Happy Wednesday, Wise Owl Nation!

Welcome to November, my friends!

I live in Texas, so I love the "winter" months when everything cools off.

I want to thank all of you that continue to read this newsletter on a weekly basis. I know it can sometimes feel random, but that is how growth works in my experience. No matter how you try to intentionally grow, there are always unintended learnings and insights along the way.

That's a part of being human; a great big messy journey through life.

This week I write about emotional self-control, washing your face, and the truth about making your first million dollars (maybe I should have put this in the title?).

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: Increase Your Emotional Reaction Time

One of the areas of my mental health I am working on right now is the art of increasing the amount of time it takes before I react to something.

You know how you can always think of the best comeback line or the best response to a tough question after the fact? You can do this because your body and mind are not in a state of hyper-awareness. Your mind and body are almost always more relaxed when you come up with the perfect response.

When we immediately react to something without taking the time to step back and think we are prone to making huge mistakes.

In the game of life, there are no bigger gambles than impulse decisions or impulse reactions.

So, lately, I have been trying to take a step back and think when something intense happens to me. It is very difficult, but I am starting to find some success.

If I am able to separate myself from the immediacy of a moment, I can go back to stoic principles and focus on what I can control.

Meditation helps train this muscle. The act of realizing my mind has wandered, and then refocusing on my breathing over and over again trains my mind to become self-aware of an escalating emotion.

I've saved myself tens of thousands of dollars in the investment world by not panic selling or panic buying when the market goes crazy. I take a step back and think about "why is this happening?"

I'm constantly trying to train my mind to be disciplined in the face of intense situations.

🥑 Health Thought of The Week: Wash your face

This is kind of a random section topic, but hear me out.

Our minds respond really well to small victories, especially if they happen earlier in the day. A classic example of this is making your bed. When you make your bed you create a little more order in your world. You start the day off with a small victory and that momentum can really change the course of your entire day.

Another example of this, that I have very recently discovered, is the act of washing your face in the morning and evening.

In a pandemic world where so many of us still work remotely, personal hygiene is really important. What is especially important is feeling good about how I look, since I am going to be on video calls most of the day.

I noticed a few weeks ago that my face was starting to always feel dry, regardless of how much water I drink. It's been easy for me to realize this since I've been drinking a lot more water consistently for the past two weeks.

So a few days ago I did a little research on a proper men's face washing protocol. That's how nerdy I am, friends. I researched a face washing protocol.

Anyway, I found a simple one that gets the job done, and WOW. I'm not sure my face looks much better, but it feels better. The psychological win of not having a dry feeling face is awesome.

It's a silly, borderline dumb thing to discover, but it's made more of a difference in my overall mood than exercise has, so I am obligated to share this with you all.

🤑 Wealth Thought of The Week: Your first $1,000,000

If you follow the wealth-building steps I have outlined before, you will, given enough time, amass a net worth of $1,000,000.

To many of you, this point in life will be a memorable one, and for some of you, you've already hit this point.

As crypto continues to surge (yay ETH hitting $4,600 yesterday) this is a subject I have started to consider more and more. I am also fortunate enough to have made many friends that have achieved this milestone and have spoken with them about how it feels.

What is the most common response I have gotten?

It seems to always be some variation of the following paraphrased quotes:

"The first million doesn't end up mattering. It's a point of pride, but it doesn't change your life. A millionaire is only someone who can keep a million. Only when you make your second million do you get to start having some fun with it."

"It's a surreal moment, knowing that you've achieved something many people dream of, but it's also a sobering moment. You don't even feel like you can touch it because the temptation to spend it is really high. Your lifestyle shouldn't change. You just now have an additional source of income in the form of dividends and other returns."

I found this to be pretty interesting, and honestly, it made a lot of sense to me.

Regardless of how much crypto/other investments I have I can't really touch them.

Remember, my plan is to stake all of my Ethereum and use the staking rewards to cover my monthly expenses. That means I don't spend any of the ETH I have accumulated over the years.

In this regard, that ETH is just an engine for producing weekly/monthly/yearly income. It is an asset that works in my favor, but not really spendable money.

Additional thoughts

This realization that your first million probably won't be spendable makes your personal finance strategy all the more important.

Remember, you build wealth fastest by creating as large of a gap of opportunity as you can.

So your focal points should remain with the following:

• Reduce your expenses
• Increase your income

If you can do this, maintain this, and remain this way even when you become a millionaire, your "fun money" will dramatically go up.

For example, let's say my ETH staking returns come out to $5,000 a month.

Now let's say I stay at my salaried job for an extra year or two.

If I use the crypto money to pay my bills, I can use the job money for whatever I want.

This is why having multiple streams of income is so powerful.

Your investment returns are just one income stream.

Build more of them if you want to have more spending options.

Regardless, if you get to this point, congratulations on creating generational wealth. Because that 1MM will be producing income each month for far longer than you will continue to live.

Ethereum Stats:

Total ETH burned - 745,000 ETH (or $2.5+ billion!!)

ETH burned in the last week - 106,000 ETH !!!! 😱

Avg ETH burn per minute (all-time) - 5.75 ETH/min

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

Quote/Meme of the week:

A simple reminder that whatever you're going through be it good or bad, will eventually change.

Don't focus too much on it, and instead focus on the present, on what you can control, and on being grateful for just being alive to experience it.

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 4.5% interest on BTC, 5% interest on ETH, and a whopping 8.25% 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.