Happy Wednesday, Wise Owl Nation!

The theme of this week's newsletter is new beginnings.

It's a topic I've avoided the entire time I've been writing this newsletter, and it's a topic my fiance Megan has been campaigning for, for...oh about 52 weeks.

Speaking of 52 weeks, the Wise Owl Wednesday newsletter has been going now for a full year! For fifty-two straight weeks, I have been writing about how to become a wiser, healthier, and wealthier human.

So, on the one-year anniversary of this newsletter, I am finally ready to talk about "new beginnings." It's appropriate today for many other reasons beyond the one-year anniversary of WoW.

For one, it's a new year and one that has already been exhausting. And two, a new president of the United States of America is being inaugurated into office. So there is a literal new beginning for the country that I live in, and on this day I finally agree to write about the topic.

Also included in this week's issue, in the wealth section, is a small bit of thought around why the Crypto market is still extremely young, and investing in crypto is still not too late.

Read on and let's get into it.

P.s. - I've considered making a "Wise Owl Reading List" of all of the books I have read in my life that I think are worth reading to improve yourself. Is this something you all would be interested in? If so, reply to this email and let me know!

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

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🧠 Wisdom Thought of The Week: The many phases of life

When I write these newsletters I always go into them thinking "How can I add the most value with an appropriate amount of words?"

Then I tend to write a full article regardless. This week's topic is no exception, and the specific topic of "The Many Phases of Life" could in itself be an entire article. But, because I love you and value your time, I am going to condense my thoughts on this as much as possible.

In the US and other parts of the western world, there are pre-defined phases of life.

They are:

• Blissful childhood
• Teenage years of existential angst and poor emotional control
• The poor broke college years of 18-22
• Your post-college twenties spent in "The real world"
• Your thirties, where you "finally figure it all out"
• Your forties, where you kind of feel like a real adult
• The mid-life crisis era of your 50s and 60s where you have enough money to do things you wanted to do in your 20s and 30s.
• Retirement goes somewhere around here
• The elder years of your 70s and beyond, if you're lucky enough to make it this far

What do you think of these stages of life?

I think they're bullshit.

Look, we mature with damage, not years, and we accumulate damage by experiencing life, facing challenges, and learning from our own failures.

You can accumulate this damage much faster by simply taking action in life. You can offset the pain of a good portion of this damage by creating healthy habits and routines for yourself, and by adopting a stoic mindset.

You can, with small changes made today, start a new phase of your life of your choosing. Almost any of the phases listed above can be had out of order. Not the elder years, of course, you kind of have to grow old to experience that :P.

Most of the others are up to you though. In some ways, I feel like I've already been through part of the "mid-life crisis" phase of buying stuff I've "always wanted" that I may or may not need.

I plan to experience some form of retirement in my 30's when I become financially independent and am not reliant on gainful employment to pay my bills. I plan to write books, play poker, and continue my self-improvement journey without the added weight of a 40-hour workweek.

You can too. At any point in your life, no matter your age, you can make changes today that can move you into a better phase of your life.

As long as you're learning, growing, and taking action, no time is wasted.

This includes starting a new health phase, which I'll discuss briefly in the next section.

🥑 Health Thought of The Week: Start today, do not wait until tomorrow

Did you know that changing your diet, exercise, or sleeping habits doesn't have to start at the beginning of a new week?

It can start tomorrow. It can start today.

Hell, it can start right now, if you're really motivated.

Humans love to make shit up in their heads, and one of the most common thoughts follows the following format.

I need to change ____. I will start tomorrow.

This is a logical fallacy. Tomorrow never actually exists.

Tomorrow is a word that always describes a point in the future.

If you push off a task until tomorrow, you are already creating an additional barrier to get started.

The transition from tomorrow to today is never automatic. There is a lot of willpower involved with actually taking action on that task you put off.

Here's a little brain hack that has worked for me in the past. If I have to put something off until tomorrow, I add it to my google calendar and mentally say: "I will do this task on <enter the day of the week, day of the month, and month of the year, at this time.>"

For example: "I will write this week's WoW on Wednesday, January 20th at 6:30 am."

Why do I do it this way? Because that day of the week, of that month of the year, at that time of the day will absolutely come. Eventually "today" will also equal the day and time you set for yourself.

It sounds a little hokey, but trust me, it works. The word tomorrow is too ambiguous, so becoming explicit about exactly when you will do a task is important. Your brain will truly allocate that time towards that task.

So, with this little trick, make a change in your lifestyle. Schedule a 30-minute walk for yourself. Or schedule a time to cook a healthy meal. Hell, use it to set an earlier bedtime for yourself so you can finally get a full eight hours of sleep!

Start a new phase of your health today. You have the rest of the day to do it.

💲 Wealth Thought of The Week: A New Beginning for Ethereum

Ethereum hit an all-time high yesterday.

It will not take another three years to hit an all-time high again.

For years the primary arguments against Ethereum were:

1. Its inability to scale to millions of users
2. No hard cap on the amount of ETH in existence
3. The energy consumption required to secure the network (with mining)

These issues are all being addressed, and a fun little meme was recently created to showcase this.

The size of the waves represents improvements to Ethereum as well as future prices of ETH.

We are currently at the beginning of the Blue Wave.

ETH2 Phase 0 introduced Staking.

Staking solved the No.3 problem shown above.

It converts the security of the network from mining to staking, which converts the network security from an electricity wall to a money wall.

The red wave of "layer 2 scaling" is currently addressing the issue of ETH1 scaling, and the next phase of ETH2 will introduce a concept called sharding, which will increase the network's ability to scale by a factor of 64.

But my personal favorite wave...the green wave representing EIP-1559 has yet to come.

EIP-1559 addresses the biggest critique of Ethereum, the lack of a hard cap on the total supply of ETH.

Bitcoin thinks it is the best because there can only be 21,000,000 BTC.

EIP-1559 stands for "Ethereum Improvement Proposal number 1559."

This will be a software update to Ethereum that will change the way that fees work.

Right now, to send a transaction on the Ethereum network you have to pay a fee. Normally this fee is small, but when the network gets congested, the fee can rise dramatically.

EIP-1559 will burn the ETH used to pay this fee, removing it permanently from the network.

This means that, theoretically, more ETH could be removed from the system than added, reducing the total number of ETH available.

ETH is required to transact on the network so it will always be in demand. Less ETH available means a lower supply.

A lower supply paired with a constant demand will force the price of ETH to go up.

Keep in mind that staking requires ETH to be locked up, removing it from the supply.

Basically, what I am saying is that ETH at a price of $1400 right now is still cheap. We are still in the early days of ETH.

You are not late to the party. You will not be buying ETH at its highest point. Even if ETH goes down tomorrow, the EIP software upgrades will drive the price back up as the Economic Policy of the protocol works its magic.

I am not a financial advisor and this is not financial advice, but these are my honest thoughts, and I have been buying Ethereum for years based on the principles I have mentioned above.

I put my money where my mouth is, and I desperately want the people that care about what I have to say to know about this stuff before it becomes mainstream.

I have no plans to ever sell my ETH back to US Dollars.

As I've said before my long-term plan is:

• Grow my ETH holdings
• Stake my ETH to earn more ETH
• One day directly spend the ETH earned from staking to cover all of my expenses

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.

BlockFi - Earn interest on your crypto. Currently, you can earn 6% interest on BTC, 5.25% interest on ETH, and a whopping 8.6% on stablecoins like USDC.

Use the referral code b09f24fd to support the newsletter.

I've earned thousands of dollars (in crypto) using blockfi the last few years.

Quote of the week:

But remember, "older" does not have to mean "old."

So hold on to your passions, work your ass off to learn and grow, and eventually, you will become the best person to best experience those passions.

I had dreams of winning poker tournaments when I was a teenager, but it has taken me an additional 15 years to learn how to learn and play poker. Now I must continue to work and learn to make that dream a reality.

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.

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