Happy Wednesday, Wise Owl Nation.

Some of the best advice I ever received went completely against everything I'd been taught up to that point in my life. It was I was told the difference between absolute time and relative time.

Not all minutes are created equal apparently.

At the time I was 21 years old (9 years ago) and thought that if I learned how to sleep only a few hours a night I would have a much better life. The idea was that the more time I spent awake, the more I could accomplish.

After a few months of this I would routinely find my heart racing wildly at random times, I would get drowsy in class, and the amount of speeding tickets I received dramatically increased.

A close friend of mine noticed my decline and asked me what the hell was going on. I told him about my theory on sleeping and he stared at me like I was the dumbest person he'd ever spoken with.

"Sure, you may get more absolute time back by not sleeping, but your relative time is destroyed. You ruin the quality of every waking minute when you don't get enough sleep. Being awake an extra few hours is useless if you are useless the entire time you're awake."

To me, at the time, this was the most unconventional wisdom I had ever heard. I still remember it to this day, and I doubt my friend remembers telling me this at all.

I've come across some unconventional wisdom in the past week, and it was awesome enough for me to dedicate an entire newsletter to this theme.

Also, there is no book of the month this month. I'm going to focus on improving the quality of the content in this email. I will still reference the books I am reading, but I will use those references to spice up the wisdom, health, and wealth tips each week.

Let's get into it.

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

_____________________________________

Was this email forwarded to you? 

Click here to subscribe

_____________________________________

Quote of the week:

Unconventional Wisdom Tip of the Week: You can be friends with people with different opinions than you

Seriously.

I'm not sure if you are aware of this, but there is a pretty intense election coming to an America near you in a few months. Tensions are going to increase, and families are going to scream at each other over the Thanksgiving dinner table.

So I would like to share with you some ancient wisdom. Even if someone is not a carbon copy of you, you can still be friends with them!

If you haven't read my newsletter on Friendship, here is an article that sums it up. Basically there are three types of friends. Friendships of Utility, friendships of pleasure, and friendships of the good.

“I don’t need a friend who changes when I change and who nods when I nod; my shadow does that much better.” — Plutarch

Friendships of the good are the most important ones. These are people that truly care about you and your well-being. They want you to succeed in life and find happiness through your own growth.

Friendships of the good do not give a f*ck about your race, religion, or political affiliation. They give a f*ck about you.

This used to be conventional wisdom, but the world has changed.

Let's not forget that in times of hardship, it's our community that matters the most.

Unconventional Health Tip of the Week: Breath Through Your Nose

Okay friends, I started reading another health book that is scaring the absolute shit out of me. It's also giving me a lot of hope though too. It's a book about breathing.

More importantly it is a book about how incredibly unhealthy it is to breath through your mouth! I had always heard the derogatory term "mouth breather" but never understood it. I still don't understand it, but now I know that it's 100% the wrong way to breath.

A brief list of reasons why breathing through your nose is better:

• your nose filters out bacteria and virus'
• your sinus cavity humidifies and temperature corrects all air that you breath in
• nitric oxide is released when you breath through your nose, which is essential in increasing circulation and delivering oxygen to cells.
• Nitric Oxide also heavily influences immune function, weight, circulation, mood, and sexual health
• breathing through your nose at night helps keep you from dehydrating yourself

There are SO many benefits it is ridiculous. I strongly recommend reading the book.

I've started trying to breath through my nose 100% of the time. For me, it is pretty easy to do during the day, but I really struggle to nose breath after I fall asleep.

So my friends, I have begun doing something you might find to be weird. I have begun...taping my mouth shut at night. **gasp**

It's true! I take a small bit of paper surgical tape and put it on the center of my lips. It is enough of a deterrent that my mouth doesn't accidentally open at night. I just started doing it, so I don't have a lot of sleep tracking data to share, but last night I got a LOT more REM sleep than I normally do.

Correlation? Causation? No clue, but it was nice not waking up with dry mouth.

Increase the size of your lungs to help make use of nose breathing:

The amount of oxygen you can bring into your body is directly related to your lung strength and capacity. The sooner you get into a practice of strengthening your lungs, the sooner your overall health will increase.

Ways to increase your lung capacity:

• walking for 30 minutes
• Cycling
• The "Five Tibetan Rites" (a fun stretching routine similar to yoga)
• Yoga
• basically any moderate exercise

Unconventional Health Tip Recap:

• breath through your nose
• tape your mouth shut at night (it's not that bad!)
• do things to increase the size of your lungs

Unconventional Wealth Tip of the Week: Retirement is awful

This is one of the cooler snippets of unconventional wisdom in my opinion because it really slapped me in the face and made me realize how much I didn't know about life.

In America in 2020 we are taught that old people retire and live out their old people days with all the money they've saved up across their long lives. We are told we just have to work for 40 years, contribute to our 401ks and all will be well. Then in 40 years we never have to work again! Wooo!

That is total bullshit. It doesn't even make sense really, when you think about it. This idea takes the best years of your life, devotes them to work, and then takes the frailest years of your life, and devotes it to leisure?

The older we get the more we need to stay active and engage our minds and body. Our brains and bones literally decay the less active we are. Retirement kills people. It is a tragic thought. Someone spends their entire lives working towards this dream of not working, and then if they live long enough to get there, the stagnation of stopping everything they are doing to sit around all day is lethal!

If you are ever lucky enough to become financially independent and no longer need to work a "day-job" you will find that you will still want to stay active and go out and do things.

Unconventional Financial Wisdom recap:

• Retirement when you are old is stupid
• Take more vacations when you are young and capable of enjoying them
• Sitting around doing nothing is nice for about a month and then it becomes awful
• Humans require growth and progress for happiness

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