Day 2

Man, that was hard to wake up today..

Set alarm clock to 5.40 and went to sleep around 11.15 the day before… But I managed to get out of the bed somehow. I think I need to go to sleep earlier?

Drank a glass of filtered water with the lemon, washed my face and now feel a bit better, time to try some S.A.V.E.R.S

No, it’s not some fancy drug or something 🙂 It stands for Silence Affirmations Visualizations Reading and Scriping (Writing). I’ll probably skip Reading till my train ride to work, but will work on other components now. I need to come up with repeatable routine, so I can do it every day automatically (engineers know what I mean 🙂 )

By the way – still no wifi. I was thinking to adjust the outlet switch yesterday, so the router turns on around 5am, but then I figured I don’t really need internet until 6 or 7am and can just type in my text editor! See?? Smart, I know. Getting better every day! )

Anyways, time for me to come up with the routine. Later gents.

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6.04 and my son woke up and started screaming loud – had to cancel my moment of silence today

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6.54 all done for today. Had to resort to the basement to find my peace. Anyways, overall the process was a bit scrambled today, but I did some breathing, a bit of positive affirmations in front of the mirror (weird? I know.. 🙂 ) then did some push-ups and stuff.. All that stuff mostly is to earn my cold shower! Yep, I try to take cold showers in the morning for about a week now, feels good!

Finally I emerged from the basement with the smile on my face! What’s interesting is my kid seem to be much happier than I was, so there is still some work to do I guess 🙂 One step at a time, right? Proud of myself anyways, great job Sergey!

Now will go grab a bagel and coffee for my wife (since she is up early today as well thanks to Evan, my son) and then will need to figure out my own “healthy” breakfast.

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Wow, it’s so nice outside, almost noone is up, the bagel shop was empty and it’s 7am! That’s pretty cool.

Now time to do some more writing. Interestingly I’m more excited about writing than anything else, even though I don’t have anything specific on my mind so far.. Still trying to “find my voice”.

The goal is to keep record for myself, but I decided to keep it public in case someone want to follow and join my journey, plus put some more pressure on myself.

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On the recent Tony Robbins event I discovered that most people (including myself) always mention “lack of time” as the main excuse to achieve what the set out to do. My brother brings it up a lot, saying that he can’t even get enough sleep, not to mention 5am wakeup..

In my mind early routine the only way to go.. If you think about it, morning is the only time we can give to ourselves, it’s truly ours. As the day progresses, other things come in the way, work, problems, family etc..

I tried to find some time after work, but usually it’s also tough, because you need to sacrifice precious time with your family. I like the saying “No success can compensate failure at home”, don’t remember who said that, but it’s pretty powerful.

Early morning is the ONLY time to make things happen.

There is another problem though, “things happen” sound too broad and that was/is my problem for a while. Turns out I didn’t really know what “things” I need to focus on and what I really want, so I need to spend some time on that, since specific goals definition seem to be the key to everything else.

For now my main long term goal is to untie myself from the day job, as in my mind any job is a limiting factor event though I enjoy solving technical challenges it presents. Not that I want to do nothing, on contrary I’m willing to put extra effort but I need to know that my efforts could be potentially rewarded.

But to give up a job and stability, that’s a scary thing.. but has to be done..

Don’t let me fool you ( and myself ) I’ve been talking about leaving my job for years now and yet I recently made a switch to HBO.. why is that.. is this taking me further from my goals? My brother says he still can’t understand why I switched from FastCompany where I was number one guy running operations, defining my own tasks and schedule to HBO, where I need to start from scratch and prove myself again.. All good questions..

I think deep inside I felt like I stopped growing and needed new challenges. Later on I realized that grows == happiness.. Plus I never worked in a company that big and was curious to learn how to operate big teams and solve really big technical challenges.. in addition, it was hard to turn back when you went through three rounds of interviews..

The ultimate thinking that it will help me grow and achieve bigger goal, a step towards being fully on my own. But it could also complicate things for me as the more you have, the harder it’s to give it all up.. I’m sure you guys know what I’m talking about.

If I look deeper the main thing for me is to be more specific with “be my own boss 100% of the time” thing, I need to define what it means in $$ and how much do I need to live comfortably.

After some quick calculations we ( my wife and I ) came up with the number – we need about 15K a month ideally to continue the lifestyle that we currently have.

Now that I know this number, I can focus on it and create a plan, set it as a goal. I think that’s a good progress here. If you think about it, it’s just 15K/month – not a million, not 10 millions. I already have significant portion of that coming from my side business ( woman clothing store that I started as a student in Belarus ), but I need to make those income streams more consistent and regular.

Good good, getting somewhere. Now it’s time for me to wrap up and go to work. My reading time in the train is waiting for me, yay. Will continue reading Miracle Morning and will report on the progress and interesting findings tomorrow.

Cheers

p.s. My wife just said that I need to go to sleep earlier, my eyes look very tired. See, that is love my friends 🙂