Legacy of the Rental Crisis

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Many thanks to all who expressed support and encouragement after my last post—this community continues to amaze me with its welcoming and generous spirit! Now that I’ve had time to reflect some more on the events of last week, I have clarity that I lacked before. Funny how crises lead to growth.

First, I regret that I resorted to name-calling when describing the previous tenant. ‘Renter from Hell’ and ‘Lucifer’ certainly represent how I felt about him, and still feel, from my judging self. But really, I don’t know him. I can’t say that he is truly evil. I can judge his actions as rude and inconsiderate, to say the least, but making sweeping claims about his character and shaming him publicly, even if anonymously, does not reflect my highest values. It would be fair to say that I was emotionally hijacked for a few days, fuming over how he desecrated my home. And we all know that we should not hit ‘Send,’ or ‘Publish,’ in that state of mind. Lesson learned.

If you have not watched Simon Sinek’s TED talks on leadership, or read his books, Start With Why and Leaders Eat Last, I highly recommend them. He is my new author-hero, sharing the golden bookshelf with Benjamin Zander and Rosamund Stone Zander, authors of my first favorite book, The Art of Possibility. Briefly, Sinek posits that leaders attract followers, and companies attract customers, when they are clear about their ‘why.’ In other words, they discern and exude their central purpose, their raison d’etre. When this is the case, the things they do, their whats, extend directly from the center where their core values live, and serve as tangible evidence for their why. He uses Apple as an example. We may think of Apple as a computer company, but Sinek asserts Apple’s why as ‘challenging the status quo.’ They revolutionized the computer industry with the graphic user interface, the music industry with ‘1000 songs in your pocket’ on your iPod, and the phone industry by dictating to the mobile phone carriers what the iPhone could do, rather than accepting the conventional, opposite practice. Computers, music devices, and phones, Sinek says, are Apple’s whats. They are the outputs of their why, and though disparate products, all align with Apple’s core values. Making great computers and phones is not an inspiring why. Challenging the status quo is. And people for whom that message resonates are the ones who will camp out overnight to be the first to get the next Apple product. They feel connected to the company and show loyalty.

For years now, I have used the phrase, “Live your best life every day” as a mantra in my work. This is what I aim to help people do, however they define it, and however they can achieve it. It’s my job to support them in their personal journeys. I try hard to apply it to myself, as well—what does my best life look like today? Best workdays in Chicago look very different from best vacation days in Colorado, and each day can be affected by myriad external and internal variables. But I find that when I can approach life in this way, newly open to possibility each morning, I feel liberated. I am free to redefine my best self, best day, best life, over and again. [You should know, however, that it is a constant struggle and I fall miserably short of this potential most days. But it’s a good practice to continue, and I think I’m getting better over time.] I started my career in a conventional primary care office. I spent five years in an integrative medicine practice, and now I do executive physicals and some concierge medicine. For a while I had a hard time reconciling this last step—it feels a little elitist and contrary to my usual liberal sensibilities. After digesting the Start With Why philosophy, though, I can confidently say that what I do now is entirely consistent with my core values.

Today I stand decisively at the intersection of Leadership and Health. My patients are leaders of their organizations, and it is my job to help them take care of themselves. Why? So they can better care for those they lead. By helping them live their best lives every day, they will role model this to their colleagues and staff, and empower those around them to do the same. How do I do this? By taking the time to know each patient as an individual, understanding their personal goals and aspirations. I collect objective data about their health and offer personalized recommendations, based on what I know aligns with their values. Today I happen to do it through executive physicals, but it’s what I have always done. I give presentations to colleagues on physician resilience, and I lead educational initiatives aimed at advancing professionalism and collaboration. This is my why—live my best life every day, and help others do the same, through our relationships.

Now I know how I must approach my rental property. It cannot be just another way to make money. It must be another what to my why. My reasons for keeping it must be consistent with my values and goals as a person, which must be the same as my goals as a physician, friend, spouse, parent, and landlord. Renting my home to a tenant is my contribution to their journey of self-actualization! Go ahead, laugh–it sounds completely whacky! And yet, approaching it this way clarifies all of my decisions and actions. As a landlord with the tenants’ best interests at heart, rather than simply calculating costs versus income, I will move swiftly and easily to repair or replace degenerating appliances and fixtures. I will take an interest in the tenants’ lives and check in with them frequently. I will monitor the upkeep of my property not just for myself, but for them. I will build the kind of trusting relationship that fulfills me in every other aspect of my life. The yield, I hope, will come in the form of respect and appreciation from the tenants, expressed in loving care of my home. You could see it as a manipulation, guilting them into cleaning up after themselves, I suppose. But it doesn’t feel like that. I know now that I want honestly to connect with my renters, to feel good about our relationship. Actions taken out of true caring are very different from mere transactions, and everybody feels it.

Before this last tenant, I never experienced this kind of drama and anguish over the apartment. But looking back, something about my relationships with renters felt distant and awkward, not like my other relationships. Now I know why, and it has to change. I have to be me in everything I do, including this. Some people will not want it. They will feel uncomfortable and see me as nosy and prying. Some patients don’t want a personal relationship with their doctor, either—they just want to have their cholesterol tested and their medications prescribed on time. I would not be a good fit for either of these groups, and the good news is they are free to not rent my home or choose me as their doctor. “People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it,” Simon Sinek says over and over. “The goal is to do business with the people who believe what you believe, not just the people who need what you have.” This sounds familiar: Seek the fellow lone nuts, the early adopters, the ones with whom my why resonates. If I can do that, no matter what happens, I can make a positive difference in the world, and attain peace for myself.

Blessings of the Renter from Hell

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“Please come right away, I cannot live here.” May*, the new tenant in our rental apartment, called Tuesday, pleading desperately. The previous tenant, let’s call him Lucifer*, had left the place in complete shambles, and she was overwhelmed. They had made arrangements directly that he would leave a few things in the apartment while transitioning to his new place. He told her it would be out of the way and ‘not affect your living space,’ and she could get the keys from the sub-letter. As they were both from China, May thought this was reasonable—help out your fellow countryman, out of courtesy. Since they had made their own transfer arrangements, my husband and I assumed he would prepare the apartment for the new tenant—clean up, basically. None of us could have imagined the wretched mess he would leave her when she arrived.

His stuff was everywhere—bookshelf crammed tight, closet fully hung with clothes. Dirty dishes and half-used remnants of ginger and garlic lay on the kitchen counter. A five foot-high pile of boxes and bags cluttered the far corner of the living room. The opposite corner housed a broken vacuum cleaner and another tangle of cables, trash, and more empty boxes. A vast array of shoes and slippers occupied seven square feet of living room floor. The hallway carpet had acquired a three inch border of decorative dirt on either side, and the kitchen floor looked as if someone had writhed on it after bathing in 5000 mile-old motor oil.

Lucifer’s kitchen

The more I looked the more offended and angry I felt. This had been our home for eight years. My best friend from college helped to install the hardwood floor with my husband when we first moved in, after hubs took out the old, gross, green carpet himself. We shared our hardest years of training here. I watched TV coverage of 9/11 while my husband was on call, hoping Chicago would not become another target. Hubs had laid the kitchen tile himself, freeing cherry hostages from the refrigerator for me every day because I was too pregnant to fit between the repositioned appliances. We lived out of the living room for three weeks and had new, plush carpet installed after the main water pipe burst behind the master closet—also while I was pregnant. It was our son’s first home, where not just his formative memories were made, but ours, as well. How could someone treat it like this? How did we let this happen?

On Wednesday I called my friends’ cleaning lady, Saint Anne*, who agreed to come Thursday. After 5 hours she could only make a small dent in the grime. She spent all day again on Friday, much of it on her hands and knees, sweating through her shirt and inhaling noxious fumes of the cleaning products she donated to the project. I brought lunch between errands and made arrangements for Stanley Steemer to come the next day. May stood by, still shocked and appalled at the conditions of her first home in the US. Saint Anne and I could both see the abject horror in her demeanor, wondering if she should stay another night or board the next flight back to China.

Saint Anne was a woman on a mission. She did not see this as just another cleaning job. She was contributing to the reclamation and restoration of my home. She was helping a poor, young student, new to this country, find her bearings in untenable conditions. She established a bond with both of us, instantly, through her dedication and unwavering commitment. I stand forever grateful to her for this, and will call upon her for any and all cleaning needs as long as I live.

I tried to reassure May that I would do whatever was necessary to make the place livable again. The stove was broken. The air conditioning unit had died. I found myself saying to her, “Please know, whatever I do, I do as if I were living here myself.” On Saturday I waited with her for Stanley Steemer to come, that tedious four hour service window. Saint Anne had done all of the heavy cleaning, GOD BLESS her, and there were still some stains on the kitchen walls. May and I found one pair of rubber gloves, each took one and a rag, and started to wipe things down together. It was the least I could do, to help her feel more comfortable and cared for.

She told me how rudely Lucifer had treated her on the phone, saying he would sue if she threw out any of his stuff, and interrupting her as if she were the nuisance for calling him on his vacation. We agreed that he had taken advantage of both of us, and we would look forward to having him out of our lives forever. We shared stories of growing up, and discussed the differences in lifestyle between America and China. We talked about respect, courtesy, and helping out your fellow human.

That’s when it dawned on me. Of course, it’s about relationships. Everything is. I let Lucifer trash my place because I saw my relationship with him as merely transactional. I never knew him as a person in the two years he destroyed my apartment; he was just ‘the tenant.’ He never knew me beyond the stranger to whom he paid rent. He had no idea that this was my home, and he had no reason to care. Granted, I think he is likely an exceptionally slovenly and oblivious individual, but still, I played a role in this mess.

Relationships take work to establish and maintain. I realized this week that this apartment is not merely a unit that we let out for extra cash. Our tenants are not just strangers who happen to live there and pay rent. The place is our home and the renters its caretakers. Beyond the terms of the rental agreement, if I really expect tenants to take care of my apartment, I have to give them a reason. They must know that I care about them, too.

On Friday I had offered to take May shopping, and invited her to my house for dinner. I wanted to make up for the horrible state of things, which I had a hand in creating. She politely declined. I sensed that she felt uncomfortable with the offer, despite her desperate and forlorn situation. Of course. Shopping and dinner are not things that tenants and landlords do together! But we can choose to define ourselves as more than this. Through this experience, I had started to see her as a little cousin. I felt compassion and empathy for her, and imagined how I would feel in her shoes. Our mutual mistreatment by Lucifer connected us.

By the time the Stanley Steemer guys had finished on Saturday, the place was not quite shining, but infinitely more pleasant and livable than just 48 hours before. She had told me about an upcoming conference gala, and we agreed she needed a dress, in addition to bedsheets and a box fan. We picked up my kids from their friends’ house, got dinner in the oven (she had her first shortcut cooking lesson—seasoned-chicken-thighs-over-frozen-vegie-bake with rice), and headed to Ross for a very successful, if brief, shopping trip. Dinner tasted great after all that work, and we had watermelon for dessert. She borrowed our box fan and took some leftovers to tide her over until the new stove arrives next week.

I made some mistakes in dealing with Lucifer these past two years. I paid the price this past week—several hundred dollars and a lot of time and energy. I also made two new friends, and gained important insights. We may think of landlord/tenant relationships as strictly transactional, and that may work in many cases. It failed this time, and it felt bad. Why not make a new friend if I have a chance, and why allow anyone I would not be friends with to live in my home? When it comes time to find a new tenant, now I know better how to look. I will meet people in person, and tell them the story of the apartment and how much it means to me. I will assess their sincerity in agreeing to treat it as their own. I will convey to them that I see myself and my place as contributing to their pursuit of their dreams. The new people may still trash it—this is always a risk. But at least I will know that I did my best to connect, and the potential human payoff from that makes me positively giddy with joy.

*Not their real names

Physician as Trainer

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“No way, are you kidding me?” I would have said, if asked to do uphill sprint intervals this time last year. I also would never have ridden a bike through traffic and then up a training hill (or ridden a bike at all, really—biking has always scared me), or tried walk/jog/running from the bottom to the top of Ryan Gulch Road in Silverthorne, Colorado, an 800 foot climb over 2.5 miles.

How is it then, that this summer, I did all of these things? I credit my relationship with my trainer, Melissa. I started seeing her in January, 2014. I had thought for a (long) while that I needed to start exercising again, but after 15 sedentary years and two pregnancies, I barely recognized my body or its capabilities. I thought I could train for a few months and be back in shape, doing all things I used to do.

Little did I know what lay ahead in the actual training. First I had to identify some dysfunctional movement patterns I had developed over the years (wait, what do you mean, ‘fire your glutes,’ I’m supposed to be able to do that?), and correct them before loading them with weights and speed. I had to accept how out of shape I actually was, and reconcile the long, uphill path to physical health. And I am not an unhealthy person! I have no chronic medical problems, sleep well, and take no medications. I experience minor aches and pains that are generally attributable and transient. But last year I was afraid to start an exercise program on my own—I knew I needed help.

The first few sessions were fantastic, full of learning and potential. Turns out you can learn to fire your butt muscles in a one hour session—gluteal amnesia can be cured! But as each meeting revealed yet another pattern to be corrected, I got discouraged. How can there be so many things wrong with me, and when can I work out for real, already? After our first interval training session I wound up on the floor, dizzy, nauseated, and disgusted with myself. Later, Melissa demonstrated 14kg kettle bell swings. She told me I would do them, too—yeah, right (smirk)!  And, over time: Turkish get-ups, first ‘naked’ and then with weights, TRX lifting, Rip Stick swinging, planking, running in Kangoo Jumps, jump roping, kettle bell swinging and snatching, hill training on a bike, and, finally, metabolic circuit training that really gets my heart rate up—without ending up on the floor—I have actually done it all.

Why is the relationship key? From the beginning, Melissa has made it safe for me to show up every week, however I’m feeling and whatever is happening. It’s okay to tell her that something we did last week caused me pain. If I feel apprehensive about something she wants me to try, I can say so. She does not judge me, look down on me, or belittle me for what I cannot (or will not) do. She also does not judge herself. That I have pain is not necessarily her fault. Neither is the fact that I push myself to the point of dizziness and nausea. She holds the space for me to bring my concerns, without blaming or getting defensive. She states her observations objectively, of both my movements and how my personality and attitude affect my training. I have a hard time pacing myself, and she helps me monitor for and manage my tendency toward overexertion.

She gives me permission to just bring what I got. We go from there, wherever it is, and see how far we get. I often surprise myself with what I can do! As a result, my confidence and motivation have dramatically increased. These days when she offers a new activity, I say, “Great, let’s try it out!” It’s okay to fail, if that’s what you want to call it, because I always learn something to apply next time. Through it all, I know she is there to coach and support me, without judgment, and always with love.

It takes time and practice to acquire new skills and habits—‘way more than I initially thought! But now I think differently—hills are challenges rather than enemies. I look forward to what I will be able to do next, including uphill sprint intervals at 9000 feet—maybe next time—this time I did them at 5700 feet.

Melissa helps me stay on course in training with knowledge, application, openness and compassion. I can do the same for my patients and their health. When I withhold judgment about patients’ physical and motivational limitations, I make it safe for them to bring their fears and aspirations to every visit. I can meet them where they are each time, and hold space for the inevitable roadblocks: medication side effects, obstacles to behavior change, complications of treatment. We can then find a way through together, because we both know we’re in it for the long haul. Physicians and trainers may have more in common than we think.