Happy Wednesday, Wise Owl Nation!

We are halfway through September, and are now reaching the end of the third quarter of the year! We're already 75% of the way through 2021.

It feels a little surreal that so much of 2021 has already passed us by. The concept of the passing of time during a pandemic is such a weird thing. Some days I feel like only 6-10 months have passed since Covid first reared its ugly head. And yet, it's already been 6-months since my first vaccine dose was given.

Time is a strange thing, and a lot of time can be wasted if we aren't constantly working to clean out our headspaces and let go of stuff we've been holding on to.

There's never a bad time to clean out the baggage and clutter that is in our minds. It is this thought and more that inspired this week's Wise Owl Wednesday.

This week I write about:

• The Importance of Letting Go
• The first stages of a fitness journey
• Balancing the current value of things and the future value of money

Let's get into it.

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

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🧠 Wisdom Tip(s) of The Week: The Importance of Letting Go

Human life is a quagmire of failure, success, pain, joy, and a struggle to achieve. With a life like that, there is inevitably going to be regret, trauma, and a natural tendency to hold on to memories, emotions, or even relationships that are no longer healthy.

I think this is why so many of us feel so tired when we reach the age of thirty, wondering why we're so old when we still feel like we're just getting started.

First of all, thirty isn't old anymore, but it can definitely feel old if we are still holding on to decades of baggage.

Eventually, our mental desks get cluttered, and the time comes for decluttering, in the form of letting go of things that don't propel us forward in life.

The more you hold onto things from your past, the less able you are to pick up new things in your present. Don't cripple your ability to grow and improve as a human by holding onto something from your past.

"If my hands are fully occupied in holding on to something, 

I can neither give nor receive." - Dorothee Sölle

This is a weekly newsletter, so I won't delve into this topic too deeply, but this idea is one of the most powerful ideas I've written about.

From a stoics perspective, I am always trying to "focus on what I can control, and let everything else go." It's a strategy that has worked wonders for me over the past 4-years and has likely saved me from a lot of PTSD.

To quote the wise and powerful Ted Lasso (such a great show) - "Be a Goldfish."

The idea here being that Goldfish have ten-second memories, so the failures and traumas of their little fish lives are quickly forgotten as they go about their short lives.

How could you benefit from letting go and forgetting some of your own mistakes?

💪🏻 Health Thought of The Week: The first stages of a fitness journey

As you all know, when I went to DragonCon I had an impactful conversation about fitness with my favorite Audiobook Narrator Travis Baldree. Travis was clearly many months into his own fitness journey and looked amazing. His consistency inspired me to kick my own fitness up another few notches.

No longer would I be content with just walking. I needed to get back into strength training and really focus on improving my physical health.

Well, I can proudly say that in the last five days I have worked out harder and more consistently than I have in the last three years or so.

In fact, on Monday evening I decided to be a good friend and go to a fitness class my friend Maria was teaching. It was a mock class in that she is still in training, but the workout still destroyed me.

Seriously. Look at my average heart rate over the 58-minute class. 😱

The workout is called Lagree, and it's a low impact, yet destructively efficient workout. As you can see by what it did to my cardio.

While this is great and all, I am now at the most precarious part of any fitness journey. I've started, had a few successes, feel pretty good, and now my initial motivation to workout has been satisfied.

I am now at the stage where it is easiest to quit. The stage where I can easily let myself get distracted by any number of things.

It's the stage I have quit a few times in the past, but because of those failures, I am self-aware of this critical stage.

So today I will do another strength workout that destroys my upper body.

Today I will choose to struggle so that the struggle to exercise in the future is less intense.

🤑 Wealth Thought of The Week: Balancing the Current Value of Things and the Future Value of Money

Whew, that subtitle is a mouthful, isn't it?

The concept I was trying to summarize is a phenomenon I constantly find myself struggling with.

The core question that crops up at least twice a month is "Should I buy this thing that feels important, or should I invest the money I would have spent on it?"

So I have to figure out the current value of a thing to me, versus the future value of the money, I would have spent on that thing.

I've wanted a sauna for five years now. Over those years the research on the benefits and efficacy of saunas has skyrocketed. There is a mountain of research showing that using a sauna multiple times a week not only makes you healthier, but it reduces all-cause mortality rates by like 40%.

I use the Sauna as an example because the sauna I have had my eye on for the last two years is $2,200.

I made the decision long ago that I want this sauna, so I have long since saved up the money for it, and that money is sitting in a checking account easily used. So why haven't I pulled the trigger and bought the Sauna?

Because I keep thinking about what that money could eventually be if it was invested.

This is flawed thinking.

The value of buying, installing and using the Sauna now and for years to come is dramatically more valuable than the compounding value of $2,200. For me at least.

Depending on where you are in life, that $2,200 could mean many different things to you. But I've spent multiple years saving for this damn sauna, so the time has come to pull the trigger.

Don't starve your present for a slightly more bountiful future. The future is never guaranteed, but the present is always is.

Of course, maintain smart personal finance habits. Spend less than you earn always. For large purchases, do what I did and save up to pay for it in cash, so it doesn't affect your month-to-month finances.

Ethereum Stats:

Total ETH burned - 297,000 ETH (or $1+ billion!!)

ETH burned in the last week - 57,500 ETH !!!! 😱

Avg ETH burn per minute (all-time) - 5.04 ETH/min

My favorite website for watching the ETH 🔥 is ultrasound.money.

Quote/Meme of the week:

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 4% interest on BTC, 4% interest on ETH, and a whopping 8% 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.