Happy Wednesday, Wise Owl Nation!

For the first Wednesday in a long time, I had multiple different topics I wanted to discuss. Quite a lot has happened in the last week, and so, per usual, my mind has been all over the place.

For example, today is April 21st, which means that yesterday was the famous 4/20, or global cannabis appreciation day! I have quite a few opinions about cannabis, and have a few interesting stories about cannabis has dramatically helped people that I love. You can read one of those stories here.

In other news, a longtime athletic and mental role model of mine Ben Askren was knocked out in a celebrity boxing match on Saturday, April 17th. It sucked to watch, but Askren's thought process throughout the entire event was mature and impressive.

Coincidentally, an hour before Ben Askren was knocked out, Bitcoin dropped a whole 10%, which freaked out a lot of crypto-newbies.

So, instead of talking about these events in isolation, I am going to weave a little life lesson on the importance of setting up and establishing healthy boundaries, and how doing so can make you wiser, healthier, and much much wealthier.

Also, this is the song I can't stop listening to. I listened to it while writing, and I think it would be cool if you listened to it while reading.

Let's get into it.

You can find all past issues (including this one) here.

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🧠 Wisdom Focus Tip(s) of The Week: The power of boundaries

Setting boundaries is a powerful mental tool for creating the environment you want both inside your mind and in your life.

Boundaries are also a subject that I feel isn't talked about often enough, but is one of the most powerful mental tools you can use throughout all areas of your life.

Boundaries are important for:

• protecting the most valuable commodity you have - your time
• maintaining healthy relationships with friends and family
• establishing discipline in life
• minimizing distractions
• building and maintaining wealth

Let's quickly talk about Ben Askren. His mindset is the perfect example of the power of setting boundaries, and not letting a wild world overwhelm you, regardless of the circumstances.

A bit of context first - Ben Askren is an olympian, world champion wrestler, and world champion in multiple mixed-martial-arts promotions. He held the world championship titles in both Bellator and ONE Championship.

After April 17th, 2021 (last weekend) Ben has been virally knocked out in front of millions of people not once...but twice.

How humiliating right? Well, it doesn't phase Ben at all.

Ben Askren has established mature boundaries between himself and the opinions of the world.

He is grounded by what he loves:

• His wife and children
• His wrestling academy
• Disc Golf (seriously!)

He's said publicly many times that the worst thing that can happen to him in a fight is he suffers a humiliating defeat that changes his life in absolutely no way at all.

Ben doesn't pay attention to social media. He doesn't care what you or I think. He knows who he is and no one can shake that.

His boundaries are impenetrable, and because of that, he has had some truly wild opportunities in life.

🥑 Health Thoughts of The Week: Setting and respecting boundaries with food

To discuss boundaries without discussing boundaries around food with be a great sin in my opinion. I love food. I'd even argue that food loves me right back.

For many years in my twenties, I had no boundaries around food. I would eat whatever I felt like eating, whenever I felt like eating it. Consequences be damned.

And then, surprise surprise, I realized one day that I was overweight and unhealthy. Like many people, I tried to stop eating unhealthy foods by sheer force of will alone.

Yeah, that failed miserably. I had never established boundaries around food, and so I had developed quite a few terrible habits that made it almost impossible for me to just stop.

To finally get things under control I had to redefine how I thought about both myself and food and set up some boundaries. In the end, it was the boundary setting that created actual change.

First of all, I threw out all the tempting junk food I had in my house. That was a boundary I needed. My home is my safe space. It's where I am at my most vulnerable late at night when I am exhausted. It's not a good place for a pint of ice cream to exist.

So I removed all the temptations. Then, I tried to redefine how I thought about myself. No longer could I be a guy that "loves food." I needed to be a guy that "loves feeling well."

These days I still think of myself as a guy that loves food, but I am definitely a guy that minimizes the amount of junk food I keep at home. The boundary-setting had by far a larger impact.

Health boundaries I am working on establishing now:

• Ordering take-out food only once or twice a week
• If I do order take-out, it has to be on a day I have exercised
• Portion control (i.e. only two slices of pizza versus two whole pizzas 🍕)

💲 Wealth/Crypto Thoughts of The Week: Buy the dip and handling volatility

It would be remiss of me to talk crypto every week and avoid the volatility, especially when Bitcoin and Ethereum drop a lot in a short amount of time.

These "dips" as they are often referred to can be extremely scary, especially if you had the poor timing to buy your crypto right before it drops.

When this happens, you have to fall back on your own principles for investing. I have advocated for long-term buying and holding of both Bitcoin and Ethereum for over a year now on this newsletter. Because my core principle for investing in these two coins is to buy and hold for a long time, I establish a boundary for myself not to sell when the markets go down.

Check out this graphic I made for you all this morning:

On the left column, I show Bitcoin, on the right, I show Ethereum.

The first row is a view of the last week. Looks grim for both.

The second row shows the one-year view for both coins.

This view looks much less grim.

Remember that perspective matters and if you find the short-term overwhelming you, take a few steps backward and get a different perspective.

One major dip last week barely registers in the grander scheme of things.

Because I established the boundary of not selling BTC or ETH no matter what, these large swings quite literally do not affect me.

I didn't even learn about the dip until mid-day Saturday when I had friends messaging me freaking out.

I recommend you establish some boundaries for yourself.

Here are a few examples you can use to get started:

• Only check the price of Bitcoin or Ethereum once a day
• Establish a time-horizon for your investing and stick to it
• Automate your buying so you don't have to think about it. (I buy ETH automatically once a week on Saturday mornings)

Quote/Meme of the week:

Our quote this week is about establishing boundaries on your time! If you don't put up boundaries on your time, no one else will respect it.

Block time on your calendars and get comfortable saying no to people that try to overstep those boundaries.

Have a great week!

This concludes our issue this week, I hope it gave you some perspective or injected a little motivation into your life!

If it helped, let me know! I read every newsletter response I receive, and I absolutely love hearing from all of you. This newsletter is for you, so I need your help to make it as great as possible.

If you'd like to show me some love for writing all this free stuff, you can always buy me a coffee.

More Resources

I will be adding to this section over time as we find resources that will help you all.

• Check out the Wise Owl Store
• All Wise Healthy Wealthy Articles on Medium
• Start your own Sendfox Newsletter
• Free products to help you level up

Crypto Resources

The Bankless Podcast: This is a link to the bankless podcast on Spotify. Start from the very beginning and learn why I am so positive about the power of Crypto and Ethereum in particular. You can find the podcast easily on the internet, but I am linking to episode 1 on Spotify for your convenience.

Buy your first ETH or BTC:

• On Coinbase - this is the easiest starting place for the newest beginners
• On Gemini - Another great option founded by the Winklevoss brothers. They are based out of New York.
• On Kraken - Kraken has a bit of a harder user interface, but they already have ETH staking enabled with the push of a single button.

Earn interest on your crypto

• BlockFi - Currently, you can earn 6% interest on BTC, 5.25% interest on ETH, and a whopping 8.6% on stable coins like USDC. Use the referral code b09f24fd to support the newsletter.

Other tools:

• Argent Wallet - This is the best mobile wallet for Ethereum, Defi, and all things on the Ethereum network, including staking. They even have plans to implement Layer 2 to remove network fees.
• Ethhub - this is a weekly newsletter that lists out all the interesting news, articles, and tweets that have happened in Crypto that week. It's free and awesome.
• Ethdashboard - A simple dashboard to look at various metrics in the ethereum space. I mainly use this as a quick tool to check ETH gas fees.
• Cointracker - this is one of the better tools for tracking all of your various crypto across all of the various wallets, exchanges, etc. You can also use them to do your crypto taxes each year.
• Metamask - this is a crypto wallet that you can access from your browser and allows you to easily interact with blockchain apps online.