Dave Kashen reflects on trading expectations for curiosity and how chasing money can obscure who you actually are. He describes his own shift from finance and startups to coaching, arguing that serving others tends to bring money as a byproduct.
there's your mind's idea of how life should be, and then there's life. And every moment we're choosing one of those two. And I just hear your mind bristling against, like, no, no, this is not what's supposed to be. It's not supposed to be like this. And it doesn't mean, like, it's not a, like, um, permission for resignation. Like, I want you to take responsibility for creating what you want and Oh, interesting. Right now, this is what's happening. Like, good news, bad news, who knows? Like, I just, I just find the more that I meet life with curiosity and I guess humility, the humility of like, I thought I knew I was supposed to make $100 grand a month, but like, I don't know, life has a different plan for me. Like, okay, I guess I guess there's something I'm meant to learn here. Um, like, at least helps me stay in flow. Um, and then the other thing is, you know, those kind of like, I got to make $100 grand a month or whatever, um, I just think they get in the way of your authenticity. So there's nothing wrong with it. I want to make lots of money too, and when that becomes primary, it can kind of overshadow, like, yeah, like, what's, what's authentic? What's my authentic path? And to me, that's when you, when you focus on that, the money follows. When you focus on the money, it obscures your authentic path. Yeah. Um, there— I love this phrase I heard recently that, like, humility is not thinking less of yourself, it's thinking of yourself less. I think that's so good. And the point is, if you're just focused on, I got to make 100 grand, I got to make 100 grand, you're just going to be thinking about yourself and your own blah blah. If you're like, oh man, I want to help people, blah blah blah, and you're truly focused on that, like, the other stuff seems to follow, right? Like, if you create value in people's lives, like, you— there's a way to you know, you end up— there's value exchange typically. Yeah, true. That, um, I mean, at a macro level, my shift from like whatever finance and investing and even startups to coaching was sort of that. It's like, okay, what if I focus on serving and like fuck the money? And then to my great surprise, the money's sort of followed But it was not— I was willing to walk away. I thought I was walking away from it.
