If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is why my wife needed a lung transplant.

That answer is simple: she was dealt an unfair hand at this game called life.

The other thing you’ll probably want to know are the non-simple answers, the questions everyone thinks but are too polite to ask when they see a 25-year-old on oxygen: *was she sick? did she smoke? how long has she been on the list?*

Yes. Absolutely not. Two years.

My wife ~~has~~ had pulmonary fibrosis. A rare disease that, over time, scars the lungs. Scarring on any organ is bad, but especially the lungs. The scarring makes it hard to breathe and stops the lungs from doing their job (putting oxygen in the bloodstream and throwing out carbon dioxide).

But all that is over now because she had a lung transplant.

It’s crazy to look at her walking without oxygen. She’s been in a hospital bed for three weeks, but she already looks stronger than she was before. *Is this normal?* *How did we figure out how to do this?* *May God bless the donor’s family.*

I’m terrified. Transplants don’t last forever. Sure, there are stories of people who had a transplant 50 years ago and are climbing Mount Everest and running marathons, but those are outliers. I can’t expect that to happen to us. It’s like buying a lottery ticket and thinking *I’m going to win this because Cathleen in Indiana won a billion dollars last week.* Most lung transplants, we’ve been told, last about six years.

*Another clock on my wife’s life – and our relationship – great.*

I don’t want to think about that all the time, but it’s hard not to. I’ll be 29, and she 31 in six years – that’s not very old! You’re tempted to do everything you possibly can now, but the road to recovery is long and full of potholes and speed bumps. Weekly check-ins with Stanford, 13 different pills and potions to take twice a day, some to prevent infection, others to prevent rejection.

*Did we just trade one handicap for another?*

I don’t think so.

Actually, definitely not. Sure, there are a lot of medicines, but being able to walk around a shopping center on a Saturday morning (without oxygen), coffee in one hand and the leash to our dog in another: priceless.

People would ask us before, “Where do you want to go after transplant?” I’d always say London. I’ve never been. I thought the extravagant trip after transplant was what getting it was all about. *We’re off the leash! Let’s go see the world, take a cruise, visit the ocean, buy a house!*

All those things sound fun – and probably are – but that’s not what transplant is about. I mean, it’s okay to celebrate – we *should* celebrate – but my wife didn’t get new lungs so we can galavant around Europe. My wife got new lungs so she could *live.*

Like the lesson most Hallmark movies try to teach, life after transplant is about enjoying and experiencing the little things in life. It’s about being able to hold hands as we walk down the street without curious on-lookers wondering why a young woman is wearing oxygen. It’s about being able to spend the night at my parents’ house in the mountains since the thin air isn’t a problem anymore. It’s about the evenings spent chasing our dog in the field as the sun sinks behind the hills. It’s about being able to kiss my wife goodbye without tasting plastic from her nasal cannula. It’s about no longer having to worry if she should hang out with friends or rest because she won’t feel well if she pushes herself too hard. It’s about being able to see and enjoy family in other parts of the country.

It’s about the little moments. Those that would be forgettable if my wife hadn’t been dealt the unfair hand she had. But that’s the purpose of trials in life, to make the triumphs that much sweeter.

It’s about the moments in life when I look at my beautiful wife and think, I love you. I love this. It’s about being able to live out (and enjoy) every day for what it offers, not what it doesn’t. It’s about taking a deep breath in (literally) and thinking *this. is. living.*

Transplant

For the past four years, I’ve gotten up at 5:00 am on most work days. For the past week, my wake-up call has been closer to 4:00 am.

Am I crazy? Why do I do this?

No, I’m not crazy. The only reason I can do this consistently is because I go to bed at 9:00 pm every night. I’m not a night owl and I hate being out late.

I’m also not getting too many extra hours of productivity in during the day, so this isn’t hustle culture advice. Someone who wakes up at 8:00 am and works until midnight every night has the same amount of working hours that I do.

So…increased productivity isn’t the point.

**I do it because there’s no better way to conquer my inner demons than by waking up at an ungodly hour and saying, “I won today.”** I know that sounds cheesy, but it’s true.

I like how Jocko Willink famously put it: “Discipline equals freedom.”

When I wake up early, I have the freedom to choose what to work on, what to read, and who I want to become. I have the freedom to make myself 1% every day between the hours of 5:00 am and 7:00 am.

Starting my day off with a win makes the rest of the day suck less. No matter how tedious the project I’m working on is or how much Resistance is fighting me from writing or filming a video, nothing compares to how hard it is to get out of a warm bed (especially if your dog is cuddled up next to you). Doing so everyday gives me enough confidence to create, put myself out there, and say, “I can do this.”

Though productivity isn’t *the main* factor, it is **a** factor. Getting two solid hours of work in before 7:00 am makes me feel like I rule the world. It also shifts the spectrum of how bad a day can get towards the positive end. No matter what goes on in a day, if I get two hours of writing, reading, or video editing done in the morning, the worst my day is going to be is just okay.

I’ve found the hardest part about this is having enough patience to let the results of one morning compound into two and three and four and 365 mornings that all build off of each other.

If I’m working on a big project, I often won’t see “results” for a month or two. After a few weeks of chipping away at a big goal and not feeling any progress, it becomes much harder to convince myself to jump out of bed and get to work.

The trick to dealing with this is making sure there are enough small wins or “level ups” throughout the journey. Often this can be sharing what I’m doing on Twitter and sparking a conversation, or just reflecting back on where I was before I started to put some perspective on what I’ve accomplished.

On the ******really****** hard days, I remind myself of this Chinese proverb:

> No man who rises before dawn 365 days a year **fails to make his family rich.**
> 

Rich financially, sure, but also rich mentally and physically. When I wake up early to read, write, and workout, I’m my best self. Being in that position allows me to be my best self for my family, friends, and everyone else.

Why I Wake Up at 5:00 am

Are kind acts done for selfish reasons still considered kind?

I'm not sure...but there's a reason I'm asking.

I have a rule that whenever someone asks to borrow one of my books, I just buy them their own copy. I do this because:

1.  I doubt I'll ever get them back. And also because there are personal marginalia in most of them that contain my deepest secrets and I don't want anyone reading those.

2.  But I also want the person to go on a journey with the book, much like I did. That's hard to do if you can't write in it, are on a time crunch to get through the book and give it back, or if you're constantly seeing passages marked up and thinking *I wonder why they liked this paragraph so much?*

Someone recently asked to borrow a copy of a book that has impacted greatly: *Einstein: His Life and Universe* by Walter Isaacson (and yes, I winced a little bit when the person asked to just bring my copy over the next time I see them lol).

Like I always do, I ordered their own copy and wrote a note in the cover. Here's what I said:

> Exploring Einstein's life and universe lead me to think about the world in a whole new way. Rather than seeing it as something fixed, I realized it was malleable, changing and full of endless curiosities--and not one of them too small to wonder about.
>
> Eisenhower said it best when he said there are few who contributed as much as Einstein did to the abundant growth in knowledge of the world in the 20th Century, yet not other who was more modest in the possession of power that is knowledge.
>
> I think that's why this booked touched me so much, for I finally understood the great benefit of knowledge for knowledge's sake; for scratching that itch that makes you think, "I wonder how that works."
>
> I hope your eyes are opened ever wider to the beauty of this world and the knowledge it contains, as mine were.
>
> With love, wonder, and curiosity,
> Dalton.

So, is this still considered a kind act, even though the motives are half selfish and half selfless?

P.S. *Einstein* really was amazing. If you're curious to find out more, you can [read my notes on it here](https://www.dltn.io/book-notes/einstein-his-life-and-universe).