Chief Change Officer - Heart Attack Survivor Turned Chief Burnout Officer, Michael Levitt: Buy an Alarm Clock, Ditch Your Smartphone

Episode Date: May 4, 2024

Would you call this bad luck or burnout—heart attack, job loss, car repossession, and home foreclosure, all happening to the same person in one year? More than ten years ago, Michael found himself in exactly this catastrophic situation. At that time, society was far less open about discussing burnout and its severe impacts on both individuals and companies. Facing these challenges head-on, Michael endured a heart attack induced by severe burnout—a modern-day epidemic equivalent to a heart attack in its sudden and profound impact. Having survived these trials, he has now shifted gears to assist people, leaders, and organisations, both large and small. Career Change Master: Michael D. Levitt San Diego's Michael began his career in the aisles of a grocery store. He has since cultivated expertise in diverse areas, including accounting, finance, IT support and operations, business development, healthcare, and insurance. Currently, Michael is the Chief Burnout Officer and Founder at Breakfast Leadership Network. Also, Michael hosts a Top 200 podcast . He is also the author of a book called Burnout Proof. Episode Breakdown: 1:58 — Origin of 'Chief Burnout Officer': Inspired by a Shower 3:57 — Breaking Free from Burnout: Michael's Journey Through a Life-Threatening Crisis 10:55 — Burnout Unites Us: A Social Media Exchange Highlights Its Global Impact 15:03 — Conquering Stigma: Strategies for High-Achieving CEOs and Professionals to Overcome Burnout 21:15 — Turning Tides in Toxicity: A Success Story of Drastically Reducing Turnover 24:54 — Office Politics: Sometimes You Can't Force the Horse to Drink 29:17 — Victimhood in the Workplace: Understanding the Limits of Influence Over Those Who Resist Change 30:17 — Burnout in Transitions: Navigating Career Changes Without Getting Burned Out 35:12 — Self-Therapy Techniques: Identifying Early Signs of Burnout to Prevent Deeper Issues 38:36 — Simple Solutions: Why an Old-Fashioned Alarm Clock Might Be the Antidote to Burnout Connect with Us: Host: Vince Chan | Guest: Michael Levitt Chief Change Officer: Make Change Ambitiously. A Modernist Community for Growth Progressives World's Number One Career Podcast Top 1: US, CA, MX, IE, HU, AT, CH, FI Top 10: GB, FR, SE, DE, TR, IT, ES Top 10: IN, JP, SG, AU  1.3 Million+ Streams 50+ Countries

Hi everyone, welcome back to Chief Change Officer. I'm your host, Vince Chen. We are all facing different challenges in today's world, but regardless of your age, generation, gender, cultural, and family background, there's one enemy that unites us, burnout. Believe me, I've been there once, twice, and more than twice. Today, we're joined by a fellow burnout survivor and a self-proclaimed chief burnout officer, Michael Levick, from the Breakfast Leadership Network. Michael turned his personal experience into a powerful force for change, helping individuals and organizations overcome burnout and rebound stronger. We had a great conversation on his show, and now he's here to share his insights and strategies with you. Get ready for a conversation between your chief change officer and chief burnout officer. Let's dive deep into Michael's journey and learn how to fight burnout for good. Welcome, Michael. Thank you for coming to my podcast.

Thank you, Vince. Always good to speak with you. I'm thrilled that you launched your own show too. I always encourage people if they even want to test it out, go for it, because your voice and your opinions and your insights are unique to you, and the world needs as many insights on things as possible. So congratulations on the launch of your show. Thank you so much. My show is called Chief Change Officer because this podcast is my 18th career transition in the past 36 years. I always believe that change opens up opportunities, drives personal growth, and innovates society for good. So far, I've invited quite a number of C-level leaders to my podcast, but you are the first ever Chief Burnout Officer.

Can you explain to me why this title? How did you come up with this title? First, it came to me in the shower, as a lot of good ideas do. That's why it's always good to invest in those markers you can write on a wall in the shower, because a lot of times you're just thinking about different things while you're getting cleaned up. And that title came out to me because I've been dealing with the burnout space since my own personal journey with burnout back in 2009. But basically 2014 is when it started to bounce around in my head anyways. And the title of Chief Burnout Officer, as far as they know, I'm the only person that has it. I don't have a

trademark. So just basically, if any organization wants to use it, by all means, because if you're going to use that title, what that means is you are focused, full center on preventing burnout in your organization and yourself, as well as if someone is burned out, give them the space and the tools that they need to recover from it and then eventually prevent it from ever happening again to them. So that's where the title came from. It's something that I strongly believe in because I don't like burnout at all. And I hate what it robs from all of us when people and teams and organizations are burnt out. You just mentioned in your life, in your career,

you've experienced burnout badly. Share with us about your experience back then and how this pain got transformed into a positive force for change and eventually turned into a business today. Of course, back in 2007, I was hired as a healthcare executive. I was working some absolute insane hours in building up this brand new clinic in a community that was under service. We just didn't have enough doctors in the community to meet the demand of the patients and people in that town. So I was working some long hours, recruiting physicians, hiring staff, understanding the healthcare system because I had never worked in healthcare before. I had a lot of startup experience, because I had never worked in healthcare before. I had a lot of startup experience, but I'd never worked in healthcare before. So it was a steep learning curve for me, but it was one that I took on. I look back at it was a mistake is this is one

of those things that happens to people when they burn out is it looks like a good idea to take everything on your shoulders and say, look, I'm going to treat this as if it's my own company and I'm going to build it. It wasn't my own company, but I acted like it was. So as entrepreneurs know and as you know, the multiple careers you've had in your life, there are times where you just pick up the load and you go, you know, like, OK, we're just going to get this done. But I did that for a solid two plus years. And it caught up with me in the spring of 2009, where over a period of 369 days, so just over a year from May 2009 to May 2010, this happened to me. I had a heart attack that should have killed me. 17 weeks later, I was laid off during the Great Recession.

A few months later, because I was on heart medication that cost me $1,000 a month out of pocket, had to feed my family and all of that, while still looking for a job and not having a lot of income coming in, the bank decided to repossess our family vehicle because we didn't have enough money to pay our bills. And then after that happened, we moved to Toronto because I found a work opportunity in Toronto. And then a couple of weeks into it, or actually it was six weeks, after six weeks of working up here, moved the family up here, was getting ready to sell our house back where we had left. And I went back there the following weekend after our move to grab whatever else we forgot. And there was a note on the door and a huge padlock that said

foreclosed. So in a year, I had a heart attack, job loss, car repossession, 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. I wasn't resting. I was making mistakes at work. I was irritable. The poster child for burnout, I would have been on it because I was checking all the boxes for it. Now, after having all of those experiences, some would say, you survived. And I could have, some would say, you survived. And I could have chose the path saying, you know what? I'm Superman.

I survived it. Here I am. I'm just going to continue on. But I recognized right away that, especially at the age I was at that time, that's way too young to have a heart attack. But I need to make some changes. And as I started to, and I started to unpack all that had happened, and it wasn't just for the last two years, I did a deep dive

and I went back as far back as I can remember to say, okay, why did I make the choices that I made? What was my goals? What was my motivation for that? And I didn't do it in a critical fashion. I think a lot of people do that when they're looking within. We're often quite critical of ourselves. But I thankfully had the mindset of saying, no, I'm going to look at this like a curiosity of a four-year-old and just say, what's this? Why this? How does that work? So that's how I did it. I approached it as just an outsider looking and going, okay, why was that important to me to do it that way? Why did I do that? What was I trying to accomplish? Was there something else that caused me to do that or make that decision? And that took time. My only regret, not that I have regrets in life, but I do have a

regret that I didn't work with a therapist before that. I have a therapist now and I highly suggest and recommend everyone should have a therapist. Everyone. There's something in your life, either now or in the past or potentially in the future, that you're going to need to work through. And if you have somebody that is a therapist, they can help you through that. It's not laying down on the couch and saying what's wrong in your world necessarily, but it's really helpful. So I wish I would have worked with a therapist back then because it would have led along some things, but I still was able to do that. So after recovering and after getting back on my feet and finding a new job, just going about things differently,

I started noticing and I realized what was going on. I was burned out, so I started researching burnout and was alarmed, and this was, again, in 2014, alarmed on the number of cases that I was seeing in burnout in a variety of different sectors, not just healthcare. That was 10 years ago. Fast forward to today, burnout is worse than it was 10 years ago. And it's impacting industry. I thought, you know what, I need to start sharing what I'm discovering about burnout. So I started writing about it on a blog and started talking with people about it, started doing little talks at different conferences

and things about it. And then a colleague of mine said, you know what, you probably have a consulting business here. That's what I did. I said, okay, let's launch this. And then that led to another colleague saying, launch a podcasts and share tidbits on how to prevent burnout. That's how the original format of my show was for the first year or so. And I started interviewing guests and meeting great human beings like yourself and a bunch of people across the planet, which has been great. So it spun off into a consulting, content creation, e-note speaking type of entity that I've been

working on for now seven years, or actually closer to eight. And it's been both very enjoyable, but also very sad because nothing would make me happier than for burnout to go away and I don't need to talk about it or work with people on it or anything like that. I'm thankful that I have the opportunity to, but I wish I didn't have to because they're not burned out. Let me tell you a quick story. Something that happened just a few days ago. I was scrolling through social media. Not something I do often,

just killing some time. I stumbled across a post from someone I don't know. This person identified himself or herself as Gen Z. This person had written something really simple, yet profound, which is, this world is so burned out. I feel burned out. So I replied, equally simply, I think many of us feel burned out, especially in today's economy.

And I added, by the way, I'm from Gen X. To my surprise, that comment got a lot of likes. What this made me realize is that it doesn't really matter if you are from Gen X, Y, Z, or if you're a baby boomer. It doesn't matter if you're American, Chinese, Japanese, European, whatever your nationality, whatever your cultural background, whatever your political views, whatever your gender, if there's one common enemy we all face today, I call it burnout. Would you agree? Oh, I definitely agree. It doesn't matter what, as you said, what demographic you're from, your gender, where you're from, what type of work you do, the career, anything like that. It doesn't matter. It attacks you. And it's one of those things that time and time again, I see it.

And over the last few years on my keynote talks, I keep track of where I speak. And I always have the industry. insurance, finance, retail, manufacturing, nonprofit, for-profit, every industry, you name it. So, yep, I've done something for them, whether it's been a Fortune 500 company or an independent insurance organization outside of Boston or a talk for European leaders. It doesn't matter. Burnout hits everybody. And it's one of those things that even the World Health Organization recognized burnout as a workplace phenomenon back in 2018 or 2019, prior to all their work with the pandemic.

And for them to recognize burnout is a huge issue globally brought to light. Okay, this is not something that's just a thing that's in style right now. This is legitimately a problem for people and need to get to the bottom of it, figure out what it is, identify the signs, which we can easily do. But the thing with burnout recovery or even burnout prevention is the steps that I see work that I used on myself and I've seen others work through them and it's helped are really easy to do, but unfortunately, they're also easy not to do. And we as humans tend to lean more towards the comfort way of living instead of doing a little bit of challenging work on ourselves.

And that's one of the things that is so hard is when we need to work on us, for some reason, that's really difficult for some people to do, which is strange in a way, if you think about it, because we're never around anybody else longer than we are with ourselves. So it's an interesting dynamic to see people struggle with trying to do things to make themselves feel better, look better, and be better. So before we talk more about burnout prevention and how we can help ourselves recover faster and easier from burnout, there's a problem with this problem. Burnout as a problem carries a stigma.

I believe this is cross-cultural, especially among leaders, high-achieving professionals. You experienced burnout yourself more than 10 years ago before this topic has become mainstream. Now, in your business,

in your practice, for the sake of helping people, helping organizations, I was wondering, how did you establish the importance of addressing burnout at the C-level as well as at the operational level? Or perhaps at the beginning, when you pioneered this unique role in the corporate world, what challenges did you face? How did you overcome them? Yeah, you hit it right on the head when it comes to C-suite executives and C-suite leaders having a difficult time because of the stigma of burnout. There's a mental health component to it. Actually, a lot of people do. In talks and things like that, they'll ask.

Burnout, especially with the science and all that, it sounds a lot like depression. There are a ton of similarities between the two. As someone who has dealt with both, I've dealt with clinical depression myself as well as burnout, I'll tell you, yeah, there are a lot of similarities. But the key difference is as burnout, I'll tell you, yeah, there are a lot of similarities. But the key difference is with burnout, you can still muster up the energy to go out and do it.

You're fatigued, you're cloudy, you're wiped out, but you're still out there just grinding and just doing it. You're tired, you want to go to sleep, your body aches, everything, but you're still doing it. When you're clinically depressed, even doing that is a big ask. And sometimes you can't, there are just days where you just like, I can't get out of bed, or I just want to go take a nap. And there's nothing intrinsically wrong with taking a nap. I'm a big fan of them. But when you don't want to do anything, even things you enjoy doing, that's a big warning sign. But to get back to your original question, because of the stigma of it, and also it's a delegate balance.

It's one of the reasons why I don't list all the companies that I've worked with on my website, because usually consulting or organizations, we've worked with these companies and they list a bunch of them and all of that. And there's some companies that I've dealt with in the past that are publicly traded. Their C-suite is the team that I worked with. Could have been an individual, could have been with a couple of them. The problem is because of the stigma, if it got out that the CEO of this publicly traded company is dealing with depression or burnout, what's going to happen to their stock? In all likelihood, at least in the short term, it's probably going to go down. It may go down a lot, which means shareholders and the business could lose millions, billions, trillions, who knows?

So this goes back to my healthcare training where privacy is critically important. So I don't tell even my spouse who I'm working with. I just don't. I might say a company if I can, or I'll say I'm working with this industry. I don't say who I work with because I strongly believe in privacy. Even though I'm quite public, I just said a few minutes ago, yeah, I've been clinically depressed and I've burned out and all that stuff. I lost my job, lost this and all that. I publicly declared, but that's my choice. I can do that. And my company's not publicly traded. If somebody wants to take it public, okay, they can talk with me. We'll have that conversation. But I think ultimately getting past that stigma for executives is the first thing. And in understanding that and acknowledging

that, because if they're worried about this getting out, it's not going to get out for me. And secondly, it's literally earning their trust. They got to trust me. Our purpose is to get them past burnout, to get them back to their best version of themselves. But one of the biggest reasons why I hate burnout so much

is it robs society of great products and services. A lot of people say, what do you mean by that? If people are burned out, they're not their best, which means they're not making the best stuff. They're not doing the best work. They're not creating. So there's products and services that might exist today that would make our lives easier that unfortunately won't exist because the creators or the people who are thinking about it are burned out and they don't have the energy to carry it forward. So we lose as a society when people are burned out. Once they address the stigma of burnout

and address it, get their trust, then we can start doing the work. And the work is simple for me anyway. It's one of the reasons why you know I got certified in cognitive behavioral therapy and neurolinguistic programming. Much easier to say CBT and NLP therapy by the way because those are some mouthful words but the reason why I did that was time and time again I kept running into people having similar issues and a lot of it was what they were telling themselves, their beliefs, their habits, their thought patterns, their programming that they have instilled in their lives. And it's much like programs on your phone or apps on your phone or on

your computer. You can uninstall them and you can install better apps and better programs for you to live your life the way you want your life to be. And just giving them that initial courage that they can make the adjustments that they need to make. In my situation, real quick, I had to reinvent my life because the way that I was living painfully wasn't the best way to live. But for 99% of the other people out there that are burned out or approaching burnout, you don't need to reignite your life. Just make a couple adjustments here and there. You'll see humongous dividends when you do so. You have dealt with a lot of individuals, leaders, and their companies.

So share with us two examples. One is a success story where your intervention led to positive changes in the individual's life and career or might be in the firm's culture. Another story would be a situation where things did not go as well as planned with your intervention. What were the key lessons you learned from them? How do these not-so-good experiences have helped you shape your approach to dealing with similar situations in the future?

Yeah, the first one, turning around an organization culture, they had a ton of turnover. In their early days, they were a startup organization, ton of turnover, no trust, no communication. People were stressed, people were leaving. And these weren't the young people by any stretch. They were well-educated individuals that were leaving like they were quitting a fast food job as a teenager. And I'm like, okay, what's going on here? And it boiled down to communication and trust was a big issue. Expectations, I think, were another. Miscommunication, going back to the communication thing, seems to be a common challenge. And then toss in some ego and you have yourselves a toxic environment so for me it's like okay let's get to the bottom of this so the nice thing about

it was how I approached it was look I'm your friend here I want to make this better for you if you were in my seat what would you change what would you do? And once they trusted me and felt comfortable sharing, then they were an open book. And they would share all the things. And I put them all together. And there was a lot of commonality on both sides, both parties, the upper management and the staff. And once we got to those commonalities,

I met with them individually. And then I met with them in small groups and we just shared the misconceptions that people had and misunderstandings. It went from an organization that was having just tremendous turnover every year to a year later they were averaging around six percent turnover and they were well in the double digits before. And all it was for me, I say all it was, I tend to simplify things, but I know the work was pretty instrumental. It was a situation where it just turned things around, and it became an organization instead of being or having a reputation of being a toxic workplace to an organization where people were applying to

work there when there were no roles open. They wanted to be a part of it because they knew and heard that this was a great place to work. And it was the same people. It wasn't a case of where we just fired everybody and turned everything around. No, it was the same people that were there before. And the majority of them are still there. It speaks volumes to if they are, and this is a common thing, if the organization and the upper management and the employees as well are willing to be open about some opportunities and suggestions

on how to make things better, if they're open to it, to give it a try, then they have a fighting chance. If they're close-minded and they just keep blaming everybody else, there's no common ground to be found, unfortunately, and those organizations will continue to struggle. That was definitely a win. An organization where it wasn't as challenging was the opposite effect. They were an organization that was doing well, but then decided because there was some infighting in the upper ranks of the organization and certain organizational members. I got to frame this very carefully. That were power hungry is a good way to describe it.

Office politics. There you go. Yeah, definitely. And there was some power brokers that wanted more power and felt that their way was the best way to go. And not typically a wrong idea to think that, but their approach was a bit abrasive, lacked merit, lacked proper research, lacked all kinds of different things. And then they ended up letting go some key people that was making that organization thrive. And then that organization went from being really successful, always in profit, to an organization that lost revenue, lost key people, and is not doing well.

For me, it was a situation, and I think the biggest lesson learned is, and this goes back to a talk that I attended years ago that isn't related, but there's some similarity to it. It was a health symposium, So it was a day-long health conference talking about different programs and initiatives you could implement in your healthcare organization. And there was a physician that was giving a talk, and his talk was about weight loss. And one of the things that I learned from that, and I didn't know this before, is our body's natural inclination is for it to get to the weight of our highest weight. So let's say you weighed 300 pounds and you lost a ton of weight because you changed your diet, you exercised, maybe had a medical procedure to lose the weight, whatever the situation is. Your body, for some reason, the brain, body combination,

all that stuff says, no, you were 300 pounds at one point. We have to get back to that. That's why people struggle so much with losing weight and keeping it off is because your body is fighting you on it. They're like, no, we want to go back to that. And it's the same thing with some organizations are just inherently toxic and you can correct them and make them healthy. But that gravitational pull to return back to the way things were is very strong. So if you don't manage it, if you don't nurture it, you don't keep on top of it, you could have a stellar organization return to its toxic traits in a very short period of time. So it's not a set it and forget it kind of thing. And that was the lesson that I learned was, okay,

I, and many consultants do, you go in, you give them the ideas. It's clear as day to yourself. They say it's clear to them. They implement it, which is always nice when they do that. And they see the big changes. And then all of a sudden, a few years later, they're right back into the problem they did before. And I've seen that even with keynote talks. I've given keynote talks to organizations and was brought back several years later when they had new people there, new management. And they're like, we're having the same problem again. Oh, okay. I'll take your money again. I'm saddened by this because for me, and I have to be careful about this. Sometimes you get to be self-judgmental and they go, maybe my talk isn't good. Maybe I'm

not convincing people. Maybe they get, and that's not it. It's the old saying, you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make a drink. It's the same thing. It's, you can say, here are all of the solutions that will make you feel better, but it is up to them to implement them. And you cannot do that as a consultant. You can't do that as a coach. You can't do that as a manager. You can't get people to do something they are refusing to do. You can encourage them. You can show them all the benefits of it, but unless they want to do it, they're not going to do it. And that includes stopping their burnout. Some people, unfortunately, love playing the victim. And I hate to be that blunt about it, but they do. They're like, I'm burned out, or I'm a single parent, or I've lost my job. Nobody wants to hire me.

And it's, okay, what are you going to do about it? I'm Gen X, too. We tend to be pretty straightforward on it. Maybe not as blunt as our predecessors, the boomers. They tend to be pretty blunt. You can take that for what it's worth. I appreciate it. I love a straight shooter. No, yeah, does it sting sometimes in how they present things? Of course. But once your ego dusts itself off, everything's good again. But

again, all you can do is bring the information, share the insights of what we've learned, the research, how it's backed, and the benefits of adjusting a few things here and there. And it goes a long way in making things better for you. Those are the couple stories of many that I've encountered over my career and in recent years and in the works that I do. This podcast is about change. And right now, a lot of people, other than dealing with burnout situations, are facing change, in particular, career change, career transitions. at life, they have a strong desire to refresh the futures. Others are forced to change because of

layoffs or in the name of corporate restructuring, cost efficiency, AI, whatever they name it. Burnout is part of this change process before, during, or even after the change. If I were one of those people in transition with a burnout situation, I came to you, I asked for advice. So what advice would you give to me? What insights can you share with me? Usually what I'll do,

and this is again, leveraging a lot of therapy work, is have you talk about your current career or the one you're leaving. One of the things we'll talk about is having you go back in time when you first applied for that role and what your feelings were when you were selected and hired and that first day. Go back and think about that. Typically, in most cases, those are some happy memories. Those are some happy thoughts. And then we flush out, okay, what changed? From your perspective, what changed?

What was going on? And through that conversation can flush out some of the causes. Could be external. Maybe there was a new manager and that manager was not easy to work with or wasn't clearly communicating or who knows. There could be all kinds of different things or could be internal. You might have been going through something else during that time. Maybe relationship challenges, a loss of a loved one or a pet, which is a loved one too. So I don't need to separate those, but both are traumatic for people. And there's all kinds of other things that could be going on. It might be the economy. It might be upset your team hasn't won in a while,

or they traded away your favorite player. I don't want to say simple or silly because it's not. Some people are very passionate about a lot of things in life. It's just getting to the bottom of, okay, where are some of the ingredients that are adding to this? It's okay. Then from there, we can see, are there opportunities to maybe look at things differently or change your perspective on a particular matter to identify that jerk manager that left from the organization because people leave their managers. They don't necessarily leave their companies. They leave their managers.

Putting yourself kind of in their shoes. Okay, what do you think their motivation is? It'll go from, oh, they're just evil and mean. It's like to, do you think they may have some self-confidence issues do you think they don't feel prepared as a manager so they are defaulting to being this quote-unquote bossy person to do these things to try to cover up for their own self inadequacies if you thought about that. Because if you dig back deep enough or peel back enough layers,

you can actually see that in people. Now, it takes time, it takes practice. It also helps that you study mental health and you get a better understanding of why people do what they do, which is great, but then also frustrating because then all of a sudden you start, and this is just me personally speaking you get frustrated because you're like I know what their motivation was in that or I know why they're doing this and you want to tell them that but it would come off

completely wrong sometimes if you do so it's like knowing the end of the story of a movie and you're watching it with your good friend who hasn't seen the movie yet. And you want to say, oh yeah, this person does. And you just have to keep your mouth shut. It's that kind of frustration sometimes. But it's one of those things where you got to meet people where they are and work with them from there. A lot of new therapists and consultants, they'll say, okay, page one of the consulting book. And no, you don't do that. You got to figure out where people are. And then you go to that particular page, get that low-lying crude, get them some confidence for themselves. And then you'll see how much more they want to work. Because otherwise, if you start at page one, they might be at page 30 and you're going to lose

them before you get to page 30 because they're going to be bored. So you got to meet people where they are when it comes to burnout and then start from there. This will be our last question for today's session. Earlier, you emphasized the importance of seeing a therapist or a coach for anyone dealing with burnout. However, from a financial standpoint,

what if it's not covered by insurance? In fact, when I had my burnout situation, which was eventually developed into clinical depression situation, I did not get insurance coverage. So that was a huge expense for me. What if people simply don't have access to a credible, qualified therapist or consultant like yourself? In that case, could you share some common signs or warning signals that we might be overlooking in our lives and careers? What should we work out for to recognize a potential burnout situation?

Identifying these signs early on, I think, is very crucial that we can address them in a timely, in a proper, and systematic manner. Yep, I'll give you the signs that I see time and time again. One, you're fatigued. You're not sleeping well. Your body aches in places you didn't know you had. And you're just not feeling well. That's a big warning sign. Another one, which was a huge red flag for me, is you lose interest in doing things in life. And I'm not talking about work.

I'm talking about in your personal life. You quit doing things with your friends that you normally love doing. You quit all your hobbies. You just don't want to do any of that anymore. You find that communication with colleagues and loved ones is harder. Maybe you're a little bit more irritated than normal. And we see that a lot. There's a lot of people that are angry right now

because I think a lot of people are dealing with certain levels of burnout and stress and fatigue over finances, wars, you name it. The post-pandemic, all of these things have been taking a toll on people. And if you notice too that the intake of food and you're not taking time to eat or your food choices aren't what they used to be. And you're starting to feel the aftermath of eating too many processed foods and not eating real food. And that will take a toll on you as well. So those are some of the signs to warn out or look out for if you think you're burning out. Now how to fix it?

There's several ways to do it. Make sure you schedule time to be active, eat the right foods for you. And that means figuring out what foods are right for you. I had a food intolerance test done a few years ago. They tested me on over 250 types of foods and I got a beautiful report, color coded, that indicated, okay, these are the foods that are good for you. Your body naturally likes these foods. And then the page that was in red, which had a lot of items on it, unfortunately, are the foods that I should probably stay away from because I have an intolerance to them in varying degrees. But it was still the red page, so I do my best to avoid any of the foods that are on that page.

And what happens is my digestive system works better. The food that I eat is naturally good for me, and my body breaks it down naturally without any issues, so I don't have to have Tums or acid reflux or anything like that. But if there was one magic pill, bullet, thing that I would tell people to focus on if they want to help prevent burnout or at least reduce the impact of it is really focus on your sleep. Get really good sleep. Spend as much money as you can on the best mattress you can afford, the best bedding, the best pillow, sheets, blankets, all of that stuff. Go buy an alarm clock.

Don't use your smartphone as an alarm clock. Get that device out of your bedroom and set yourself up for the best possible sleep you can get every night because when you get a good night's sleep, your body repairs the damage that we do to ourselves on a daily basis, which means you wake up more refreshed, which means you can face those stressful situations in life a little bit better. And prolonged stress is what turns into burnout. So if you don't have prolonged stress, you won't burn out.

Michael, you are spot on. I have to confess, I've been struggling with sleep issues. My partner keeps reminding me to sort it out. So I'm gradually working on adjusting my sleep schedule. Just yesterday, I was joking with someone about how we don't even use alarm clocks anymore, not since smartphones took over. And right here, you just advised me to ditch the phone at night and go back to an old-fashioned alarm clock instead. I'm going to take your advice to heart. Thank you so much, Michael.

Thank you, Vince. That's all for now. Thanks for listening. I'm your host, Vince Chan. Follow us if you like our episode. Subscribe, inspired, and thrive. See you next time.