Health, Wealth, and Happiness

April 14, 2023

"You can’t be a good value investor without being an independent thinker. You’re seeing valuations that the market is not appreciating, but it’s critical that you understand why the market isn’t seeing the value you do."

- Joel Greenblatt

In today's issue: What do Suze Orman, Jim Carrey, Oprah Winfrey, Dwayne Johnson, and Beyonce have in common?

They have all used positive affirmations to accomplish their goals.

Today we'll dig into the history of affirmations, as well as the science that shows 97% of us already use affirmations to accomplish life goals.

Here are different ways to use affirmations to accelerate your progress toward your financial dreams. Read on.

Must Read

Today's most important story for crypto investors.

$198M in Ethereum Staked to Network in Last 24 Hours

(Decrypt)

Despite fears that unlocking staking on Ethereum would cause a crash as ETH redemptions poured in, the opposite is happening. While there have been redemptions (which continue to outpace deposits), market participants remain bullish and have pushed the price of ETH near $2,100 (an eight-month high).

It also looks like once the initial wave of withdrawals is completed (there are currently over 874,000 ETH still slated to be withdrawn) that deposits will once again outpace withdrawals.

As reported by Decrypt, "Yesterday, there was even a brief moment in which deposits far outpaced withdrawals, with 27,000 ETH deposited and just 7,615 ETH withdrawn."

Outflows are slowing, and the spikes in inflows are likely from re-staking. Image via Dune Analytics.

Investor takeaway: It appears bullishness over Ethereum is going to continue. Unstaking is slowing, and many of the tokens unstaked by validators to bring their stake down to 32 ETH appear to be coming back into the staking pool. Over time, ETH staking should increase to similar levels as other PoS chains (50-60% versus 15.2% currently), which will help support ETH prices.

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New NFT Investor Scorecard: Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC)

Bored Ape Yacht Club is a collection of 10,000 unique NFTs featuring cartoon monkeys. By most metrics, BAYC is the most successful NFT art collection today. With over 170 different features, each Bored Ape is one of a kind, and grants exclusive community access to its owners.

Today's Premium exclusive looks into our analyst ratings using our NFT Scorecard, highlighting the opportunities and challenges of investing in the apes (if you can afford it).

Premium members: Download the Scorecard here and see how we rate BAYC as an NFT investment. Is there good potential, or should investors retire from the monkey business?

Not yet a Premium member? Sign up now and get access to our complete library of investor scorecards to help make better investment decisions.

The Power of Financial Affirmations

by John Hargrave

Money guru Suze Orman tells a storyof taking a job as a Merrill Lynch financial advisor in the 1980s. In that male-dominated industry, complete with power suits and BMWs, she felt terrified and unqualified.

She didn't have the right clothes or the money to buy them, so she charged $3,000 to her Macy’s credit card for a new wardrobe. She hid her 1967 Volvo station wagon on the street out of sight, constantly feeding the meter and racking up parking tickets.

In the midst of her doubt and insecurity, she came up with a new positive thought for herself:

“I am young, powerful and successful, producing at least $10,000 a month.”

She wasn’t young (almost 30), she wasn’t powerful (more like pitiful), and she wasn’t producing anything near $10,000 a month (that’s $38,000 today, or about $450,000 per year).

But she repeated the affirmation 25 times a day -- sometimes silently, sometimes screaming -- looking at herself in the mirror as she repeated it.

Day in, day out, 25 times a day.

After six months of this practice, things started to click. She soon began developing a media persona that was young, powerful, successful, and earning far more than $10,000 a month. She wrote ten consecutive New York Times bestsellers, with her hit The Suze Orman Show running on CNBC for over a decade. Today, estimates place her net worth between$25 million and $75 million.

I’ve simplified her long and winding career into a paragraph, but it’s clear theaffirmation was the accelerator.

Many other celebrities have successfully used positive affirmations to help them accelerate winning mindsets:

"I am the creator of my reality." – Jim Carrey

"I am capable of accomplishing anything I set my mind to." – Beyonce

"Everything is always working out for me." – Oprah Winfrey

"I am intelligent, strong, and capable." – Jennifer Aniston

"Success isn't always about greatness; it's about consistency. Consistent hard work gains success. Greatness will come." – Dwayne Johnson

Clearly, each of these celebrities had tons of talent and world-moving work ethics. They didn’t just lay in bed and think positive thoughts, but in each case, affirmations ignited their talents and exploded the work forward. Affirmations were the accelerator.

Affirmations are Accelerators

Some believe affirmations help “manifest” your dreams, but I think about it less magically and more logically... Affirmations prime your mind for success.

Anything we repeat to ourselves over long periods, good or bad, becomes part of our belief system.

Mental repetition carves new “grooves” into our brain, like digging rows in a garden to plant new seeds. Those seeds (the positive thoughts we want to cultivate) eventually take root and bear fruit.

You’ve heard the saying you “make your own luck,” but researchers are showing that’s literally the case. Dr. Christian Busch has studied those with a “serendipity mindset,” which simply means you find meaning in life’s everyday twists and turns.

Busch talks about “connecting the dots” between seemingly random events. That chance introduction to a recruiter is something you take seriously, which leads to a great career opportunity, or losing money on an investment causes you to rework your investing strategy, leading to far greater gains down the road.

Affirmations prime this kind of thinking. They help you "connect the dots" between your setbacks and the goals you’re trying to achieve. They make you resilient in the face of hardship, as with Oprah’s affirmation. A serendipity mindset means seeing obstacles as opportunities.

Affirmations also give you X-ray vision for new opportunities. We're swimming in opportunities every day, but it takes special kinds of outlooks to see them. Affirmations help you “connect the dots” between seemingly random ideas. For example, noticing that parking is easier to find could lead to an investment in Zoom (ZM), and that is also a serendipity mindset.

By helping us overcome obstacles and observe opportunities, affirmations are accelerators to our goals and dreams.

There’s also science behind them. A 2005 study shows positive self-talk can reduce stress. Also, a skeptical 2009 study that questioned the validity of affirmations found that people with higher self-esteem used positive affirmations more frequently. The more positive the self-esteem, the more helpful they found affirmations, suggesting a positive feedback loop.

Perhaps the most important finding was that 97% of respondents already used regular affirmations, leading the authors of the study to conclude, “The results confirm that positive self-statements are used commonly (by westerners) and are widely believed to be effective.”

So, if you’re not already using affirmations, why not? And if you are, why not more frequently?

Top 5 Affirmation Techniques

While positive self-talk has been encouraged for millennia by spiritual traditions like Buddhism, yoga, and Christianity, the modern form probably originated with the Stoics around 300 BCE. The Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius dropped this knowledge bomb, which bloggers are still pondering today:

"The things you think about determine the quality of your mind. Your soul takes on the color of your thoughts."

He then recommended a daily discipline of affirmations:

“Say to yourself in the early morning: I shall meet today ungrateful, violent, treacherous, envious, uncharitable men. All of these things have come upon them through ignorance of real good and ill.”

The French psychologist Émile Coué was the first to popularize affirmations for a global audience at the beginning of the 19^th century. He became famous for this phrase, which is still used today by motivational and self-help gurus:

“Every day, in every way, I am getting better and better.”

Authors like Norman Vincent Peale (The Power of Positive Thinking), Napoleon Hill (Think and Grow Rich), Mary Baker Eddy (founder of Christian Science), Louise Hay (You Can Heal Your Life), and Shakti Gawain (Creative Visualization) took the ball and ran with it through the 20^th century. They wrote extensively about the power of positive thinking, and affirmations often played central roles.

Gawain’s bestseller contains a library of affirmations from which you can pick and choose:

"I love doing my work, and I am richly rewarded, creatively and financially."
"I communicate clearly and effectively."
"I now have enough time, money, energy, and wisdom to accomplish all my desires."
"I am always in the right place at the right time, successfully engaged in the right activities."
"This is an abundant world, and there's plenty for all of us."

Many modern self-help speakers talk about the power of affirmations including Jack Canfield, Wayne Dyer, and Tony Robbins. They vary in their techniques, but here are the five major flavors:

Affirmations: This is the basic discipline, repeated daily (or more often) and usually first thing in the morning or just before bed. You can use a habit tracker app to help you stick to them every day. You can also challenge yourself to a six-month “streak.”

Written affirmations: You can also write down affirmations, anywhere from one to 25 times a day. I’m a big fan of this method, as the muscle movement and mental focus make it a more purposeful discipline than just saying it to yourself.

Visualizations: Some authors add imagination components, explaining that the more you can see yourself in the desired state (with the successful business, the healthy investment account, or the life partner), the better.

Emotions: Some recommend cultivating the feeling of achieving the goal. You feel yourself on a stage inspiring thousands of people. You bask in the sunshine of success. You work up an earth-moving desire to get there.

Vision boards: Finally, you can go artsy-craftsy and create a collage of all the things you'd like to be, have, give, or do. It’s easy to be skeptical, but many of those who have tried it swear it works.

These affirmation techniques can be stacked or swapped, and my suspicion is that it doesn’t really matter which ones you use. The most important thing is to do it consistently for the long term (daily for at least six months).

Affirmations for Investors

Most investors I talk to have no idea what they’re trying to achieve. They don’t have clear long-term goals or dollar figures, so it’s little surprise they never get there as there's no “there” there.

For investors, affirmations help accelerate your goals. The discipline of doing daily affirmations is that it helps you get specific. It helps you set concrete goals on what you want to achieve while understanding those goals may evolve over time.

What if your goals are too ambitious? Well, if you shoot for the stars, you may still land on the moon, but that’s a lot better than being stuck on Earth.

"Every day, I am growing more financially prosperous."
"The more I have, the more I have to give. The more I give, the more I receive and the happier I feel."
"I have a net worth of $___, investing in projects and people I am passionate about."
"I'm relaxed and centered. I have plenty of time and money for everything."
"I have a wonderful job with wonderful pay. I provide a wonderful service in a wonderful way."

Treat affirmations like experiments. It’s free to test them out on your own life, and there’s nothing to lose. You may have many incredible experiences to gain.

Health, wealth, and happiness,

John Hargrave

Publisher, Bitcoin Market Journal

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