Spot Burnout Before It’s Too Late (with Michael Levitt)

[Dana] (00:01)
Welcome friends, whether you’re out on a walk, running errands, or relaxing at home, it’s wonderful to connect with you. Joining us today is Michael Levitt. Now Michael is the founder and chief burnout officer, I love that, of the Breakfast Leadership Network, a media firm dedicated to addressing burnout and improving workplace culture. Michael, welcome to Phoenix and Flame.

[Michael] (00:31)
great to be with you today and the title came to me in the shower. Actually the name breakfast leadership did too. pay attention when you have thoughts in the shower kids because it might do something for you good or maybe bad but that’s why you have those washable note pads you can keep in the shower but then don’t let the water hit it because then guess what it’s washable it’ll go away. Figure something out or or yell to the listening devices we all have, add this to the list or whatever. There’s all those kind of things.

[Dana] (01:07)
It’s amazing how often those thoughts just kind of come into our mind that they end up developing into something later. So Michael, share with me and our listeners, you how did you get to be in this space? Why did you have curiosity about it? Why have you spent so much of your time and energy toward burnout? And how did you get there?

[Michael] (01:28)
Yeah, for me, it was birthed out of my own personal experience with burnout back in 2007 to 2009. I was the healthcare executive just outside of Detroit across the border in Canada, Windsor, Ontario. And I was hired as an executive for a startup healthcare clinic. I never had any healthcare experience. I was a user of the system occasionally, but never ran a clinic. Didn’t know what an autoclave was or how to recruit doctors or hire nurses or anything like that. And I somehow figured it out and was in that field for almost two decades. So I learned quickly. I had startup experience. So I knew how to launch businesses, so I figured out along the way. But the challenge was, even though I was an employee, I treated this as it was my company. So I went into full entrepreneur mode. and worked some insane hours, pretty much 6 a.m. to 11 p.m., seven days a week for a couple years. And when you do, of course.

[Dana] (02:33)
Oh my goodness. Now let’s pause for a moment. You just said 6 a.m. to 11 p.m. seven days a week for a couple of years. How did you maintain your sanity during that time?

[Michael] (02:50)
When you are burned out you end up getting numb and you just don’t really pay attention you just I’ll work through it I’ll work through it I’ll work through it and it’s one of those things when you when you have a work ethic and you’re driven Type-a personality driven you want to accomplish you want you have big goals. You want to crush them? Sometimes you end up neglecting yourself by doing those goals and that’s what I did and it all came to a crashing halt in May of 2009 and over period of a year, May 2009 and May 2010. I had a heart attack that should have killed me. 17 weeks later, I lost my job during the Great Recession. And again, it was across the border from Detroit. If you remember, the US and Canadian governments had to bail out the auto sector because at least two of the big three automakers in the US were, well, they did file bankruptcy and they were going to go out of business, which would have a gigantic impact on the economy of both countries. So needless to say, not a lot of jobs to be found. Here I am fresh off a heart attack and losing the job. So it took several months to find a new job. Finally found one relocated to Toronto. No, I’m not a Maple Leafs fan. Don’t worry Detroit. You’ll never see any Maple Leaf gear in any of my possessions. I promise you there’s nothing here. And if it even comes into play, it gets like, nope, that guy, that has to leave. Yeah, but not that I’m against Leafs fans. They let them celebrate their team. I do like to say of the original six NHL cities, the Toronto last one in 1967, which predates me. But the thing that I like joking about is the original six NHL cities. Toronto is the only photo that’s in black and white. The others are in color. That gives you an indication of how long ago it was. So anyway, so.

[Dana] (04:46)
Wow.

[Michael] (04:47)
Yeah, they’ve come close a few times, but they haven’t cashed in yet. As much as it pains me to say this, I hope they do sooner than later. I think the fans deserve it. Will I be happy about it? No, but they deserve it, okay? I’m willing to let that happen, not that I have any say in it.

[Dana] (04:54)
Hahaha That’s hysterical. Now before I’m going to pause you just a second because you said something a few moments ago that I think is absolutely worth just kind of hovering over for a moment. I think there are a lot of people out there, myself included, who are driven entrepreneurial people who are high achievers, high performers, and we literally will push ourselves until we’re sick. There needs to be, I’m glad you’re kind of bringing up the whole burnout thing because it’s hard when you’re someone who is a go-getter and a type A kind of individual to slow down and stop and heed the warning signs in order to keep going. And you were able, you pushed yourself until you had a heart attack.

[Michael] (05:54)
Yeah, yeah, when the cardiologist is getting ready to put stents in your left interior descending artery, and for people that aren’t familiar with that artery, it has a nickname in cardiology world. It’s called the widow maker because when you have a blockage and you have a heart attack in that artery, statistically speaking, you are viewed instead of being seen. So the cardiologist comes into the room getting ready to do the procedure. My first wife and my mom were on the right side of me. He comes in, doesn’t say, hi, I’m Dr. Morrissey, doesn’t say, how are you today? He comes in, he’s looking at the chart. He looks me dead in the eye, says, you know, you should be dead right now. And of course, my, my first wife and my mom start crying. I look at him and I say, I see you skipped a bedside manner class in medical school.

[Dana] (06:49)
Hahaha

[Michael] (06:50)
And he laughed, I laughed, they’re crying. They did not find that funny. Doctor and I, we’re joking, cracking jokes, having fun. They’re like bawling about it and it gives you an indication of how warped I am. so he went in and then he said, all right, here’s what we’re gonna do. We’re gonna go in, we’re gonna put in probably two stents, maybe more. We’ll see, once I get in there, I’ll see what we need. Did it, quick procedure, done, went on my way. But yeah, that’s what happens with entrepreneurs. And that’s where a lot of people burn out, especially type A personalities. And it doesn’t mean you have to be that, but I see it a lot. the things that is kind of ironic in a way is the things that we get overwhelmed with and we take on too much, those things are typically good things to do. Yes, you should.

[Dana] (07:41)
Yes, yes.

[Michael] (07:42)
you know, spend more time on branding your company. should spend more time doing the social media. Yes, you should do more time going out, doing all the keynotes and traveling and all that because it’s building your brand. It’s growing your business. But we forget to kind of check the gas tank and go, all right, what do we got? Are we on empty? We got a quarter tank. We have tank worth for five people that have their tank at full. It’s like, how’s that happen? You know, I’m one. Because usually I’ll fill the tank and you know, okay look at it and it’s like, okay It’s full for a while. But most people know their tanks not full and entrepreneurs There are many cases they’re showing up to work or in their you companies They’re on e the lights on it’s chiming. You know, it’s it’s it’s a mess and they’re like, well, yeah

[Dana] (08:30)
I just keep right on going. Do you hear anything? I don’t hear a chime. Do you hear a chime? No, I don’t hear a chime. There’s no chime.

[Michael] (08:34)
much I’m not. No, they put on the AirPods or the ear muffs and they just, la la la. don’t hear anything. Yeah. It happens all the time and it catches up to you. And in my case, it certainly did. And that’s, it scares me when I see people going down that path. I’m like, yeah, you don’t want to do that because having a heart attack that should have killed you when you were 40.

[Dana] (08:43)
you

[Michael] (09:01)
And I’m talking with my cardiologist, not the same one, he moved to Orlando. But the cardiologist that I have now, we have conversations when I go in for my checkups. And I used to, when I’d go in for the checkups, I’d look at the room and I’d see people that were 10, 20, maybe 30 years older than me. The last couple times I’ve gone, I’ve started seeing some people that are younger than me. And I talked to him, said, so without violating health privacy laws, who’s the youngest patient you got on your roster right now? He said 34. So I’m like, so you have a cardiac event, there’s a distinct possibility you’re gonna be on some type of heart medication, whether cholesterol, blood pressure, hypertension, something like that, for a long time, unless you really make some dramatic changes. And unfortunately, nine out of 10 people that have cardiac events don’t make a single change. They don’t change a thing. They don’t do anything. They figure, well, it didn’t kill me, I’m just gonna continue on my path.

[Michael] (10:12)
Unfortunately, my late father was one of those people that were the 90%. I elected to do the 10. I’m like, you know what? I got stuff I want to do, but I’m going to have to do it the right way. And how do I do that? going back to my year worst case scenarios, after moving to Toronto, finding a place for me, and then moving the family up a few weeks later, we were to sell our house and all that good stuff. I was in my new role for a couple weeks then my daughter who was 10 at the time called and said the bank had come and repossessed her family vehicle. So what happens when you’re unemployed for a long time and you’re on heart medication that cost you a thousand dollars a month out of pocket and you don’t have any health insurance coverage? You have to make choices. Okay do we have food and I pay for this medication to keep me alive or do we make the mortgage payment and the car payment? Well, you’re going to do what you’re to do. And we worked with our creditors. We weren’t ones going, ignore the phone call. No, we were like, we called them before they called us. Let us know what’s going on. And they were all very gracious. They were very helpful. They were as flexible as they could be. mind you, this is a great recession. A lot of people were in deep trouble losing their homes, cars, jobs, all that stuff. So it was a mess for a lot of people.

[Dana] (11:06)
Yeah. Right.

[Michael] (11:31)
The banks are in a business, they’re gonna make money. I get it, they weren’t making any money. I stopped making the payments because we couldn’t. Just started a new job, so we were gonna start digging out, but unfortunately ran out of time and the bank exercised their right to take the vehicle, and they did. so thankfully we still had another vehicle, but I had it. So we had to coordinate all of that for a little bit, but then we were moving the family up a couple weeks later. So we found a place to rent. So we moved the family up. Forgot the bunk bed ladder for our daughter’s bed. So I was going back to Windsor area the following weekend to close up a couple of counts and drop off some stuff to the realtor because the house is going to be listed in a couple of weeks. Which was going to be interesting because it’s like down market, are we going to be able to sell this? What are we looking at? Are we going to be short compared to what we own on it? Kind of thing. And so swung by the house to go get the ladder or anything else we’ve got and open up the screen door, the front door.

[Michael] (12:31)
Saw the biggest padlock in my life. Can’t buy this padlock at Home Depot, folks. They sell it somewhere else and there was a sticker on the door that said foreclosure. So in a year, heart attack, job loss, car repo, home foreclosure. And all those things happened to me because I was burned out. My burnout led to all of those things happening. If I wasn’t burned out, I wouldn’t have made mistakes at work. I would have been taking better care of myself. Would have been in a better financial position.

[Dana] (12:45)
Wow.

[Michael] (13:01)
and what if

[Dana] (13:02)
Well, and I want to jump in here too and add to what you’re saying is that some people also experience mental health issues because of burnout. They will get eaten alive with anxiety or they’ll get so depressed because we both know, Michael, that when you’re an entrepreneur or something like this, that it takes a while. It’s not something that happens overnight.

[Michael] (13:11)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

[Dana] (13:28)
It’s a marathon, not a sprint, and it’s hard. It is fricking hard to keep going and keep going and keep going and keep going. And you don’t have a promise. You don’t have a guarantee that something is going to happen when you get to this month or this date or whatever that you’re going to have this guarantee. You don’t. And so sometimes when people are pushing and pushing and pushing, they do have the physical stuff that happens. We, like I mentioned earlier, and you’re talking about and so eloquently describing pushing ourselves until We are physically ill, sometimes to the point of a heart attack, as you’ve mentioned. And also, we experience depression. We experience anxiety where we feel like there’s no… And I have felt this some myself at times and I’ve talked to other people as well, that they will feel like that anhedonia where they just… they can think of brings them any sense of happiness or joy. They feel like they’re just caught in a dark hole. and they’re trying to keep going, but they think about, what if I were to go do this? What if I were to talk to this person? Or what if I were to have a glass of wine? Or what if I were to go out with my friends? And nothing they think about, because this is when the depression rolls in, nothing they can think of, nothing they can pull to mind makes them feel any sense of happiness or joy or looking forward to anything. They’re just stuck in this black place.

[Michael] (14:41)
Oh

[Dana] (14:54)
because of that burnout that you’re talking about.

[Michael] (14:55)
Yeah, yeah, no, I had it. I was definitely in that boat too. And a big, red flag for me and family and friends knew it. And when I talked to them, you know, afterwards, like, you why didn’t you tell me that I was burning out? And they said, we did. We all did. You didn’t hear it. And the big red flag for me was at the time I was with a group of people, season ticket holder for the Detroit Tigers. baseball team and that was during the time when they were really good and they went to the World Series for a couple years in 2006 and 2012. So you know the burnout started like 2000 late 2007 2008. By 2009 I quit going to the games which was should have been the biggest red flag to me of all because I love baseball. first career as an accountant was because of figuring out how to calculate the stats on baseball cards in the late 70s when I bought them. I bought a pack of Topps baseball cards in 1977 from a general store in Luther, Michigan where my grandmother had a cabin. And I looked at the back of the card and saw the numbers and I didn’t have a calculator but I was able to figure out how they were able to get those stats. And I did that. all the time and it was kind of an indication at a very young age like, okay, you like numbers. Okay, good. You well, you can into finance or accounting, which I did, you for the first career. But so I love baseball, played it a little bit when I was a kid, was humongous fan of baseball and it was a dream to be able to go to not only go to games, but be a season ticket holder. And the beautiful thing about season ticket holder then, I’m sure it’s still the same now, is you buy the season ticket package, your tickets covered. You get a beer and food voucher, your parking’s covered. You can show up literally with nothing but your clothes on and the keys to your vehicle. Everything’s covered. There was no, you didn’t have to worry about anything. I quit going. And I love the game. I love going to the baseball game. I, season ticket holder, you go to a lot of games. I loved it. It was a dream come true to be a.

[Dana] (16:55)
Nice.

[Michael] (17:11)
holder especially and also helped that your team was really good and made the playoffs and had a chance to win the World Series. I’m like, you know, I, quit going and it was when I was recovering from the heart attack, that’s when I recognized, you know, you kind of peel back the layers a little bit. And for me, and I don’t recall anybody telling me this, um, whether it was a spiritual inclination or maybe somebody did, and I just didn’t realize it, but What they suggested and I didn’t I didn’t work with a therapist then I’ve worked with therapy since but I didn’t work with one then I should have but it was when you are looking back at what happened and Your part in it because you were there. Mmm I didn’t I didn’t point any I didn’t point your fingers at anybody. I didn’t point fingers at the fast food restaurants that fed me I didn’t point fingers at the board that fired me or anything else or the banks that took my vehicle in my house. didn’t blame them at all. I was like, I’m the one that’s responsible for all this. But how I approached it was with curiosity. I returned to a five year old version of me. And like, why was it important for me to work all those hours? What was I trying to accomplish? What was my, what was the outcome that I wanted?

[Dana] (18:29)
I love that.

[Michael] (18:35)
to see what was I looking for and a lot of times it was you know I wanted to boost my ego you know I wanted to be viewed as a pillar in this community and bringing this new clinic in helping people live healthier lives and all the other nonsense that I was telling myself or my ego was trying to tell myself and I just completely ignored me you know so self-improvement self-care the key component in that is self you have to take care of yourself first. And that’s where boundaries come into play. And boundaries was a huge issue for me. You know, I wouldn’t delegate work to anybody because they were, they said they were busy. So I ended up doing it. So I was trying to do my job and the job of some other people. And I had no business doing that. It also robs people of the opportunity to do their things and learn new skills and all of that. I’m like, they’re too busy. I’ll just do it. Well,

[Dana] (19:11)
Yeah. Mm-hmm.

[Michael] (19:33)
One-off, okay, but every off, no, that’s not good. So you have to have boundaries and you know, we’ve heard the phrase, it’s not mine, we’ve heard it all the time. No is a complete sentence. No. Harry Truman did it and you know, he sent off a telegraph or telegram to, I forget who it was, somebody, it might have been, I’ll have look back in history to see it, but it was one of the things, he responded back to a message.

[Dana] (19:45)
Yes.

[Michael] (20:01)
and sent the telegraph back to it and it just said, no, period. And it’s like, if you study Truman, he was a feisty guy and he didn’t have any problem telling you what he felt, which I appreciate. You some people, there are certain people in this world that will say what they feel.

[Dana] (20:20)
Yes, I appreciate that too.

[Michael] (20:27)
They don’t filter it and sometimes people are taken aback by that or sometimes they get offended by that. I completely understand why they would feel that way. But there’s something about being direct. It’s like, okay, well, just say it. And maybe it’s the Gen X in me. I don’t know. like, we just, we don’t care. know, our parents, spit it out. Our parents tried to kill us. So, you know, we were feral. had the house to ourselves, the latchkey kids.

[Dana] (20:48)
Spit it out. Latchkey kids, that’s it. Absolutely had a key hanging around a necklace on my, underneath my shirt when I went to school. Now Michael, let me ask you this, as my listeners are following you and they’re really tracking everything that you’re saying and resonating with your experience and appreciating your transparency in sharing that, what would you say to someone if they’re listening and they’re thinking, well,

[Michael] (20:56)
Exactly, you know Yeah, yeah Yeah

[Dana] (21:22)
That might apply to me, but I don’t know. Does it really? Am I burnt out? I mean, I kind of see myself in Michael. I don’t really want to have a heart attack, but does it really apply to me? So I’m kind of wondering when you’re working with your clients, you know, what are some of the keys that you tell them, the behaviors or whatever that for people to notice, to ding, ding, ding, for a bell to go off saying, you are… either burnt out or you are approaching burnout. What would you say?

[Michael] (21:55)
There’s a few things that I ask them. One is, okay, how’s their sleep? How have they been sleeping? And some people, like my late mother, was horrible at sleep. She just never slept well from being a little kid. And the dynamics of the home that she grew up in post-Great Depression and big family and both parents worked, and so she kind of got anchored as the oldest daughter to kind of run the house a bit. So she was always on and afraid that you she’d missed something and it was you know I saw that you know I think I was aware of what that looked like so She probably burned out too at some point in her life, but just went through it anyway But for me is like sleep is like if you normally sleep okay, and you haven’t been sleeping well lately That’s definitely a warning sign because your body is trying to process all this stress and anxiety and or anything else you’re dealing with. And the problem with that is when we don’t get good restful sleep, our bodies are not repairing the damage that we do to ourselves on a daily basis. I don’t care how healthy you are and how you eat all the right foods for you, get all the right exercise, have boundaries around the information you consume. Please don’t watch the news all day and all night, people. Stop doing that. I don’t care what flavor you watch. It is depleting your soul and your brain power. just stop. And I know it’s hard, but please, you’ll thank me later, you’ll feel better. But if you’re not getting good sleep, that just has a ripple effect on everything else. Your cognitive ability, relationships, being able to recognize things, you start making more mistakes at work, your relationships go in the tank. It’s really, really bad. that’s usually the first thing I’ll ask. Second is, okay, know, health wise, physical health, are you… Okay, gaining weight, losing weight, you know, what’s your, you know, don’t judge people on what they eat. It’s like, you know, what has your dietary choices changed if you’re working more hours? Are you eating more processed stuff? Are you, you know, constantly ordering your food through a microphone and driving around the corner getting handed a brown bag like I did that? I’m not saying that’s not good for you, but I’m to go out on a limb and say it’s probably not good for you. You got to kind of harmonize that with some other stuff. I’m not saying don’t do it at all, but you have to figure out what’s right for you. So how’s your sleep? How’s your eating? You know, how, you know, how are your relationships? Things good, things not so good, you know, and you know, of course, you know, some people are very guarded when it comes to that, but I’m approaching it’s like, look, I’m, not a gossip person. I’m not going to throw it up on Tik TOK or Instagram and say, oh yeah, I met with this person. No, I don’t, I don’t do that. I, I saved. Drama for TNT. If you want to watch drama, go watch some TNT or other shows. There are plenty to watch. Watch that. That’s where you can consume drama. Don’t have it in your life. So that’s another thing. then I’ll ask them about their calendar, how they schedule their time, and if they track what they do. And I’m a big advocate for that. even your self-care time or your me time, your fun time, even if it’s like… Okay, on Wednesday nights I watch Netflix or I watch this show on Hulu or Disney Plus or the 18,000 other subscription services you have. By the way, don’t add up the bill for all of those subscription services on top of the cable that you still have. That’s a car payment, Just saying. But I get it. I’ve got a bunch of them too. I’m not judging. I’m just saying don’t add those numbers up. It’s a little alarming. Because financial stress, in my personal opinion.

[Dana] (25:25)
No. Oh.

[Michael] (25:44)
is one of the worst stressors out there. And the reason for that is the majority of us, I haven’t really found anybody when I asked this question, anybody love paying their bills? I usually don’t get anybody raising their hands, but I do know that we love the ability to be able to pay our bills. And I’ve been in a situation where I couldn’t, that’s not a fun feeling. So if they’re dealing with some financial stress, that can add a toll to things and whatnot. So if they’re not sleeping well, they’re not eating well, they’re having trouble financially, their relationships are falling apart, all the flags are there, it’s pretty easy to see. If they say, everything is good on there, then I’m like, okay, well, let’s look at your calendar and see how you’re spending your time. And a colleague of mine, actually two colleagues of mine, actually one before my cardiac event talked to me about this. And then a colleague, Virginia, several years ago told me to color code my calendar. And if you’re color blind, that’s a cruel joke. I apologize. I used to, side story I’ll share about network cabling in a minute. If you’re ever looked at a network cable for computers and stuff like that, or even a phone cable, if you look really closely, you’ll see the wires in them have different colors. There’s a reason for that. because each of those things have a certain signal in order to have the communication there. So there’s a certain order that the colors have to be in. And on both ends of the cable have to be identical because when you crimp them, you have to make sure that all the colors are in unison. I worked with an IT guy at a company, internet startup company several years ago. And one of the things that they gave him to do is like, make some cables. me and he was like uh… him and her and finally he finally did it all those cables were crap none of them working like what the heck’s the problem and he says uh… i’m colorblind

[Dana] (27:49)
Oh my goodness.

[Michael] (27:51)
We, all of us begged his forgiveness. We were so upset with ourselves. We were so sorry. like, we’re never going to ask you to do that again. We are so sorry. We weren’t mad in the end, tell us. It like, kind of wish you would have told us, but you will never do that again. So for people that are colorblind, use a symbol or some kind of thing to do it. And basically what you do is you code your calendar either for meetings, a certain color, phone calls, color. your self-care, me time, personal time, choose your favorite color or your favorite symbol. And there’s a reason for that because your favorite color, your favorite symbol, if you’re looking somewhere, your brain is naturally going to see that color quickly because it’s just what we’re conditioned for. It’s your favorite color. It could be just genetics or who knows what, but you’re going to see it. So behind me right now, my favorite color is blue. I don’t see any blue behind that, so I gotta correct that. I’m like, I see yellow, I see red. So I’m have to hang something up there on that wall back there that’s blue, maybe just a little felt or something, like I’ll get blue. But the reason why you do that is it doesn’t matter if you use a paper calendar and you’re using highlighters or a digital calendar on a screen. The reason why you wanna do your favorite color is you can look at a week or a month, for example, but a week is good. So you look at your appointments and everything that you schedule during the week and you can squint. And you’re not seeing the text at all on anything. But if you don’t see enough of your favorite color, that means you’re not scheduling enough me time. Now, entrepreneurs and everybody else on this planet would love to say, I spend 17.5 hours a week working on this. As an entrepreneur, Every day is different. We know that even if you work for companies every day is different

[Dana] (29:50)
Yeah. And I would like to know who has enough time to figure out that they spend 17.5 hours. You know, and I, I’m listening to you describe all this. It’s fantastic. And what’s coming to my mind is a couple of things. One is our me time, our downtime, our personal time is so important because I, in my mind, I’m thinking about someone who’s getting ready to run a marathon and the gun goes off and they take off at a dead sprint.

[Dana] (30:21)
I mean, I’ve not run marathons, but I’ve run 5Ks before. But I’ll tell you one thing, I’m not a person that can run a 5K even at a dead sprint the whole entire time. No, if somebody did that, they’re going to be gassed out on the side of the road, just a sack of sweaty skin, waiting for an ambulance to come pick them up. And meanwhile, everyone else is just going to pass them on by. So it’s like people have this idea that if they take some downtime, then they’re not gonna accomplish what they want. I think the opposite, and I hear you saying the opposite is true. If they want to go the distance, if they want to cross the finish line, then they better slow their roll. They better not go from the start line when the gun goes off at a dead sprint. Just pace, pace, pace and take that time. And as a matter of fact, this past Sunday, my husband, he did… his chores and mine, bless his heart, because I was up to my eyeballs with all kinds of this, all the spinning plates, Michael, you know, all the spinning plates and doing all that. And so because he did that, I literally, don’t judge me, but I literally stayed in my pajamas all day long. I did not come out of my pajamas. I had the pajama pants, I had my top on. I stayed in those the entire day, which is very, very unlike me, but I needed a day. I needed a day to just sit around and read some fiction, watch some Netflix, eat some good food that I like and just have a day where I didn’t have to be constantly thinking about what’s the next thing? What’s the next thing? What do I have to do next? What’s next on the checklist? Checklist, checklist. Because I felt that kind of like, you you think of like a rocket that’s coming back into, and they call it that reentry zone. It’s coming back into the earth’s. gravitational field and it has that time where it starts shaking, where the rocket is shaking and you’re kind of wondering is it just gonna come apart? Is it gonna just fly to pieces and not make it all the way back in? And so I think when we feel that kind of shaking we’ve got to stop so that we can slow down, pace, and cross that finish line. Now unfortunately we are about out of time so I was wondering from you

[Michael] (32:29)
you

[Dana] (32:34)
I’ve got listeners right now, I know Michael, that are listening to you and thinking, oh my gosh, I think he’s describing me. What is something that you would like to leave with them? And I know I’m going to give them a website because I know they’re going to want to get more of you and access to you and all the things, the fabulous things that you have to share. But what is one thing that you could like leave with them? A word of advice about if they’re listening to you thinking, think I’m Michael, what would you say to them?

[Michael] (33:03)
Well first I would give them a free copy of my book, Burnout Proof. So just go to breakfastleadership.com slash burnout book, enter your name and email. I don’t need your blood type or your mother’s made name or your first make of your car. don’t care. Pontiac Ventura if anybody wants to know mine. Actually that wasn’t the first. Well, it sort of was. but yeah, breakfastleadership.com. It’s a quick read, it’s under 100 pages. I didn’t want to go Tim Ferriss on the thing because it would just be too big of a book and when people are burned out, here read a 300 page book. They’re not going to. This one is under 100 pages. It reads quickly. There’s comedy in there, there’s some jokes and know, I, laughter is, having worked in healthcare for a long time, laughter is really…

[Dana] (33:44)
No time. Nope.

[Michael] (34:00)
some of the best medicine you can have. Laugh, you’ll feel better because your body reacts and it just makes you feel good when you laugh. So try to laugh more. So pick up the book. There’s tips on all the signs of burnout, some things you can do to prevent it from happening or recover from it. The deeper work is preventing it from happening again. And sometimes, as you know, as a therapist, that can be a very interesting place to go. people tend to be afraid to do that, but I had burnout once. I should be dead. I’m not. I’m thankful for that. I don’t want people to flirt with death prematurely. Don’t do that because it can have such a humongous effect on everybody you know, your work, your loved ones, all of that. It doesn’t have to be that way. You can take back control of your life by prioritizing yourself and Real quick, we said the pajama day you had, those days are amazing because your brain’s still saying, I gotta do this and this and this, and what you do is just grab a piece of paper and write it down and say, I’ll get to it later, and just go back to your pajama schedule. We need those days where we just stare at a wall, because that’s when we get clarity and things become clearer and all of sudden we go, wait, I can do this a little bit more efficiently than I have been. So take advantage of those days, and I really appreciate. your audience and the time you spent with me today.

[Dana] (35:28)
Thank you, Michael. This has been amazing. I appreciate you coming and spending your time and your expertise with my listeners. Thank you. Guys, I know you have heard all kinds of stuff today from Michael that you’re thinking, woo, I know the person. I’ve got a best friend. I’ve got a coworker. I’ve got a family member that absolutely needs to hear what Michael has to say. Take this episode, copy and paste the link, send it through text, send it through email, put it on your favorite social media sites so we can grow our Phoenix and Flame community and let people know you’re not alone. I hope your day has been great. I hope the rest of your day is fantastic. I’m Dana on Phoenix and Flame.