2/24/23: How We'll Finally Win the War on Drugs
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Announcer: This is The Truth About Your Future with Ric Edelman. Brought to you by Global X ETFs. Dedicated to providing investors with unexplored, intelligent solutions. And by Invesco QQQ, a fund that allows you to access the innovators of the NASDAQ 100. Invesco.com/QQQ. Ric Edelman: It's Friday, February 24th.
Today, I want to talk with you about decriminalizing drugs. I'm not talking about marijuana. That's already decriminalized or outright legal in dozens of states.
No, I'm talking about us legalizing cocaine. Cocaine? Sound byte: When? All round my brain. Take your cells will dig your brains. She don't like to go, but she run.
Cocaine. Ric Edelman: I know it sounds crazy. Drug addiction costs this country $600 billion a year, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse. And drug addicts are responsible for a massive portion of our nation's crime.
75% of those in treatment for a substance abuse disorder say they've committed assault - they've mugged someone, they've used a weapon to attack someone, or they committed some other violent crime. Government statistics show that alcohol and drugs are involved in 60% of domestic abuse cases. They cause 90,000 deaths a year worldwide.
More than half the people who abuse their elderly parents are addicts or alcoholics. And every year, 300,000 victims of violence say their attackers were under the influence of alcohol. And alcohol is involved in 32% of all murders in the US. 60% of the people who get arrested test positive for illicit drugs or alcohol. It's no surprise that 80% of prison inmates abuse drugs or alcohol.
Half of inmates are clinically addicted. And after they get released, 80% of them commit crimes all over again. 95% of them get sent back to prison. Sound byte: Back where you started.
Bad boys, bad boys. What are you going to do? What are you going to do when they come for you? Ric Edelman: But here's the thing, people who have drug or alcohol addictions are not evil people. They themselves are victims. They didn't choose to become an alcoholic or a drug addict. These are desperate, scared individuals.
25% of them commit suicide. Yeah, you're 14 times more likely to kill yourself if you abuse drugs or alcohol than the rest of the population. Yeah, more than 50% of suicides are by people who have dependency on drugs or alcohol. 70% of teenage suicides are associated with drug and alcohol use. I'm not saying that the victims of the crimes that addicts commit aren't victims.
They certainly are. I'm just saying that these criminals are victims, too. It's not good guy versus bad guy. They're all good guys. We've had a war on drugs for 52 years.
It was 1971 when President Richard Nixon created the war on drugs. America's public enemy number one in the United States is drug abuse that led to the creation of the DEA, the Drug Enforcement Administration. We were still in Vietnam, and according to one report at the time, 15% of US soldiers in Vietnam were addicted to heroin. Has the situation gotten any better? Are we now winning the war on drugs? I don't think so.
20 million US adults have a substance use disorder today. Like I said, people with drug problems are pretty likely to get arrested. If you get convicted of a drug offense, in a lot of states, you don't just go to jail, you lose your driver's license which means when you get out of jail, you can't drive.
You lose your professional licenses, which means you can't work. You lose your eligibility for food stamps, which means you can't eat. You lose your eligibility for public housing, which means you have nowhere to live. And you lose your ability to vote, which means you can't elect people who are willing to change the law. There's also pretty strong evidence that there's racism going on in the war on drugs. Ric Edelman: Blacks are 16% of the population, 13% of drug users, according to national data.
But black drug users are 35% of drug arrests, 55% of convictions, and 74% of those who are sent to prison for drug crimes. Relative to the proportion of the population, blacks are 13 times more likely than other races to wind up in prison. Clearly, something is wrong with this war on drugs. And it's not just blacks that have something wrong going on. In 2021, 108,000 people died in the US from drug overdose, an all-time high. You know all about the opioid crisis and the fentanyl crisis and the crack cocaine crisis.
And it just goes on and on and on. Well, that was the past. This is a podcast about the future. So let me tell you about the future of our war on drugs.
We're going to win it partly because of a change in our attitudes about the war on drugs and partly because of innovations in exponential technologies. First off, many people are now arguing that drug abusers should get treatment, not prison. There are a lot of reasons for this. Prison just gets you off the streets for a while and then you get back on the streets. And when you do, you go right back to using drugs, right back to committing crimes. Ric Edelman: But if you get treatment, you get off drugs and you stop committing crime.
The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration says the longer you stay in treatment, the more likely you'll stay off drugs. In a study of addicts who got treatment instead of prison, 16% of those who got treatment were rearrested versus 44% who went to prison. And we spend $24,000 a year on every inmate, but we spend just $900 to give somebody treatment. We get better results from treatment at a fraction of the cost. And here's the shocking statement. Ready? It's time to legalize drugs.
That's not me saying this. That's Harvard economist Jeffrey Miron. He says legalizing illicit drugs would save the United States $65 billion a year. The RAND Corporation says drug cartels would lose a fifth of their annual income and we would generate a new source of tax revenue just like we get from cigarettes and alcohol and gambling. You'll find politicians from Central America to Europe all saying we should legalize drugs.
But won't legalizing drugs just cause more people to use them? And won't that just produce more addicts and therefore more violent crime and suicides? Not necessarily. And the reason is exponential technologies. Researchers now believe they can cure addiction. They've identified the gene that causes it. Ric Edelman: It's called ARC, activity-regulated-cytoskeleton, and they're now using CRISPR gene editing technology to remove this gene from the DNA. So far, the scientists have done this in studies involving rats.
They've succeeded in decreasing addiction in those animals. Get this, it's not just drug addiction that they're going to cure, it's all addiction - alcohol addiction, shopping addiction, gambling addiction, sex addiction. They're even going to cure anxiety and other psychiatric disorders.
It doesn't matter what your compulsion is. It's all caused by a problem gene in your brain. Fix or remove that gene and the compulsion disappears. At the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism and the Veterans Administration and at the University of Chicago, researchers are using stem cells to cure addiction. They treated mice and then gave them lethal doses of cocaine.
Instead of dying within 5 minutes, the treated mice were totally fine. Exponential technologies. That's how we're going to win the war on drugs. By the way, if you'd like to invest in something along these lines, consider the Global X Genomics and Biotech ETF.
The symbol is GNOM. You can learn about it from your financial advisor or visit GlobalXETFs.com. The link is in our show notes on today's podcast. Coming up next, we're talking with Amy Florian, CEO of Corgenius. Stay with us.
Sound byte: Don't criticize it. Legalize it. Yeah. Announcer: Did you know Schwab offers a satisfaction guarantee? If for any reason you're not completely satisfied, Schwab will refund your fee or commission and work with you to make things right. You won't find that kind of promise everywhere, but you will find it at Schwab.
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Ric Edelman: You're listening to The Truth About Your Future. Death isn't something we like to talk about. It is certainly an experience, when we're dealing with the loss of a loved one, that is hugely challenging. As financial advisors, we come upon this extraordinarily often and we're dealing with hundreds and hundreds of people.
And most of the people who hire financial advisors tend to be in their 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s. And let's face it, they die with greater frequency than younger folks. And so it's not at all uncommon for financial advisors to be dealing not just with the planning elements of end-of-life scenarios, but actually sadly going through the experience of losing a client and helping the survivors deal with the financial planning elements of death. But what about the human element? What about the grief process itself? I'm very happy to welcome on to the program an expert in the subject.
She is Amy Florian, the CEO of Corgenius. Amy is the author of hundreds of articles, two award winning books. She is the recipient of numerous awards, been featured in the Wall Street Journal, CNBC, Forbes and others. Her book is No Longer Awkward: Communicating With Clients Through the Toughest Times of Life. And if you're a consumer, Amy's book for you is called A Friend Indeed: Help Those You Love When They Grieve. Amy, I'm really glad that you're with us here on the show today.
Amy Florian: I'm delighted to be here, Ric. Thanks. Ric Edelman: You have a master's degree and you're a fellow in Thanatology. What is Thanatology? Amy Florian: Thanatology broadly written is, I'm an expert in death, loss, grief, aging and transition. If you narrow it down, the origin of the word Thanatos is the Greek word for death. So if you're a marvel comic fan, the latest Marvel comic movie, the bad guy is Thanos.
Ric Edelman: It would never have occurred to me that you can get a college degree in grief. Amy Florian: That is becoming more and more common. It's a field that actually was begun by Elizabeth Kubler-Ross in 1969 when she wrote her book, On Death and Dying. That sort of opened up the field of Thanatology, but it has grown slowly over time. And now I'm a fellow in Thanatology.
There's less than 200 of us in the United States, but it's growing because the need is so great. As you said, we face it all the time. Ric Edelman: And when we do, it is a horrific experience. I think many of us have had the experience of grief. Talk about, though, perhaps, can you define it? What exactly is grief? When does it happen? Amy Florian: Well, this is a misconception.
Everybody thinks grief comes from a death - and it does, but it's actually far more pervasive than that. Grief is actually triggered whenever there's a break in an attachment, whenever we have to leave behind something we like about our life or familiar with it, we're attached to it. And we have to go forward and learn how to live without it.
That triggers grief. So yeah, death triggers grief. That's a big one.
So does divorce. So does becoming estranged from a family member. And even if you set aside family issues, how many people have become estranged from others in the last few years because of the political polarization in our country? If a pet dies, if your role changes when the adult child now has to parent their parent and they both grieve for the change in role, a loss of material possessions, a house burns down in a wildfire or it's damaged in a hurricane or it's robbed. Or, you know how attached people are to their money. Volatility, inflation. People are grieving.
Or loss of function, like from aging or accidents or illnesses. Those progressive illnesses that robs of function inch by inch. Loss of plans or dreams, like you start a business and it fails.
Or infertility. Or even shattering of faith in the institutions we believe in our country, when we lose faith in our government or lose faith in the healthcare system. Actually, even positive transitions trigger grief. And most people don't realize this.
This is really important. A financial advisor has a client who retires. Throw a party, right? Happy. But look at everything they have to leave behind in order to retire - their status and title and prestige, their role, the relationships, the colleagues they associated with on a daily basis. I mean, how many people in your profession, Ric, do not want to retire because they'd have to leave all that behind? Ric Edelman: You're absolutely right.
And most financial advisors I know who you would ordinarily say are at retirement age have no intention of stopping what they're doing for exactly those reasons. And we counsel clients all the time who are facing that transition when they're forced out, because unlike financial advisors who can choose when to quit, airline pilots have mandatory retirement at 65. So many occupations, you're done if not because your employer is kicking you out the door, because you're no longer physically able to perform the tasks. A surgeon whose fingers get unsteady is no longer a surgeon. And so, yeah, it could be thrust upon you.
And that timing may not be of your choosing. Your circumstances may not be prepared. And I can imagine very clearly how you're describing that grief would be the reaction. Amy Florian: A lot of the losses we have were actually not prepared for. Even the things like you can't hit the golf ball as far anymore. You need bifocals.
You need assistance with walking. Are we really prepared for those things? And we're all - especially with everything that's happened in the past several years, we're awash in grief. You know, there's nothing wrong with a person who's grieving. They're not sick. The job is not to fix them. The job is to companion them wherever they are.
Ric Edelman: You mentioned that grief, even when it's anticipated, nevertheless arises. And we hear that all the time of people who lose a loved one to cancer, a long, debilitating illness or ALS or Alzheimer's, even though you know it's coming, when it finally does occur, the grief is overwhelming. The preparation didn't really seem to do you any good, did it? Amy Florian: Yes and no.
When someone dies over a long period of time, we start the grieving process. When we get the diagnosis, we start letting go as it happens. My mom died of Alzheimer's. Inch by inch, we grieved as she lost this, loss that. And we knew what was coming up.
My husband died in a car accident. He kissed me goodbye in the morning. Never came home that night.
Then I got slapped in the face with grief. And it's a different kind of experience. But it's still grief. It's just that I didn't start the grieving process because I had no warning. I didn't start the grieving process till I found out. With mom.
we started the grieving process ahead of time. But that doesn't make the grief any easier. And even when you expect that it's going to happen, when they actually die, it's still a shock. Ric Edelman: You mentioned the grieving process. Is it a process or are there an infinite variety of this process? What is it? Is there something you can suggest that people might anticipate that they'll go through in this experience? Amy Florian: Grief is all over the place. I mentioned Elizabeth Kubler-Ross earlier, her five stages of grief, which actually she didn't create them as the five stages of grieving because she was studying dying patients in Chicago hospitals and observing the emotions that they experienced.
And then she classified them into these stages. We don't even use the stages in our field anymore. They're not really accurate.
These are all things that, yes, you can experience when you go through grief. You can experience denial and anger and bargaining and depression and acceptance. You can experience all of these things, and many people do, but not everybody experiences all of them. People who do experience them experience a whole range of other things. And it's not linear, orderly or predictable. Grief is a roller coaster.
It is up and down and back and forth, three steps forward and two steps back sometimes. And it takes way longer than people think, at least for those significant griefs. And I listed a lot of things that trigger grief. If it's an insignificant loss, if you lose a trinket, a big deal, but you get you get through that grief pretty quickly.
But for significant losses, it lasts way longer than most people think. Ric Edelman: What do you mean by that? What's way longer? Amy Florian: It's not over in a day, a week, a month or a year. Now again, this is an individual process because how we grieve is based on what happened, how we found out, our prior experience of loss, the strength of our support network, our faith, our culture, and a whole host of other factors. We each grieve in some ways individually. And yet in some ways we're all going through the same process with the same end goal. But for many people with a significant loss, a child dies, a spouse - the second year is actually harder or at least hard in a different way.
The first year you're doing a lot of letting go. You're always steeling yourself for the next first. That first birthday, the first wedding anniversary, the first holiday with that empty chair, a year of bad anniversaries.
You do a lot of letting go. You do some healing, but you haven't built the new yet. And in the second year, that reality really hits home because it's the first time you can't say, oh, a year ago, we. Oh... Nope.
And at the same time, all the support has disappeared. Because what we're taught in society is by the time you get to the first anniversary, if not two weeks after the funeral, certainly by the time you get to the first anniversary, well, you're all good now, right? No. Amy Florian: Grief lasts a lot longer. But I also want to make the point that that's not necessarily a bad thing.
Because healing does not mean forgetting. Healing does not mean put it behind you and get on with life now. Healing does not mean get over it or find closure.
Those things don't exist. Grief is a process of letting go of what can no longer be. You're not going to get their hug. You're not going to hear their laugh.
Not in person. You have to let go of the fact that when you dial that phone, it's not going to be an answer on the other side. But you don't put it behind you.
You create the stories, the memories, and you carry them with you for the rest of your life. You carry their life with you. You carry their love with you. The love never dies. You carry their influence, who you have become.
I am a different person because John loved me. And I've gone on and I've healed, but nobody can ever take that away from me. One little point here.
Earl Grohmann is a noted Thanatologist, and he said the greatest memorial we can ever build to somebody we love who dies is to live your life now as fully as possible enriched by their memory. We carry them with us for the rest of our lives. Ric Edelman: So it seems to me that the distinction then, since we're never going to walk away or abandon the lives that we had together after our loved one is departed or after our prior career is over, or that home that we grew up in is gone, that the difference is, is that the pain associated with those memories is gone.
Is that a fair way of referring to it? That grief itself is painful and the elimination or the completion of that process, that the pain is gone, but not the memories or the history? Is that fair? Amy Florian: Yes and no. Because we never forget. For the rest of our lives, we will occasionally get ambushed.
Sometimes it'll be something you don't expect. You walk in the store and that song is playing on the PA and maybe you've heard that song 50 times, didn't do a thing. But that day, depending on how tired you were, what day it was, what somebody said, it just grabs you and you're sobbing in the aisle. Totally unexpected. Other times, it would be things that, you know, are coming up.
The wedding without that parent walking down the aisle. Even if it's been years, it still hurts. The grandchild is born and one of the grandparents isn't there to see it. The things that happen in life and we miss them again. We never reach that final closure. There's never a point when you can say, Oh, I'm all healed.
I will never wonder what life would be like if they were still alive. I will never miss them. I will never cry again. We don't do that. So the pain is not defining our life. The pain is not controlling our emotions.
The pain is greatly, greatly diminished. But every once in a while, it pops up because we don't forget. I think about 9/11, happened 20 years.
But every anniversary we read every single name and the mantra is never forget. Never forget the Hispanic tradition of Dia de los Muertos, where they build the shrines, they tell the stories, they put up the pictures to honor the people they love who have died. The Asian tradition of leaving food for the ancestors. This is all healthy stuff. We're not supposed to forget.
We carry them with us. We heal. We function. We regain purpose, we regain joy. We take the lessons we learned from their life or from that career or from that experience in that home or whatever the case may be. We take that with us and it becomes a part of the fabric of who we are, the fabric of what we have to offer to the world.
Ric Edelman: So when you're counseling financial advisors who are confronted by or dealing with clients who have suffered a calamitous loss, loss of a spouse, the loss of their careers, the loss of money such as last year with a horrible year in the financial markets, what is the advice you give to advisors? What is it you counsel and coach them to say and do when they're trying to help such clients? Amy Florian: It's really important to ask good open invitational questions that invite the story. You don't want to fix them. You can't fix it anyway.
We're a society of fixers, and financial advisors are trained to fix people's problems. That's not your job. Your job is to companion them wherever they are.
So you've got to find out where they are. So you ask good open invitational questions. You really, really listen. You learn to avoid the mistakes that everybody makes. Easy example.
Don't ask a grieving client, how are you? How am I? I don't even know. You know, I might have woken up in the morning feeling better than I have any time since the funeral but then that song came on in the middle of the morning, and I crashed. But then I had lunch with friends, and it was good. But then the afternoon dragged on forever.
It's impossible to answer. I don't even know. Ric Edelman: And yet it's the most common question people ask. How are you? I think it's because people are trying to demonstrate a care and concern but don't know what to say or do. And out comes this rather silly question that serves no useful purpose.
Amy Florian: And, you know, grieving clients know it's the standard thing that everybody asks. And they also know that 90% of the people who ask don't really want to know. So if you ask the standard question, how are you? You're going to get the standard answer. Ric Edelman: I'm fine. Amy Florian: Oh, I'm fine, thanks.
Thanks for asking. I'm fine. No, they're not.
I've heard "fine" so often we've turned it into an acronym. FINE means Frightened, Insecure, Neurotic and Exhausted because that's what grief feels like. So if a client says they're fine, you can say, Oh, you know what fine means, don't you? And you tell them and it gets a chuckle, breaks the tension. And then you can follow it up and say, besides, you know, fine is the standard answer people give when they think you don't really want to know. I will always listen to the truth, even when it's hard. So would you like to tell me what's really going on? Would you like to tell me? You open the door.
You always follow their lead because they may not want to tell you right then or whatever, but you open the door and you invite them to tell you. And most of the time they're going to because grieving people are so hungry to talk to anybody who's willing to listen. But if you want a totally different question besides, how are you? Keep it more time limited. What kind of a day is it for you today? Is this an up day or a down day or an all over the place day? Do you hear the difference? I mean, you didn't ask the standard question, so maybe you really do want to know. Plus, you have a clue what I'm going through.
You understand that some days are up and some days are down and some days are all over the place. You get me. I think I can talk to you. Ric Edelman: When you're going through these conversations, it seems to me that you therefore must be prepared to spend time because how are you is a two word answer - "I'm fine", which we all know is nonsense. But if you're going to go beyond that, you're going to be in a conversation that could be rather extended, not just right then and there, but in subsequent follow up conversations as well. Amy Florian: Right.
Always allow time for grieving clients. Now that's not a bad thing. Dr. Harvey Chochinov did a study and found out that when people are allowed 40 to 60
minutes of talking about what they're going through in their life, it actually decreases their levels of suffering and depression. So your client's going to walk out of your office feeling better because you listened to them. People need to be heard.
So allow extra time for the appointments when a client is grieving. Now, if they don't want to talk - because you always open the door and follow their lead - if they don't want to talk, you might end the meeting early, but chances are they're going to want to talk. Ric Edelman: Is there anything that you are recommending that advisors do in the terms of advice, any actions that you recommend? For example, if you're teaching advisors how to help grieving clients, the clients themselves are going through this grief often for the first time themselves.
They've never lost a spouse before. They themselves don't understand what they should be expecting in terms of their grieving, in terms of what it means emotionally, what it's going to mean chronologically. Is there anything that you're suggesting that advisors say and do with their clients beyond merely listening? Amy Florian: In my book, No Longer Awkward: Communicating with Clients Through the Toughest Times of Life, I've got a chapter of over 100 different texts you can write in condolence cards. I've got 90 different books that I have vetted that you can give or recommend to clients, or my client version of No Longer Awkward is called A Friend Indeed: Help Those You Love When They Grieve, so you can give that to clients and say, you know, you're not the only one grieving.
Your whole family's grieving your friends, the coworkers. This book has a lot of good information in. It helps you understand the grief a little better so you can all support each other as you go through it. Things like that. Offer books or valid information at the same time as learning as much as you can about grief and grief support yourself, so that you really can be there for them. Ric Edelman: Financial advisors get an awful lot of training, but I'm not so sure that I can recall any particular programs that focused on training and grief support.
It would seem that this is becoming, as our clients and our overall population are aging, and therefore closer to death, that this is becoming increasingly important. Are you finding much reception to the type of training that you're offering to advisors? Amy Florian: I'm finding tremendous reception. Sometimes I will have advisors say, Wait a minute, where were you 35 years ago when I started my career? My master class awards 18 CE credits.
I do in-office training, I do client events. Everything that I teach is certified for CE credits. Clients have their choice of whoever they want. Who are they going to choose? The ones who have the relationship skills, the ones who can walk them through the toughest times of their lives, the ones who understand their life and get them and let them know it. So this training is more important than it has ever been, and that's becoming much more ingrained in the industry than it ever was before. Ric Edelman: Now, I think it's safe to say that there is a large - I will refer to it incorrectly and inappropriately as a grief industry.
There are social workers, theologians, the clergy themselves, the medical profession, who are well versed in grief, who spend substantial amounts of their time serving patients and clients and consumers who are in desperate need of grief counseling and grief support and assistance. But that is what I'll call, again, inappropriately B2C (business-to-consumer). That's directly from the expert to the individual who needs it. What led you to recognize the combination of opportunity and need for delivering grief counseling and training to advisors who are the intermediaries between you and the one grieving? What led you to go to the advisory community? And to say, Hey, you financial advisor, you need to learn how to help your client who's grieving. How'd you do that? Amy Florian: The first whole chunk of my career was working with those fields that you're talking about.
And you know what? You'd be amazed at how little clergy often know about good grief support. They often alienate people or say all the wrong things because they aren't taught in seminary. They're not taught grief support. So many of them are not as good as they think they are, or that people assume they are. The medical profession doctors are not trained in how to tell people that diagnosis or how to talk to the family in the waiting room after someone died on the table. They don't know how to do that.
There's a lot of bad advice or a lot of lack of expertise out there that you wouldn't really expect. But how did I get into this? I have a friend who's a financial advisor, and about 15 years ago he was having dinner over at my house and he said, Amy, I've never asked you a professional question before, but you know what? I realized that when clients call, I pick up the phone, I say, Hi, how are you? He said, I've got a client. They've been my clients for almost 40 years and his wife died and he's coming in next week. And when I see his number come up on the phone, Hi, How are you...
Are you kidding me? But I don't know what to say, so I let it go to voicemail. What do I say? Amy, can you coach me through this? And what am I going to say when he walks into my office next week? Amy Florian: So I coached him through it and he said, Oh my gosh, do you realize every financial advisor in this country needs to know what you know? This is gold. So he started introducing me to people. In fact, one of the first things he did was he took me to the Morningstar conference. They wouldn't let me into the sessions because I wasn't a financial professional, but they let me into the exhibit hall.
So he walked with me booth to booth and said, You need her. You need what she knows. You got to hire her. And a few people listened and publications said, Well, I don't know.
This is really different. Why don't you write me an article? We'll see how it goes. When I started teaching, people realized how valuable it was and it kept going and going and going and going. And I like to believe that I created a movement in this industry to help people get grief support skills so that they really can build those relationships with their clients. I still do some of the other work too, but I do an awful lot of work in the financial profession with advisors, with offices in lots of different capacities.
Ric Edelman: I think it is safe to say that you have been a pioneer in this field and it's been a pleasure to talk with you. We've been hearing from Amy Florian. She's the CEO of Corgenius. You can learn about the services she provides to financial advisors and also resources for consumers as well at Corgenius.com.
Her book is No Longer Awkward: Communicating With Clients Through the Toughest Times of Life. And if you're a consumer., Amy's book for you is called A Friend Indeed: Help Those You Love When They Grieve. Amy, thank you so much for being with us today. Amy Florian: You are most welcome, Ric.
It's been a pleasure. Ric Edelman: You're listening to The Truth About Your Future. You know, the world of crypto has created an entirely new vocabulary, and it's often very confusing for people to understand what is going on. One word: airdrop. What on earth is an airdrop? I'm not talking about the airdrop you use with your iPhone when you send pictures from your phone to somebody else's phone.
That's a different kind of airdrop. Doesn't it drive you crazy that everybody keeps using the same words for different things? Well, actually, you know exactly what it is. Helicopter money. Okay.
That wasn't necessarily helpful, now, was it? Okay. How about this? Open a bank account and get a free toaster. Now, that sounds familiar to you. Well, that's what helicopter money is. That's what an airdrop is.
In other words, when you have a bank account and the bank enticed you to make a deposit by giving you a free toaster or remember way back when (if you don't, you're too young then go ask your parents or grandparents), you bought a box of soap and inside was a glass. Yeah, believe it or not, they used to have drinking glasses inside a box of dishwashing detergent. So it was a way for companies to entice consumers to use their products. Helicopter money just literally dropping money out of the sky. Free money.
Well, that's what these were. This was just free money as a way for you using this product. Ric Edelman: Airline miles.
If you use this credit card, we will give you points that you can use to get free airline tickets, that kind of thing. Free money. That's what helicopter money is, money that falls from the sky.
in the world of crypto, they call it an airdrop. You own some kind of digital token and merely because you own it, the organizers that are promoting that digital asset send into your digital wallet more tokens, more money in an effort to get you to use it. So they call it an airdrop. In the world of crypto business, more generally calls it helicopter money and those of us old enough to remember S&H Green Stamps will remember it as simply glasses inside a box of dishwashing detergent. So an airdrop. Now you know what it is.
I'm Ric Edelman. It's The Truth About Your Future. And if you would like to learn more about airdrops, read my new book, The Truth about Crypto. It's available in paperback, e-book and audiobook from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and your favorite bookseller.
Coming up next on The Truth About Your Future, a visit by my wife, Jean Edelman, with her Word of the Week. And remember, if you miss any of our weekday podcasts, you can listen any time you like, wherever you get your podcasts and at TheTruthAYF.com. Announcer: The Truth About Your Future is sponsored by Global ETFs. Exponential technologies are transforming the world around us and creating investing opportunities along the way. Artificial intelligence, robotics and 5G mobile networks are among the emerging technologies shaping the future.
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Before investing, carefully read and consider fund investment objectives, risks, charges, expenses, and more in Prospectus at Invesco.com. Invesco Distributors Inc. Ric Edelman: Time now for everybody's favorite segment visit by my wife, Jean Edelman Jeans segment. Self-Care with Jean Edelman is now her own podcast every Thursday, so you can subscribe separately to Self-Care with Jean Edelman.
It's available at TheTruthAYF.com and everywhere that you get your podcasts, here's Jean. Jean Edelman: Great to be with you this week. This week I want to talk about napping. How many of us are not getting the rest that we need and we do need to reset and replenish ourselves. And as I am still doing recover and recuperate and this is what I'm learning after my recent health event, listening to our bodies, when it tells us it's tired, it's very, very important to rest.
So research is showing that napping can influence our health and cognition. The micro naps can improve our alertness and charges our creativity. So maybe you're aware, but there's very different stages of our sleep. The first stage is kind of when we doze off and we're kind of in and out, and that's about the first 5 minutes that we lay down the second stage.
This is where our breathing slows and our muscles relax and our body temperature falls and this is where our brain activity falls. And this stage two is actually quite excellent for pushing our reset button, hence the power nap. And this usually lasts about 1 to 25 minutes.
The power nap we're going to come back to that. Stage three is when our brain goes into the delta waves. This is about 40 minutes and this is where our biological system is recovering.
And then stage four is our REM sleep. In about 60 to 90 minutes into our sleep and our dreams are vivid. And this is where sleep is good for our creativity. But the nice thing about research is showing is that even if we don't sleep well at night, we can take these power naps and they can help us.
Jean Edelman: And the reason that we really may want to try this is because our poor sleep will affect our cognitive function, our metabolism, our immune system, and our inflammatory systems. These relate to heart disease, obesity, high blood pressure, even early death. So they are calling this the researchers are calling this are sleep debt. And as I shared, the good news is that our naps can actually save the day and counteract that poor sleep that we had the night before.
And that power nap is providing all the benefits of a full night's sleep only on a smaller scale. So something I've learned in my recuperation is I actually do schedule in my day like a half hour actually lights out. I pillow over my eyes just really because I'm still recuperating.
So it's really important. And if you don't have good sleep, you need to do this. So here's our action item for the week. If you're not sleeping well, maybe you have a stretch of insomnia. Block out 15 to 20 minutes in your day to lay down, sit in a good, comfortable chair, put an eye pillow over your eye, set the timer, put on some soft music.
But we really need to reset and restore because we've got to think of our cognitive health. We've got to think of our creativity. If we want to be worth something in our day, we really need to get this rest. And so I think it's kind of cool that we now know that we can take a 20 minute nap.
Jean Edelman: I mean, they do it in Europe. They take their siestas and they take their afternoon rest. So I think it's a good thing over time our body will get used to this little break. So maybe it's from 2 to 220 every day. That's your time.
That's your time to sit and relax and take your time off. Try it. That's our action item for the week. So our word of the week is going to be real simple. It's going to be Knapp. The end is for nourish.
We need to nourish ourselves. We need to nourish our immune system. Fresh air, clean food, good drinking water and rest. And sleep is the most important way to nourish ourselves.
The A is for align life flows so easily when we're in alignment and in balance. And that happens when we've had good rest. The lack of sleep throws us off kilter and so we feel out of control. We feel more stress. Our emotions get out of control. If we make the time for our nap, we will feel so much better and be able to manage our life much better.
And the P is for Pamper. You know what? It's okay to take care of ourselves. And that may feel selfish and self-indulgent, but if we're not taking care of ourselves, we can't take care of others. And we must be in prime form every day.
We do this by making sure we have our rest. So I'm giving each and every one of you permission to pamper yourselves and take a nap. Have a great week, everyone. Ric Edelman: Hey, if you like what you're hearing, be sure to follow and subscribe to the show wherever you get your podcasts.
Apple, Google, Spotify, YouTube. And remember, leave a review on Apple Podcasts. I read them all.
Never miss an episode or The Truth about Your Future. Follow and subscribe on your favorite podcast app. I'll see you next week. Announcer: The Truth About Your Future with Ric Edelman has been brought to you by Global X ETFs. Dedicated to providing investors with unexplored, intelligent solutions.
And by Invesco QQQ, a fund that allows you to access the innovators of the Nasdaq 100. Invesco.com/QQQ. Announcer: Get The Truth About Your Future with Ric Edelman. It's TheTruthAYF.com.
2023-03-01 23:08
