🦉 WoW #130 - Back to Basics 🦉

🤯 Basics of Increasing Wisdom

What does it mean to be wise?

To me wisdom is the ability to use all the knowledge and experience you’ve had in life to make the best decisions possible in any given moment.

The more life you’ve lived, the more knowledge you’ve actively sought out and learned, the wiser you will be.

As for failures? They are AWESOME.

Failures, mistakes, f*ck ups all teach us what not to do. They create powerful feedback loops we can learn from.

You’ve survived 100% of your worst days, and every single one of them has made you stronger.

Wisdom is listed first on this list because the more you learn and grow, the easier it becomes to become healthy and wealthy.

So what should you be doing to increase your wisdom score?

• Develop a Growth Mindset - when you approach life with the mindset of how you can grow, it can make even the most mundane tasks more interesting. Have to take out the trash? How can you improve the process of taking out the trash? Are there better places for the trashcans to be? etc. etc. etc.

• Cultivate Curiosity - Ask questions. Ask how to ask better questions. ChatGPT is a powerful tool for getting started at becoming better about being curious.

• Consume books/podcasts/newsletters like this to keep your mind constantly learning new information. Expand the topics you learn from because that will create a wider net for your brain to draw connections between.

• Get your hands dirty - When you take action and try to do something yourself you learn much faster.

• Teach others - When we teach others we reaffirm knowledge into our minds as well as get new experiences by teaching others.

• Challenge your beliefs and opinions regularly - You’d be surprised how much you can learn by letting yourself be open to new information.

💪🏼Basics of Increasing Health

Oh how I want to write for days and days on this subject!

But alas, today we are getting back to basics and I really don’t want these emails to be as long as book chapters each week.

So, what does it mean to be healthy? This is a question each of us need to answer for ourselves.

To me, to be healthy means that I am living a lifestyle that is constantly strengthening my mind and body. Mental health and physical health are intertwined so deeply that improving one will have an impact on the other.

What are the basics of improving your health score?

• Prioritize sleep. It’s the foundation of health. I cannot stress this enough. If you are not getting enough sleep at night your health is 100% suffering. I finished the book Sleep Smarter last week and it’s a reader friendly guide on improving your sleep. Strongly recommend.

• Lift heavy things. The more lean muscle we have on our bodies the slower we age. This is scientifically proven at this point. Cardio is great for getting in shape. Strength training is great for living longer and avoiding injury

• Stretch daily. Your mobility matters. One of the number one indicators of health is your ability to get up after falling down. For my younger readers this might seem wild, but if you don’t keep your body limber and strong, it will eventually become more and more difficult to get up on your own. Don’t let that happen to you.

• Eat nutritious food. Y’all I love pizza too. I love ice-cream even more than pizza, but my body needs better fuel to function properly. Veggies, lean protein, and most fruits are important fuel sources our bodies need. The fun part is that our bodies are amazingly adaptive. You crave what you eat the most. You can train yourself to crave healthy food. It just takes time and dedication. I believe in you.

Sleep, exercise, and quality food. That’s it.

🤑Basics of Increasing Wealth

I’m writing a deeper dive on building wealth for next week’s newsletter which will expand on the following concept.

There are only 4 ways to build wealth:

• Reduce expenses

• Increase Income

• Pay off debt

• Invest

To start off you need your income to be greater than your expenses.

Until you make more than you spend you can never build wealth.

Once you are earning more than you spend, then you have money left over with at the end of the month. This becomes the foundation of your future. The larger you can make this gap between your income and your expenses, the quicker you will grow your wealth.

As I wrote above your very first goal is to make sure that your spending is less than your income.

If you need to get multiple jobs to accomplish this then so be it. If you need to acquire skills and experience to get a higher paying job then do so. That is what I wrote about back in the wisdom section. Acquire knowledge and improve.

Do what you need to do to make your “gap of opportunity” as large as possible.

Your next step is to put away several months of expenses in a high-interest savings account. Currently these exist all over the place ranging from 4-6% APY. You do not want your emergency fund wasting away in a low-interest savings account with a large bank. I use and love Wealthfront, but have recently learned about a cool financial service company called Domain Money that I might try out.

The purpose putting your emergency/rainy day fund into a high interest savings account is so it can grow on its own every month.

Once you have a few months of expenses saved away, it is time to pay-off debt. Debt sucks and the interest on it eats away at your wealth every month you carry a balance. So don’t carry a balance longer than you absolutely have to.

I’ll cover various debt paydown strategies next week.

Finally, once you have strong savings and your high-interest debt is paid off, it now makes sense to invest. If you use Wealthfront like I do, you can automatically invest into a portfolio of index funds. I think Domain Money can do this as well, but I haven’t used it yet so I can’t say for sure.

In next week’s issue I will also go further into what makes an investment worthwhile.

Tools/Resources I am Playing With

This is a new section where I want to write about books I am reading, products I am trying out/testing, so that you all have a chance to try them out if any of them tickle your fancy.

These products will be affiliate links where possible, so just know that if you buy them from these links you are directly supporting me on this writing journey!

Books I have recently read or am currently reading:

• Sleep Smarter by Shawn Stevenson - I read this in a week. Last week in fact. The last sleep book I read was Why We Sleep? by Matthew Walker and that book scared me. This book covers similar material but is much more actionable and easier to get through. And less scary. Seriously.

• Atomic Habits - This will always be one of my favorite self-improvement books. This is my 4th read through of this masterpiece. James Clear is a talented writer and worked on Atomic Habits for many years before finally publishing it.

Products I am testing out:

• Smart Goggles by Therabody. This is the same company that made the Theragun, which I use every single day. They look like a sleep mask but are able to massage your eyes, brow, and temples! It also uses heat to help you relax. I bought this for my partner as a gift and have found myself using it to relax when I am decompressing after work. It’s a little pricey but after using this for a week or so I have found it to be well worth it. Put it on your Christmas list.