Michael Levitt’s Guide to Achieving Work-Life Balance and Avoiding Burnout

Welcome back to Grow Your Impact, Income and Influence. If you are an entrepreneur or a high-powered executive that wishes you could run away to the beach because you are burned out, today's show is for you. I am joined by Michael Levitt, who has 25 years in leadership experience. He is a two-time global thought leader on HR and community culture, and he is here to share with us, all the way from Canada, how you can avoid burnout and maintain your best.

All right, Michael, how are you doing today? I am great. Really looking forward to this conversation today, Steve. Awesome. Well, take us back to the beginning. I mean, this all starts somewhere. Did you burn out and go on a tequila bender and run down the street? In Canada, you probably drank too much beer. The burnout actually took place in Canada. It did not involve tequila. My tequila drinking days are long, long behind me.

But it was back, ironically, I was working in healthcare, which is an industry, unfortunately, that definitely has experience with burnout. We're seeing a lot of it, especially during the pandemic. But in my situation, let's go back to 2007, where I was hired as a healthcare executive for a startup healthcare clinic, south side of Windsor, Ontario, across the border from Detroit, Michigan. That is an important element of the story, which we'll get to momentarily.

But what was so funny about the role was I had zero healthcare experience, and here I was hired to be a healthcare executive. Now, when people apply for jobs that they have no skill in, usually they don't get hired. In my situation, I did, and it had a lot to do with my startup experience because I'd worked in startups earlier in my career.

So I had a lot of experience with that, which was definitely transferable skills for me to utilize and learning how to navigate a health care system and understanding what an autoclave was and how to hire doctors and staff. And it was quite a learning curve for me. So there was a lot of long hours. And we see a lot of people that are burning out dealing with long hours. And I was pretty much putting in 12 to 16 hour days, seven days a week.

And I did that for a couple of years, which that's not good for your mind. It's definitely not good for your body. And it took a really difficult toll on me.

And in May of 2009, it kicked off what I like to refer to as my year of worst case scenarios. And thinking back on those, that's been 15 years ago now. I think about all of those things that transpired. And I was the common denominator in all of them. You don't blame and never have blamed anybody or anything for what happened to me and why I burned out. It was my fault. I took full responsibility and held myself accountable for all of those things. But over a period of a year...

And this is one of those things where people, you might want to grab some tissues, because it's kind of a sad story from what people tell me. Having experienced it myself, yeah, definitely sad, but I don't remember crying throughout it, which was kind of ironic. But over a period of a year, and we can unpack all of these things, from May 2009 to May 2010, I had a heart attack that should have killed me at age 40. And then 17 weeks later, I was let go from that healthcare role.

Remember, this was across the border from Detroit, Michigan, 2009. Anybody remember the Great Recession? In Detroit, that was a really bad time, and there wasn't many jobs to be found. So here I am, 17 weeks off of nearly dying, and now I don't have a job. And it took a long time for me to find a role, which ended up requiring me to relocate to Toronto, which was not where I wanted to work or live.

Growing up in Detroit, originally, a fact of having to deal with Toronto Maple Leafs fans was not something on the top of my to-do list, but here I am. But what happened after that was even more challenging. Because when you're on unemployment and you're looking for work and you're on heart medication and it costs $1,000 a month out of pocket and you don't have any insurance coverage, you have to make some choices.

And I made the choices of being able to eat, take the medications to get me healthy and keep me alive, feed my family, of course, which of course, when you do that, that's when the mortgage payment and the car payments and the other payments start falling behind. Now, during this time, during the Great Recession, there was a lot of people that were going through those challenges as well. So I wasn't the only person doing or dealing with that.

And thankfully, my creditors were really, really gracious as much as they could be because we kept them up to date as to what was transpiring. But at the end of the day, they did decide to exercise their right to reclaim their assets. So after I found a new role in Toronto, I was up here for a few weeks and commuting back to the Windsor area on the weekends. I got a call from my 10-year-old daughter, and she was crying, and I couldn't understand a thing she said.

And finally, I was able to get from her that the bank had come and repossessed our family vehicle. So you don't make a car payment. They're going to take it back. That's usually how it works. They tend to come back. Yeah, it does. It does, and I don't blame them. We had an agreement. You give me money, I buy this car. I pay you money back. I don't pay money back, they're going to take the car. There's no sense in getting angry about that because I didn't live up to the agreement.

So after dealing with that, I finally found a place for us to rent in Toronto. So I moved the family up. And after we unpacked everything, we recognized that we'd left the bunk bed ladder for our daughter's bed back at our place that we were getting ready to sell. And so I was going back there the following weekend to close up some business accounts. And I said, I'll just swing by the house and grab anything else that we may have forgotten. So I went back to the house.

And I opened up the front door, the screen door. and I saw the largest padlock I've ever seen in my life. Never seen this padlock again anywhere, not at Home Depot or any other place. And there was a sticker on the door that said foreclosure. So let's summarize this for everybody. Any year I had a heart attack that should have killed me. I lost my job during the Great Recession. My car was repossessed. My home was foreclosed. All in a year.

And it was the best thing that ever could have happened to me. So I'd love to hear your thoughts and happy to unpack any of this that you'd like to chat about. Well, I mean, let's just start like you work for a healthcare company, you leave that job and you don't have any healthcare. You've got the heart attack. You're taking your healthcare medication, but there's no money for bills. What? I mean, that sounds like beyond burnout to me.

That sounds more along the lines of like life meltdown and stress than burnout because you weren't working. Like, were you working? Tell me what happened? What'd you end up doing to get out of this? Let's talk about that. Maybe that's where you learned the anti-burnout. Yeah, for me, it was the burnout that led up to the heart attack. And I was still working when I had my heart attack. It was actually at work when it was transpiring.

And thankfully, we had the co-op med and heart equipment to run a quick test and determine that there was definitely something wrong. And then I was in the hospital for a week to recover from having the cardiac event. But it was the burnout that led to all those things. Now, during that 17-week period between having the heart attack and losing my job, I was on medical leave. So I had a lot of time to just reflect and go, what in the world just happened to me?

And it was great because for the first time, and I can't tell you when, I was forced to slow down and just stop. And that's something I had not done in forever. And it made me realize how many ends of the candle I was burning. I mean, if I could find a wick, I was lighting it. So it wasn't both ends. It was everywhere and it was not sustainable, obviously. So for me, it was important to kind of reflect back.

And I don't know where I got this from, but I'm really thankful that I did is when I was reviewing and going back and trying to figure out, okay, what in the world happened that got me to this point. I approached it, with childlike curiosity. That's always a good way to start. It is. And for me, that was not my normal way of thinking or doing things.

It was always the, you know, get in there, you know, move everything out of the way, just get to the core problem and don't care about anything or any one type of situation. And for me, it was like, okay, let's look at this. I'm not going to blame myself because that's not going to change a thing. I'm not going to be upset. Okay. If you get emotional, that's fine. But for me, it was, Why was this important? Why was I working all those hours? What was I trying to prove?

What was I trying to accomplish? Was it an ego thing? And a lot of it was because it was a smaller community and I wanted to be recognized as a new and upcoming pillar in the community because I thought that would be really noble to be a big part of a community and grow it and provide access to healthcare in a community that had not had a lot of that over its history. So it was one of those things was I can give back to the community type of thing.

But there was a lot of ego behind that. And I neglected taking care of myself, not only from a physical standpoint, but from nutrition, rest, you name it. I was the perfect candidate to have a heart attack when I did. So I want to talk about the heart attack for a second. How did that happen? Well, I had two, basically. I had a real minor one and then the major one, which was the night before I went into the hospital. I thought it was gas.

Basically, earlier in that week, in May of 2019, I was mowing the lawn, and I had an electric lawnmower because gas was expensive, like it is now, and we had a small lawn. But I had this electric lawnmower that was key and hard to turn, really heavy. So I mowed down a path and then I have basically have to lift it and turn it. And I did that and I felt like I pulled a muscle in my chest and it really hurt.

And it was so bad that I couldn't finish mowing the lawn. So got the lawnmower in the backyard. I'm like, you know, I'll deal with it later in the week. So for the rest of the week, I was fine. Other than if I lifted anything heavy with my right arm, then I felt that pain. It was dull. It wasn't like, oh, this is the worst thing ever, but it hurt. So I thought, okay, I just blamed it on pulling the muscle. The Thursday night of that week, I went out to dinner.

There was a local restaurant that had an all-you-can-eat special, and I took them up on that offer. Ate way too much fried, greasy, really tasty, really bad-for-you food. And then washed it down with a few adult beverages and got home, went to bed, woke back up around 11 o'clock. With that pain that I had earlier in the week, but it was that infamous, feels like an elephant stepping on your chest kind of pain. That's when I was having the big heart attack, basically.

So I was able to take, I took some Tums, because again, I thought it was acid reflux or whatever else. Took some stumps, went to sleep. Thankfully, I woke up. Next morning, going to work, that pain that I had, that dull pain, was persistent no matter what I did. Even if I was just standing here, I felt it. So I asked one of our physicians, check something out. So he did.

And that's when they hooked me up on the equipment and all that kind of good stuff and determined, yeah, this is not good because the EKG was really sporadic and they're like, there's something wrong here.

So I got in the hospital and that's when they determined that I had a pretty significant heart attack and I had two blockages in the left anterior descending artery, which has a nickname, it's called the widow maker, because usually when people have heart attacks and there's blockages in that artery, they are viewed instead of seen. But very fortunate that that did not happen. I'm glad that that didn't happen either. Everything happens for a reason.

So let's go go back to you have the heart attack you're now the house is foreclosed on what happens next it was one of those things when after the after i saw the lock on the door and realized okay i knew it was happening i knew what had happened i reflected on what the last year was like and i felt this amazing sense of peace which is usually not the reaction people have when they see a foreclosure sign on their door but for me i saw it and it was like

the most serene calm moment i've ever experienced in my life it was weird i heard the birds chirping i could hear and feel the breeze it was a nice day in may and i i just basically had this yeah i have survived all of this let's move forward this is a chapter that is now officially closed let's move forward and i did Up until that point, I was still in this trying to figure out why all of it happened.

What did I do? How can I go about changing things? And that's when I did. I realized, okay, I need to make some significant adjustments in how I live. And more of a warning for everybody, the majority of people that burned out or are burning out, you don't need to reinvent your life. In my situation, I had to just because I was extremely doing things wrong every aspect of my life. Most people, a couple adjustments here and there. It'll make a big, big difference.

So let's talk about the things that you were doing wrong that led to this. You said you have all of them. Let's see if we can unpack a couple of them. I wasn't eating right. My breakfast, lunch, and dinner consisted of ordering food through a microphone, driving around a corner, giving them money, and then handing me a brown bag. You can kind of figure out what kind of food that is. And that was my diet. I was eating fast food.

That was it. I really wasn't eating anything nutritious because the long hours that I was working. I was in home a lot, so I had to eat. Or if I did eat something, I basically inhaled it and went right back to work. So the combination of that with- You did this while working at healthcare. Do as they say, not as I do is a phrase I like to say. And that was, yeah. And I asked people around me who knew me then and part of my life and those that still are.

Yes. And I said, why didn't you warn me that I was burned out? And they told me we did. You wouldn't listen because I was so hell bent focused on doing the work that I was neglecting me. Completely. And there was no exercise to be found because when you're an executive, you get the good parking spot. So there was hardly any steps involved. So I hardly, and our clinic was small in size, so not a lot of movement.

I was sitting down a lot. So checking all the boxes of what you're not supposed to do, I was doing, and definitely wasn't a good role model for our patients, you know, how to live a healthy, active lifestyle. Cause I certainly I certainly wasn't doing that, at least working for that organization. So did you change that? So what I've heard so far is lifestyle being sedentary and diet. Let's talk about that. And what did you change? And what was your next job? Let's move into that stuff.

The next job was in health care. My parents wanted to have me committed. They're like, are you nuts? You're going back into health care in a field that nearly killed you. And I said, you know what? I'm going to prove everyone, including myself, that I can do this without killing myself. And I did. I worked better hours. I had boundaries around when I worked. I ate the right foods. I made sure I took breaks. I didn't work at night or weekends.

I ate better foods for me. I got more active, lost a ton of weight. And how much did you lose? Damn near a hundred pounds. Okay. It's a pretty good amount. It is. It is. And, you know, my cardiologist says, I like dealing with you because you actually apply what we told you to do this for those that have cardiac events.

Usually this is across the board with a lot of chronic diseases, but for heart patients Patients in particular, nine out of 10 patients do not follow their physician's guidelines or suggestions on how to better their lives. And I see that when I go in for my checkups and I go in every few years. I don't need to go every year, thankfully, but every year I go in there and I can look and I can, you can see people that are taking the right steps to

get better and those that aren't. And my doctor says, I'm pleased with what you're doing. So that's always good to know because I have work to do. I want to live long. So, yeah, it's just selfish. I know, but I want to live long. So there's going to be some things they need to do.

So it was a reinvention for me. And, you know, the health care side of things, I was having the time of my life and I worked in it from that would have been from 2010 until I left health care industry in 2018.

So eight years and I launched my business in 2016 on the side because I saw healthcare and every other industry struggling with burnout and I thought okay I don't want anybody going through what I had to go through so what can I do to help and that's basically kind of how I launched my business and started doing the work that I did. So, okay, let's jump into some of the tactics of how to avoid burnout or what to do if you're in the middle of burnout.

If you're working with somebody or somebody comes to you, what are the top one or two things that you do? I ask them how their sleep is. What are they doing? What's their sleep hygiene, if you want to use that phrase? What's their sleep like? Are they sleeping well? Have they historically had good sleep, bad sleep, indifferent?

What are they doing? wink because sleep is one of those magic bullet type of things where we repair the damage that we do to ourselves on a daily basis when we get a good night's sleep. So I always tell people, instead of buying that brand new big screen television before the Super Bowl, why don't you go buy a brand new mattress? Buy some really good pillows, some amazingly comfortable sheets and bedding.

And if you go on a cruise or a resort or something like that, everybody talks about, thought, oh, the bed was amazing. Did you know you could actually own a mattress and bedding like that for your home? Yes, you can. And a lot of people don't think that. They're like, oh yeah, I'll go do this. But then they'll go to a discount store and buy their $2 pillow or cheap sheets or whatever. And I'm like, why? No, no, no, no. Where are you spending the majority of your time in one spot?

It's typically your bed. So make that a palace. And when you do that, Giving your body at least a fighting chance, it's going to be comfortable. You'll rest better. If you sleep, that works good. The second thing I ask them is just, okay, what's your calendar look like? What are you scheduling? How's your days look? Is there any rhythms or patterns, or is it just complete chaos? And just get an understanding of how they are living their lives.

And look for opportunities where they can find little ways to improve on the areas that would benefit to them. I'm a morning person, okay? But I'm definitely not going to tell somebody who's an evening person to become a morning person. That's... Telling my dog to do something, he's just going to ignore me. But people are wired the way they are wired.

So you just work with who you are and you maximize it. And just helping people, and I see this all the time, a lot of people just truly don't understand who they are, which is kind of ironic in a way, because who do you spend the most time with in your life? Yourself. But so many people are overwhelmed with all the external things going on in their lives, work, relationships, maybe they're a caregiver now, financial challenges, elections, wars, all the fun stuff we're hearing about all the time.

That takes a toll on us. And when we're constantly thinking about that, well, we're not focusing so much on taking care of ourselves. And that's when we start running into problems. And that's when you start getting overwhelmed. And that's when prolonged stress turns into burnout. Because without prolonged stress, you don't burn out. You got to have the prolonged stress in order for each burnout state. Got it. So if I, if I'm summarizing what you're saying, you have to, it's being preemptive.

It's getting there before you have so much prolonged stress that you actually enter burnout. Yeah, it's important. I want to touch on sleep. So I'm a bit of a sleep nerd. Sleep aid, bed, what's the other one? The chili pad. Do you recommend any of those? Do you recommend an aura ring? What do you use to track people's sleep? For me, it's whatever tool they can use that will be least intrusive for them to kind of get an idea of how they sleep.

Some people feel comfortable wearing a watch when they sleep. Mine's charging, so I'm not wearing a watch at night. I could charge during the day and then see how things are, but I have a good idea of how I'm sleeping. Yeah, the Oura Ring would be a good option. If you're having difficulty sleeping, and I think of my late mother, she struggled to to sleep her entire life.

And a lot of that was post-trauma because growing up during the World War II era and all of that and having a big family and both parents working, she was anchored with kind of taking care of everybody. And she wasn't the oldest, just kind of fell on her lap. So that impacted her ability to sleep and just carried forward. But for most of us, at one point or another, we've slept well.

So it's just setting up your sleep system, if you want to call it that, to maximize the best opportunity for your sleep is important. That includes keeping the smartphone out of your bedroom, television, all that stuff. I use a sleep mask. I never did before, but when I was working on trying to figure out how to get better sleep than I was getting, I started using one. I found a handful of brands that work really good, and I just put them on, and it helps.

Great Great for naps, too, during the day, too, because they block out the light and all of that. So you can take a little siesta during the day if that's allowed. If you're working at an office, maybe not so much. Most companies frown upon that. Unless you're in a European country, then they encourage it. But for most of us, it's difficult to do that. But just figuring out what works for you.

Because as much as I would say, get your eight hours sleep, do this, do this, it doesn't work for everybody. And you have to figure out what works for you. and document it, just like. Food journaling, you know, that's something that I do because I have a ton of food intolerances and I had a food intolerance test done a few years ago. And ironically, my company name is Breakfast Leadership, but I have an intolerance to eggs.

So my damn logo is an egg and I'm allergic to it. So it's like, you can't eat the egg. I can't eat the egg. So I just have it displayed permanently. Can, but it causes some inflammation. The only true allergy, food allergy that I have is potatoes, and I'm Irish descent, which I just find as ironic as you can possibly get. I was going to say, that's pretty funny. It is. I've done lineage and stuff, and there's Irish background on pretty much every spoke and branch of my family, both sides.

So it's like, wow, this is really weird that I'm allergic to potatoes. But that's what happens. So rice for me, thanks. But at the end of the day, just figuring out what works for you when it comes to sleep, because, again, when you get good sleep, repair the damage that you've been dealing with today doesn't eliminate stress, but it basically gives you that additional layer of armor to be able to navigate through stressful situations better.

Your cognitive abilities are better, able to navigate around or through stressful situations a little bit better because you're rested. it. We all know if we have a bad night's sleep, how we are the next day. We're like, well, and it's just, if you feel decent, when you wake up, no matter how stressful your day is, you're going to be able to deal with it easier because you've got the cognitive ability and the rest to be able to navigate and see ways to navigate through challenging situations.

Absolutely. Okay. I want to talk about, I mean, I think, I think people have heard like get good sleep.

I think people have heard like help your diet, do stress. What are some things that you hear people talk about when it comes to overcoming burnout that you don't agree with? I think it's bad advice and people should run away from. I think a lot of it is, you know, when they tell you, okay, you got to don't eat these foods, don't do this, you know, they start don'ting you. And I'm not going to tell people not to go eat at the Golden Arches.

I'm not going to tell people to stay up late to watch their favorite shows. I'm not, I'm not going to do that. But one of the things that I see happen time and time again, and it was the case with me as well, is when you're overwhelmed and you're stressed and you're burned out, you start cutting out the fun things in life. And don't do that.

You have to do those fun things. I don't care how many hours you're working, even if you're only doing it for a little bit, whether it's watching your favorite show or going out with friends or visiting your favorite coffee shop or whatever you like doing for fun. You got to do that and you have to schedule it because what gets scheduled gets done. You schedule meetings all the time. You can look at your calendar and you can see the 5,000 Zoom or Teams meetings on there.

Schedule something you like doing. As silly as it is, like, okay, I'm going to schedule the new Batman show that's on Amazon Prime. Okay. So guess what? You have an appointment on your calendar to go do that. Yes, it's something personal, something fun for you if you like that show or like Batman or it could be a Netflix series or it could be reading a book or writing or painting or playing music, whatever. Whatever you like doing, do it. Because when I was burned out, I cut all that stuff out.

I was like I was too busy working. And that just added fuel to the fire. And that's the thing I see a lot is people say, well, you got to do this and this and this and get eight hours sleep and eat these right foods. Figure out what works for you, because I know people that can eat fast food and their blood work comes back better than anything that I've ever done.

So it's very you can't just blanket and say, do this for me, like going back to the sleep thing for a second, figure out what works for you. It's a trial and error thing. You know, it's just figure out what works for you. And you go, OK, that that's good. That worked out well. Well, see if you can replicate it. And once you start doing that, then you get a better understanding of how you operate as a human in your body and what it needs. And you figure out, okay, yeah, this is going to be good.

If you know you're going out on Friday night and you got a Saturday morning presentation, probably should consider that twofer special at the nightclub. But you do you, boo. Whatever works for you, that's fine. You know, we've all had to go in the next day and go, okay, I'm not quite with it, but let's figure this out.

You know but at the end of the day just figure out who you are and and that's kind of a real broad statement but figure out what kind of foods bother you then adjust accordingly if you find that you get better sleep then do this if you like this versus that do this it just it just maximize how do i spoil myself this is one way to do it it's like i want to spoil myself and you should. Why not? And you only live once depending on who you talk to.

But ultimately, the more you do that, the better you're going to be.

And you'll be the best version of you. And then the best version of you, you won't have to worry about burning out. Nice. I like it. All right, Michael, if people want to learn more about you more, learn more about breakfast leadership, where can they go? What action can they take? Best thing to do is just go to breakfastleadership.com. You'll see there's the little hamburger thing in the upper left-hand corner. If it's on your phone, you'll see it in the lower right.

Menu of all kinds of different things, my podcast, articles, YouTube channel. If you go to breakfastleadership.com slash burnout book, just give me your name and email. I'll email you a free PDF of my burnout proof book, which is a real quick read. That's intentional. I didn't want to drop a, okay, you're burning out. How do you get over it?

Here's Tool of Titans from Tim Ferriss. amazing book not going to digest that in one setting mine you can because i want you to get to the point where you're not burning out and you can design a life that you don't have to worry about burnout anymore so go there you get a free copy of that i'll send you some other resources as well don't worry i don't spam people it's available to reach out them on all the socials so you

can find me in a variety of different places and all that so but breakfastleadership.com tends to be the good good starting point for people get a hold of me okay awesome well michael we'll send people there. If you have enjoyed this show, make sure you go check out breakfast leadership.com. I just want to say thank you so much for coming on and to time, take action, change lives and make money. I'll see you soon.