Dave Kashen explores how founders can use paradox to move through setbacks. The key: hold acceptance and ambition at the same time. That tension generates creative flow instead of frustration.
Another metaphor I sometimes use is a literal roadblock. Like you're on, you know, you're on a road trip or you're driving somewhere and there's a literal roadblock. Like you can't go, like most people are not like, oh God, why me? Why is this happening? What's wrong with me? I'm so stupid. I, I, why did I think I could do, you know, they're just like, oh, okay, I guess I got to find another way. And if you could live life that way, especially as a founder, like because there's tons of roadblocks and setbacks, especially relative to your ideas and expectations of how things would go. Right. You know, no, no business plan meets contact with the market, right? To paraphrase that.
You just get a lot of clarity from, from the acceptance piece of it. But then I, I guess maybe it, it doesn't, you, if I accept where I'm at and I, there's a difference of resignation, that's not resignation. I guess that's an important distinction. Right.
I accept. How it is right now. And I could still, and this is a paradox. So like humans are capable of holding paradox. And one way I've heard of it described is that the being becoming paradox. So if we just apply it to you, like I accept myself just as I am, that's being, I can just be, I accept myself exactly as I am. I let go of needing to be different. And I can imagine like an even better version of me in the future. And that being able to hold that paradox creates a different kind of tension, like creative tension. It's like more of a sense of flow motivation, right? I think about like frustration, fear, or flow. That's the clean fuel that is possible. That's how you achieve wild success without suffering. Is you get really practiced in accepting the now as it is and imagining some even better future, or you don't even have to label it even better, but some desired future.
