Dave Kashen argues that external circumstances like money and status matter less than you think for your actual happiness. He uses prison and beach examples to show how your inner state determines peace more than where you are, and admits he resisted this idea despite financial success.
the biggest myth is that your external conditions determine your internal conditions. That is probably the biggest, most pervasive myth in the human experience. And, you know, it's a little extreme to say they have no impact. Is it easier to feel joy and peace when you have a lot of money versus no money? Sure. When you're on the beach in Hawaii versus, you know, in prison, of course. Right. So, I don't want to say has no impact and there's a lot of research on this. Maybe it's 20, 30%, but it's not nearly as much as we think. And it is possible to intentionally change your internal conditions. It takes way less time. It's actually way, way less effort. So like the ROI on like investing in your, you know, internal growth is extraordinary relative to ROI of spending 7 years trying to get, you know, success and millions of dollars and then still not experiencing it. Now, some people, I don't know, like for whatever reason, some people just need to go through that to, to see it through. By the way, I, I just want to own, like, I didn't really believe it. Like, there's a part of me that's like, yeah, yeah. But once I hit my number, like, yeah, I, I I get that theoretically, but once I have $10 million, $20 million, you know, and honestly, there's a, I can feel a part of my system, my mind that still believes it now that does that same game. That's like, totally. Okay. But if I had like twice as much and I was generating this much passive income, then I'd really be free and I wouldn't have to do this. Or so, so it's a really ingrained pattern. That, that like lives in us. Um, but let, let me go back to one point I really want to make, which is this great irony that the reason that you do feel some peace and relief and even fulfillment for a day or a week is because finally your external conditions have met your mind's idea of how the external conditions should be. Right. Another word for that is acceptance. That's the, that's what's like the joke of it. It's like, it's like, you know, looking at a beautiful sunset and you feel peace because for that moment, you don't want anything to be different. Nothing needs to be different. It's not. Yeah. The day you exit and the money hits your bank account, you're like, nothing needs to be different. Finally, life is exactly the way my mind thinks it should be.
