Meet BARBARA LEVIN

We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful BARBARA LEVIN. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with BARBARA below.

BARBARA, so great to have you with us today. There are so many topics we want to ask you about, but perhaps the one we can start with is burnout. How have you overcome or avoided burnout?

Once upon a time, I was a workaholic. As I was building my company, I would often work 7 days a week from November through May and then long hours for the rest of the year.

And then, through what I now see as a blessing, a doctor discovered a growth on my lung that could be cancer. It was and it was caught in the very early stages. After one surgery, I was free of the cancer with no additional treatment required

It was the first time I faced my own mortality and it was quite the wake up call. Perhaps in my case, it took something as significant as that to make me examine my priorities in life.

I didn’t waste time in re-balancing my life. I returned to doing the things that I loved to do- spending more time with friends and traveling more. Lo and behold! The more balanced I became, the more successful the business became and the more I enjoyed it and my life in general

It’s easy to get caught up in being a workaholic- society condones it. The problem is, it doesn’t lead to true success. A close and wise friend told me ‘the qualities of getting there are the qualities of being there’. How would you spend and balance your time if you believed yourself to have accomplished your professional goals?

Appreciate the insights and wisdom. Before we dig deeper and ask you about the skills that matter and more, maybe you can tell our readers about yourself?

After 25 years of commitment, passion and hard work, I have just sold my company, Athena Designs. It was not to ‘retire’ but to explore other aspects of myself.

Starting as a child growing up in NY, I would collect postcards of foreign countries. I would lay them out on the floor and study the details with a promise to visit. And so I have! And there are so many more discoveries to be made. In December, I will visit the Amazon,Machu Pichu and then Lima. Next year, Bhutan, Cambodia, Bolivia and Scotland

Traveling, exploring and discovering are part of my DNA. It is my belief that going beyond our own ‘borders’ and opening to another culture can strengthen compassion, imagination and empathy. I will be photographing the journey and hope that I might inspire others to venture out.

I invite you to visit @1travelingwoman and share the adventure

There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?

Perseverance, flexibility and imagination are keys to unlocking new opportunities in my opinion.

I also think ‘failure’ is underrated. Rather than judging one’s self or others, the examination of failure can lead to new ideas and methods. And maybe a healthy dose of humility and kindness.

Seek out others who might be further down the path for their thoughts. It’s important to question, to be open to other people’s opinions. Be a sponge- absorb the advice that others might be willing to give. And then it’s your job to sift through to discover what really speaks to you.

Don’t quit! But perhaps be honest with yourself about your true motives.

Looking back over the past 12 months or so, what do you think has been your biggest area of improvement or growth?

Let them! This year,I watched one of my dearest friends lose an 8 year battle with stage 4 cancer. I was there with him from the original diagnosis until 5 hours before he passed.
I had a lot of ‘good’ ideas about what he should do and how he should live and how he should approach death. He had his own ideas and it was my job to surrender and respect his path.
Perhaps that is an extreme example but I would bet that each of you reading this knows someone who would be ‘better Off’ if they just listened to you
In these last 12 months, I have really begun to understand how respectful and loving it can be to give up attempts at control. First of all, it doesn’t accomplish anything and most of all each of us has our own unique and precious destiny.
The balance is – offer and them ‘let them’.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: @1travelingwoman