I saw money as water pent up in a dam. The more I accumulated, the better.
Money was meant for future-Kevin. I just had to keep waiting.1
Once I quit my job, this model was not useful. I was still not future-Kevin and thus couldn’t touch it.
Reading The Soul of Money by Lynne Twist provided a different mental model for money. Instead of a dam, what if it were an abundant river?
…the flow of resources in our lives, rather than being something that is constantly escaping our grasp or diminishing, instead becomes a flood of nourishment and something we have the privilege of being trustees of for the moment.
Going from owner to steward has also helped shift my mindset away from ego.
Instead of:
How do I make money?
I’m considering:
What do others need from me?
That said, I still feel tension between going for obvious, immediate forms of cashflow vs trusting that money can be downstream of more interesting work. If all you know is the world of traditional jobs, it’s hard to imagine a way that isn’t directly transactional.
It was radical to consider that I was not an owner of money but was rather a conduit. I don’t totally embody this belief yet, but it’s at least shaken loose a previous worldview.