Michael Levitt's Blog, page 142

30 Days of Boundaries Day 21: Triage Your Calendar Again

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Welcome back. I want to talk to you about triaging your calendar. I've talked about this before but, specifically, I want to talk about looking for opportunities to automate things that you do in your life.

Every day we have things that we have to do. We have to eat, we have to sleep, we have to take care of ourselves, brush our teeth, all of those things, but there are other things that we do day after day that take time, and when you're trying to focus on the things that are important to you and the things that you want to accomplish in your life, you want to make sure that you're spending the proper amount of time on those things and less time on the routine stuff, if at all possible.

The exercise we've gone through before is looking at your calendar and figuring out how you're spending your time. There's many ways to do this, and reach out to me because I have a system that can help you really get down deep into how you spend your time and you can figure out a way to make life easier for you.

Today I want to talk about automating tasks and batching things that you work on from time to time, or every day, or every week. Once you know what those things are, if you can, delegate them. If you can't, at least be specific on when you do it and really schedule things. Get comfortable with doing things routinely at the same time every day, or every week, because it'll become part of you, it'll be automatic, you won't have to think about it.

This is one of those things where we like to call a life hack that I've discovered over the last few months and I really wish I would've jumped on it before. It's called Amazon Subscribe and Save. I should probably put an affiliate link here for people to sign up, because this is a life-changing thing.

There are so many things that you can order on Amazon that will routinely get delivered to your home on a scheduled basis, every month, or every couple of months, depending on what it is. This is going to make you laugh, but I have my toilet paper delivered to me. Now, once you pick yourself up off the floor you're going to realize this is actually a brilliant idea. Why should I spend time going to a store, doing what I do in my career, standing in lines and buying something that I use daily? The cost is actually affordable, plus factor in the time, okay?

There's other services depending where you live: grocery delivery as an example. It's getting easier and easier for you to have things brought to you. By doing this, it actually enables you to spend more time on doing things that's going to grow you or things that you enjoy. I'm not sure of many people that actually enjoy going to the grocery store. I used to work at one years ago so I don't have an allergic reaction to grocery stores, but if there's a way for someone to do that work for me and bring it to me, or go shop for me and then I pay five bucks and they bring it out to my vehicle and then I drive home and unpack it, sign me up. Because, again, you're spending time on things that are important to you and not the boring tasks that you can automate.

Look at your calendar, look at the things that you're doing and see if there's anything there that could be automated or delegated or just deleted. When you do this you're going to find yourself having more time. When you have more time, you can do things that are important, like relaxing, reflecting, growing, so many opportunities.

Till tomorrow, be well.

 

30 Days of Boundaries Day 20: How to Implement Boundaries at Home

Photo by Andy Fitzsimon on Unsplash

Yesterday I talked about implementing boundaries at work and while that is easier said than done, it crucial because if you have strong boundaries at work it will make your boundaries at home a whole lot easier to roll out. When you get home, you shouldn't be doing work. Now for entrepreneurs and people that have really complex jobs, I get it. I've been there. I've worked in IT before so you're basically on call like a physician, from time to time. If you're a senior leader, you're also on call, although depending on how strong your team is and how well you delegate and the boundaries you create in your job opportunities, it can minimize the amount of impact that your work life will have on your home life.

I'm not going to talk about establishing boundaries for how you go about your daily lives in this particular segment. But I do want to focus on the importance of when you get home, you do have a routine that you follow. I've talked about exercising, I've talked about taking care of yourself. I'm a big fan of routines. It doesn't make life boring. I know some people feel that it does. In my opinion, it makes your life easier, because then you've automated a lot of things you're doing in your life and by doing so, it frees you up to be able to do the things you really enjoy and want to do and give you opportunities to go to that last minute concert or that last minute sporting event. Or go to dinner somewhere that you like going to and not have to worry about doing some other work.

Set up your home life in such a way it works for you and the people that you live with. If you're married or have a partner, communicate with them just like you'd communicate with your boss. Let them know what's going on. If you have to do work for example, if there's a special project that you need to spend some time on after hours or at home. Let them know. Give them an estimate of how long it will be and it makes things easier. But again, having control of how you spend your time goes a long way to help you do this. If you're just going through life aimlessly and not really focusing on designing how you spend your time, then your time is going to get away from you and you won't be able to do the things that you really want to do when those opportunities come up.

Insight on how I go about my life: In the mornings, work out, brush my teeth, shower, all the fun stuff that you're supposed to do to be nice to the human race. Then I go to work and when I'm at work, I do my work thing. When I get home, there's chores and things you want to do. Emptying the dishwasher, laundry, all the tedious boring stuff. But going back to the blog about trashing your calendar, again that actually simplifies things because if you don't have a ton of clothes, then what happens is you have to use laundry a little bit more frequently. Now work with me here. That seems like something I already have to do all the time. Yes, but you're also consistent on when you're going to be doing the laundry. Because if you don't, you're going to be out of insert undergarment name here. That's never a good thing.

Structure your home life in a way that works for you. And it takes time. You're not going to roll it out and say okay, here's my life. It's designed perfectly. Things happens, things come up. I'm a big fan of having slack in my life. Let's say I don't do the laundry on a Thursday night like I typically do. All right, well then I'll do it Friday night or early Saturday morning, we'll figure it out. But understand that you need to have some slack in your life to be able to do anything. I know that might be confusing. One, I just said design your life and structure it in a certain way that you know when you're going to be doing things and the time and all of that. Then all of a sudden you get slack and that freedom and simplifying your life will actually give you that opportunity to do so.

Tomorrow I'm going to dig back in to triaging your calendar a little bit. I know we've talked about that before and I've written and had podcasts on that from time to time. But I'm going to go a little bit deeper in to it tomorrow and also talk about some techniques I use to automate my life, so I don't have to think about those things.

So until tomorrow, cheers.

 

30 Days of Boundaries Day 19: How to Implement Boundaries at Work

Photo by Tim Gouw on Unsplash

Most of our waking hours are spent consecutively at our jobs and when you're spending that much time in one place, you basically get into some scenarios where you might encounter burnout if you don't have your days designed the right way. Now, for many of us, we've been at our jobs for a while, so the prospect of actually trying to change how we do things without getting first approval from our bosses can be traumatic to some, downright frightening to others. The best way to approach this is more or less to figure out exactly what you want to do, and what your day should look like.

Now, for some of us, we may not know. That's where I can definitely help you get clear and get some clarity on that.. Right now, I want to focus on how to approach your boss about changing how you do things. The first step is just realize the fact that you are approaching burnout or maybe in a worse case scenario, you are burned out at work already. Acknowledging that is a huge step. Most people don't even get to that stage. If you're understanding that things aren't right, and you feel overwhelmed, that's good. It's not good that you're overwhelmed, but it's good that you feel that, and you understand it.

Otherwise, you might be going through the motions, and hating your job, and wanting to leave, and do all of these things when in fact, it may not be the job where the problem is. The issue may be on how you approach your job and how you do things. Identifying what's bugging you is a big thing. Write down all of the things that bother you about your job. Be open. This is a conversation with yourself, and it doesn't have to be something that you do overnight. You can write it down over a week, maybe even a month. Depending on the type of work you do, you may have cycles and seasons of things. You may want to take a look at those as well and see if there's busier seasons and others that drag you down.

The second thing you need to understand is how you approach your boss about this is crucial. Hopefully, you have a good communication system with your boss or bosses. If not, then that's going to be the next step is to figure out how to communicate. The best way to find out is ask them. Whenever I get a new boss, I always ask, "How would you like me to communicate with you? Do you want it in face-to-face meetings, over emails, a scheduled meeting, free form?" Figure out what their stye is and deliver to them the communication in a format that's good for them and for you. If it doesn't align with how you want to communicate, then bring that up.

Once you get the communication paths all sorted out, the next thing is to approach your boss with your concerns. You may have to do this by being humble, I guess is a good way to put it. You don't go in as a victim. Don't blame your organization. Definitely don't blame your boss, but approach them and say that you're worried about yourself and you need some help and some guidance. When I'm a boss and when people come to me and they ask for help, it feels good, because one, they trust me to be able to guide them. Number two, they understand that they need some help to grow. That is a huge step for an individual to be able to do that. Once you do that, then you can sit down with your boss and talk about the different things that are bugging you.

Your boss may not be able to address everything, but at least if you can alleviate some of the burdens that's causing you to get burned out, that is a huge win for you. That's a huge win for the organization because it increases the likelihood that you're actually going to stay in the organization for a bit.

If you want more tips, reach out to me with scenarios that you're struggling with at work and I can guide you on how to navigate those.

Until next time. Be well.

30 Days of Boundaries Day 18: Introducing Boundaries in Your Life

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Boundaries are crucial, and I talk about boundaries a lot, but many people may not understand what that actually means. There are several kinds of boundaries that we have in our lives, not just this big boundary order type of thing that we talk about. Personal boundaries are very important. I've stressed that in the past few blogs, but I'm going a little bit deeper today.

One of the first boundaries that comes to mind is physical boundaries. We've heard about that a lot in the news in the last few months with all of the drama that's happened in Hollywood and a variety of other places for varying boundaries being violated, sexual harassment and whatnot. Those are boundaries where someone is invading your space when they shouldn't be invading your space without your permission. Those are definitely boundaries that you want to protect no matter what.

Mental boundaries. Everybody has opinions. Everyone has beliefs. As humans, we need to respect the beliefs and understandings of other people. We may not understand from their perspective, but here's a challenge for you. Try to. Try and figure out where people are coming from, not just people from different walks of faith or different backgrounds, but people we've grown up with and people you have known for a long time. Their outlook and their perspective on things can be different than yours and a boundary is to respect their beliefs, as well as they should be respecting yours.

Emotional boundaries. Oftentimes, people can be emotional when it comes to situations and some people are a little bit more dramatic than others when it comes to things. They may react differently to situations that you say that may upset them, similar to what I shared in a different post about, "No," is a complete sentence. It can be the situation of you said, "No," to somebody and then you get quite emotional about it. They have to respect that boundary and they have to respect your decision to be the way that you are and feel the way you do about a particular situation or matter.

Material boundaries. Ever loan somebody a book or a tool or your lawnmower and they never return it? That's a boundary that they crossed. That's something that they shouldn't do. If you borrow something from somebody, return it. Actually, here's a pro tip for you: Return it in better condition than you borrowed it. If it's something like a tool or a lawnmower, clean it. Return it to them better than when they gave it to you. They're in all likelihood going to loan you something again if you need it or, more importantly, be there for you in times of need.

To establish boundaries, it's crucial that you come to grips with what you want to do. A couple things that I do regarding boundaries is write down how I feel about things. If something is bothering me and it's eating at me inside, then I write it down and I write down how I feel about it, so that way you can prevent those situations from happening if at all possible or understand why those situations arise in the first place.

Technology is another boundary. I'm using technology right now to write this, and in the other room, I have my cellphone. Cellphones, as you know, have all kinds of notification settings. Many of you, I'm sure, have a variety of different apps and they have this little red circle on them with a number. My recommendation to you is to go into your settings on your phone and turn all notifications off except for your phone and text messages. If you get tons and tons and tons of text messages you may want to shut that off too. I don't turn mine off because I get messages from loved ones and business clients and I want to make sure that they can reach me when they need to, but you also have to establish those boundaries on when they can reach you.

Don't check your phone at night. The recommendation of having your phone in a different room when you go to bed, I highly support that. I do, however, I use my cellphone as an alarm clock. I know that's a no-no. Work with me. Help me out. I want to find a really nice alarm clock and then I'll put my cellphone in the other room. Those are a couple things you can do from a technology standpoint.

This is something that I want you to do: The next time you go to a store or a restaurant and you are dealing with a clerk that's taking your order or ringing up a product, or they're serving you in such a way that you are getting something from them, treat them like a family member that you love and adore and look forward to seeing. If you treat everyone you encounter that way, can you imagine what kind of world we would live in? That's my personal challenge to you. From now on, everyone you interact with, treat them as if you're a loved one that you actually love. If you do that, your world will change and so will theirs.

Communicate with your boss. If you're running into work boundary problems, then I think you need to really have a good conversation with your boss, and in the next couple days, I'm going to share more about how to approach your boss if you need to start establishing boundaries and what you do. You don't want to go to your boss and say, "Look, boss. I'm not gonna do things this way anymore, and this is how I'm gonna do it. That's the way it's gonna be because Stone Cold said so." You'll be on the unemployment line if you do that, depending on your boss, of course. There's a better way to do it, and I'll show you how.

Until next time, be well. 

 

30 Days of Boundaries Day 17: No is a Complete Sentence

Photo by Andy Tootell on Unsplash

The topic is 30 Days of Boundaries about the word no. More specifically, "No" as a complete sentence. Often times when you have boundaries issues, you say yes a lot more often than you should.

Sometimes through other party's attempt to make you feel guilty or make you feel like you're not making a contribution, they try a variety of techniques to make you feel guilty so you will say yes and agree to something, when in fact. This may not be in your best interest or the interest of the parties involved to say yes. "No" is a complete sentence.

Sometimes you don't want to hurt people's feelings. Sometimes you may think you're not being who you're supposed to be when you say "No" and deny a request or disagree with something or not want to do something that the other parties want you to do. It takes a long time to get past that. Especially if you were someone like me that often would say yes, just to make things easier on everybody, but by saying yes, you're saying "No" to yourself. I did that for a long time and I have two stents in my left anterior descending artery to prove it.

What are you saying "Yes" to that you should be saying "No" to? It's important for you to understand boundaries in your life and to stand ground when things come up that deep in your heart and in your gut, you know you should say "No" to, but then you end up saying yes. Maybe you're anti-confrontational. I get that. I'm trained in conflict resolution and you want to try to avoid conflict when at all possible, but sometimes that's it's not possible. Saying "No" is sometimes a necessity. When you do, you have to understand that the other parties involved may not receive that in the way that you would hope, but how they receive it is not your concern.

Your concern is to do the things that are beneficial to you, to respect yourself, your self care, your boundaries, in order to do the things that you need to do. This can be at work. This can be in home life. This can be opportunities that come up. It can be a variety of things, but you have to start looking at the things that you are saying "Yes" to and make sure that they are in alignment with your purpose and your mission. If it's not, then you have to say "No". Do it with grace. Do it politely, but have "No" be a complete sentence.

 Until tomorrow. Cheers.

30 Days of Boundaries: Day 16 - Rebuild From Square One

Let's recap. In 369 days, back in 2009 and 2010, I got a heart attack, I lost my job, my car was repossessed, and my home was foreclosed. As I joke with people, if I would have had a dog at the time, I probably would have lost it too. If there's any country music fans out there that knows somebody that can write music, feel free to write a song about it, because I'm sure it would sell quite well. When you have things like this happen to you, for most people, it's going to be a situation where they may have one or two of these types of losses, but not all of these in such a short period of time. It has the potential to really knock you on your butt and make you not want to get back up.

I have always been one to get back up, and a big part of that is part of my background, the fighting mentality. Not fighting like confrontational, but just to fight to get back on your feet and get back into the ring and be able to do the things that you need to do, because we all have a calling to do something to make a dent in the universe. I have that, and it's with boundaries. It's with teaching people how to find their boundaries so that they can have the life they're supposed to have and not be in constant flux or in constant stress or anxiety about trying to accomplish everything when they're actually accomplishing nothing. After all of those events, I was at square one. I had to start from scratch. Clean slate.

Tabula rasa, as I like to say, which, for some, would be devastating. For me, it was a wonderful opportunity to say, "Okay, let's go ahead and rebuild my life," which I have. You don't rebuild a 40-something-year-old life in a couple weeks. It takes time. It's taken me several years after those 369 days to determine what is important in my life and what isn't. What are the things that I want to do with my career, and what are the things that I don't want to do with my career? These are things that are important because once you figure these things out, your life will go a lot easier. When you start off from square one, you have the opportunity to redesign your life based on the skills and the life that you've lived before.

You can pick and choose the things that work, and I was able to do that. I'm in the same job. Different company, but same job that I was in when I had my cardiac event. I'm in the same field. Most people would say, "You're crazy to go back in the field that almost killed you." It was important to do this because I knew I had a lot to accomplish, and my career, and your career as well, would thrive if you design your days the way that you need to. I've referred to my book 369 Days quite a bit. Go to breakfastleadership.com/30days to get a free digital copy.

I think it's important for people to see how I navigated through all of those losses and how I rebuilt my life. In the coming days, I'll share more specific tools and what you can do to make your life better, both at work and at home, and find that balance that's crucial to you.

Until next time, be well.

30 Days of Boundaries: Day 15 - 4th Domino: House Foreclosure

Photo by Steve Halama on Unsplash

After the move to Toronto I was up here for about six weeks. I was renting a room in an apartment complex in the northern part of the city. At nights, I was looking for a place for our family to live. Over a period of six weeks, the family came up to look at various places to rent to figure out where in Toronto would make the most sense. Trying to find a place that was relatively close to my new job was easier said than done.

For anyone that's familiar with the Toronto housing market, it's absolutely insane. In parts of the U.S. where a home would run from $150,000 to let's say $250,000 or $300,000, that same home in Toronto would be anywhere from $750,000 to well over $1,000,000. There are bidding wars to get those houses. It's absolutely insane up here.

From our situation anyway, we had to rent because of course, coming right off of the losses and everything that was going on. We weren't prepared to be able to get another mortgage because we already had a mortgage on the house that we had down in the Windsor area.

After six weeks, we were able to find a place. We loaded up moving trucks, which there's nothing more painful than dealing with moving. I'd rather have root canals done on every one of my teeth than move. It is absolutely painful. I hate it.

Long story short, we moved everything up to our place in the east end of the city of Toronto. After we got everything moved in, we realized that we had forgotten the ladder for our daughter's bunk bed.

I was going back to the Detroit area in a week or so and I was going to stop by the house that we were going to be putting on the market to sell and pick up the ladder because I knew where it was. It was in the basement or somewhere. Maybe in the closet. It was in one of those two places.

Visited my brother in the Detroit area. Then, after that I was heading back to Toronto, but I swung by the house to go pick up the ladder and anything else that we may have missed with the move.

When I approached the house, I pulled up into the driveway and then I opened up the screen door and I saw the largest padlock I have ever seen in my life and a note indicating that our home was in foreclosure. At that moment, I felt the greatest amount of peace I have ever felt in my life. I know that may come as a shock to many because that is an emotional component. You go home and you realize that the bank has taken it away from you.

The reason I felt so much peace was because I knew that was the last domino. I had a heart attack and survived. I lost my job. I found a new one. My family vehicle was repossessed. We still had a vehicle that was paid off that we could keep. Then, finally, the home that we loved and thought that we would be spending several years at was no longer ours. I thought, "I've survived everything to this point. What else can they take away from me?" Short of my life, which I dodged that bullet, there was nothing else for me to lose. There's a certain element of confidence that comes when you are in that place where you've survived so much.

Since then, we have a beautiful place that I live in now. It's convenient. It's close to work. It's close all that Toronto has to offer. Again, it's been a challenging journey these last years after these events. I still learn from it. I think that anyone that goes through any type of loss or, hopefully not to the extreme of the losses that I had in 369 days, that you learn from it and you figure out ways to navigate it.

I was interviewed for The Mindfulness Mode podcast recently. We talked about how I navigated through those 369 days. For me, it's just the spirit of getting back up and doing what I need to do to get past this. It's something that I've had to learn in my adult life because my childhood was freaking awesome. I know many people, unfortunately, have had lousy childhoods. Mine was absolutely amazing. I have zero complaints about it. Got everything I ever wanted. My parents were able to provide. Even though they were struggling, you don't know that as a kid, but financially they had challenges with jobs and everything else under the sun just like most of us, but I have this spirit about me that just says, "I'm going to brush myself off and I'm going to pick myself up". That spirit is within you as well. You may not know it. You may not sense it, but it's there.

Oftentimes, we refer to this as "The Hero's Journey". It's used in movies and books a lot where someone faces adversity and then they come out of it stronger and better than they were before. That's within you. A way to find it is with boundaries, is to really protect yourself, protect how you go about your living, protect the choices you make, learning how to say, "No" and learning how to say, "Yes". It's not something that's learned overnight, but I have learned it and my life is amazing now. Yes, there's challenges in my life. I face them daily, but I know I can get through them because I've gotten through so much before.

Think about the losses that you've had in your life and how you've been able to overcome them because I think we're all in this together and we can learn from each other. Over the next few days, I'll be sharing more and more tips on how to introduce boundaries in your life and how to recover from setbacks or losses.

Until then, be well.

 

30 Days of Boundaries: Day 14 - 3rd Domino: Car Repo

Photo by Etienne Martin on Unsplash

In my book, 369 Days: How to Survive a Year of Worst Case Scenarios, I basically have four dominoes of things that happened in those 369 days. If you look at the cover, you'll see what they are. What I found probably the most frustrating of the four dominoes, because I was not in town when it happened, was the car situation.

Back story: in 2009 I had a heart attack and then after 17 weeks of recovery, I lost my job. And then I had to relocate to Toronto to find work. So, going back to that time frame, I was in my new role for about six weeks. Then, I received a phone call from one of my daughter, and she was crying quite strongly on the call. Once she was able to compose herself, I was able to get information that our car, family vehicle, had been repossessed by the bank.

When you're unemployed for nearly a year and you're not getting any income for a period of time, it's amazing how quickly things can go sideways. Once I finally had received a paycheck again, I started catching up on some things. Mind you, I didn't have a drug coverage, so my medical expenses for the prescriptions for my heart medication were close to $700 a month. So, I kind of needed that in order to stay alive. Those were the priorities; food and medications to keep me alive. Car payments, obviously, would take a back seat to other things. We had negotiated with the auto loan organization a delay in payments. But, that timing had come to an end and over a period of time, once I got a normal paycheck coming in and finding a new place to live and everything else, we would have been able to start making our car payments again and start catching up.

Unfortunately, we ran out of time. I was in Toronto, family was in Windsor. When the car, our family vehicle, was repossessed, I was four hours away. It was probably one of the most powerless feelings I've ever had as an adult, knowing that I had zero control, that I wasn't there to try to deal with the situation. Thankfully, the tow truck company was kind enough to allow the family to empty the contents of the vehicle before they towed it away. I can't imagine what that visual was like seeing the family vehicle being taken from us. I know that was a traumatic experience for my daughter and I'm sure for the rest of my family as well. It was traumatic for me being so far away and not being able to do anything about it.

As with everything, it was probably the best thing that ever happened because based on income levels and all of that, that was a very expensive car payment. It was a very expensive lesson. The hallmark for you, is I want you to look at what you're spending your money on. This is not a financial course by any stretch, but you need to look at how you spend your money and what your budget looks like. You need to be able to control what you spend. We're all on fixed incomes, so you need to be able to spend accordingly on the things that are important. I'm not saying that you're spending money that you shouldn't be spending. We work because we want to be able to do things and have things, there's nothing wrong with that.

You also have to make sure that you're able to pay your bills and take care of the things that you need to do. Personally, it was an embarrassing period of time. Frustrating for sure, because we were hoping to be getting back on our feet to be able to pay our bills again. Unfortunately, the bank had lost its patience and decided to take the vehicle back. Hopefully, you've never experienced that. If you have, I know how you feel. It was not a pleasant experience. It was, however, one of growth, on where I focus on what's important and what's not. You don't need the brand new shiny car. You need a vehicle that can serve you and the needs that you have.

The next story I'll talk about, is our home. That one is something that is definitely a worst case scenario for many, many people. I hope that you can take and find inspiration in what happened to me and you can make the changes in your life so it never happens to you.

Until tomorrow, be well.

30 Days of Boundaries: Day 13 - Saying Yes to a Previous No

Photo by Berkay Gumustekin on Unsplash

Yesterday I talked about my job search and how it took forever to find something until I finally changed my mind and opened up the opportunities of working in a large city such as Toronto. Background information: I used to work in Chicago for about six years and that is a very busy city. I'd become accustomed to working in the suburbs so I really wasn't down, I guess, for lack of a better term, with working in the concrete jungle again.

However, when you are unemployed and you're recovering from a heart attack and you are in an economic period where there's not a lot of jobs to go around, you can't be picky. I had to loosen up my boundaries, as false as they were, to open up to Toronto. It was the best decision that I ever made because I was almost instantaneously getting job offers and I took a position in the healthcare field, ironic, as that was the field that nearly killed me, but I knew that I wanted to do something differently. I wanted to go back and do something the right way instead of the way that I was doing it before.

I want you to ask yourself this question, What are you saying no to that you should be saying yes to? I was saying no to working in the big city. I was saying no to working in Toronto. Are you saying no to opportunities that would actually be beneficial to you? Figure out why you're saying no and then take a look at and see if you said yes, what would it mean to you and to your family and your career.

Toronto is an interesting city. There is a ton of people here, millions of people. I left a community of 23,000 and went to a community in the GTA that is close to six million the last time I heard, maybe seven. That's a lot of people when you get on the roads and you have a difficult time getting around but, it is an area that has a ton of opportunity. It is an area where I have been able to flourish both personally and from a career standpoint. I've been able to get accolades, sit at government tables that are designing and redesigning how healthcare is delivered in this province. That's not something I take lightly. It's something that I find very fulfilling. I don't take advantage of that opportunity to the point where it gets neglected. I make sure that my contributions are for the greater good and not just for me as an individual because we have to help as many people as we possibly can. Doesn't matter if you're in healthcare or any other field. You wanna be able to make an impact on as many lives as you possibly can. And that starts with you.

Again, in your boundaries exercise I want you to start thinking about things that you're saying no to that you should be saying yes to whether it's exercise, whether it's changing how you eat, whether it's where you work, maybe it's a case of the relationships you have. They are never easy questions but, you have to protect yourself. Your boundaries are the most important boundaries you will ever encounter.

Until tomorrow, think about what you're saying no to that you should be saying yes to.

Be well.

30 Days of Boundaries: Day 12 - The Buffalo Bills of Job Searches

Yesterday, I talked about my job loss back in 2009 and how after 17 weeks of recovering from my heart attack, losing my job during the time of an economic recession is not exactly the best time to be unemployed, so I had to do a job search.

I was in the Windsor, Ontario area, which was a sister city to Detroit, Michigan, which at that particular time was definitely going through some challenges. The auto sector was on its last legs. Houses, and mortgage collapse, and banks, and all of that stuff. It was not the ideal time to be without a job, so I started going on interviews. Now, with my background, accounting, IT, management, healthcare, pretty diverse background, I have a lot of transferable skills.

I was able to use those skills to land a lot of interviews. I probably had 35 to 40 types of interviews and I was looking in the area that I was living as well as closer to London, Ontario. I had a pretty big footprint as far as where I was searching, even as far as the Kitchener Waterloo Region.

For those you that aren't aware of that area, Blackberry was huge in that particular area back in 2009, but they were soon to be running into some challenges, too, that we're all well aware of. How many of you are using a Blackberry device now compared to an Android or an iPhone? iPhones only came out in 2007, so do the math.

I was going on job search, after job search, after job search, and finding interviews, and getting interviews, and getting second interviews, and even third interviews. But one of the problems I was having is I kept coming in second place. The organizations would hire somebody else because they had slightly better experience or there was something else that in particular was a better match for those organizations.

f you recall, back in the 90's the Buffalo Bills went to four straight Super Bowls and lost every one of them. I was feeling like the Buffalo Bills of job interviews, always coming in second. Always a bridesmaid, never a bride.

I kept going on interviews and I was getting a little frustrated, but I was spending nights and weekends in hotels trying to find work. I was looking anywhere between Waterloo, Ontario and Windsor. I was looking in the Detroit area and there was absolutely nothing there, again because of the economic problems. I'm sure many of you have lost your job before, and I know that looking for a new job, especially when you're not prepared for it, is not a fun adventure. I'm curious as to what did you do to keep yourself motivated, as well as what did you do to keep your spirits up?

Because there's a lot of pressure that we put on ourselves when we don't have a job we tend to assign our self value to the job that we have and we need to quit doing that. We are more valuable than what our job title is. Yes, it's how we make money, it's how we earn our living, but too many of us associate ourselves with what we do instead of who we are. That was definitely an issue that I did as well, a personal boundaries violation, as I like to call it.

Have you had job nightmares? How were you able to overcome not having a job, and finally landing a job, especially if you were out of work for any particular part of time? One of the things that I wish I would have done during my job search is expand it a little bit further and by further I mean Toronto. Toronto is an international city, it's one of the largest cities population-wise in the world, and I ignored it during my job search. I didn't want to live in Toronto. I'll talk more about that in the blog. When I finally did look at Toronto things changed, and changed for the better.

Until then, enjoy your day.

Cheers.