going, but like, okay, deep breath. All right, what can we do? What's the information? Try to remove the emotion of things, which is easier said than done because we are emotional creatures, but try to remove the emotion. And then that way we can make the best educated decision based on the information we have. think take another short break here We'll be back very soon. Just moving in again for a moment. Sometimes the biggest breakthroughs start with a small intentional step. That's why I created the Identity to Impact Start Guide. It's a guided space to reflect, to reset and to move forward with clarity. lifeleadshipconnected.com there is a space for that too. Now back to the episode. Hello and welcome back to the Life and Leadership of Connected Podcast round three. Now I have another question here for you Michael. And this is the third question I ask everybody podcast. What gives you purpose and meaning in life? What is your why behind the work you do today? I think the ultimately the answer to that question is as a consumer of life and experiences and products and services, I want the best things in life. That doesn't mean I want a $10,000 designer bag or shoes or suits or things like that. That's not what I'm referring to. The things that I do buy and the services I get, I want the best. Why? Because I want a great experience. And in order to do that, the people that make these products or create these services need to be the best version of themselves. And if I can help people figure out the way for themselves, their definition of an ideal life to be their absolute best, not my definition for them, it has to come from them. I only know people. as much as I know them. don't know them, even my spouse or family members. I know them really well, but I don't know all their thoughts or concerns or worries if they don't tell me. But ideally, you want people to be their absolute best. And if they are, then what they do in life is better. Their relationships are better, their work is better, their communities are better. That's what I want for people. I am of the mindset that there is more than enough to go around and a lot of people think that there isn't, but there is. It's just a case of what do you want, where are at, what do you need to do to get what you want in life, figure out how to go do that and then go do that. Does this sound easy? Yeah, it's actually in many cases, it's easy to do. But unfortunately, quoting the late Jim Rone it's also easy not to do. Unfortunately, a lot of people choose Comfort Avenue and they live on Comfort Avenue and they don't challenge themselves. They don't grow. They stay stuck and they blame everybody and everything for where they are in life when those people had nothing to do with where they are in life. They did. And I know sometimes that's a tough thing to hear, but ultimately you are the designer of your life. Design it the way you want it to be, out what that looks like, figure out how to get there. There's no shortage of access to information. YouTube University friends, you can learn anything and everything you'd ever want to learn there. To figure out how to learn new skills or do different things or whatever. Invest in yourself and when you do that you're going to have a much better life. Life will taste better. Days will fly by faster. To the point where you want it to slow down, you're like, want more time. But time goes really fast, so design the life that you want to live. Let's return to more specific to the theme burnout and I wonder how can someone identify burnout before it hits full force? Yeah, for them, it's, you we've alluded to it a bit, but I'll give you the three or four signs that I see a lot in people. Number one, you know, how's your sleep? Are you sleeping well or is your sleep bad? You know, that's one. The second one is, you know, how are you physically feeling? You know, are you fatigued or you drained, tired, not, you know, just not feeling well? How's your relationships? know, how, you know, how are things at home or with friends or family? You know, how's the engagement? Are you enjoying the time together or does it seem to be more of a chore? How's your work performance? Are you making mistakes at work? Are you forgetting things more often? Those are all signs that you're under some prolonged fatigue and maybe prolonged stress, which of course can turn into burnout. So those are the four big ones that I tend to see. uh The other one I mentioned too is if you stop doing things in life you enjoy doing. If you just cut those things out because you quote unquote don't have time, that's a big, big warning. Even if you can't go to the baseball game every weekend, maybe you can go one day or every couple of weeks or, you know, but even if you're working a lot of hours, and again, I mentioned before, I used to be an accountant and I worked for an accounting firm during tax season, you work a lot of hours and but I still did things outside of work. Even though I was working a ton of hours, was still, I was intentional about doing things that I enjoyed doing outside of work. Wasn't as much as I normally get to do, but I, I still did it. Why? Cause I, I wanted that pleasure. I wanted to be able to do things I like doing and you can still do that. uh And it's important for you to continue doing that. Even if you think you're tired, it's amazing how your body can reenergize once you get to the place, whether it's going to a sporting event or going out to dinner with friends. Once you're there, even if you're kind of tired, you'll find that second wind and you'll laugh or you'll have some time and you'll feel a little bit better. And that just feeling a little bit better has such a huge ripple effect on everything else that goes on in your life. I wonder Michael, what are your top daily or weekly habits for staying balanced and clear headed? Yeah, for me is one, just making sure that my calendar is harmonized as best as possible with the work that I do and the time I need for relaxation, leisure, self-care and all of that. And a good friend of mine, Virginia, taught me this several years ago and she had me color code my calendar. Now, if you're color blind, that's... That's a cruel joke, I apologize for that, but use a symbol instead, like a star or a character, some, maybe a letter that you use, whatever. What you do is you code your calendar, so basically your meetings are a particular color or code, your productivity time, work time, whatever is there, your self-care, your me time, your leisure time is also a symbol or color. But I highly recommend that that self-care, leisure time, fun time, play time, use your favorite color or symbol. And the reason I tell you that is that way you can look at your calendar, whether it's a paper calendar you write out or a digital calendar on your screen. You can squint the calendar. You can't read the text, but you can see the colors. And our brains are naturally wired because it's our favorite color. We're going to see that. So if you look at a calendar and do it for a week, squint. If you don't see an ample amount of your favorite color, that means, that week is, or this week maybe, for example, is a little heavy on the work stuff and not enough on the self-care time. If you've got some ability to shift some things around, do it. Harmonize a little bit more. If not, and again, this is life, there are gonna be weeks or days that are gonna be jam-packed. And you understand that. But you go, okay, what can I do to offset that? Maybe tomorrow, let's see if I can move that appointment to next week. It's not gonna be a big deal. Then that way you've got a slot open, block it off with your favorite color and just say, you can just say block and use your favorite color or simple. That way it gives you some downtime. Now, if you're a go-getter, like many of us are, what happens is you're gonna be sitting there going, I need to do something. This is driving me nuts, I gotta do something. Write down your thoughts. Take a sheet of paper, write them down. Don't type them, literally write them down. What do you wanna do? What that is, in many cases, is clarity is coming in and all of sudden your brain's feeding you all of these ideas and things you wanna work on. Write them down. Because what that does is it tells your brain, hey, I acknowledge you, especially if it's anxious thoughts. I acknowledge you, I hear you, I am writing these things down. I'm going to get to these. It helps calm you down because you're like, because otherwise your brain just starts racing and you're stressed and you didn't relax. You wound yourself up and you're, then all of sudden when you do start backing to doing work or whatever, you're wiped out in fatigue because you've been stressed out about working. So write it down. So for me, the biggest life hack for me keeping harmonized throughout my life is, really leveraging my calendar, scheduling everything. I know some people are like, oh, that'd be the worst thing ever. Okay. But I know I understand that. going back to my original career, we charge clients billable hours. So we had to track every 15 minutes of what we did at our workday. Some of us don't have to do that now, but we had to. So that's something that was taught when I was 17 years old. So that was a long time ago. So that's alarming how long ago that was, but I've done that and it's a natural thing for me. I don't think about it. I don't go, I hate doing this. It helps me look at things. like, when we're done with this call, I've got another interview. But I know what my afternoon looks like, and because I looked at my calendar earlier today and I saw, okay, is there anything in there? Because today's an abnormally heavier day for me than I usually do it. So present moments. Today's a little bit busier. So tomorrow, I automatically didn't have anything blocked in the morning. I said, OK, let's block that off. That does not mean I'm not going to work. It doesn't mean I'm not going to work on something I do. I'm going to let my creative juices tell me what I want to do. And I may feel inspired. I need to write an article about something. And I'll do it. Guess what? But I'll do it from a place of I've got time. I'm not robbing from anything. I enjoy doing this. It's a self-care kind of thing for me to write, so it ties in. again, get better understanding of how you spend your time, and that can help you shift some things around so that way when you're doing something, you're fully present to do it, and it makes it easier when you do things like that. What is your best way of getting balance in life? know, balance life and leadership. How do you stay healthy mentally, emotionally and spiritually? Health-wise, I went before our call, I went for a morning walk. I try to do that every morning, at least for 30 minutes, and then I'm active throughout the day. My watch tells me how much activity I got in the day, so it's my accountability partner, and tells me, hey, you gotta move a little bit more today. Okay, well let me go do something about that. uh So that's for there. From relationships, when one of my wife, gets home from work, make sure that I do my best to be present with her. If I'm home before her, get dinner prepped and ready to go so when she gets in, she can sit down and eat dinner, talk about her days and do whatever or plan for whatever we want to do this coming weekend or in the next couple of weeks. I'll occasionally watch a sporting event. I'll have time blocks when I do certain things. Obviously meditation is something that I do and getting really in tune with that. And I do that during my walks too. You don't have to close your eyes when you meditate. If you're walking, especially outside, I do not recommend that you close your eyes or inside for that matter. You're gonna bump into things. But you can meditate with your eyes open, but just to kind of take in things and be more present. And when you do that, you know, again, it calms life down a little bit and in the grand scheme of things, know, thing I see all the time is like, okay, well this particular situation you're dealing with right now, will this be a big deal in five years? And if the answer is no, then don't make it a big deal now. I mean, it's an issue you need to deal with, but don't make it this biggest thing that's ever happened in your life kind of situation. Because if it won't matter in five years, don't make it matter now. Michael, where can people find your podcast and your writing and your book and so on? Where can they get told of you if they want to learn more from you? is a great place to start. The Breakfast Leadership show is available on all the platforms and some that I've never heard of, shows like I didn't know it was on there too, that's cool. But yeah, there's interview, great thought leaders from all over the world. I've been very fortunate to get to meet amazing people like yourself and everyone else and talk about all kinds of different things that help people maybe get a little bit better in their own life. And if they can do that. we all benefit. yeah, but breakfastleadership.com will link you to all the places you can find me. Do you have any final encouragement or something that you would like share with the who listens to watchers before we end the podcast? Just figure out what your ideal life looks like. It may not be what it is right now, and that's okay. But just kind of map it out. It's like, what would my ideal day, week, month, year look like? What does that look like? What are the ingredients? And don't think about, I don't have that now, or I can't get, no, no, what, this is you writing down basically the goals or the dreams that you want for what your life, you want it to be. And you should want your life to be the best it can be. Figure it out. Figure out where you're at right now and then connect the dots and figure out how to get to there. That's what life's all about is about growth. It's a journey. It's a path. It's more about the journey than the destination. And it took me a long time to figure that out. But uh once I clued in on that, it helps keep you present and enjoy the moments as they come and whether they're good, bad or indifferent. Be fully present as much as you can and you'll like life a lot better when you do that. So just take care of yourself and design the life you want to live. Thank you so much Michael. This has a long podcast but you have done a great job and I thank you for this golden nuggets you've shared with us and with the audience and I hope you've enjoyed this too. I have, thank you so much. Okay, listeners and viewers, thank you for joining us today, for that you've been here today and might be a listener, a watcher YouTube or elsewhere welcome back when we release our next podcast. until then, bye bye.