Happy Wednesday, Wise Owl Nation!

What a weird week the last seven days have been.

I post on Wednesday mornings, so anything that happens later in the day must be recapped or brought up the following week.

Anytime something of global significance like this happens I have many thoughts, but after reflecting on those thoughts I tend to boil everything down to what I can control personally. The one thing I have more control of than anything else in life is myself.

And remember, we are not letting 2021 become "2020 won."

You can do that by making yourself a little bit better. You can choose not to hate and instead to work on yourself. You can choose to help others when they are in a tough spot, and you can choose to add value to the world.

So that is the focus of what we are talking about this week.

Be curious, prioritize your health, and add value to the world.

Read on and let's get into it.

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

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🧠 Wisdom Thought of The Week: Be Curious, Opportunities are Everywhere

I think a lot about motivation, productivity, excitement, and happiness in my own life. In life, I’ve found that there are a ton of subjects and topics I am really interested in.

I’ve also discovered that the more I learn about any given topic, the more I learn in general. What I mean by this is that there is overlapping wisdom in most subjects, sports, etc that can be applied in all areas of life.

There are also huge mental benefits to drawing connections between various subjects and topics to find the deeper truth.

For example - I’ve recently drawn a connection in my mind between Poker tournaments, war, and health.

I have a goal in 2021 of winning a poker tournament of 800 entrants or more, and this past weekend I got 20th place in two online tournaments that each had 900+ entrants. It’s the best I’ve ever done in a tournament of that size. What did I do differently that pertains to war and health?

I considered my chip stack as my army or as my life. In the past, I would make major decisions based purely on if I had a probable chance of winning. Basically, if I had a greater than 51% chance of winning it was a good bet.

That's wrong. That holds true in cash games where you can immediately buy back in, but in a tournament, once you’re out...you’re out. Once I die, I die. I don't get another shot at life. Thinking this way made me value my chips a lot more.

So I played more cautiously when the odds weren’t dramatically in my favor. I also noticed that many other players were not doing this, so by sitting back and letting other “armies” destroy themselves, I was able to advance much further in the tournament.

The moral of this little story is that there is wisdom in all things, and the way to make these little discoveries is to learn to be curious.

And now we quote Jame's Clear, author of Atomic Habits, for the second week in a row!

"There are nearly endless opportunities to improve each day and finding them largely boils down to being curious.

People who are better, in the end, are usually curious in the beginning." - James Clear

Sometimes I think that wisdom is simply:

• knowing how to get started when you feel like doing nothing
• listening when you feel like talking

Curiosity is a great place to start for both of the above.

It is much easier to get off your ass and get to work when you are excited and curious about the work you are doing.

It is also far easier to listen to someone speaking about a topic you're interested in than listening to someone talk about something you're not interested in.

How to become more curious:

1) Read widely - as I wrote above, the more you learn.. the more you learn. Wisdom = Knowledge * Experience. So read a wide range of topics.

One of the best places to start on a subject is the base principles. The original source material. A few internet searches can help you find the base material on any given subject.

2) Question everything - especially concepts or beliefs you've "always known were true."

3) Hold strong opinions, weakly - It is okay to have strong opinions. It is usually dangerous to hold strong opinions even when faced with overwhelming evidence that the opinion is a bad one.

You would be surprised at how many opinions you might hold based on flawed knowledge or understanding. You would be even more surprised at how many more truths connect in your mind when you are able to let go of flawed knowledge or concepts and accept knowledge that is closer to the truth.

4) Allow yourself to be humbled - Curious people make a ton of mistakes. No one is perfect, and those that seek to challenge their understanding are often faced with some humbling experiences. This will be uncomfortable, but the discomfort is growth happening.

5) You will never find the end, so keep going - No matter how close you think you have come to knowing everything, just know you are nowhere close. Humans just don't live long enough to ever come close to learning all there is to know about a subject. Even if you are the best in the world in a field or at a sport, all that means is that right now, at this moment, you might be a fraction closer to the end than anyone else.

You will be passed by eventually, and that is okay.

🥑 Health Thought of The Week: Your Health Matters Most

Your health is the most important area to focus on, especially if you haven't prioritized it in the past.

I could write an entire article about this concept. In fact, someday I might just do that.

Here is the basic concept of why your health is the most important thing you can improve this year.

The healthier you are, the better you will feel today, tomorrow, and every day after that.

• You will live longer
• Life will stay an adventure far longer
• You will feel a lot less pain in the long term
• Your chances of becoming wealthy go up
• It is far easier to stay healthy than it is to become healthy

In some ways this concept is ridiculously obvious, and yet despite how obvious it is, so many people around the globe ignore it to better enjoy the moment they are experiencing right now.

There is a famous proverb that exists in most languages and cultures that goes something like "youth is wasted on the young."

Well, the earlier in life you get your ass healthy, the longer you get to hold on to that youth. The longer you live, the wiser you will become.

So use this little spark of motivation to make a small change in your daily routine to start moving towards a healthier you. You already know what changes you can make, so finish reading this newsletter then go out and make a change for the better.

💲 Wealth Thought of The Week: Bitcoin and Ethereum dropped 15-20%, but so what?

In case you haven't been reading this far down into the newsletter, I can be a pretty huge advocate for Cryptocurrency on occasion.

Over the weekend all Cryptos took a tumble in price, and I feel like it's only fair that I bring this up just as often as I bring up the price skyrocketing. So this week's wealth thought is my own explanation for why you shouldn't care at all if BTC or ETH prices go down.

First, let's remind ourselves why we are interested in crypto in the first place.

• We are interested in the long-term wealth potential crypto offers by investing early and often
• We are very interested in the freedoms cryptocurrency provides its users in the form of not needing a bank or any institution to hold or manage our assets for us
• Crypto and ETH, in particular, has the ability to continue to grow and accumulate even without your involvement in the form of staking, liquidity providing, etc. Basically, your money can grow while you sleep.

None of the reasons above give a damn about the price of BTC or ETH in the short or mid-term.

What I think is happening is:

1. A lot of people are becoming wealthy and are desperately trying to hold onto that wealth by selling their crypto when they "think" it is at its highest
2. Whale investors (people with a shit ton of crypto) are manipulating the market in order to make more money for themselves. They are using the fact that crypto is tradable over the weekend to cause the price to start to drop when the stock markets are closed so that traditional investors freak out on Monday morning.

It's all a dramatic soap opera to those of us that are holding for the long term. When I get asked, "When are you looking to sell?" I take my answer from the bankless podcast.

"When I don't have to anymore."

This means that I plan on holding on to my crypto until it is easily spendable as crypto.

One day in the not so distant future we will be able to use a Visa Debit card connected to an Ethereum smart wallet to easily spend our crypto anywhere that the Visa network is accepted.

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:

I don't know who needs to hear this today, but it is okay to say no.

This is your one single life and you should not be spending it doing things you don't care about doing.

It is okay to say no.

Popularity only lasts so long, but respect can last forever.

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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