Don Kowalewski
Writer. Ad Sales and Marketing. Social Media Content Creator. Aeropress Coffee. Makes the best salsa in the world.
The Don Daily – What Successful People Do
I’ve spent the last three years, and actually the decade before that, reading about successful people, reading books by people who research what successful people do, and listening to audio books and Podcasts daily and . . . like many people like me who read, attend seminars, and listen to audio books and Podcasts . . . I’m not successful.
That’s difficult for anyone to say about themselves, but when I look at my life and my career, I’m not too proud to say it. I’m. Not. Successful.
“But, Don,” you say, “you’re being to hard on yourself.”
Am I?
Successful people exercise. Successful people eat healthy. Successful people wake early. Successful people have seven habits. Successful people have clear goals, written down, and achieve those goals. Successful people work hard. Successful people work long hours chasing their dreams. Successful people meditate daily. Successful people have clear priorities.
Now, let me ask you . . . am I being too hard on myself?
I work every day at my job from 8:00 a.m. until 5:30 p.m. That’s 9 1/2 hours. If I ask myself, Don, do you maximize those 9 1/2 hours? Guess what my answer would be? Ahem. Hardly.
I set my alarm every day for 5:15 a.m. In a seven day week, how many days do I pop outta bed, take the dog for a walk, and then come home and write (for myself) until 6:30 and the daily routine starts? Ahem. Hardly. Most often I lay in bed listening to a silly Podcast, dozing in and out of sleep until I absolutely have to get up at 6:30.
I know something about myself, if I do not eat anything after dinner, that I can pretty much lose weight super easy. Do I avoid snacks after 6:00 p.m.? Ahem. Hardly.
I know something else about myself. I am better, mentally, when I get 7+ hours of sleep. I almost always have a good day when I spend the time on my morning walk meditating while praying the Rosary (for a specific person, idea, or area of worry). See above. If I set my alarm for 5:15 a.m. and have admitted I hit the snooze until 6:15 a.m., and if I’m about to admit I sabotage my sleep by staying up too late …what do you think is the answer whether I mediate and pray daily.
I know I am highly effective when I get 7+ hours of sleep. So, with a wake-up time of 5:15, it would stand to reason I go to bed at 10:00 pm. Check my math, please. Do I go to bed at 10:00 p.m.? Ahem. Hardly.
So, again, I’m not defining “success” by my income (though, truth be told, it’s not where I wish it was), but by my ongoing battle to do simple things for myself that I tell myself I’m going to do.
If I ever really start doing the things that I know successful people do, I’ll have a better answer.
The Don Daily
Yesterday was All Souls Day and I was invited by my Aunt to attend an evening Mass with her where my Uncle Jerry would be called by name and we all would pray for his soul, again. I miss him. But having him in my life made me a better person, and while I prayed for his soul, I also thanked God for blessing my life and soul with his presence. It was difficult watching my Aunt cry and I felt a little guilty for feeling his presence and feeling lifted by his spirit. We lost my Uncle exactly nine months ago. There’s been plenty of times where I wish like crazy I could talk with him. And yet, sometimes I do feel he is talking to me. Like last night at Mass. I’ve been struggling with things . . . work . . . life . . . sleep . . . money . . . time-management. These are things I might’ve talked about with my Uncle Jerry. So when I prayed and reflected last night, I talked to God, Jesus, and my Uncle about those things, and I believe he spoke words into my brain. My brain, which too often races at a hundred miles per hour and can’t ever focus on anything …my brain became clear. Thoughts of my bank account, my sleep deprivation, my expanding waistline, my budgets at work, my budgets at home, the leaves in my gutters, my lack of exercise, my too-long to-do list, my sparse time spent with my kids, my marriage (the good and bad) . . . it all disappeared for a few moments.
I felt at peace. I felt like I felt when I was a young man without so many burdens and stresses and I could see my Uncle Jerry living a balanced life. Living a life that seemed joyful. Seeing him joyful reminded me, that’s where it all starts. It starts with joy.
Last night, my Uncle said to me, “if you miss me, remember the video you have of me? Watch it. Show it to your kids.”
And then a few hours later, my Aunt texted me that she watched the video, again. She and I didn’t compare notes. But we both did the exact same thing following the All Souls Mass.
I feel sorry for people who don’t believe that God, Jesus, Angels, spirits, and our loved ones speak to us. It’s easy to poo-poo such silliness, I guess, but it’s much nicer to open one’s heart, mind, eyes, and ears to the possibility.
I’ve said it before and will say it many times …we read in the Bible how God appears as a burning bush or parts the sky and speaks to us, but I believe it’s more simple than that. Burning bushes are rare. Mostly God, Jesus, Angels and our loved one whisper to us. Don’t disregard a random thought. It’s someone hoping you’ll hear them.
If you don’t know my Uncle Jerry, let me introduce you to him and his life, here: https://kaleidoscopicraygun.com/saint-jerry/
Or watch this…
And, yesterday, I reminded the world – yes, the entire world – that I’m completely over-connected on social media. If you need me anyplace other than this blog, here’s my things…
Twitter: http://twitter.com/donkowalewski
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LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/donkowalewski
Snapchat: donkowalewski
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The Don Daily
I’m gonna try something new. My Blog will have at least one post per day and I’ll call it The Don Daily. Who cares, right?
I like to read alotta Blogs. Sometimes I see a clever blog and check it every day and the author seems to be hilarious, or interesting, or really on top of their subject and then . . . poof. No more entries. Then, maybe weeks later or months later, there’s a new Blog entry that starts with, “hey, readers, sorry I’ve been missing in action . . . ” blah, blah, blah and I think, “oh, good. I’ve missed this guy (or gal).” A couple of days go by and, bam!!!! There’s a new blog entry on that blog. And then a week and nothing.
A month goes by.
Three months go by.
Finally, a new banner headline and a long explanation of “so many things going on” and “stay tuned” and then . . . more nothing.
Look over to the right side of this page and you’ll see long lists of Blogs and if you click on half of them, you’ll see the last entry made was in 2014 or 2015.
Go back and re-read my first sentence. “I’m going to try something new.” It would seem I’m in the club with the Bloggers who don’t blog consistently.
It’s OK. I know. I’m very hit and miss.
But … I’m going to try something new.
We all should try something new, especially if what we’re currently doing isn’t making us happy, successful, wealthy, inspired, respected, admired, or appreciated. I’m not even saying we all need to be millionaires and hold seminars. I’m saying, we need to enjoy each day and if we’re healthy and our families are healthy, and we have some friends, and are lucky enough to have shelter and three warm meals a day . . . the rest should be gravy.
I’m going to try something new. Daily. I’ve gotz two months left in 2016. Time to sprint to the finish line.
The Don Daily bullet points:
- I undid some burdens – paid my $18 library fine, transferred by backpack carry-all to my super nice leather brief-case, and charged my lossless FiiO high-resolution audio player because, while I am unashamed of my Podcast addiction, listening to good, quality music is something I really enjoy.
- Today I’m going to call them, “my Cubbies,” just to annoy people.
- As soon as this I finish writing this Blog entry, I’m going to spend every moment at work doing ONLY WORK things (and nothing personally) because I believe I’ll enjoy my mornings and evenings more while not thinking about work.
- I started today with the Darren Daily and it was really good (and it might’ve inspired this Blog entry, actually).
Have a great day! Don’t be afraid to “try something new.”
Twitter: http://twitter.com/donkowalewski
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Sleep is Important
Wanna know who my nemesis is? My ultimate rival? It’s Night-Time-Don. That guy is completely out to sabotage Morning-Don and Daytime-Don.
Let me tell you about Night-Time-Don. He eats like shit. He loves cookies, chips, beer, ice cream, and Halloween candy. And not just a little bit. Sometimes all of the above. Calories on top of calories, and sometimes more than one alcoholic drink and Night-Time-Don makes it impossible for Morning-Don to wake early and get the day started on the right foot.
Night-Time-Don is also like a spoiled child and refuses to go to bed. Not because he’s doing anything productive or is engrossed in a work project or an amazing book. Nope. Night-Time-Don stays up to watch mindless TV. To check Facebook. To watch sports. Games, in fact, that don’t even involve a team he roots for.
Night-Time-Don knows that Morning-Don and Daytime-Don need sleep to function at their peak performance levels. Morning-Don likes to wake up, drink some water. Put the dog on a leash. And then take a 1/2 hour power-walk. It’s good exercise for the dog and for Morning-Don and gets his juices flowing. He listens to a Podcast or, more often than that, he’ll meditate over the Rosary while walking. But when Night-Time-Don doesn’t head to bed until midnight(ish), well, Morning-Don can’t drag himself out of bed at 5 a.m. . . . nor 5:30 a.m. . . . and not even 6 a.m. Morning-Don, instead, hits the snooze and starts stressing about the day and cursing Nighttime-Don.
And don’t even get me started talking about Daytime-Don and how that guy curses the choices that Night-Time-Don makes and how disappointed he is in Morning-Don.
Daytime-Don, too often, finds himself tired, unfocused, and unable to cope with the tasks and demands of the day. Daytime-Don simply doesn’t function well on less than 7 hours of sleep. Well, you ask, why doesn’t Daytime-Don and Morning-Don agree to sleep-in until 6:30 or 7:00 a.m. Ahem. Don (all versions) has kids and a morning routine. Morning-Don needs to shower and be ready for the day by 6:55 a.m. when he wakes his kids and starts their 6:55 a.m. to 7:40 a.m. morning sprint out the door. That’s non-negotiable. OK. Yes. Morning-Don could set his alarm for 6:45, spring out of bed, handle the morning routine of his kids, and then at 7:40 when they leave (along with his wife), take a walk, shower, and then head to work, but that’s not realistic either. His work-day starts at 8:30 a.m. Morning-Don’s commute is 25-minutes. So that means if Don waits until 7:40 to get ready, he only has 25-minutes to shower and leave his house by 8:05 a.m.
Working backwards. Let’s say Night-Time-Don could live with an 11 o’clock bedtime. In order to get 7 hours of sleep, he would need to sleep straight through to 6:00 a.m. So, yes, that’s an option and will be taken under consideration. But understand this. Morning-Don, not by choice, has a bad habit of waking up at 5 a.m. anyway. He’s not sure why this is. It just is.
The point is this: when Nighttime-Don isn’t so dang selfish and heads to bed at 9:45 and spends some time reading or listening to a Podcast, and gets to sleep by 10:15 or 10:30, and then wakes up at 5:00 a.m., it has a profound impact on Morning-Don and Daytime-Don.
Wow. What a long blog entry. Nobody read it, I’m sure of that. But if they did, they know all I’m doing is beating myself up about the fact I stay up too late and then fail myself by neglecting my morning routine and lacking energy and focus throughout the day. Everything suffers when Don (all versions) neglect sleep, which is really neglecting his brain.
“Early to bed. Early to rise. Makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.” -Ben Franklin
How come nobody lives by that, anymore? You can’t Google search “morning routines” or “power of sleep” without reading about the benefits. Damn you, Night-Time-Don.
Focus. Focus. Focus. Organize. Organize. Organize.
Do you, like me, often feel like you bite off more than you can chew? How does a normal person manage it all?
I think it’s about focus and organization. It’s about being honest about how many hours exist in a day and in a week, and using them to your full advantage.
For example. Here I am at work at 8:03 a.m. and I’m firing off a quick blog entry. Should I have done this at home? Well, at home, I got up at 5:40 a.m., was out walking (with the dog) at 5:45 a.m. saying the Rosary until 6:10 a.m. Then it was a quick cuppa coffee, a shower, and then some morning chores (empty dishwasher, make breakfast for the kids, wake the kids, make my own breakfast, make my bed and pick-up my side of my bedroom, floss, and brush teeth).
I want to write my own book. I want to ghost-write another book. I wish I still had time to write for spunkybean. I want to chillax with my kids in the evenings and help them with homework. I like coaching their soccer teams. My billing at work isn’t where I would like it. I should be working 10- and 12-hour days to make up for that. I want, and need, 7 hours of sleep each night and would do better with 8-hours. I worry about EVERYTHING and, then, I wake up at 4:00 a.m. in a near panic.
It starts with focus.
To Agree or Disagree, Which Do I Notice?
I wonder if I notice quotes because they fit in with my thoughts at a certain time, or do I notice quotes because they conflict with my current state of mind? This is a bad example, but if I’m thinking, “I’m going to exercise more,” but I don’t really want to exercise more, subconsciously, will I be more apt to notice quotes about injury and fatigue?
I’m having trouble with time-management and getting things done. I want to do deep, meaningful work, but there’s too much work. I’m not “perfect” by any means, but I like my work to be quality. I like my work to impress others because I think that will have an impact on securing future work (and sales). It seems to be a formula that’s worked? Or has it?
Am I fooling myself that my attention to detail and creativity mean as much as I think they do?
So, I see quotes like . . .
… or . . .
… or . . .
Did Mark Cuban really say that?
Maybe this is why we have a Fox News and an MSNBC which, if you watch their biggest shows at 10 o’clock, pretty much report totally different news stories. And I watch the one that, at any particular moment, fits in to what I want to hear.
Where am I going with this? I’m questioning whether my current state of being, current financial situation, or current level of success, are reflective of the messages I listen to and notice, or do the messages I see and hear appeal to me because of where I’m at in my career, life, and age? It’s like this, and I use this analogy all the time. I worked for 15 years in jobs that required zero travel. I never noticed a commercial for a hotel or airline. Then, one day, I took a job where I’d travel for full weeks at a time, every other week, and suddenly, all I saw were ads for hotels, rental car companies, and airlines. And those commercials mattered to me. Then, I quit that job and lo and behold, I never notice hotel, rental car, or airline ads.
Which comes first? The chicken or the egg? The message or the state?
Kaizen Improvement of the Day: Get rid of all paper notes on my desk
#22Kill 22-Day Push-Up Challenge, Day 6
I missed a couple of days, but my daughter asked, “aren’t you still doing the push-up thing,” and I was like, yes, and so what if I missed a day or two. Right? I’m doing it to inspire others and maybe spread the word that many Veterans are struggling with depression and anxiety and we should be sensitive to that and help wherever we can. For goodness sake. They sacrificed alot to defend our wonderful way of life full of Wifi and cable and freedom and opportunity.
I’ll say it again, the fact that it’s #22Kill and we’re doing #22 push-ups, and this isn’t #12kill or #ZeroKill . . . well . . . it makes me said. My daughter joined the push-up fun. She did better than I thought she would. Go, Ada!
Kaizen Way, Day-2
Am I bragging? No. Do I hate writing where someone writes a question and then answers it in the next sentence. Yes, I do.
Everything about this article is me. How many times have I (have you?) started over, or made promises to myself, made a plan, started a journal, and said to my self, “this is it!”
It’s embarrassing I don’t even know the answer, but my start-over moments must number in the hundreds.
And how, with the hundreds of self-help books I’ve read, have I never heard about the Kaizen Way? It speaks to me. One little improvement daily. That’s it. I’ve been digging around the Internet this morning and it appears Robert Maurer is sorta the founding father of this movement (and I won’t hold this 2009 video against him, even though it looks like it was recorded in the mid-70s).
The bottom line – improve yourself a little (1%) each day. One thing. Day-1 I committed to always emptying the dishwasher before bed. Day-2, lay and meditate for 10-minutes after my first alarm goes off and the snooze alarm goes off. Use that time to breathe, meditate, and reflect but not try and fall back asleep. Get it? See how it works. Just two things in two days. Seems small, but that’s the point. I had a happy evening and I’m having a happy morning.
#22Kill 22-Day Push-Up Challenge, Day 5
I’m a little envious of my man H.F. who’s not only doing the #22Kill 22-Day Push-Up challenge, he’s doing it in a much more entertaining way than I am. He’s doing push-ups in the back of a moving pick-up truck. On the roof of a Ferrari. He’s on top of a wall. He’s doing it while tennis balls are launched towards him. But I guess, in the end, it’s all for the cause of bringing awareness to something that I wish never happened – on average, 22 Veterans take their own lives every day.
Below is as creative as I can be and it’s probably way to up-close and personal.
If it weren’t for the push-ups, what would I be doing with this blog? Usually I try to point out something interesting. I try to learn something new every day. Really, I do. Can you imagine if every day for 365 days I actually found something new and exciting, or added a good habit to my routine, or ended some bad habit or behavior? That would mean 365 new things or changes each year. 720 self-improvements over the course of two years. I’d make 4,000 discoveries or improvements over the next 11 years. Wow! That means, by the time I turn 53 years old, I’ll be 4,000x better than I am, today.
So, you ask, what did I learn, change, or fix, today? OK. Don’t laugh. I committed to loading the dishwasher and running it right after dinner and emptying it before I go to bed as part of my bedtime routine. My morning-self will thank my nighttime-self. Do you know who the morning-self and nighttime-self are? The nighttime-self is the enemy of the morning-self. Nighttime-self stays up too late, has a second or third beer, and doesn’t do anything productive. He’s lazy and selfish. Morning-self hates nighttime-self because when morning-self wakes up, he has to clean up after and undo all the damage nighttime-self did. Basically that’s my way of saying that I get made at myself in the morning when I wake up and I have to unload the dishwasher and it starts my day off in a bad mood. And when I wake up tired and can’t get outta bed at 5:15 because I stayed up until 11:30 or Midnight, it makes my whole day worse.
“The greatest danger occurs at the moment of victory.” -Napoleon’s warning
Back to the topic and my day-1 of 4,000-days of improvements. Today, I’m committing to doing the chore I hate doing before I got to bed each night to make my mornings better. I believe this (doing one thing daily) is called the Kaizen Way (1% better every day).
“Little strokes fell great oaks.” –Benjamin Franklin
And now …my push-ups.
“When you improve a little each day, eventually big things occur. When you improve conditioning a little each day, eventually you have a big improvement in conditioning. Not tomorrow, not the next day, but eventually a big gain is made. Don’t look for the big, quick improvement. Seek the small improvement one day at a time. That’s the only way it happens — and when it happens, it lasts.” —John Wooden
#22Kill 22-Day Push-Up Challenge, Day 4
Something occurred to me as I took a nice bike ride with my kids to a local park, this evening. It occurred to me that I can safely do things like that, and we can all enjoy that freedom and peace, because whenever our enemies threaten us, our military suits up, heads overseas, and kicks some ass. Save for some very limited and horrific tragedies (when we had to be completely blindsided by cowards), we live in a safe and free society.
I watch dumb reality TV. A minority is currently serving as President. A woman could very well be our next President. I can have any job I want, as can my wife, and while my opinions and religion may differ from many of my friends and neighbors, I’m allowed to have different opinions and my own religion, and you can have yours. It’s amazing. I’m lucky to live in thee U.S.A.
I get to be lucky, and safe, and watch dumb reality TV because our military keeps us safe. And when I hear they can’t handle being back on U.S. soil, can’t always find (or hold) jobs, and that an average of 22 Veterans take their own lives each day, I get mad and sad.
Maybe someday soon the #22Kill 22-push-up challenge will be the #0ZeroKill push-up challenge.
Here’s me with a little message and 22 more push-ups.
Don Kowalewski 