My Takeaways from the Spiritual Experiences of a Lifelong Monk 2024

Sacinandana Swami has kindly been sharing spiritual wisdom with the Upbuild community every April and May for the past few years through the medium of personal storytelling and Q&A. He recently completed his second series of “Spiritual Experiences of a Lifelong Monk” after having spoken with us about his near-death experiences (all of which were also spiritual experiences) in 2021 and 2022. All of these “episodes” are available here and here so you can watch all that you may have missed and rewatch them again and again to immerse yourself further in the wisdom Sacinandana Swami has shared. 

After the last episode a couple of weeks ago, Michael noticed that I had been taking a lot of notes and asked me if I would share my takeaways from Sacinandana Swami’s 2024 series with our community. I was inspired by his request, so here we are. (For clarity, I won’t be retelling or summarizing the adventurous stories Sacinandana Swami shared with us, which I would encourage you to hear directly from the source himself at the links above, but my intent is to crystallize my takeaways from this year’s series on the “Spiritual Experiences of a Lifelong Monk” that are directly applicable to my life and hopefully to yours as well.)

“Stories are told to children so that they can go to sleep, and stories are told to grownups so that they can wake up!”

Sacinandana Swami shared this aphorism at a retreat Michael and I attended with him in Rishikesh, India in October 2023, it immediately resonated with everyone, and it’s the perfect frame through which to view the stories he’s been telling us about his experiences. He is trying to wake us up! Wake us up to the spiritual reality. And take concrete steps so that we may have our own such spiritual experiences. I find it beneficial and inspiring to view Sacinandana Swami’s storytelling in this regard.

April 10, 2024 – Divine Reciprocation

Now, for my takeaways. In his first episode this year, on April 10th, Sacinandana Swami shared the idea of “divine reciprocation.” That what you look for, looks for you. So, one’s ability to experience a divine presence is directly related to one’s search for it. And what gets in the way? Our egos. Sacinandana Swami shared a quote: “The intelligent man who is proud of his intelligence is like the condemned man who is proud of his large cell.” How is our pride keeping us imprisoned in the large cell of our material existence?

In response to Michael’s question about how we know something has come from God (as opposed to a mental concoction), Sacinandana Swami shared three parameters:

1. Parisanu – a direct experience where you see the Lord or the Lord’s hands (not necessarily in the form of hands, but his arrangements)

2. Bhava – a certain feeling that accompanies the experience of being touched by divinity, which is so palpable and so different than being touched by anything else

3. Vairagya – a healthy state of detachment from material life when you have such an experience

Sacinandana Swami then shared that the ultimate indication that something has come from God is that it always has a very transformative effect on the person who experiences it. In Sacinandana Swami’s case, the story he shared about surviving a near-death experience and seeing the hand of God in that experience made him very fearless in his life, and that fearlessness is still with him. As Sacinandana Swami concluded, “A spiritual experience at its core is about the transformation of consciousness.”

In answering a question Sacinandana Swami offered one more insight for those seeking our own spiritual experiences, encouraging us to spend more time in solitude: “Divine experiences happen when you have time alone with God.”

April 17, 2024 – Genuine Spiritual Experience

In his second episode this year, on April 17th, Sacinandana Swami opened with the question: “What is a genuine spiritual experience?” 

He offered four characteristics from his experience:

1. It defies expression by words; it must be experienced

2. It has a noetic quality (an inner knowing, a direct knowing, that this is true, this experience is real)

3. It is short, but you remember it

4. It happens to you; you don’t make it happen (“you become a receiver, not an achiever”)

Sacinandana Swami shared a beautiful parable to illustrate this fourth point and the importance of preparing oneself to receive:

• A monk asked his spiritual master, “What can I do to be enlightened?”

• “As much as you can do to make the sun rise.”

• “But then why are you giving me all of these spiritual practices?”

• “I’m giving you these practices so that when the sun rises, you will be awake for it.”

In response to a question about what to do when our spiritual practices go through a “dry” phase (and we feel demotivated), Sacinandana Swami encouraged us to give up control. We’re so conditioned to think in terms of cause and effect, but that’s not how “the traffic rules of the spiritual world” work. He shared that spiritual practices usually go through three phases:

1. Get familiar

2. Work harder

3. Give up control

Finally, in response to another question about how not to get attached to admiration of others, Sacinandana Swami shared another important aphorism: “Praise is like a cup of nectar when given to one’s teacher, and like a cup of poison when drunk oneself.” Pass the admiration on. Acknowledge what you’ve been given. And recognize the giver. 

April 24, 2024 – Blessings of Saints

In his third episode this year, on April 24th, Sacinandana Swami shared that we are often good at knowing what to do, but bad at doing it. There’s a disconnect between what we know and what we do. But the powerful blessings of saints can actually help us close that gap.

He shared three ways to receive the blessings of saints:

1. Offer our services to them

2. Put relevant inquiries before them

3. Cultivate a general attitude of submission and wanting to learn from them

Now, what if you don’t know any saints? I think if you seek people with genuine spiritual knowledge and experience, they will introduce you to saints. And if that feels intimidating, you can start by reading about the lives of saints with an attitude of wanting to learn from them, and put your inquiries before them in your mind’s eye and see what you receive over time.

The sacred Vedic text, the Srimad Bhagavatam, consists of 12 books and 18,000 verses, and there is only one verse that is repeated verbatim. That verse’s translation: “Even a moment’s association with a pure devotee [of the Lord] (a saintly person, in other words) cannot be compared to the attainment of heavenly planets or liberation from matter, what to speak of worldly benedictions in the form of material prosperity; association with pure devotees is the highest benediction.” 

So, find those saintly people and associate with them. Even a moment with such a person can change your life.

May 1, 2024 – Not a Spectator Sport

In his fourth episode this year, on May 1st, Sacinandana Swami opened with the declaration: “Spiritual life should not be a spectator sport. We must make an experience of it.” The whole series has been attempting to wake us up to the need for us all to cultivate our own spiritual experiences. And as Sacinandana Swami has made clear, we must be active in the process.

In this episode, Sacinandana Swami shared what he called “his most transformative spiritual experience,” which happened in Tibet while circumnavigating Mount Kailash. I won’t retell the story which you can watch here, but a couple of sentences in particular struck me. Sacinandana Swami said, “I was filling myself with the admiration of others. I was committing the cardinal mistake of inflating myself.” I wrote down these sentences because of how often I do this myself. Fill myself with the admiration of others. Make the mistake of inflating myself, inflating my ego. And how strong Sacinandana Swami’s language was in calling it “the cardinal mistake.” It made me realize that I treat this mistake in myself way too casually.

For Sacinandana Swami, this cardinal mistake led to an experience that made it clear to him that he is not his body nor his mind. It was such a profound experience that he would never make the same mistake again. And he posed a question for us to contemplate: “What if it is true that you are not the body?” And later during the Q&A, another related question: “Who are you when everything that is not you falls away?” One could spend their entire life pondering these two questions alone, and it would be completely worth the discovery.

Later in the episode, Sacinandana Swami shared three reasons why people don’t experience spiritual growth:

1. They’re too busy

2. They’re too proud

3. They’re too complacent

What is your reason?

Sacinandana Swami also made the following comment about balance: “Your life is out of balance when you suddenly find yourself with free time and you don’t know what to do with it.” He was asked for his guidance by someone for whom this was true, and he said you need a prayojana — an ultimate spiritual goal. When we have an ultimate spiritual goal, we’ll have a long list of To Do’s in service of that goal, and whenever we have free time, we’ll be enthusiastic to tick through our list and make progress on our goal.

May 8, 2024 – Q&A

The fifth and final episode this year was dedicated to Q&A with Sacinandana Swami. He opened by revealing that “Spiritual experiences can be had by everyone. You simply have to look again with the eyes of spiritual knowledge.” And how do we look with the eyes of spiritual knowledge? Sacinandana Swami has instructed us to engage in the 3 Ps many times before: People, Philosophy and Practice. 

• People — Associate (actively) with people who are farther along in their spiritual journey and who inspire you

• Philosophy — Read and study sacred texts, write down your questions and your doubts, and inquire humbly of the people above

• Practice — Cultivate a daily spiritual practice, such as meditation, to connect with the reality that’s much bigger than yourself 

At the end of the Q&A, I asked the following question: “Sacinandana Swami, you had shared that after your experience in the Ganga (episode #1) you had no fear. That line really struck me because most of us are not aware of how much fear we are operating with all of the time. Would you please share more with us about what it is like to live with the fearlessness of having realized the reality of a divine presence?”

Sacinandana Swami answered: “You can live from a place of no fear any longer when you don’t believe but know. As long as you only believe, you have a concept which you want to hold onto somehow or other. But the moment you know, you are resting your life on something that is not just a mental concept; it is something that has become part of you. I want to encourage everyone to [migrate] from the platform of belief…to the point of knowing.

“I have a simple practice which I wish to suggest to all of you, and something that can bring you to a level of fearlessness based on [your] experience and inner knowing. And that simple practice is to ask yourself from time to time, ‘What do I actually already know?’”

And then he gave some examples from his own life:

• “I, Sacinandana Swami, know that when I read the wisdom texts of the Bhagavad Gita, it resets my mind in a different way from the resetting I experience from any other subject I put into the mind.”

• “I know that there is a higher power that moves my life.”

• “I know that inside my changing body…throughout all the changes which I undergo, I am there as a spiritual witness and observer.”

• “I know that it’s good to control my mind when it’s impulsively acting…I become more happy.”

• “I know that when I meditate on the mahamantra, it has a profound effect on my consciousness.”

He closed by sharing that just as doubt paralyzes us in our material pursuits, doubt also paralyzes us in our spiritual life. For the doubting soul, there is no fearlessness, and there is no happiness. So he admonished us, “Therefore, don’t [remain] a believer!”

I followed Sacinandana Swami’s instruction after the class, and this is what I wrote about what I actually already know:

• I know that when I’m in your presence, Sacinandana Swami, I feel uplifted.

• I know that when I receive a new spiritual insight, I feel more enlivened than I do with anything else I experience.

• I know that when I’m in the company of bhakti yoga devotees, I feel their care and their love in the way that people are meant to be loved.

• I know that I feel so happy when I’m with the Upbuild team.

• I know that after the immersive experience of a spiritual retreat, I feel really inspired to talk with Krishna in my japa meditation practice.

• I know that I want to read the Bhagavad Gita over and over again until I fully realize its wisdom.

• I know that when I memorize a Gita verse in Sanskrit, I feel compelled to keep singing it again and again.

• I know that when I’m sitting in kirtan, I sing with an abandon that I don’t sing with in any other context.

• I know that my beliefs with respect to spirituality have changed a lot over the past ten years.

• I know that some of what I would previously categorize as beliefs are now firmly in the category of knowing.

What do you actually already know?

If we track our answers to this question over time, we will be able to see our own spiritual journey more clearly. And we will likely be inviting more spiritual experiences into our life as well.

A Final Note
Sacinandana Swami shared peak, transformative spiritual experiences with us to wake us up to a reality that is different from the one that’s visible to our senses, the one that feels real and tangible to us, the one we’re so invested in. He told us that spiritual experiences can be had by anyone, but what he was really telling us is that they must be had by everyone if we want to go beyond the limits of our material existence. And he gave us many tips both to cultivate such experiences and to locate what is getting in our way. Now, it’s up to us.

Ego Scooby Snacks

I need to go on a diet. I have been munching on too many snacks. But not anything like cakes or cookies. The snacks I’m talking about are snacks for my ego. Ego Scooby Snacks, as I like to call them.

Ego Scooby Snacks are identity reinforcers. They build up the image of how we want to be perceived by others and ourselves.

Ego Scooby Snacks come in many different flavors. They range from obvious acts of self-promotion to much more subtle behaviors. Examples include:

• Casually name-dropping an important person or a company who is interested in working with me

• Adjusting the placement of my art so that it can be more easily seen before a group of friends comes over

• Working an extra two hours at night even though I’m exhausted and it’s not really necessary just so I can feel productive

• Apologizing for something I’m not sorry for

• Reading books or watching movies so that I can teach others about them or tell others that I completed them

• Stumbling over my words after someone gives me a compliment because I am trying to be modest

• Checking my brokerage account more times than is necessary

• Wearing luxury items to reinforce my sense of taste or my ability to afford something

• Spending three hours organizing my closets

• Checking email constantly when I am expecting good news 

• Exaggerating stories in slight ways way that make me look better

• Using essential oils just because I want to be that kind of person, rather than because of a real conviction

• Asking more people than is necessary for advice to have my decisions and thought processes re-affirmed 

• Going to a cool event because I don’t want to be the person that didn’t go to the event

• Engaging in superficial chit-chat rather than having a hard conversation with the person I know I should have it with

• Traveling to exotic places so that I can be the type of person who travels to exotic places

If you were wondering, these are all autobiographical.

Ego Scooby Snacks are not just actions. They can also manifest as internal thoughts that reinforce our egos. Things like:

• Ruminating on how my lifestyle choices make me special

• Basking in the glory of my humility

• Rehearsing in my mind how I will share my impressive achievements

• Mentally rejecting criticism because I convince myself the other person is envious or not intelligent

Also, all autobiographical. 

The term Scooby Snacks is, of course, in reference to the TV series Scooby-Doo in which the characters Fred, Daphne, and Velma would try to entice Scooby-Doo and Shaggy with biscuits to get over their fears in order to solve mysteries.

Unlike the original Scooby Snacks, Ego Scooby Snacks are tempting us to play into our fears. They are the things we do or think in order to help us feel enough, but the problem is that they don’t satiate us in any real way. They are like artificial sweeteners or refined carbohydrates or fast food that might give us a temporary feeling of satisfaction, but can make us feel bad as soon as the satisfaction wears off and can cause more serious consequences in the long run.

Munching on Ego Scooby Snacks doesn’t mean that we are wrong or bad. Just like eating cookies won’t give us a heart attack. At least not in the short run.

The problem with Ego Scooby Snacks is that we are rarely aware that we are eating them, and they are not beneficial for us if our goal is becoming the best version of ourselves. They divert our attention from our true values and goals. Eating Ego Scooby Snacks entangles us in the game of the ego. We are trying to feel enough, but in fact, they only make the fear of not being enough worse because we are playing into the fear. We are giving oxygen to the fear and developing coping mechanisms that don’t address the fear.

It is a term I often use in my coaching practice to help my clients self-identify behaviors that may be ensnaring them in the ego. 

If you, too, need to wean yourself off Scooby Snacks, then what to do?

The first step, as always, is to develop awareness. Check in with yourself. What am I really up to here? What is my real motivation? Depending on what you discover, it may be helpful to say out loud, I’m having a craving for an Ego Scooby Snack, or I just pigged out on some Ego Scooby Snacks. 

In the example of me compulsively checking email that I shared above, I have become more aware that my real motivation for the compulsion is to feel valuable. When I get an email that a new client wants to work with me or when I immediately respond to an incoming request, I get a “hit” of worth.      

Next, you’ll want to see how the Scooby Snack is getting in the way of the type of person you actually want to be. Who do I want to become, and how is this in opposition to that?

With the email example, I don’t want to be so dependent on and desperate for external validation to feel valuable. I also don’t want to be someone who always prioritizes work and who is always on his laptop. My journey of growth is toward someone who can more easily and gracefully tolerate times when there is a lull in external validation and who strikes a better balance between being responsive to my professional responsibilities and spending time nourishing my inner self and family.

You’ll then want to decide how you want to act. Do I really need to eat the Scooby Snack? Or if you’ve already eaten it, what will I commit to doing next time a similar situation presents itself? 

I have a long way to go, but I have committed to resisting the temptation to check email in certain situations where the compulsion gets in the way of my presence with others, and I have become more disciplined in doing daily practices that are nourishing and don’t involve any interaction with email.

And finally, over time, you’ll develop a “higher taste.” 

I’ve seen myself develop a higher taste when it comes to my travel choices. Throughout my 20s and into my early 30s, I was obsessed with traveling to as many countries as I could possibly get to. In extreme cases, I would go to a country just for two days to say I’d been there. I even had a travel app that I would excitedly update when I stepped foot into a place that kept count of everywhere I had been. These travel experiences no doubt expanded my understanding of the world and myself, opened my mind to different ways of life, and were a lot of fun, but they were largely based in ego because a big part of my motivation was proving my value as an interesting and worldly person who would be admired for the number of stamps on his passport. As my tastes have shifted, I’ve become a lot hungrier for immersive experiences that are meant to help me explore what is underneath the ego and directly connect me with a more authentic version of myself. This has meant more retreats, a lot less moving around, and fewer Ego Scooby Snacks of traveling to new countries just so I can update the country count on my travel app. I don’t know that I’ll ever lose my attraction to globetrotting, but over the last few years, my higher taste has meant a meaningful shift in behavior without it feeling like a sacrifice.

With my email compulsion, I have more of a ways to go before the higher taste of discipline and nourishing practices are more tempting than the compulsion, but I eagerly look forward to getting to a place in my life when I can go an entire weekend without checking email, without it feeling like a sacrifice.  

This last stage, the higher taste, is a key teaching from the Bhagavad-Gita, a sacred text from ancient India. The main speaker of the story, Krishna, tells the protagonist Arjuna that when one experiences a higher spiritual taste, the person will naturally lose interest in lower, materialistic sense gratifications. In other words, when we get the taste for something greater than the ego, we no longer feel tempted to reach into the Ego Scooby Snack cookie jar. 

Developing a higher taste is indicative of a higher level of consciousness. It is the most rewarding way to live because we genuinely feel pulled towards where we are going. As my partner Vipin has articulated, we go from “I should do this” to “I get to do this.” “I should do this” is certainly a central part of the growth process because the death of the ego never comes without resistance, but when we reach the level of “I get to do this,” that’s when we really hit escape velocity with our personal and spiritual growth. 

There is a Ralph Waldo Emerson quote that we share in our Upbuild “The Call to Awaken” course that has been on my mind a lot recently:

Sow a thought and you reap an action; sow an act and you reap a habit; sow a habit and you reap a character; sow a character and you reap a destiny.”

Becoming aware of and choosing not to indulge in Ego Scooby Snacks is about sowing the thoughts, actions, and habits that will lead us to having a character, and ultimately, a destiny more and more aligned with the best version of ourselves, our real selves.

A Takeaway for 2023: Are You Seeking Relief or Are You Seeking Shelter?

My Dear Upbuild Community,

I've become much more sensitive to the subtlety of inexhaustible suffering in this world. It’s something I’ve carefully avoided paying too much attention to for fear that it would impede upon my own happiness.

Where I’ve given some room for indulgence into seeing the suffering is in making sure that I’m not an unthinking, unfeeling, ignorant person. For that, I could afford to care about the suffering of others. And the truth is, I’ve always been naturally so sensitive to anyone’s pain as I’m so sensitive to my own. I could never stand that anyone would have to suffer. Which actually made it easier to turn away from suffering toward my own happiness and the pursuit of that, because I really can’t stand seeing or feeling or thinking about the alternative. So better to focus on something less morbid.

As I’ve aged it’s become harder to escape the reality that everyone is suffering to some degree, grossly or subtly, acutely, or silently, consciously, or unconsciously. Our egos always make us suffer and always make others suffer. That’s the law of this world until we cross beyond our own egos.

I’ve been through a monastery in my most formative years. I’ve come out of the monastery for more formative years. I’ve watched the world get older. I’ve watched myself get older. I’ve seen so much pain outside of me and I’ve seen so much pain inside of me, especially from the dreaded Inner Critic we all house within us. There’s really no escape. Besides, I’ve done my best to swear off all the anesthetics long ago. Not just with my strict monastic practices of renunciation externally. But also with the subtler internal approach of drowning out pain through happiness.

Whenever I was down, I used to go out to a movie. That would make it all better. Live a little fantasy for a little while. See some friends. Do something fun. Or go out for drinks and be wild. Or travel and do something exciting. Or contribute something awesome. I’ve done all that in more permutations than I can account for. It doesn’t address my own pain, nor anyone else’s. It’s simply a diversion.

To be steeped in and soaking up pain 100% of the time is not advisable. But making a coping mechanism out of little escapes is not advisable either. And that does sharply solidify into an approach. Let us not fool ourselves into thinking it’s just an innocent, human, little thing. Our little habit of little escapes becomes who we are. Escapists. In fact, my guru, Sacinandana Swami, asks a simple question to convey the implications of this most ubiquitous methodology for dealing with this most ubiquitous experience of life.

Are you seeking shelter or are you seeking relief?

We all must face our share of stress, pain, and fear. There are enough challenges to life without the fact that we will end up losing all whom we care about as well as our own bodies and minds. We won’t be able to take anything with us when we die. How we deal with that reality determines the quality of our lives as well as the quality of our deaths.

Relief is short-lived. Small. Insignificant. Unable to stand the test of time. Unable to touch the vastness of the real self, which is eternal, spiritual, and unsatisfied with any temporal material experience you give it.

I myself have always been a proponent of long-term thinking over short-term thinking. I realize I’ve not actually grasped the depth of what that means. We have to follow the trail to its proper end.

The longest-term thinking is the best thinking, which is the opposite of eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die. It’s living life in preparation for death, as I wrote about in the 2021 Takeaway “Die Before Dying.” It’s being willing to stare death in the face. Seeing our limits and choosing to outlive them by investing in the real self which does not die when the body dies.

It’s giving our everything to our spiritual practice, our sanga or connection with those who can help us on the path of self-realization, and service to all living beings as dear souls, not even discriminating amongst species. Then everything becomes precious.

It’s not creating innumerable throwaway moments. Or memories that won’t travel with us beyond the death that so soon knocks upon our door.

Relief will absolutely never benefit us the way we crave inside. Choosing comfort, familiarity, safety, worldliness, the path we all take which leads only to more suffering when our bodies and minds stop functioning, is really no way to live. Who wants to live for the fleeting, flickering, insubstantial? Most of us say we love life, and especially that we love people, but who would want to give up something or someone if they are truly loving? How can we say it's okay to give them up if we actually love them? That's by definition not loving. It’s only our coping mechanisms that make us go the way of rationalization that the temporary is beautiful. Deep down, we all long for the lasting, steady, substantial. The soul will never let us get away with settling for anything less, no matter how many little escapes we try to heap on it. Whatever the hit of pleasure or the absence of pain, relief just doesn’t work.

And yet, it’s an addiction that we justify through the ideology of empiricism (that what is real is only what I can see) and constantly nurture through our everyday habits. At the cost of what we’re really after. Shelter.

Life is a constant storm of challenges. It tempts us into a game of whack-a-mole. Firefighting. Or cutting the hydra’s head for two more to grow back. Again and again. Ad infinitum. This is what Camus was pointing to with The Myth of Sisyphus. We roll the boulder up the mountain each day only to do it all over again the next day.

While we must address the challenges of life head-on, it will serve us infinitely more to do so with the broader context of who we are and our ultimate reality. Entropy thus turns into intentionality. Temporality into transcendentality. In this way, life is made magical with new, ever-increasing meaning.

Taking shelter means running toward refuge not diversion. Running toward the only real shelter, the only thing that provides lasting, substantive, protection from the storm of the material. The spiritual is the only thing capable of giving true shelter. But forever busy in search of infinite forms of relief, we dismiss the only actual shelter.

To deal with an endless relief-seeking addiction requires an honest admission. I’m an addict. I’m dependent. I don’t have it all figured out. And I need help. This is the AA mindset that has helped countless addicts and what Gabor Mate declares we can’t afford to think doesn’t apply to us, whether we’re substance abusers or straight-edged. But amidst our addiction to temporality, suppression, and escapism, today I find the distinction between shelter and relief that Sacinandana Swami illuminates to be more vital than ever.

How will we know who we really are if we forever settle for relief? The approach of taking shelter in the true self is a night and day difference. It’s one that I’m feverishly trying and praying and seeking guidance to cultivate with greater and greater effect.

As I reflect back on this year and how my mind has worked through the course of it, I can see how subtly I seek relief. Yes, I’ve given up many external habits. But have I really given up the mentality that binds me to my ego and all temporality?

I found myself more often than not hesitant to pick up my meditation beads, practically wishing for some diversion. Amping up my sense of urgency to do many other genuinely urgent things. Creating highly reasonable and good justifications that steered me away from the core of what connects me with me. Again and again.

If I just do this one thing, I’ll feel a little better. If I just do that one thing, I’ll feel a little better. My head will be clearer. I’ll be more focused. It will only take two minutes. Five minutes. 30 seconds. 30 minutes. Moreover, one thing I’ve realized about this material world is that everything always takes longer than you think! And creates momentum where context-switching gets harder and harder. What to speak of if it involves a screen. Or another human being. Especially if you want to do it well, genuinely connected, with your heart and soul.

Because I’m blessed to have found a higher taste in serving rather than wanting some flickering stimulation and because I find the spiritual more satisfying than the material, there’s a safety net that I have which I pray always remains. That is the grace of my guru’s teaching and example which has impacted and transformed me to this point. But if I don’t want to get stuck where I am, I better change. If I want to actually realize the self in full, not partially or theoretically or ethereally, then I better change. To use a framing that my guru directed at me when I was a monk which I can never forget:

Pick up an axe and carve out your life. Not tomorrow. Not the day after. Now.

I decided the popular adage of “first things first” deserves some fresh attention. I’ve found there’s a lot more to be gleaned by re-examining this principle if we look harder. By getting the rush of taking care of something, being active, being dynamic, experiencing relationship, knocking something off my to do list, creating plans that make me feel organized and give me something to look forward to, I’m putting the cart before the horse! These are fantastic things to do. Necessary things to do. Nourishing things to do. Spiritual things to do if done with a spiritual motivation as I earnestly try. But I’m clutching to them as a crutch because I’m too pained to think about confronting my uncontrolled mind in meditation. Too enmeshed in the stress of life to follow the impulse of grasping at relief. I do my practices as staunchly as I know how every day, without fail, yet I still manage to rob myself of greater gains.

And that seemingly tiny, human, forgivable, justifiable delay of my practice, is the symptom of something so much larger. Something that I came into the world with and I came to the path of self-realization with. An addiction to relief that dies hard.

So do I think I’ve found my fix and I’m soon to be done with all relief? No. It’s not so easy! But am I onto myself? Yes. Will I work through this? Yes. Will I make progress in 2024? I certainly hope so! I already began at the end of 2023 rethinking things and trying new habits that have profoundly affected my well-being. Just a few little glimpses into what that looks like: Putting more faith that if I fulfill my commitments to my practices and needs for spiritual nourishment first through mantra meditation and reading sacred texts, I'll be better equipped to serve everyone and do all I feel called to do in service. Not doing certain things after 9:30 p.m. as far as I have control over. And endeavoring as far as possible not to organize myself, get on my laptop, plan, or answer messages until I've completed my practices.

First things first really works. It’s not a miracle that ends the game of whack-a-mole or cuts every hydra head. The stress, pain, and fear will still live. But this approach is an immeasurable boon that leads us out of the suffering we keep running from.

Then taking shelter of 1. our spiritual practices, 2. the sanga of fellow journeyers who can support us to self-realization, and 3. service to all with a divine lens, brings us something extraordinary. Then, in spite of all the ups and downs, the summit we long for of living as the real self comes more and more into reach. Then nothing will be able to shake us from our steady ascent to that most glorious destination. Nothing will be able to divert us. We’ll be fixed in determination and carried by grace. Sheltered. Fully secure, at peace, and enthusiastic, through everything life throws at us and beyond. For this, I’ve seen enough from those who’ve made it, and gotten enough tiny, mounting tastes of my own, to have complete conviction.

What will you do now to move from seeking relief to seeking shelter?

From “It Happened TO Me” to “It Happened FOR Me”

There is somebody who is important to me in my life who is not talking to me. It’s painful. It’s painful because I love him, and I’d really like to have him in my life. It’s also painful because my inner critic strongly believes that I should be able to fix the relationship. Recently, I have put effort into offering space for this person to share his perspective in the hopes that we can find a path forward. These efforts were turned down, and as a result, my resentment began to build. The fact that I felt wronged created the initial resentment, and then the feeling of resentment further convinced me of just how wronged I had been. It was a self-perpetuating cycle that felt impossible to break, especially in the absence of communication.

More recently, I’ve lost hope for reconciliation, at least in the near future. It sucks. The silver lining is that the loss of hope has given me some space to reflect, rather than constantly being in the mode of strategizing how to fix the relationship. This space for reflection led me to ask some deeper questions about what I did and what his experience of me must have been that led him to cut me out of his life. 

It might seem like I should have asked these questions right off the bat. They certainly crossed my mind at points in the process, but it took the pain of being cut off and the helplessness I feel in being unable to mend the relationship, for me to look at these questions in a more honest way. With this introspection came discomfort from seeing some of my ugly tendencies: difficulty loving and being kind to the people closest to me, a self-serving need for control, and a competitive way of relating to people which creates disconnection and can sometimes make others feel small.

It is a wake-up call. These tendencies aren’t new discoveries. In fact, some versions of them were all mentioned on my kindergarten report card and came up consistently in my annual reviews during my time in the corporate world. But the consequences I am facing because of them (broken relationship + pain) are something I have never experienced – I’ve never been cut off.

Because the consequences are severe, they have been a catalyst to learn a bunch of lessons about how I want to be in this world and how I want to relate to others. I am learning that I need to put more energy into being kind to people close to me, such as actively trying to find out about and honor my family members’ preferences, rather than being so focused on my own. I am learning that when I try to control a situation by controlling others, it feels really bad on the other side and has the opposite effect of what I intended. This lesson has been important in my relationship with my partner as we navigate the challenges that come from being first-time parents together and having very different parenting styles. And I am learning that my “innocent” competitive way of relating to others, such as when I make fun of a friend’s sense of direction in a situation where he makes a mistake getting somewhere (which comes from a place of trying to feel superior), isn’t always so innocent because of how it can affect people. 

These lessons might seem straightforward, but just because something is straightforward doesn’t mean that we get it. My partner Hari often likes to quote Aeschylus: “Man must learn by suffering.”

When I got to a place of more tangibly experiencing these lessons, something shifted. The whole question of whether he is wrong or right began to feel less important. The resentment gradually subsided, and it was replaced by a feeling of gratitude not only for the lessons, but also to the person responsible for the lessons. I started to feel gratitude to him for doing something bold that must have felt really awful to do. And gratitude to him for, knowingly or unknowingly, being my teacher.

As humans, we are story-making machines. We are constantly telling ourselves stories about who we are, who other people are, and why our circumstances are as they are. In my example, there is one story that says I was wronged. There is another story that says this situation is a gift. The first story may or may not be true. It could very well be the right decision for him, and I am trying to trust that it is right for both of us in the long run. The second story, the one that says this situation is a gift, might feel overly optimistic, especially when there is pain, but with a little time and space, it has become obvious that it is true. And not only is it true, but it is also a lot more beneficial than the first story because it has the potential to become a catalyst for change.

As I have continued to digest the lessons, the gratitude has grown. These are lessons I need to grapple with in order to live more aligned with my best self. Without them, and without the person who taught me them, I’d have less information and less inspiration. For this reason, I have come to see the situation as something that happened FOR me, rather than something that happened TO me.

Beyond the lessons from this specific situation, there is the meta lesson that the presence of just about everyone we encounter in our life is a gift (with the exception being when we are victims of evil). This is not to say that we should keep challenging people in our life because they teach us stuff, but if we are open to seeing them, there are nuggets of gold for us to mine in every situation and with every person we encounter. The reason this is true is because when we have an experience with someone, we relate to what happened and that person in some way. That experience is never independent of who we are. How we relate to what happened tells us a lot about ourselves and what kind of work we need to do in order to become a better version of ourselves. They are a mirror that we can choose to look at or choose to ignore.

For example, if you get a challenging review from your boss that contains comments from colleagues that you feel are unfair, you might have one story that these colleagues don’t understand your intentions and that it’s in their best interest to disparage you. Instead, what if you tried the perspective that there is a 2% truth in their comments, and that the 2% truth is necessary for you to take the next step in your development? 

Or, if an overweight person were to sit down in the seat next to you a few minutes before takeoff for a five-hour flight, you might tell yourself a certain story about the situation and about who the person is. But what if you tried something different? What if you tried the perspective, however uncomfortable it might feel, that this is an opportunity for you to internally examine the judgments you felt when you first saw the person approaching? And what if you tried opening yourself up and connecting with the person, and then reexamining your preconceptions?

Understanding what story we are telling ourselves gives us the opportunity to see where our egos might be trapping us and holding us back. It gives us the opportunity to zoom out to choose a perspective that might be more aligned with the best version of ourselves and one that is closer to reality. It also gives us the openness to tap into the truth that every person has the potential to be our teacher. And it allows us to appreciate that the most challenging people for us can often teach us deep and impactful lessons because of the intensity of our experiences with them.

This can't be purely an intellectual exercise. It has to be an authentic experience of getting how our story is only one possible story, grappling with the lessons that are available, and then letting it sink in that only this person at this particular moment in time could teach us this particular lesson. 

When we take the time and put in the effort to have this authentic experience, the cliché, “Everyone is my teacher,” stops being such a cliché and becomes a lived experience that has the potential to help us make meaningful shifts in our lives.

A Takeaway for 2022: Being Pulled Toward Our Best Self

Dear Upbuild Community,

Another whirlwind year has gone by. There are many things to celebrate and many things to mourn, as always. I try to be daily in touch with the bigger picture which helps a lot, but at this time of year especially, I become contemplative about where I’m at in life. How am I doing? What have I learned? Where do I need to go from here?

How Am I Doing?

To answer the first question, many close to me would tell me in the words of our Enneagram teachers, Don Riso and Russ Hudson: I’m doing better than I think. My schedule and responsibilities somehow feel increasingly unmanageable and yet I feel called to all that I have the privilege to do. Even my guru, Sacinandana Swami, was puzzled about what to do with me! When we got to be together in person for the first time in three years due to the pandemic, he marveled that I’m doing all that I should be doing and it’s so wonderful. And yet he understood that the stress is just too much. He could not advise where to pull back because there’s something so right about things.

Yet I’ve suffered a major toll to my digestive health (previously it was back issues), and I know it’s not unrelated. I’ve therefore revamped my life in very surreal ways with a new Ayurvedic diet. I’ve become more committed than ever to certain sacred habits, capitalizing on the early morning hours that are a linchpin to my well-being. And I continue to serve every way I can to my heart’s content with my wife, this Upbuild team, and our community…Except that my heart is never content! I always want to serve much more and much more deeply. This is all a great honor and also an intense growing pain I experience constantly. Hopefully I can at the very least live up to the idea that I’m doing better than I think!

What Have I Learned?

To start, I’m carrying a lot of weight! I guess I always knew that, but I’m seeing it more acutely as well as the effects of it. So then I’ve had to determine – what’s the source of that weight? With all good intentions to do more and be a better version of myself, I’ve discovered that the source is one thing: the notion that it’s all on me.

I have to figure everything out. I have to move move move. I have to do. And if I don’t, things fall apart. I better get to it. Nonstop. It never ends. And it’s never enough. And then one day it will end. And it will have to be enough. But with this mentality, even at the time of death, it won’t have ever been enough. That’s a wake-up call!

When I spoke to my guru about this, he made a startling observation that has remained burned into my consciousness for many years: Hari Prasada, you’re a pusher. You always push yourself. And you act as if that is the best way to live. I know because I was a pusher myself…

It resonated intensely. And you can see the effect of that pushing on me in what I’ve shared here. But I could not seem to understand the alternative for how life should go except as some ethereal idea.

When I’ve asked Sacinandana Swami about how to flip the switch to the way he now so beautifully operates, he’s told me that this requires deep spiritual experience. It’s not an overnight job. It’s a “rewiring.” But I understand that the rewiring has to begin now.

The challenge, as I also expressed to him, is that whenever I try not to push, things don’t happen. Things really do fall apart. I have evidence! If I don’t push myself, it’s not good. Maybe you’ve experienced the same thing yourself or would never want to try lifting your foot from the accelerator for fear of that same thing. Yes, this is why it’s not so easy!

And that brings us to the third and final question.

Where Do I Need to Go from Here?

I’m faced with a crucial choice: To continue pushing or to be pulled somehow toward my best self.

Currently, my mindset carries the momentum of the ego’s limitless self-centeredness. It’s all up to you, Hari Prasada. You’ve got to do everything. You have responsibility to everyone. Don’t let them down. You have to make things count. This life better amount to something. Make it happen.

There’s a place for this mentality outside of the ego’s reign. We do indeed have to be responsible and not offload that to others or avoid. We have to take our lives seriously. We have to take the people in our lives seriously, the roles we get to play for them, and the contributions we can make. No one else will do that for us. And it is our precious chance to make something wonderful out of this life! Who would want to argue with that or squander it with casualness?

To live the most meaningful life, we do indeed need strong aspiration, dedication, determination, and action. Without goals, strategy, and resolve, we won’t get anywhere. And likewise without proactive adaptation and iteration, we won’t get anywhere. Hence, it’s not so easy to just stop pushing and actually get somewhere worthwhile!

But there’s something more here. There are unseen forces at play that have shaped our lives into what they are beyond our own ability to do so. We cannot even will ourselves to breathe, or as I’ve learned bitterly, to digest food. We are very small. So little is really within our control at all. If we actually recognize this, a door opens up.

Through the spirit of humility, we feel our dependency. We feel our insignificance. We feel our hopelessness. And why would we want any of these things that sound completely negative? Because they’re the truth. And it’s not helpful to choose illusion over truth. Moreover, in this spirit of humility, there is uncharted possibility. It is only through humility that we can be pulled.

The self-oriented pusher carrying the weight of everything knows no peace. There is a fundamental lack of humility in the approach. It’s a mythical hope to gain control over the uncontrollable. To somehow miraculously tame the tides of life before we leave the planet – an event also tellingly beyond our control.

As we close on another year, I want to change my approach. I’m determined to do so. But not with the pushing mindset of “I will pull myself!” That would be antithetical to what I wish to achieve. To achieve what is most precious in life – deepening connection to my best self – I must get in the mindset to receive.

I have to stay with the recognition that I’m not so great, I’m not so special, and I’m not capable of doing any of this myself. I also can’t turn that into the ego’s inferiority complex which is just the flip side of the same coin. I’m so down and frustrated because I’m not so great, I’m not so special, and I’m not capable of doing any of this myself, but I should be!

Rather, the spirit of humility is a grounding release of the pressure I put on myself to be everything at all times and have things under control. It’s a voluntary giving up of the weights I carry without giving up or making someone else become the carrier. It’s a deep internal shift.

By admitting my lack of control and my inabilities, I don’t have to hold myself to unreasonable standards and live on the treadmill of life. This is the secret I observe in my guru. He’s as productive and dynamic of a force as anyone I’ve ever seen. He often doesn’t get enough rest because he gives so much of himself to people in the same vein that I aspire to – writing, teaching, coaching, counseling, serving, and being with people. But he never feels he’s pushing. He always feels pulled.

Sacinandana Swami doesn’t think – look at what I’ve done, look at what I’m doing, or look at what I have to do in the future. He thinks – look at what an instrument I’ve gotten to be, try to be currently, and get to be in the future, by some grace. This takes all the weight off! He feels incapable of doing anything himself while paradoxically using his nature and skills to contribute to the world by helping us realize our best selves. There’s a pulling force he feels beyond himself that is electrifying.

When I’ve tapped into this pulling force myself, which I did for the first time in my monastic days, it’s been intoxicating. There’s nothing I love more. It’s really the best, and I could always tell that there’s so much more where this came from! I’m only scratching the surface…

I have vivid memories of hosting events and taking care of our community by giving talks, serving sanctified food, and spending time with people, experiences that have been out of this world. Being in flow. Feeling I’m not doing anything and yet things are happening. Feeling that I get to be an instrument.

Honestly, by some grace, I feel this way at our Upbuild events practically every time. And this gives me great conviction that the approach can be ported more and more into all aspects of my life. For example, when I’m very stressed about cooking for guests, making sure everything is tasty, nourishing, and on time, I offer a simple prayer, resolving to give my best, eager to satisfy the bellies and hearts of all, and I trust it will somehow come together. When it doesn't go the way I’d like, I get to learn from what could be better and to accept what’s not meant to be. This works wonders! And I see how the same experience can apply elsewhere in my life. Everywhere in my life.

There is a flow that’s available to all of us. There is a pulling force that is bigger and more fulfilling than our little efforts to push ourselves. That experience awaits us all. We have the crucial choice: to push or to be pulled.

To increasingly receive this freeing feeling of flow with life, as we wrap up 2022, I’m committing to the following steps, and I sincerely hope you will too:

1.     Recognize I’m carrying the weight of “it's all on me”

2.     Admit that things are beyond my control

3.     Set the intention to simply be of humble service to the people in my life

4.     Trust that when I give my best it will be enough and I will be pulled to keep growing

Accompanied by daily spiritual practice, this formula becomes extremely potent. Over time, it will dismantle the ego that harasses us, making everything a struggle or dangling one carrot after another for us to chase. This formula will undoubtedly bring us to being our best self more and more, as we all crave. I have evidence! Start the rewiring now.

Imposter Syndrome

Am I qualified for this role?

This is a question that frequently weighs on me. 

Am I qualified to lead this workshop? Am I qualified to be a managing director? Am I qualified to write this blog post? Am I qualified to make $X per hour? Am I qualified to receive praise from the person who just complimented me? Am I qualified to call myself a good older brother?

This question shows up in my life in big ways and small ways. It shows up when I have a role that is important to me and when I perceive my value in that role as being in doubt.

In receiving some coaching from my partner Rasanath on this topic, I have come to see that my relationship to my roles is a little paradoxical. On one hand, I like having a role. It gives me an identity. It gives me an outlet for my value to be seen.

On the other hand, I live in fear that I may not be able to live up to the role. I fear being exposed as a fraud. 

I want the role. But I don’t want the role. I want the recognition. But I fear not being able to get the recognition.

This contradiction leaves me feeling out of sorts. Underneath the contradiction is a feeling of shame for being so dependent on the validation that comes from having and maintaining the role.

It’s a double dose of shame. Shame for not being good enough at the role. And then shame for being unable to happily live with myself if I didn’t have the role. 

This is imposter syndrome.

Evidence for Being an Imposter

At any given time, I have lots of good evidence for my being an imposter. This evidence might include any number of the following: 

1. I am riding someone else’s coattails

Throughout my 11 years at Goldman Sachs, I had a few bosses who were considered “rainmakers.” In other words, they made tons of money for the firm. The thought that my success was largely due to my being a part of their team, rather than my own ability, made me feel like an imposter.   

And more recently, as a coach at Upbuild, I often feel like “I am where I am” because of the charisma and wisdom of my partners, and all of the relationships they cultivated prior to my joining the organization.

2. They don’t know me well enough to see the truth

I am adaptable. I know how to play to the crowd and play to my strengths. This makes me doubt whether others know the real me. I assume people can’t perceive all of my flaws, or at the very least, can’t perceive the extent of my flaws. If they could see my flaws more fully, I assume they wouldn’t be supportive of my maintaining the role. 

3. It’s not worth it for them to rock the boat by giving me negative feedback or getting rid of me

When people accept me in my role or give me positive feedback, I often chalk it up to that being the path of least resistance for that person; maybe they want to avoid having a difficult conversation or maybe it’s difficult to get someone else for my role (the sunk cost is high). I sometimes feel this way in my marriage. That my wife might be better off without me, but the hassle of separating from me is too high.

4. I have insufficient training or domain expertise

In my time at Goldman, when I looked around at other traders, I never felt “quantitative” or “technical” enough to lay claim to the role of derivatives trader. In my role at Upbuild, I coach a handful of founders and leaders of startups, some of whom are older than me. The idea of a coach who is older and wiser and has already succeeded at whatever the client is doing makes me feel like an imposter. 

The definition of imposter syndrome (from Oxford) is “the persistent inability to believe that one's success is deserved or has been legitimately achieved as a result of one's own efforts or skills.” Therefore, the predominant method for overcoming imposter syndrome, as espoused by the self-help world, is to convince yourself that you are worthy of your roles. Just give yourself lots of pep talks about how you deserve to be where you are, and eventually you will believe it, and then the imposter syndrome will go away. 

The problem with this approach is the rather large detail that we don’t believe it, which is the reason we are feeling imposter syndrome in the first place. 

While most of us know emotionally what imposter syndrome feels like, have we ever dug a little deeper to ask ourselves the question: What am I an imposter to?

Consciously or unconsciously, we have an idea of who we think we should be. This identity is often informed by individuals who have been successful in the arena we are competing in AND who are similar enough to us that we consider them within reach. 

For example, if we are working in a product team at a tech company, this identity might be informed by successful product managers at other tech companies, co-workers at our company whom we deem to be a few steps ahead, people of the same age and from the same university who have become successful in tech, or tech bloggers we follow on LinkedIn.

We usually look for people who have similar demographics and ambitions. This is why most of us don’t feel threatened by Steve Jobs’ success but can be sent into a tailspin when we see on social media that a major news outlet wrote a story about our college friend's professional success.

This is not to say that we don’t also base our identity of who we think we should be on celebrities. It’s just that it can feel a little more acceptable (for some of us) not to be famous. Also, as Rasanath points out in this Upbuild podcast on imposter syndrome, most people will never admit to trying to be Steve Jobs because of the stigma that comes with having such a grand vision, but when we look underneath the surface, expectations like these exist. It’s a little cringeworthy to admit this, but I have some notion of myself as part Tim Ferris, part Brene Brown, and part Tony Robbins. 

No wonder we feel like imposters. Because we are. We are imposters to who we think we should be.  

Working with Imposter Syndrome

The effects of getting stuck in imposter syndrome are well known: anxiety, guilt, envy, disconnection from others, less intimacy, less risk taking, procrastination, overpreparation, and prioritizing the wrong things. It is also a rather unpleasant feeling, like walking around with rocks in your shoes. 

So, if pounding your chest and winking at yourself in the mirror doesn’t work, what can we do about it? 

The key is to remove the ego. This, of course, is not such a simple task and can feel abstract as a goal. So, to get more concrete, what we can do, as my partner Vipin highlights in that same podcast, is do the work of separating the truths from the distortions. Within the various pieces of evidence that we have for being an imposter, there are truths (facts or beliefs based in reality) and there are distortions (beliefs that are based on misrepresentations or exaggerations of the truth).

For example, underneath the thought that “I am riding someone else’s coattails,” there is the truth that in every aspect of life, in all circumstances, we are benefitting from and dependent on the success and contributions of others. We would not be where we are if it were not for our associations. Rather than using that as evidence of our unworthiness (a distortion), we need to take time to orient towards the gratitude we feel for those contributions (even if we can’t immediately feel that gratitude) and be generous in our acknowledgement of the contributors.

So, in my case, rather than feeling like a fraud because my partners at Upbuild are good at what they do and because their work opened doors for me, I can acknowledge that truth first to myself (by journaling about it, meditating on it, etc.) and then thank my partners for their contributions. When our dependency on others lives in the light rather than the dark, it enlivens rather than shames us. 

As another example, when imposter syndrome is brought on by the thought that “I have insufficient training or domain experience,” the truth is that there are certain qualifications that are necessary for us to properly do our roles. It is also true that we could always become even more qualified for our roles. The distortion occurs because the ego misrepresents or exaggerates the items on the so-called “checklist” of necessary qualifications, often because of comparisons with who we think we should be. 

When I was a trader, did I really need to be as quantitative as the guy with the PhD in math sitting next to me? My ego sure thought so. And this thought was the painful seed of my imposter syndrome for more than a decade. That was a distortion.

In my current role as a coach, do I need to be older and wiser and have already been successful at my client’s job? My ego often thinks so. That’s a distortion.

And this kind of distortion doesn’t only show up when we have roles. It also induces imposter syndrome for our other identities. 

For instance, I consider myself a very “responsible” person when it comes to personal spending. This identity was called into question when, for Father’s Day a few months ago, my wife bought me not one, but two pairs of $200 jeans. The jeans fit incredibly well and fabric was oh so soft, and I knew my wife had spent a lot of time picking them out. In spite of this, when I received the gift (which had the receipt in the bag), I could barely manage a “thank you” or a smile because the thought of not returning them gave me a mini identity crisis. If I kept them, my ego reasoned, I’d be an imposter to my identity of “responsible spender,”  and this distortion was the reason why I showed up with less presence and less gratitude in a moment where there could have been meaningful appreciation for a loved one. (And just In case you are wondering, in the end, I kept the jeans to preserve my other ego identities of “fashionable guy” and “grateful husband.”) 

Summing Up - The Ego as the Ultimate Imposter

When imposter syndrome arises, it can be a reminder of the truths that other people contributed to us in significant ways and that there are certain competencies that would be beneficial for us to work on. Our egos distort these truths in various ways and make them mean that we are not worthy of our roles and our identities. The way to work with imposter syndrome is therefore to separate the truths from the distortions. And while there are many distortions that we need to look out for, the biggest distortion of them all is the conscious or unconscious belief that we need to be someone that we are not. After all, the ego is the ultimate imposter.

The Two Sides of Working on Yourself

There are two aspects of us that we can work on if we want to effectively uncover our best self:

1. The Ego – who we think we should be

2. The Soul – who we are (our spiritual core)

When we work on both, we do so from opposing angles, but both are absolutely essential. In fact, you cannot uncover your best self without this dual approach. We can only arrive at our self and inhabit our self fully by coming at it from both sides. That means having the courage to find and follow our spiritual inclination while working on our shadows. 

We’ll see that the self naturally feels intangible to us, perhaps even fanciful, buried under all the layers of ego. But with an open mind and heart, we might just notice the subtle intuition that something spiritual is there inside us. Let’s invite that daringness to discover what lies beyond our present state by sincerely seeking to understand the ego and the self.

The Ego:

The ego is what blocks the self. The prison. Without peeling the layers of ego, there’s no way in. The more we peel off, the more we discover about ourselves that is confronting. We feel frightened and ashamed about what we’re covering with our masks that help us look better to ourselves and the world. And we simultaneously feel freer by exposing our ego masks – the postures of who we think we should be. 

The method of working on our ego is:

1. Call ourselves out on our ego's selfishness to prove and defend its identity

For example, I have the desire to be seen as the best husband so I don’t feel small and not enough in this relationship that is so precious. By sharing this with my wife and also by writing this, I get to call myself out!

2. Diligently do all we can to not play into it

I’m very conscious of this ego identity to be the best husband. I try to focus on just serving my wife rather than being seen as “the best husband.”

3. Take responsibility when we do play into it

When I fail, I get humbled and apologize for my insecurity around being seen as the best husband. I’ll keep trying to understand her and support her rather than trying to get validation for my being enough.

4. Seek guidance to work through our ego addictions

I need coaching for perspective, empathy, and the ability to share my heart. I need people who understand me, care about me, and can give strength to my growth journey. I need safe spaces to process my hopes, fears, emotions, and the road to freeing myself of ego.

If we follow this path, we’re destroying the prison, bar by bar. We get a hint of the potential within. And we forage closer and closer to the soul.

If we don’t remove the blocks, we’re out of reach from the self and it becomes wishful spirituality. Doing your spiritual practices while letting the ego run the show is the greatest disservice to the self and to everyone else. It makes this most crucial work on the self far less effectual for us and even repellant to others. Nothing is more unattractive than hypocrisy, which is what work on the self without work on the ego becomes because in the name of the self, we continue to project ourselves egoically rather than act from who we are!

In the monastery where I spent some of my most formative years, I observed that many of us followed through on the work of the soul with our meditation, prayer, and spiritual services. But those of us who did not as carefully strive to monitor our ego’s workings suffered unnecessarily. 

Some of my fellow monks were resistant to work on the ego. They felt why waste time on the stuff of this material world like psychology? They felt our work is beyond that. And as a result, I observed that dear monastic brothers of mine suffered in isolation, unable to confront the shame and speak about their difficulties, caught in a culture of toughing it out, trying to just focus on God rather than our inner work, experiencing terrible loneliness, forbidden longings, unfulfilled desires for a secure identity in the world, and harboring high levels of frustration that also caused pain in their relationships. This broke my heart. It reinforced for me the necessity to work on my own ego and offer that opportunity to others. It made the calling to invest in this side of the self-work much louder.

We can’t skip the ego work to hit the transcend button. That’s called “spiritual bypass.”

If we earnestly keep peeling away at the layers of ego, we develop strong momentum. But even as the bars of our ego prison are being destroyed, it feels there are always more of them – an endless prison. And the soul is atrophied from never actually having moved.

The ego side is a great starting point for our self-work because we all are familiar with the qualities and behaviors of our egos. This is why most people who engage with us do so from the vantage of working on the ego. And even working on the ego is exceptionally rare in this world. It is glorious. But that still is just licking the honey jar, tasting what fragmental smudges might be there without opening it for what’s inside.

The Soul:

The soul, on the other hand, is uncharted territory… Even more rare. That’s the honey. And the jar is bottomless. In the sacred text which we’ve dedicated ourselves to studying and teaching as the foundation of Upbuild’s work, the Bhagavad-Gita, Krsna expresses that out of many thousands of people hardly one may endeavor for perfection. 

How many people do you know actually seeking the perfection of the soul? I don’t mean someone who goes to a place of worship or someone who believes in the soul or God or energy. I mean someone who is striving with every breath to embody the qualities of the eternal soul that is infinitely attractive in its humility, purity, honesty, patience, selflessness, compassion, strength, and love. 

As long as we do the work on our egos alone, we find ourselves in an asymptote of forever going closer, without arriving. The real self is left theoretical – a construct. This is not the bypass of wishful spirituality – this is no spirituality.

Going directly to the soul awakens us to who we are. Spiritual practice addresses that deepest me who we crave to be. Nothing else has the power to do this.

In my own life, that’s sacred mantras, reading, prayer, and wanting to lovingly serve everyone. It requires the vision that all living beings are souls, and I am placed here simply to serve these souls.

At Upbuild, we’re so impassioned about our Enneagram work because we get a taste of being more and more ourselves by removing the blocks of the ego. This encourages us to go deeper. But even our teachers, Don Riso and Russ Hudson at The Enneagram Institute, share that the Enneagram can only take you so far on the journey to the self. 

To cross the threshold and actually know the self requires a spiritual practice.

Are we bold enough to tread this new terrain?

The Mission:

At Upbuild we strive to take both approaches to working on ourselves with utmost sanctity. Self-realization is everything to us, and this dual approach is the key to accomplishing it. Without both, we’re missing something, and deep down, the self knows it. We may not allow ourselves to feel it, as we drown ourselves in busyness, responsibilities, obligations, pleasures, pains, and escapes from having to deal with our shadows. But we can never be satisfied this way. The treadmill always pushes us onward in a state of perpetual wanting.

It’s only when we remove the blocks and go to the heart of who we are that we can be our real selves. That requires a constant movement of managing the ego and awakening the soul. One is an outside-in approach, and the other an inside-out approach. The work on the ego is outside-in, starting with the covering to go deeper inside. The work on the soul is trying to grow the deepest self to the point where I can experience it out in the world, free from all external layers of ego.

To exit the paradigm of the familiar and take on the paradigm of the soul is no small task. But it is the most extraordinary one I know. And my deepest conviction is that anyone who sincerely takes up the mantle will wholeheartedly agree. Imagine what this world would be if we all responded to this calling and tried to help each other arrive at our real selves.

The heart is the deepest part of us, where the soul resides. It is likened to a precious garden. The two sides of working on yourself are 1. removing the weeds of selfish qualities like lust, greed, envy, and anger that choke the self, and 2. watering the flowers of the real self through absorption in spiritual practice. If we sincerely tend to our garden with both sides, then we are guaranteed to awaken from our ego-slumber to who we really are.

What will you commit to doing to work on yourself from both sides?

I Dislike In You What I Dislike In Me

After being abroad for most of my adult life, I have been back in the US living with and spending time with my parents the last few months. This has meant that I frequent many of the same places I did as a kid. One of these places is the community center gym where I spent considerable time pumping iron in high school. 

On a recent visit to the gym on a Tuesday at 4pm, I was surprised to re-learn that weekday afternoons are prime time for the high school crowd. Much to my chagrin, the weights area was packed with 15 post pubescent boys wearing cut-off shirts checking themselves out in the mirror. While I waited for some bench space to clear up so I could do my presses, I watched as one boy after the next would walk up to the mirror, do a biceps and a triceps flex, lift up his shirt so he could admire his abs, rub his pec muscle back and forth a couple of times, lift up his chin and nod at himself, and then look around to make sure that no one was watching. 

As I observed these shenanigans unfold, I noticed myself experiencing intense judgment. These boys think they are such hot shit. All these boys care about is how they look on TikTok. Their muscles aren’t even big enough to justify admiration. 

The judgment turned into disdain for the boys. It also turned into a feeling of shame on their behalf. Don’t these boys have any self-respect?

As I reflect on this experience and look a little deeper at what’s in my heart, it is painfully obvious why my judgment showed up so intensely. The reflection of the boys in the mirror was also a reflection of myself.

While the stages of life are very different, the key ingredients are the same: a preoccupation with body image, a desperation to be desired, and at its core, a deep insecurity about self-worth masked by feelings of grandiosity.

I was those boys when I was in high school. And I am those boys now. The shame I felt was not as much shame on their behalf. It was more the shame I felt about myself. The disdain I felt was not as much the disdain for what the boys were doing to themselves. It was more the disdain for the boys having reminded me of my shame.

What we dislike most in others is often what we dislike most in ourselves.

The dislike is the coping mechanism. It is our way of distancing ourselves from the behavior and from the underlying insecurity that drives the behavior. 

As C.S. Lewis wrote, “...if you want to find out how proud you are, the easiest way is to ask yourself, ‘How much do I dislike it when other people snub me, or refuse to take any notice of me…or patronise me, or show off?’...It is because I wanted to be the big noise at the party that I am so annoyed at someone else being the big noise.”

This is what makes spending time with family members so triggering. We spend, or used to spend, a lot of time around them, and so we are intimately familiar with their stuff. And because we are cut from the same cloth, their stuff reminds us of our stuff. Ram Dass captured it when he said, “If you think you are enlightened, go and spend a week with your family.” 

Anxiety runs pretty rampant in my family. I don’t consider myself a particularly anxious person, but that’s because I have worked hard to stamp it out. Projecting confidence, speaking in a loud voice, stating opinions as facts, overpreparation, spending time in areas of my life I know that I am good at, and avoiding the areas of life where I am not as successful, are all ways that I deal with (i.e., suppress) my anxiety. When I see anxiety in family members, I often get annoyed and judge them as weak. This judgment shows up in both nonverbal and verbal communication, usually through short outbursts of frustration. Stop worrying about everything! For the other person, it can feel like a rejection of not only their feelings, but also of who they are.

When I look a little deeper, I can see my reaction is driven by my own shame around my emotional vulnerabilities. My ego clings tightly to the identity of an emotionally resilient strongman. When someone else gets anxious, I feel anxious as well. That’s natural. The issue is that my ego worries that maybe I’m not such an emotionally resilient strongman. In other words, maybe I’m not who I thought I was. That’s painful. The judgment and irritation are defense mechanisms that prevent me from feeling the pain. But because of the emotional escalation, I am often not aware of or honest about what is really happening, and all the person on the receiving end experiences is the judgment.

Materialism is also something I tend to be judgmental of when I see it in those I love. This shows up in tuning out when my wife starts talking about some clothing she loves that she found while shopping or feeling irked when the Fedex delivery person rings the doorbell an hour after the Amazon delivery truck departed. Despite my ego identity as a zenned-out minimalist, I have more than a few times in the last month spent too much time browsing Amazon looking for nothing in particular. I feel so much shame about my own materialism that when my wife walks into the room during one of my browsing sessions, I will immediately shut my laptop and jump up from my seat as if I’ve just finished up a work email and am now excited to spend some time with her. In reality, I am trying not to get caught. 

And even if we genuinely think our tendencies are distinct from the behaviors that we disdain in others, we just need to look a little deeper to see what is underneath the surface.

I am working with a coaching client who has a prestigious job at an investment bank and is one of the most unpretentious, down-to-earth people I know. She truly defies the banker stereotype because of her humility. Even though arrogant behavior is all around her, it bothers her when she witnesses or is on the receiving end of it. Her aversion toward that kind of behavior had gotten so intense that she was not able to do her job effectively because she was avoiding connection with people whom she judged as arrogant, which is a sizable proportion of people. In a recent coaching session, we were exploring her “overactive arrogance radar,” and at some point in the conversation, in a very innocent way she said, “I take a lot of pride in not having a big ego.” There was a moment of silence, and then we both started laughing. Her next words, “Oh my gosh, I have such a big ego about not having an ego.”

The judgment and the disdain are signals. They alert us to where we need to explore and where we need to ask some deeper questions. They help us discover our shame, which can be ridiculously hard to find if you, like me, happen to be skilled at burying it. 

To get started, here are 3 questions that you can explore in a journal, with a coach, or in the presence of someone you trust:  

1. What is one thing I am judgmental of others about?

2. How is this also true about me?

3. In what way does knowing it is true about me bring up shame?

Notice the second question is “how is this also true about me?” not “is this true about me?” The question does not call for a “yes” or “no” answer. The presumption is that it is true, and we want to know how it is true.

So…if it pisses me off when others are not reliable, how am I not reliable? If it pisses me off when people get into political debates without having done their homework, how have I also formed my political views without the full picture? If it pisses me off when others are controlling, how am I also controlling? If it pisses me off when others are not self-aware, how do I also lack self-awareness?  

This is not to say that we condone other peoples’ behaviors that are affecting us and the world in negative ways. And it may not always be true that what we judge in others is what we judge in ourselves. The question, “how is this also true about me?” is meant to provoke us and may not be relevant in 100% of cases. But before we go about judging the behaviors of another, let us first understand why we are triggered and in what ways we might be able to relate to the behaviors that we believe ourselves to be so adamantly against. When we have this understanding, our actions come from a more honest place and are more likely to have the intended result, especially if we are hoping to help facilitate change in others. And when we are honest about our shame, the shame starts to soften.   

In the example of materialism, rather than being on a crusade against everyone in my family buying things, I need to be honest first with myself and then with others about my own shame that I feel when I spend too much on something, when I buy things that I don’t need, or when I see how much packaging Amazon used for the essential oils set I purchased during one of my browsing sessions. The honesty offers oxygen to the people who are suffocating from the judgment. 

And we ourselves rarely have the full picture about our own judgments. It can be helpful, in our relationships where there is a sufficient amount of psychological safety, to ask others about where they feel judged by us. We can then use the feedback as entry points to explore using steps 2 and 3 from above.

With sincere effort, this exploration is our ticket to growth and connection. It is our ticket to honest relationships and less hypocrisy. It is our ticket to less shame about our shame. As Joseph Campbell wrote, “In the cave you fear holds the treasure you seek.”

When Will We Stop Beating Ourselves Up?

“If anyone else spoke to you the way you speak to yourself, you’d punch that person in the face…” says our teacher at the Enneagram Institute, Russ Hudson. Why are we so hard on ourselves? What is the consequence? And what do we do about it?

I regularly coach clients who wonder about these questions and look for guidance on how to handle the tyrannical internal reign of the Inner Critic. I suffer from the same affliction and questions as they do. It’s an ongoing struggle, but it does get better if we invest the time and energy into understanding what’s actually happening and where our power lies to change things.

For example, I had one client express how stressed she is in her job as a health care professional in the midst of the pandemic and how she is rough on herself about it, which only makes it worse. She deeply desires to help people more than she’s able and also wants to be calm and grounded while doing so. The stress makes her feel less adept in her life and in her role of caretaker for others. But with a few steps that we’ll look at here, she is beginning to be kinder to herself and create more spaciousness for others.

Our Inner Critic is the mouthpiece of our ego. Our ego is the identity of who we think we should be, rather than who we are. When we don’t live up to our fanciful identity, our Inner Critic comes to the rescue to let us know! Do we ever live up to our fanciful identity? No. Why? Because it’s fanciful! It’s not us. So the Inner Critic has a full-time job keeping us on the treadmill, working our butts off to become something we’re not and can never be!

That taskmaster and evaluator that lives in us has different flavors and imperatives according to our Enneagram Type, or the needs of our unique ego personalities. We’re never satisfied. It’s always that we need something more and then we’ll be okay. We’re never enough. We always have to become something we are not. 

Whether I’m toiling for a prestigious promotion or financial security or a sense of calm or the best friend award or otherwise, I can never be truly at peace with myself. That is the consequence of our often hidden self-flagellation. And it leaks out onto others. 

I hurt people because, in that moment (at the very least), I don’t have compassion for myself, so I have no compassion in me to offer anyone else. When I react, raise my voice, self-isolate, or send any subtle or not-so-subtle message to someone that they’re no good right now in my eyes, it’s because my Inner Critic has gotten the best of me.

The challenge is that we don’t often hear it. We don’t even know it’s happening. Our unconsciousness makes us the perfect prey. So we need to become conscious of our Inner Critic. We need to hear its voice. That is the first step.

That’s something we create experiences around and drive home in our Working With Your Inner Critic workshop. We must become attuned to its voice. Any time we’re feeling negative, trace the feeling to the voice. Hear what it must be telling you that accounts for the down-trodden emotions. Now you’re present, connected to reality, and you know what’s happening, so you’re ready to take action.

In Nonviolent Communication (NVC), the framework developed by Marshall Rosenberg, we learn that behind every feeling is a need. Those needs are either met or unmet, or somewhere in between. If we’re feeling something positive, that indicates a need has been met. And if we’re feeling something negative, vice versa. Emotions also communicate the degree to which the need has been met or unmet. We have intense emotions for needs intensely met as well as unmet. We have temperate emotions for the more moderate meeting or lack of meeting our needs. This is vital to understand because when our Inner Critic is at the helm triggering us, we have to know what need it’s blasting us for not having met.

The need is the purer form of the ego’s drivers. Needs come from our real self – who we actually are – and get refracted through the ego as fixations. Those fixations are a distortion of our natural needs that now cease to serve us and create tension with others. 

We generally work in a self-absorbed way to meet the demands of our own egos and simultaneously try to keep enough good will with one another to feel morally upright and not disturb our lives…until someone steps on one of our internal landmines. Those triggers then summon the Inner Critic to the scene.

So we want to be something that we’re not and we want to be seen in this way by others to reinforce that we are in fact this identity. And when others don’t see us that way, we get triggered. Our Inner Critics thus fire at the other person and fire at us for not being unassailable and self-evidently the identity we think we should be. It should be obvious that I am this and if anyone doesn’t see it, that means you’re not good enough, is the message.

And the need is buried in all of this mess. It is our mission to dig through and uncover the pure need. That will help us create clarity and stability in the chaos. Moreover, we’ll begin to understand ourselves better. And when we understand ourselves, we can feel for ourselves. We can recognize that we’re going through a lot and need care. We are never above that need for care. All of our needs boil down to the most intrinsic and ultimate of all – to love and be loved. So we’re never beyond that need for care. And charity begins at home.

We have nothing to offer others if we don’t carry it ourselves. We can’t offer a gift that’s not in our possession. So we must stop to check in with ourselves and give much needed empathy that will offset the madness our Inner Critics muster.

I will close with a step-by-step simple process:

1. Recognize you’re triggered and pause

2. Listen for the voice of your Inner Critic

3. What are you feeling right now?

4. What is the pure need behind that feeling?

5. Stay with the beauty of your need and give yourself empathy for its not being met

Even without trying to meet the need, that self-empathy will do wonders for you and the people in your life. Then from there, you can try to find better strategies to meet your need (a step 6 for another time). And you can offer empathy for what anyone else involved in the situation is going through and needs (a step 7 for another time). 

What does this look like in practice? This is an inner dialogue that can serve as a model to coach us from the pain of starvation for our needs to self-acceptance and continuing growth:

1. I just showed up to a meeting and didn’t get to share anything meaningful

2. My Inner Critic is telling me I’m useless and I don’t have anything to offer and I’m not good at my job or good with people and others are much more adept than me

3. I feel ashamed and sad

4. I have a need for contribution, effectiveness, belonging, and deepest of all, to matter

5. I know that to matter is something vital to my being, otherwise, what am I doing on this planet? It is painful not to feel like I matter. Deep down, I know this need is coming from a pure place of the real self and deserves to be honored. I allow myself to feel empathy for myself and my unmet need, such that my Inner Critic isn’t the dominant force. My own self-empathy becomes more real, present, and impactful. There are lessons from this experience that I’m committed to learning, and there are countless more opportunities to meet my need to matter in different arenas.

If we don’t have this self-empathy, our Inner Critic barks more loudly at us (and we often still will not hear it, but merely feel its effects). When we actually hear the woundedness within us, patiently, it doesn’t need to yell anymore. When someone is trying desperately to get our attention and feel heard, ignoring and neglecting typically exacerbates the situation. What you resist persists. With presence to what’s happening inside us and self-empathy for the suffering, we rise in consciousness and courageously show up more fully as we are. Then we can also be far more understanding and connected with others, as our hearts crave, and as our world craves.

This is Your Damn Life

“What would you like to work on?”

As a coach, I usually ask this question or a version of it in the first five to ten minutes of every coaching session, after devoting some initial time to connect with the person I’m coaching. My goal is always to help the person make progress in the most important areas of their life.

Yet there are still people who join our sessions not having thought about what they’d like to focus on, or simply not knowing what they want to work on even after thinking about it. I understand this response, and I think it can happen for a few reasons:

• The person is unaware of the areas of their life that need attention

• They’re aware of what those areas are but they still don’t completely understand the scope of coaching (which is partly my responsibility as the coach) so they’re not bringing those areas to our coaching

• They feel that “life is good” right now and therefore they may not be in touch with what needs work (false presumption: if life is good, that must mean there’s nothing substantive to work on)

• They simply didn’t take the time to prepare

I understand these reasons because I’ve been in all of these positions before when I’m being coached myself.

In contrast, there are other people whom I coach who join our sessions knowing exactly what they’d like to work on. Some of them have been gathering topics since our last coaching session. Some of them block time in their calendars prior to each session to think about what they’d like to focus on. Some do both! And others are simply always in touch with what they need to work on so there’s not much preparation necessary. That’s where we all want to get to ideally, and we can.

There’s a sincerity and a substance in these coaching sessions, and thus in these coaching relationships, that is strikingly different. These people are bringing the most important areas of their life that need attention to their coaching sessions. They’re sincere in wanting to work on them. And they believe that coaching can help.

Recently, I’ve been thinking about how the way a person approaches their coaching sessions is indicative of the way they approach their life…

An Ideal Mindset

There are people who know what they want to work on, and there are people who don’t. And then there’s my Upbuild partner, Hari Prasada, whom I would classify in a category by himself. All of us at Upbuild receive coaching, and Hari and I coach each other every two weeks, switching off which one of us is coaching the other. Hari is the extreme case of knowing what he wants to work on.

Not only does Hari know what he wants to work on, but also he joins every coaching session literally wondering what little nugget will emerge that will change his life. At the end of each coaching session, he confirms exactly what actions he’s going to take. Afterwards, he takes copious notes on everything he wants to take away from the session. And before the session is complete, he’s already looking forward to our next coaching session and envisioning what further transformations await him.

I know all of this because I’ve observed Hari in action for years, and I’ve asked him about it. He deeply believes in the transformative power of coaching. He knows he’s receiving something that others pay a lot of money for and honors that value. And if he’s not following through on what he’s committing to, he understands that he’s only cheating himself. He’s also seen the impact of the coaching he receives, on himself and on his life. And those experiences have further strengthened his conviction to approach his coaching the way he does.

Expect Miracles

Assuming each coaching session has the potential to transform one’s life is a big expectation. Most people would think, “Why would I carry that expectation into a coaching session? Isn’t that basically a recipe for disappointment? Why not expect less and then be pleasantly surprised when transformation appears?”

One of my dearest friends from business school used to joke about how he set really low expectations for the types of gifts his girlfriend (now spouse) should expect to get from him. And that, he joked, was one of the keys to their happiness. Setting really low expectations, and then just barely exceeding them. And he extended this strategy to numerous other parts of his life.

For many years, I thought it made sense. Expectations management leads to a higher likelihood of (at least temporary) happiness. But as I’ve observed Hari Prasada, another premise has replaced it. I’ve been thinking about this premise as: THIS IS YOUR DAMN LIFE.

Sure, you can keep your expectations low, but those are also the expectations for your life. And our expectations affect what will happen in our lives. When we’re looking for transformation, we’re more likely to find it. Much more is possible than any of us can imagine. When we lower our expectations, we’re also limiting what’s possible. So, setting low expectations isn’t a free strategy. There’s a cost. And that cost is extremely expensive when it has anything to do with who I am and who I am becoming.

What’s Possible

For me, Hari Prasada serves as an important benchmark for how I aspire to approach my own coaching (when I’m receiving coaching), and by extension, how I aspire to approach my life. What would my life look like if I were to approach every interaction asking the question how might this interaction change my life? And every experience desiring to learn what I’m meant to learn, even when it’s difficult? And every moment conscious of what I’m working on and progressing towards becoming my best self? That sounds like a lot of work, but to me it also sounds like a magical way to go through life (as long as I’m also taking rests among the sprints to make this higher level of consciousness sustainable).

While I’m not quite there, I can see the impact of sincerely working on myself over the past ten years. As a few examples, I was able to make a career choice for the first time that was driven by a higher (inner) calling instead of being (externally) consumed by what other people would think of me. (The subtlety is that I thought I had been coming from that place before only to realize how much I had deceived myself having not done the work.) I’ve learned to become more self-accepting, and more truthful and vulnerable with other people as a result, which has enhanced my relationships. I permanently changed my diet and became a vegetarian after one coaching session in which I was able to gain clarity on what was important about it to me philosophically. And perhaps the most striking change I can see in myself is that I’m on a spiritual path with daily spiritual practices, neither of which existed for me ten years ago.

These are all changes I wouldn’t have made without continuously asking myself what areas of my life need attention and pushing on the boundaries of my comfort zone. These changes also wouldn’t have happened without having people in my life to help challenge me in encouraging ways. Whether we have a formal coaching relationship or not, we all need people in our lives who can help mirror and guide us and ensure that we don’t lose our focus amidst the chaos of life. And then of course, there’s also grace. So, I know it hasn’t been all my own doing, and at the same time, I have an important role to play.

My Work From Here

I’m desperate for the changes that lie ahead because there’s so much more for me to work on. What are the areas of my life that are in need of attention now? I carry a lot more anger than I’d like to admit, and my kids are too often on the receiving end of that anger. I’ve lacked patience all of my life, and this shortcoming is also most visible in the context of my children. My self-worth remains tangled up in my achievements and my success. And I continue to prioritize those achievements and successes over the most important relationships in my life.

Will these areas of my life change without me intentionally working on them? No. Or at best, in random ways rather than in a specific direction. And there’s a lot at stake here, especially when I consider the impact on people I love. Why would I leave that impact to chance?

What about just keeping my expectations low and being happily surprised with any transformation that happens? The people I know who are models of what transformation truly looks like are also exemplars of intentionality and focus. They’re always aware of what they need to work on, and how they’re going about it.

An Invitation

We each have the opportunity to live with such awareness, intentionality, focus and fulfillment in this life if we take it seriously. And if not, it’s easy — without any conscious choice at all — to pass up the opportunity of becoming our highest selves. We can be bystanders to the course of our lives or we can actively seek to shape ourselves into who we’re meant to be.

So what do you do if you want to take your development seriously but don’t know where to start? How can you move from low expectations and out of touch with your struggles to a state of clarity about the work to be done and expecting miracles? What is one simple, bite-sized step in that direction?

Whether you work with a coach or not, start by making the time and space to identify what you need to work on. Prioritize that. In what areas of your life are you unhappy, or affecting others negatively? In which of your relationships is trust breaking, or broken? What dreams have you given up on? You can start right now just by investing five minutes thinking about one specific issue in your life that you really need to work on. Explicitly identifying what needs attention is an important first step in the right direction.

This is your damn life. What would you like to work on?

The Freedom Fantasy

“I’ll be happy when…”

One of the most delusional phrases in the English language. 

I try to keep my audible uttering of these words to a minimum, but if I’m being honest, I’m thinking these words practically all the time. 

I’ll be happy when I can move into a place with more space.

I’ll be happy when my son starts sleeping through the night.

I’ll be happy when my net worth hits a certain number. 

I’ll be happy when I can finally see my family. 

I’ll be happy when it’s the weekend.

I’ll be happy when I get through this project. 

I’ll be happy when I can spend more time in nature.

And on and on. Morning, afternoon, and night. 

Underneath these thoughts is almost always the belief that:

When I get these things, I will experience more freedom, and with more freedom, I will experience real happiness.

I am constantly fantasizing about quitting my present circumstances to start living my ideal future. A future with more freedom.

My freedom fantasies have lots of different flavors: freedom from time constraints, freedom from financial constraints, freedom from stress, freedom from deadlines, freedom from other people’s mistaken perceptions of me, freedom from rules that don’t suit me, freedom from any situation that has the potential to be better.

I hold these freedoms on a pedestal.

My hunger for freedom can often feel counterproductive. The more I hunger, the less I feel free. To deal with this well-known phenomenon, the “self-help” section of the bookstore will tell you to stop hungering. If you just reduce the desire for something, then not having it won’t be as bad. This might work for a beach house or a BMW, but for freedom? 

Impossible. I’m famished. I’m starving for freedom. 

Experiencing freedom is core to what we humans are all about. So my hunger for more freedom is not something that I should (or can) rid myself of. My hungering for freedom is not counterproductive. But what I am realizing is that my definition of freedom has been wrong all along.

My understanding of freedom is proven to be mistaken on an almost daily basis when my mini freedom fantasies come true. A difficult project comes to a close. The weekend rolls around. My son starts sleeping 12 hours a night. And yet, the freedom never seems to bring the kind of happiness that I had in mind when I concocted the fantasy in the first place. The freedom never seems to bring real freedom.

This is the freedom fantasy. 

A personal example of this myth was when I left my corporate job a few years back. I had fantasized about that day for more than a decade, the day when I would finally quit in a blaze of glory (and with a standing ovation) to pursue my passion. In my mind, I had checked the boxes of the freedoms that I wanted, mainly financial freedom and freedom from desiring another promotion, before I could make such a move. And I was ready to start living my fantasy full of new freedoms: freedom from 50-hour work weeks, freedom from a boss, freedom from having to wear a suit, freedom to live wherever I want, freedom to do work that I would find meaningful and enjoy in a deeper way. 

And yet, when the excitement (and validation) of the day eventually subsided, and I got down from my high horse of having quit Goldman Sachs to do something to “help the world,” I didn’t feel more free. In fact, it felt like I was standing at the bottom of a mountain with a whole new set of peaks to climb.

The French author, Alain de Botton, wittingly illustrates this point in his book The Art of Travel with his observation of what typically transpires when we plan our vacations: We look at pictures in a travel brochure, thinking how amazing it will be when we get there. We fantasize about it for weeks. And then when we finally book the trip and make our way to the exact same spot that looked so attractive in the brochure, we find that we aren’t as happy as we imagined. We wonder why, but eventually, it dawns on us that we made the crucial mistake of bringing ourselves along for the journey.

As a coaching client recently remarked to me in one of our sessions, “I just want freedom from myself.”
My client was onto something. We do want freedom from ourselves. But it is not freedom from our real selves. It is the freedom from our egoic selves.

We’ve all had tastes of this freedom. For me, these tastes have come while going camping in the wilderness, during experiences at music festivals jamming out to great music with good friends, during intense yoga class in a hot room, letting loose on the dance floor at a friend’s wedding, giggling with my son as we roll around on the floor, and taking a walk by myself on a warm summer evening with house music coming through my noise canceling headphones.

Make no mistake. These experiences are not experiences of the real self. They are worldly experiences that give us a sense of something closer to what the real self must be. They hint at what true freedom feels like and give us an idea of what starts to happen in our internal world when we move away from the egoic self.

More specifically for me, the ever-present and excruciatingly loud voice of my inner critic reduces in volume; the parts of me that carry anger, frustration, and judgment don’t feel so angry, frustrated, or judgemental; the need for attention and praise starts to soften; and the “I-me-mine” centered view of the world doesn’t feel as important or true. I feel less of a pull to prove myself to the world and to defend the ego identities that I have worked my whole life to propagate.

It’s certainly not the case that music festivals or intense yoga classes are the answers to our hunger for freedom. And it’s not that we should avoid pursuing goals like financial freedom or freedom from a job in which we feel trapped. But we are deluding ourselves if we think those kinds of freedom are going to allow us to feel truly free.

Many people have gone their entire lives thinking that if they were just a little more successful or had a bigger house for their family, then they could finally start to enjoy life. And then one of two things happens: either they go to their grave feeling like they never could be happy because they hadn’t achieved what they were chasing OR they work 20+ years toward that goal only to find continued existential angst and unease even after they achieve it.

To help us on the path toward true freedom, we first need to be deeply honest with ourselves about whether how we currently spend our days will eventually bring us freedom. For most of us, the truth is that it will not. And if you aren’t sure because you haven’t tasted the success or identity that you crave, then just ask someone who has it. And second, in order to satiate our desire for freedom, we must start to find ways to soften the attachments that we have to become bigger, better, and more of whatever our ego tells us we should be.

There is only one true freedom: freedom from the ego. And it is the freedom from the ego which gives us the freedom to be our real selves.

Going Beyond the Limits of Mindfulness

“Be here now.” The ultimate mindfulness mantra. 

In mindfulness, we’re commonly taught to ignore the past, ignore the future, and just focus on the present. Focus on the breath, or the amazing view of the sea, or the sand beneath your toes, and everything will be fine.

Maybe it will feel fine at that moment, but we are missing the larger reality.

We often take mindfulness as encouragement to leave the big picture behind because it’s too much, too stressful, or seemingly unimportant as compared with the current happening. Just be present. 

If we follow this directive to leave the past and future behind, our actions will not have much meaning in the broader scheme. We never want to ignore the bigger picture. We want long-range thinking. In fact, we want the longest-range thinking – seeing the grand spectrum of things. From the perspective of the real self, it becomes so clarifying to get out of the minutiae of a single moment. We must see beyond the blinders of the present. That is losing the forest for the trees. That is our myopia.

The real self, the soul, does not belong to a moment in time. It does not even die when the body dies. This is my deepest understanding from my years of studying wisdom texts and living as a monk. The self belongs to eternity. As my guru says: We are children of eternity.

Only when we act as the self, the deepest and most authentic core of who we are, and have the perspective of eternity, do we begin to do justice to reality.

Mindfulness advocates will typically acknowledge that we would profit to take each moment as if it is our last. That may sound like preaching to the choir because if it’s our last moment, we will certainly be only in the now. But if we really understand this practically, it means we are projecting into the future that we could die at any moment. We are not dead at this moment. And we’re using that future projection as a guide for the present.

Likewise, mindfulness advocates will typically acknowledge it’s good to learn from the past. Learn from our mistakes. Don’t just keep repeating them.

So it’s clear that we can’t afford to kiss off the past or the future. That will never serve us.

We must always look for the context of who we are in the spectrum of reality, which includes past, present, and future. This is wisdom. The self is never isolated from these dimensions.

As an example of how mindfulness falls short, I regularly go through my day feeling like I didn't do enough to earn my worth. I have too many undone items and everything feels too chaotic. I feel out of control with a to-do list that never ends. If I just absorb myself in the here and now, trying to live in the material reality of an isolated moment while convincing myself that I am enough, it’s flimsy. I miss the bigger picture. I lose the meaning of past and future with their direct connection to the present. Moreover, I cut the vision of the self who exists not only in this moment, but always, which is the greatest shelter. I must remember amidst the myriad trials and tribulations that this too shall pass. I will make it to the future and better for it. And what I need then is to zoom out for the bigger picture and zoom into the real self. I do this zoom out and zoom in every day, without fail. It keeps me going and keeps me growing.

So are we against mindfulness? Does it collapse onto itself under scrutiny? Not so. Rather, we need a more holistic understanding of mindfulness. We need to be mindful of the past, the present, and the future. We need to absorb ourselves in the present from the vantage point of what the past has taught us and what future we intentionally are called toward.

We need to be mindful of how to use mindfulness for its maximum impact. Mindfulness is extremely beneficial for the mind and body. We need to nourish our minds and bodies with what serves them. However, mindfulness does not touch the self. 

The self is mindful, but being mindful does not mean we are being our selves. It means we feel a little closer to who we are because we’re developing a trait of the self. And that is indeed wonderful. That’s why it’s so attractive. We want this! But we don’t want to conflate that with being who we are.

Many of us will stop at mindfulness and consider it as our spirituality or our being the real self. That is a travesty. Good being the enemy of great to the infinite degree…

To illustrate the principle further, let’s look at mindfulness in a higher and in an average state of consciousness:

In a higher state of consciousness, I can be mindful in meditation, trying to clear the mind and be peaceful, free of stress, gaining in presence, gaining in awareness. That is the best we can possibly do with mindfulness from a worldly perspective. Make no mistake, it is still not spiritual. Yet it’s grounding, healthy, and good.

At an average state of consciousness, I can eat an ice cream with incredible focus. That’s nice. You’ll get more enjoyment that way. It’s better than scarfing it down or fueling a flamboyant addiction to sweets (though a proper addict will know this is actually the best way to indulge…). But what does that do for the world? What does that do for the self? Mindfully getting what I want is actually what most of mindfulness entails today. It has nothing to do with the self.

This is not what mindfulness is meant for. Mindfulness is meant for bringing us closer and closer to reality, which includes the self and the world. The higher the consciousness, the more our mindfulness takes us closer to reality and the self. The lower, the further away. 

To be best suited to serve others, we want to be mindful, but as our selves, not refracted through our ego identifications. We want to make sure we work on being who we are, and not mistake mindfulness as doing that. That is how mindfulness sells us short.

The increasing mainstream embrace and commercialization of mindfulness are helpful for simulating one of the wonderful qualities of the self. However, this simultaneously removes most of us from any impetus to experience the actual self. We think mindfulness is where it’s at. And we stop there. That’s the immeasurable loss!

What we need is to take mindfulness in context, not out of context. Mindfulness is one part of the journey, and not the most important one – unless and until we channel it internally toward perceiving the self and what’s getting in the way.

We’ve exposed three things here:

1. The lack of clarity on what mindfulness actually means

2. The lack of completeness in the way mindfulness is commonly taught

3. The misconception that mindfulness is spirituality

Again, the purpose of this piece is not to discourage mindfulness but to clarify what it actually is, what it isn’t, and how it can be used for the best benefit. And to go beyond its limits to experience our fullest self.

I started my own journey at NYU Film in 2006 experimenting with mindfulness and meditation. I found it so helpful to be more present and more attuned! I’ve never stopped feeling that way. But if I only sought this, I would never know what more is at stake from the spectrum of eternity. 

Working to remove the layers of ego that cover us and cultivate connection to the soul via spiritual practice has taken me light-years beyond my prior conceptions of mere mindfulness. I still have many more light-years to go. And so I rely on spiritualized mindfulness to propel me through – all the way to self-realization.

Goldman Sachs Bonus Day and the Entitled Ego

To the outside world, today is just a normal weekday in January. On Wall Street, today is anything but normal. Today is Comp Day, the day that annual bonuses are announced.

8:30am. Matt, the most senior trader on the team, receives the first call. The caller ID on the phone dashboard blinks, Conference Room 5. No one ever calls from Conference Room 5. Except on Comp Day.

On most days, the junior team members pick up the phone for the senior members. On Comp Day, everyone picks up their own phone. Especially if the caller ID says Conference Room 5.

There is a collective gasp from the team as Matt looks down at his phone. “Hello,” Matt says sheepishly into his headset. “Yes, on my way.” Matt, who flies business class with his family of five to Hawaii four times a year, gets up from his seat like his 3rd-grade teacher just whispered in his ear that the principal would like to speak to him in her office.

As Matt disappears into Conference Room 5, we get a peek at Nick, the Partner who runs the team, sitting behind a stack of papers. Everyone pretends to go back to work, but no one is doing anything. Except thinking about Conference Room 5.

After three minutes that feel like 13, Matt walks out with a look on his face that communicates he was expecting an additional zero.

Another minute of silence. The phone rings. Conference Room 5 on the caller ID. This time it’s Taylor’s turn.

The process will continue most of the morning. Eventually, it’s my turn.

My heart jumps into my throat when I see the blinking light next to my name. “On my way,” I say in the same robotic tone as those who came before me. I feel the eyes of my co-workers pierce my physical body. My heart has returned to my chest, but it is now beating at the same speed it did in the moments before my first kiss.

Nick greets me with a nod and a quarter smile. “Take a seat.” I know not to expect any pleasantries.

He starts in with the canned qualitative commentary about the firm’s performance. I don’t catch what he says. My mind has blocked all qualitative parts of the conversation.

And then the moment of truth. The quantitative part. “Your P-A-T-C is …”

P-A-T-C stands for “per annum total compensation.” It is the total of base salary plus bonus, and is colloquially referred to as your number.

After my number is revealed, Nick communicates how much of the bonus will be paid in cash and how much in company stock. None of this information registers. My mind is playing the part about my number on repeat.

My access to my emotional temperature at this moment is non-existent. All I know is that I need to appear both gracious and disappointed. I need him to know I am mature enough to act like a decent human being, but that I am unimpressed by my number. To admit satisfaction or to offer sincere gratitude would be equivalent to acknowledging I had been paid too much. Dissatisfaction is a strategy to be paid more next year.

I give one final nod and walk back out onto the trading floor. The eyes of the legions of traders, sales people, and strategists again pierce my body. By the time I get back to my seat, the caller ID is already flashing, Conference Room 5.

It’s hard to know how to act the rest of the afternoon. Some people are ready to quit. And some are thinking about what color Ferrari to buy. I don't know which person is which. Better to keep to myself. Everything feels like a blur anyway. Everything except my number.

Today is the start of a year-long relationship with my number. It is a very intimate relationship because my number sticks in my head. It marinates. It stews. It consumes me. And it becomes me. I start believing everything that it represents.

As the chorus from Johnny Rivers’ “Secret Agent Man” goes: They've given you a number and taken away your name.

But this is not about them. This is about me. This is about how I have surrendered my self-worth to a number. A single number on a single day communicated to me by a single individual.

During each of my 11 years at Goldman Sachs, two months before Comp Day, I would send a list of my accomplishments to my boss to give him ammunition to pay me a higher bonus. When my number was eventually revealed, my ego’s internal algorithm would compare it to my list. The number always fell short.

Externally, I would act like I had been betrayed. “It’s so unfair that they paid the sales people more this year!”

The ego feels entitled. It loves to use the concept of fairness in service of its agenda. Especially on Comp Day.

Internally, my inner critic would beat the crap out of me: “You’re not quantitative enough. You never deserved to get promoted to MD.”

The inner critic is the mouthpiece of the ego. It had known all along that I was an imposter and here was proof thrown back in my face. The shame from feeling “not enough” would become extremely unpleasant.

To provide temporary relief from the shame, I responded with disengagement (“I never wanted to be a part of this greedy profession in the first place”) and angry resentment (“Those greedy assholes kept it all for themselves!”). While these responses offered me an illusion of power and control, they also left collateral damage in my life. Professionally, I wouldn’t put in as much effort, wasn’t as enthusiastic about helping others, and would overcompensate by finding subtle ways to show just how valuable I was. In my personal life, I would get grumpy, wouldn’t be as present, and would indulge in validation-seeking behaviors such as name-dropping and humblebrags.

This whole cycle is problematic, and it is entirely because I surrendered my self-worth to a number.

Comp Day is not about the money. It is about the meaning that our fragile egos create about the money.

And even if you don’t get a bonus in the same dramatic fashion as an investment banker, what number do you let define you? Is it your company’s valuation, the price of Bitcoin, your brokerage account balance, your hourly wage?

When we surrender our worth to something extrinsic, it will never be enough. It will never be real worth.

Fast forward to the present…

So now that I no longer work for an investment bank, has this tendency to define myself by a number gone away? Unfortunately not.

As a team of four at Upbuild, we have tried to disassociate our worth from our compensation by basing our compensation on collective earnings, rather than on individual contributions. It does change the mood, but it doesn’t mean the link between compensation and self-worth has gone away.

Even with this more equitable system, and even as I do the work of excavating egos for myself personally and professionally with my clients, it’s hard. My conditioning is intense. I experience insecurity about my value that comes from wondering if I am doing enough to earn my share. And I feel the insecurity of questioning if I have less value because my number these days is a lot smaller than it used to be.

But just because something has been one way doesn’t mean that it is destined to be that way forever. By bringing awareness into my life about my fragile ego, I am starting to detangle the link between my number and my worth.

Contrary to what my ego wants me to believe, worth does not need to be earned. It does not need to be proven.

These numbers are not us. They are not indicative of our real value. We know this because even when the number is good enough, the insecurity that, “I’m not enough,” persists. This whole system of relying on numbers to tell us our worth is flimsy. It doesn’t stand the test of time. We need to find something with a longer shelf life and something that is closer to the core of who we are.

We can ask ourselves the question, “Who would I be if I lost my money, my job title, and my status?”

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A Takeaway for 2021: Die Before Dying

My Dear Upbuild Community,

I wrote to you last year that my focused endeavor would be to let go of the results in life, just as Krsna instructs Arjuna to do in the landmark sacred text, The Bhagavad-Gita. That has been a phenomenal challenge. With so many ups and downs, progress on the path looks more to me like the spastic upward curve of a seismograph than a simple straight line to perfection.

In spite of the difficulties, I know this process of ‘let go and let God’ works. And there have been many indicators that encourage me to move forward. I regularly have moments where I think this is divine magic and that a benevolent force is looking out for me. I regularly gain crucial realizations that I cherish. I regularly gain blessings that I can feel are powering me. And I regularly have the opportunity to serve others in deeply meaningful ways that are beyond me. So in looking back at another chaotic year, for the world, and for this Hari Prasada, I want to focus on one jewel (with four faces) to carry forward into the new chapters ahead.

The cornerstone of what I want to share with you is that I’m going to die. Some of you may be shocked and terribly concerned by this statement. Others may think I’m merely stating the obvious. To all, I must express, I’m okay, but this is a reality we don’t give proper time and attention to. Thankfully, I’m healthy and have no reason to believe I will die prematurely. But death is almost always premature, even if it’s in the furthest human reaches of old age. Stated simply, no one wants to die, ever, unless life is too much suffering that death is the lesser of two evils. The tragedy here is that we never then see what life could be and how it extends beyond the death of our body.

The great king of Vedic times and elder brother to Arjuna from the Gita, Yudhisthira, was once asked: What is the greatest wonder in all existence? 

His response: We all will die, and yet everyone acts as if that day will never come. 

This is what Ernest Becker so aptly exposed as “The Denial of Death.” If we did truly understand and face this phenomenon of death, we could never live the way that we do. Each moment would be far too precious and the core of us – who we really are – would be our foremost preoccupation.

In our Remembering Who We Are weekly gathering, we heard from my guru, Sacinandana Swami, about what it was like to be On the Brink of Death (as the series is called), many times over. The experience of a life-force bigger than death endowed him with the most powerful conviction in the existence of the soul.

The experience of his soul, undying, and capable of rising into the air over an operating table where his bleeding body lay, only to cross through walls and perceive the rest of the hospital, was just a tiny striking glimpse of what this means. He later verified both with his fellow monk friend sitting outside in the waiting room, as well as the surgeon performing the procedure, that everything he had seen and heard while outside the body defying the laws of physics, was indeed true. When he presented this account at a scientific conference in Germany, an esteemed doctor thanked him for making his job easy by providing top-notch first-hand experience for any skeptics of how we can exist separate from the body.

In the same Remembering Who We Are program, we went on to follow the thread around death into the writings of another self-realized soul – Bhakti Tirtha Swami. In his book, The Beggar IV: Die Before Dying, which we continue to study in these sessions, Bhakti Tirtha Swami notes that there is a spiritual technology that allows us to “die a glorious death.” And if we get that right, it can only mean we have lived a glorious life. In other words, we don’t have a beautiful and successful departure from this world into the life of the soul unless we’ve properly prepared.

That’s Krsna’s main lesson in The Bhagavad-Gita. In Chapter 8, he explains to Arjuna and to all of us that the purpose of life is to pass the final exam of death. If we study and train well, we’ll have no problem at all.

Since the age of 33, I started to realize more tangibly that I will die. Before that, my finite years on the planet felt infinite. That is the illusion we generally like to live in. For these last several years, it’s been starting to cave for me. I imagine my death, morbid as it sounds. My guru has taught me this. There must be preparation.

Although I know it’s only a gateway, I fear my death. For those who think biologically and not spiritually but believe that death is not to be feared because it is only natural, that is nice in theory. In practice, we have infinite longings and infinite fears. Death is the heaviest block to all our longings and the very culmination of all our fears. It is the symbolic representation of everything that gives us anxiety and that we wish to avoid and suppress. And so I still fear. But turning away from this is not the recipe for success in death.

Rather, Bhakti Tirtha Swami offers us the spiritual technology for a glorious death. With my mom, Dr. Tzipi Weiss’s inspiration, we’ve distilled this technology into four branches:

1. Prioritization

2. Preventing Offenses

3. Forgiveness

4. Sanga (connection)

I would love to one day write separately about each, just as we’ve been processing each of them deeply in Remembering Who We Are. But for this moment I will just say a word about each branch that sets us clearly on course for a glorious death. 

1. Prioritization - We must prioritize the Big Rocks, as Stephen Covey would say, as I often like to share thanks to him, and as my guru expressed to me very intensely this year. We will be pulled in all directions by this world, and especially by our wild hearts and minds filled with desires and distractions. If we don’t put the Big Rocks in first, we will wind up with so many regrets, fears, and pains that are needless. The practices that open up connection with the soul such as mantra meditation, prayer, reading of sacred texts, and coming together for spiritual growth are the most powerful tools that I know at our disposal. May they never get lost in the shuffle. May we never neglect the calling within that competes with all the noise of this world.

2. Preventing Offenses - We all have urges that, if acted upon, cause us to disrespect others, ourselves, and our practices, as well as the services we do. We regularly experience the impulses of reactivity, defensiveness, hurt, desire to retaliate, and we sometimes move too quickly, neglecting to give proper care to what we’re doing or who we’re with. As long as we act on the impulse to disrespect, we cheat ourselves from growth. We distort the sanctity of our connection with ourselves and each other. Being attentive, caring, and genuinely wishing the best for everyone, even when there’s a need to be strong or set firm boundaries, is critical for our own spiritual well-being. When we come from a selfish place, an entitled place, a reactive, what to speak of retaliatory place, no good comes. If we behave thoughtlessly and carelessly in our practices and services, no good comes. It’s only with deep respect by understanding with spiritual vision that everyone is a soul and everyone is worthy of love that we do justice to reality. And we always want to be as mindful and heartfelt as possible as we offer our spiritual practices and our service to others. We want to act with this pure understanding always, and try our best to take responsibility for any shortcomings that stand in our way.

3. Forgiveness - People will let us down. Circumstances will push us over the edge. We will feel unfairly treated. This is inevitable. It’s in the DNA of material existence. It’s part of the karma we all come with and must learn from. We all have done things that afford us a reaction that we’re meant to learn from. That’s our karma. If we take out our frustration on others or hold it inside begrudgingly, we only hurt ourselves. Forgiveness is the key that unlocks the soul from the prison of self-righteous expectation. People are not here to meet our needs and abide by our conceptions. They need our compassion and forgiveness, even if again, strong boundaries are required to flourish and not enable another. But more than anything, we need for ourselves to not hold hatred or resentment in our hearts. That chokes us. The heart suffocates without forgiveness.

4. Sanga - All our learning, inspiration, and support on this path to the real self depends on sanga, or the company we keep. Particularly, it means those who walk this path with us and can help us on our way. It’s the loving relationships that nourish us and set an example, mirror us, provoke us to rise to greater heights of being, and allow us to gain realizations. We need people to receive us as we are and to show us what is possible in living by spiritual principles. Nothing has been or continues to be more impactful for me personally than this understanding of sanga. The people we surround ourselves with have the biggest influence on who we are currently. If we become intentional and find ways of connecting with those who push us beyond our comfort zone and care about us with heart and soul, as my guru says - miracles will happen. So making time to show our love for such sincere souls and receive their love for us could not be more pivotal.

When we’re on our deathbeds, there are common worries that have been documented in studies and by end of life caretakers. Having prioritized superficially, created harm, failed to forgive, and lost out on pure love, are some of the heaviest worries. If we think of these now – doing a pre-mortem, no pun intended – and steer toward strong spiritual investment in each of these areas, we not only prevent a painful death, but we imbue our life with maximum meaning.

What is it to die before dying? It means we voluntarily let the ego die before we’re forced to let go of it in death. We give up all temporal identifications with our mind and body. We give up all the possessiveness towards this life. We think of who we really are in eternity – a selfless, loving servant of all living beings, divinely connected. This happiness knows no bounds. It is full freedom. And it makes death not only a cakewalk when it’s the most formidable misery of all miseries, but it makes it glorious. It becomes our portal to a sublimity of the soul we can’t imagine.

Bhakti Tirtha Swami departed at 55 with vicious melanoma. In his last days, his leg amputated and in excruciating pain, he said: It doesn’t get any better than this. I wouldn’t trade my position with anyone in the world. He’d done what he’d set out to do. He died before dying and lived as the soul.

When my hero who first inspired me to take up this path, Soren Kierkegaard, passed from this world in 1855, he lit up the room. His nephew, who was six years old at the time, remembered it decades later as the most significant event in his life. At the moment of exiting his body, Kierkegaard had a smile on his face that was truly glorious. For he had mastered his life. He focused on dying before dying. And the glory of his death spoke for itself. Everything he lived for – all his spiritual principles and teachings, in spite of his many struggles, paid off. Though centuries too late to have been there myself, I never forget this scene. I always keep it close to my heart as I imagine my own death.

So my ardent intention to take away from 2021 into the future is the acknowledgement of my death, the commitment to die before dying, and the investment in the four branches of spiritual technology that will help me make my death and my life glorious, by divine grace and the grace of my teachers. I pray so much the same for you. 

We don’t know how much time we have. Kierkegaard left this world at 42. My own 37 years have gone by like it was nothing. Another 37 is just around the corner if I’m given them. Time is always too short. Please take this life seriously and please take this death seriously. If we do both, with the understanding that we are indeed souls, and we feed our souls by this spiritual technology, all of our struggles become meaningful. Don’t forget to prioritize, prevent offenses, forgive, and seek loving sanga. Then the happy ending of this life will become the best new beginning there is.

The Long Lost Duckman and The Meaning of Life

Who remembers that cartoon on USA Network with a very cranky duck detective as its lead character? The one and only Duckman (voiced by Jason Alexander). It ran from 1994 to 1997 at 10 p.m. Eastern Time, and I used to watch it religiously. Why I was so into it, I can’t really tell you, but at the time, I found it quite fascinating. And of all the innumerable episodes of Duckman that I watched, there is only one that I still remember to this day. And within that one episode, there is only one moment that remains with me presently: Duckman’s meeting with God…

There’s a question we all carry with us unconsciously, moment to moment, and which we sometimes bring to consciousness: What is the meaning of life?? 

For most of us, it’s rare to speak about it at all, and for many of us, rare to even think about it, but it’s lodged in us…deeply. 

A common reason we don’t think or speak about it is because we’re too busy and there are many “more pressing” or “more practical” considerations. Another is that we think it’s unanswerable. Yet a third is that we think it’s obvious: Life is what you make of it.

Duckman played on our unconscious obsession with what it all means in a way I think typifies the importance of the question. It presented an almost climactic recognition of how that very question necessarily underpins everything we do by the illustration of Duckman’s death and subsequent encounter with God.

Of course, a TV show in that time-slot about a wild duck with a George Costanza alter-ego could only mean God is portrayed facetiously, at best - a booming voice amidst billowing clouds who asks Duckman to step into the light, then step out of the light, put his left foot in, take his left foot out, and shake it all about… 

He tells Duckman he wants to give him something to take back to his life on Earth, which he left for heaven prematurely (by a celestial mistake in the records). Duckman interjects to ask for the Super Bowl results ahead of time or a photo of him with some dead celebrities. Clasping his hands together as if in prayer, he anxiously awaits God’s response. God then gives him...an Etch-a-Sketch. 

Duckman is mildly disappointed trying to figure out what to do with it, moving it around as if to examine how it works. On that Etch-a-Sketch, was written what God says is “the ultimate answer to the ultimate question - the meaning of life.” When Duckman looks at the screen, true to Etch-a-Sketch functioning, he sees his motions have erased the content. That’s it. No more meaning of life for Duckman. 

And whether we know it or not, that’s more or less where most of us find ourselves. For those of us who do think we know the meaning of life and it’s just obvious, i.e., the ‘life’s what you make of it’ adage, that approach really lets us off the hook from too much concrete motivation to live meaningfully. In other words, it’s too nebulous to be a guiding force toward experiencing deep and lasting meaning. We may then say, wait, there’s another adage to the adage - it’s all about love. Yet, aren’t we still pretty good at keeping that loose, vague, and if we’re really honest, often peripheral to our day-to-day?

From my vantage point, both of these ideas are actually on target - life is indeed what you make of it, and love we know rightly to be at the heart of that. However, the question remains, how do we make such a central premise central to how we live? And is there not something more to it than these simple cliches which can work well for a certain Hallmark niceness but which quickly become hackneyed and dry?

I honestly like the dramatic flair and marked mystery that Duckman shrouds this question in, i.e., the buildup to Duckman’s death, an encounter with God, God’s ultimate gift, and it all being for naught because of the torment of losing the answer to that ultimate question that matters more than any other… I find the depiction so fitting for the place this question actually holds in our hearts and minds. And I think our ways of typically dealing with this question, by either ignoring it or giving pat answers are ultimately insufficient. They fail to do justice to the utter “ultimateness” of the issue, as Duckman’s God would put it. They let us live practical lives, numb to its extraordinary import.

So what are we left with? Only the chance to explore meaning further. It’s something which has occupied us since time immemorial. Philosophers and religionists have been trying to resolve this along with physicists, evolutionists, psychologists, and artists. The 1960s saw a revolution stemming from lack of meaning, where an entire generation ducked out of their habitual lives to become known as hippies. And in the new millennium, the concern for meaning has entered into the mainstream with a vengeance, even into the workplace! 

Now, studies show that meaning is what most people, especially millennials, are seeking, above other considerations in a career. Meaningful work provides the greatest satisfaction and can spare a company exceptional cost in disengagement and turnover. But what makes something meaningful? Is it only what we make of it? Is there love to be found in the workplace? How do we make this concept of meaning tangible so that it’s actually meaningful?

I was discussing exactly this point with a coaching client in Washington Square Park some time back. I could feel his surprise that we arrived at such a fulcrum of existence in the context of our work. And yet, he also knew that that’s what we’re together seeking. 

When I shared my understanding that there is indeed a meaning - a specific meaning - that we can make of our lives, he was all the more intrigued. I expressed my conclusions, which inspired me to write this piece.

Specific universal meaning to life often makes us dubious. We tend to associate some kind of glory with questions being more important than answers and even questions not having answers that we can know. But I believe we cheat ourselves by asking questions we don’t ever intend to answer or that get answered without thought and implementation.

Living as a monk, I studied the wisdom of the world’s traditions for many years in as much depth as I could. And I made it a point that it’s not to sit in my head. It must be lived for it to be meaningful. What I found was that there is one commonality that resonates most deeply amongst all of the wise. To live a meaningful life means we cannot be at the center. It means we must not live the life of the ego. We must be called to something larger than ourselves rather than enlarging ourselves and pretending our finite little existence - soon to be forgotten - is so meaningful. 

Paradoxically, our lives become meaningful to the degree we don’t think ourselves more meaningful than anyone else. When we break out of the ego and step into the life of service, we contact a meaning beyond anything previously experienced. This is the ultimate gateway.

The meaning of life as I understand it and endeavor to live it is simply pure service. What you can give, not what you can get. Nor what you’ll be remembered for giving. It’s what you can give free of strings, free of attachments, free of ego. What you can give from your heart. From your real, deepest self. Independent of outcome and temporary happenings. That’s a region of transcendence we usually shy away from. And that is where the ultimate meaning lies.

I had an experience that really encapsulated this for me and instantly changed my outlook on the day in a very powerful way. I was heading to the monastery to do my regular service of making flower garlands, but it was the end of an exhausting workweek on a day that ran extremely late, yet again, and would necessarily mean I was up ridiculously late, nodding off while doing the service I love, and in anxiety about preparing for and teaching our weekly Bhagavad-Gita class first thing the next day. To add insult to injury, there were no flowers in the cooler where they are kept for the garland-makers, so I’d have to venture out into the cold and take more time to purchase five bouquets. 

As I was en route to make my reluctant purchase, I found myself in a very strange setting. I was taking one of my treasured shortcuts to get from one block to the next via an apartment complex and park, when suddenly, I saw the gates closing behind me. I thought, ‘Good, I’m just in time!’ As I proceeded to the exit, I found I was too late after all. Locked. So I quickly backtracked, grumbling internally. I got to the entrance gate that was shut behind me only to find it too was locked. I nearly panicked.

My heart was racing as I pushed with all my might. I managed to create a slender opening and barely squeeze through. Relief. Until I noticed there was a second person in the same boat. We were the only people in sight. 

A homeless person, so bundled up I couldn’t tell the gender, tried to get through the gap in the locked up gate. It was no use. I witnessed the scene, trying to keep it to the corner of my eye, so that I could keep it in the back of my mind and not really notice, for I was well on my way. There was a part of me that thought, ‘I have to run because I don’t have any more time and I need to be clean to do this service in the sacred temple.’ I nevertheless turned around, unable to take that shamefully compelling voice of avoidance more seriously than my conscience. I thus stared into the eyes of the human being trapped on the other side. There was no call for help, no communication. Just an understanding that came over me when I gave up my provincial consciousness to allow for the existence of another. This is my opportunity to help. Not my burden. Not even my obligation.

I lifted a bag he or she was trying to fit through the opening and carried it over to my side. Then I pushed the gate the furthest I could muster until my companion at last made it to me.

“God bless you!” was the first thing the person said. It was also not obligatory. Not a “thanks” - “you’re welcome” exchange. It nearly brought me to tears. To overcome my own baggage and appeal to another, and to feel the depth of connection in the words of a total stranger - a stranger that I shamefully would want nothing to do with, and certainly no repeat or deep connection - compounded by the purity of the exchange...it all just bowled me over. As I was about to return to my own state of affairs, this struggling soul spoke.

“You want some socks? It’s cold!”

It was true. It was cold and I was stupidly not wearing socks. I was awestruck that the person looked down at my feet, in the dark, and in the present struggle, not to mention overarching struggle of life. I almost couldn’t find words to respond. I just thanked him or her for caring and being so good. I assured that I would be all right. In response to their still wanting to make sure I couldn’t use socks, I shared that it would be a short time outside and I wouldn’t be too cold. This person was so giving...

I don’t remember exactly the words that came next as we parted ways, I only remember that he or she expressed love for me. And well-wishings for my life. Even as I write this, I feel unworthy and emotional reliving it. I’m a privileged, sheltered kid. All I did was my duty as a fellow human being, and I almost did it begrudgingly or not at all. I wish I could have done so much more than just letting the person through the gate. 

I was simultaneously humiliated and elated. It was such a moving experience that the rest of the night I thought far less about my own woes even though they were causing me real stress and exhaustion. I continued to think about my unlikely friend on the other side of the gate and the heart-to-heart connection based on service. It filled me up and lent spirit to my garlanding. 

Getting outside the grip of the ego is not easy. It never is. But it is more rewarding than anything else in life. This I say with full conviction. As a leader in end-of-life care, Frank Ostaseski, says in his Wisdom 2.0 talk, Inviting the Wisdom of Death into Life: “At the end of life, there are only two things that matter to people - am I loved and did I love well?” 

That means love that flows without the dams of ego which block us from ourselves and each other. It’s not limited, and certainly not to mere family or friends. It encompasses the world and all living beings. It takes over us in a way that is humbling rather than pride-instilling. It’s an accomplishment that doesn’t feel achievement-oriented or worthy of a pat on the back at all. It can be lived at home and at work. There is no cap on it and it need not always be expressed in words. It’s this spirit which makes us lovable to our friends, family, team, and everyone we meet. It makes us trustworthy and enlivened to be our best and offer that for the benefit of this world. Are we prepared to live such a meaningful life?

Start by evaluating each day at it’s close: How many times can I count my ego clearly coming in my own way or the way of another? How many times did I break free and offer pure service to another without expectation or self-congratulation? The more we see our ego, the more we need not be run by it. And the more we offer pure service, the more we shed ego identity to become our real self. It changes our days and builds up increasing momentum for the most meaningful life.

How to Live with No Regrets

I have this pact with myself since I was a small boy that I will live my entire life with no regrets. Do you also share this desire with me? I don’t know anyone who takes the contrary approach and wants to live a life with lots of regrets! I don’t know anyone who desires a single regret at all. But for me, this is serious business.

How am I doing on this, you might ask? Well, it’s a bit complex. To arrive at the outcome of a life with no regrets — it’s a journey, and a circuitous one. Let me start with what prompted me to write this piece, and we can use that concrete example as a thread for a better understanding of a life without regret.

I recently lost an old friend who was a very lovable, innocent little brother to me when we were monks together nearly a decade ago. I helped train him and felt a deep, lasting, affectionate connection with him. He suffered a lot in his life, and I didn’t have a clue just how much he suffered until he was gone. It’s most likely that he took his own life. I was devastated to learn of his death, out of the blue one day, and the grief came at me with mounting force. I had also never been in the surreal position to have to reach out and share the news with others who knew him.

When I first heard of his passing, I thought that life had naturally taken us in different directions and I trusted that there is a divine plan for him which is bigger than the awful tragedy that hit. I still feel this way 100%, but what I didn’t count on was the intensity of my own regret.

I’m not used to thinking consciously about my own regret in the first place because I try to live in a way that will preclude its ever coming to me. Moreover, I’ve never been in a situation where I was a caretaker of someone who later left the planet untimely, in abject misery, and by their own hands.

He had reached out to me sporadically over the years, and I have a trail of correspondence between us leading up to just weeks before his departure. It was always his initiative. But the worst thing of all on my conscience was that there were times when I could not get myself together to respond to him until months later, caught in a deluge of messages, and I was never really that anxious to speak with him. I felt responsible.

It was clear that I could not manage the chaos of life well enough to keep up the relationship to the degree he would have desired. And I didn’t have great confidence that I’d be able to continue to inspire him after we left our monastic lives, nor that I could receive inspiration from him.

The effect of all this was I cried a lot. My wife and I held a sacred ceremony in the hopes of benefiting his soul as well as his loved ones. And I had to do a lot of processing within myself, in prayer, and in numerous conversations to try to bear the weight of my guilt in a healthy way. All the while, I needed to remind myself that this is not about me and I’m no savior for anyone — I only want to be the best person I can be for my friend and for all those on my path. Therefore, I’m very determined to learn the lessons, honor this dear soul, and grow the best I can by some grace, sharing the gift of realizations with others thanks to him. Hence, I write this piece as a hopeful offering.

There are so many things I wish I did differently in my life. There are so many things that embarrass me to this day. There are also so many things I’m all the more embarrassed that I’d not be able to do differently because I’m so limited. Every time I’d go over in my mind how I was in relationship with my late friend, I would come up against this very block. I’m not so special that I could conquer my own humanness and the struggles that kept me from being there for him more. Thinking like this humbled me deeply.

I had to reconcile with the fact that I’m not anything great. I had to become grounded, real, humble, as the self really is. And in this way, I could honestly see myself being helpless to have done anything differently.

Then I asked myself the question — what would I have wanted to do differently if I could have? In Nonviolent Communication (NVC), the framework developed by Marshall Rosenberg, there’s a concept of “The Do-Over.” It’s as simple as it sounds — you ask the question I just did and you envision the scene going differently. This practice is so helpful if we actually do it!

When I looked at the past again, I felt a surge of energy. I would have checked in on my friend periodically. I’d have sent him lectures, readings, and quotations that inspired me. I’d have invited him to events that we put on. I’d have spoken with him from time to time. If he was receptive to coaching and it felt right, I’d have found a way to serve him accordingly. There was so much I’d have loved to offer him.

I don’t know that any of it would have kept him alive longer. And he may not have wanted the support or been able to do anything with it. The truth is, had his death come when I was trying to support him so actively, I’d have been much more of a mess, and I have to acknowledge again my own vulnerability and weakness here.

Nevertheless, this opened up my perspective, and it gave me energy to want to serve and become better. It also brought up some frustration and anger. Several times, my friend never responded when I tried to set up a call with him at his own request. And he never told me what he was going through. I had no idea things were so bleak! If I had known this is what was happening, my god, I’d have done something! Anything!

I couldn’t blame him though in spite of the frustration. That was not productive, nor did I have any desire to. And in his situation, the fact that he reached out to me so sweetly always was a testament to his beauty and the beauty of the relationship. It was, however, important to acknowledge and experience everything that was coming up, even the frustration and anger.

I kept thinking — I wish I’d known! But as Devamrita Swami, a senior monk I look up to, shared poignantly when I was a monk myself — “You can only act with the information-base available to you at any given time.” I cling to that insight constantly.

In NVC, there’s a concept called Beneficial Regret. It means we mourn the things we wish had gone better, take responsibility, and try to integrate the new understandings that come for future situations. As NVC trainers Jim and Jori Manske point out, this is meant to be done without self-punishment. They also outline what growth looks like for one successfully practicing Beneficial Regret:

“Consistent willingness to openly own oneʹs part in outcomes that did not meet needs; willingness to feel and express regret; [seeking] learning and growth.”

This resonates deeply with all of our work at Upbuild and my own life experience. The only way out is through. And through means not bypassing. It means going through it, with our hearts. That means feeling the difficult feelings, not avoiding them.

What you resist, persists. Avoiding, as we’re conditioned towards, will not do us any good.

And if we look at what the sacred texts teach in every wisdom tradition around the world — repentance is a core theme. Today, we get the unfortunate image of a religious zealot holding up a punitive finger with burning eyes, and yelling, “Repent!!” But true repentance is something else.

Repentance means remorse. It means my heart feels bad because I wish I could do more. It recognizes our honest limitations. But it’s an alive heart that feels that negativity which points us to where we want to go that we have not yet been.

And it builds authenticity within ourselves as well as deep connection with others by being real and heartfelt. If we didn’t feel bad when other people are hurting or we could have done something more for the good of ourselves or others, we’d be callous. Our hearts call us to feel. And that feeling of care is expressed by regret. Genuine regret respects anyone affected by a situation, including ourselves. And it invites connection to ourselves and to others.

So we are actually meant to repent. We are meant to feel for what others go through and the effects of our actions or the lack thereof. It’s human and it’s healing. The irony is that dancing around trying to live a life without regret will only produce more of what we’re endeavoring to escape in the long run.

I’ve never reflected so much on regret as I have now in the absence of my friend. And I’ve never seen the importance of doing so with the clarity I experience now. Let us make sure we are crystal clear in what we are taking away here for a life with no regrets.

To live with no regrets is processing all the regrets that necessarily come up. It’s owning them. Not wallowing in them or using them as ammunition for my Inner Critic to pulverize me. Not enticing others to rub things in my face because I admit my regrets to them. It’s being with the feeling of remorse, the care that softens my heart and connects me to all others, allowing me to grow wiser.

In summary, it’s not fleeing from, suppressing, or stewing in the guilt of our past actions, but working through the guilt. How do we work through the guilt? It’s as straightforward as acknowledging our regret and desiring to grow from the realizations that come. I can feel what I feel, process the different aspects and complexities, as I’ve tried to here in the case of my lost friend, and mine for lessons, asking, “What would be my Do-Over?”

And if we’re truly honest, regrets are a daily affair. When we look back on our lives, how many of us would want to continue doing all of the things we were doing in the past which we no longer do? Why do we change our ways? We regret the effects of our habits constantly, even in the form of unconsciously wondering how we could have a better experience, become better, or do more. When we regret bad habits or anything that keeps us locked in our present mode, holding us back from further potential, we gain fuel to give up those habits eventually and to reach newer and newer heights.

Regrets never disappear. They serve a purpose. And when we embrace them in this light, paradoxically, we don’t regret anything in life. It is all strongly growing us.

The Five Elements of Trust

“I just don’t trust you.” It’s a phrase we’ve all said (or at least thought), maybe even more than once this week. And once this thought enters our heads, it usually means poison for the relationship. While trust can be a complicated word to define, we’re all aware of what can happen in the absence of it: we don’t share honest feedback, we walk on eggshells, we don’t delegate work that should be delegated, we don’t ask for help, we spend energy wondering whether the other person will follow through, we worry if we will be cheated, we ruminate about what the other person is thinking, we rarely experience joy or a feeling of freedom in the presence of the other, we might even talk badly about that person behind their back, and ultimately, we don’t feel welcome to show up as our real selves.

On an organizational level, when trust breaks down, there is  less willingness to speak up, less risk-taking, more turnover, less engagement, and less creativity. In our experience and as advanced by Patrick Lencione, trust is the single biggest indicator of healthy teams. 

Because it can be painful and uncomfortable to deal with a situation in which there is a breakdown in trust, most of us keep our assessments of these situations at a superficial level (e.g., “I don’t trust you”) without getting into the nuance of why and how the trust has been broken. The problem with staying at a superficial level is that it doesn’t leave anyone with next steps that could be helpful in rebuilding the trust. Even if we think we know why we don’t trust somebody, our reasons can often be based on gut feelings and might be difficult to communicate in a grounded way. But if we can be clear with ourselves and eventually with the other person about the specific gap(s) in trust, then we have a starting point from which to work.

Based on our years of experience doing personal and professional development with organizations across industries and building on the work in The Trusted Advisor (Maister, Green, and Galford, 2000) and Slalom’s Trust Equation, there are five key elements of trust: Competence, Reliability, Authenticity, Empathy, and Intent. While these elements are not mutually exclusive nor completely exhaustive, and some elements wield bigger impact than others, we have personally found in our work that they are extremely helpful and really get at the essence of what makes for trust and how to increase it.

Although the language we use here is geared towards building trust in organizational settings, we find this framework just as powerful when adapted for use in personal settings.

In the following table, we present these five elements of trust along with three supporting statements for each element that will allow you to determine the extent to which you trust someone in that area. These supporting statements, when taken together, function as a practical definition for the corresponding element of trust.

To make use of the table, first think of a relationship in your life. Then give a score of 1 to 5 for each statement using the following scale:

1 = Strongly Disagree     2 = Disagree     3 = Neutral     4 = Agree      5 = Strongly Agree

Add up the three scores for each element in the "Element Subtotal” column. This number should be between 5 and 15. When all the subtotals are calculated, add the five subtotals together to get the total, which should be between 15 and 75.

While the total is certainly crucial (anything below a 57 in our view would indicate that there is something to work through), the subtotals are generally more illuminating as they point to gaps in specific elements of trust. Anything below 11 in the subtotals should be considered an area for which further work and/or discussion may be helpful.

While the total is certainly crucial (anything below a 57 in our view would indicate that there is something to work through), the subtotals are generally more illuminating as they point to gaps in specific elements of trust. Anything below 11 in the subtotals should be considered an area for which further work and/or discussion may be helpful.

In high-achievement oriented organizations, we often find that there is a lot of trust when it comes to Competence, but there is much more variability in the other four elements.

Conversations to Rebuild Trust

Once the specific gaps in trust are identified, a direct conversation may be helpful to directly address these gaps. In order to have as productive and two-sided of a conversation as possible, we recommend following this nine-step process: 

1. Recognize that trust is a subjective experience 

2. Convey your intent in having this conversation

3. Talk about what’s important to each of you that will enable you to engage in this conversation wholeheartedly

4. Start with what you trust about the person as a foundation for the conversation (using the elements of trust)

5. Take responsibility for your experience in any elements where you’re lacking trust

6. Share examples of behaviors you’ve observed and their effect on your trust

7. Give space for the person to reflect back what they heard, clarify any questions, and respond with their experience

8. Reverse roles and repeat steps 4-7 from the other person’s perspective

9. Establish one or two specific actions you each will commit to doing to cultivate more trust in the relationship

In Summary

While trust can sometimes feel like an amorphous concept, the ability to get clarity about what is really going on in a nuanced way allows us to more effectively work through situations where there are gaps in trust. Although it can be tempting to write people off when trust is broken, the future of our organizations and our relationships depend on us being able to address these situations in a direct and compassionate way. As we and our colleagues, friends, and loved ones feel increasingly comfortable and confident communicating authentically what we are experiencing and where the gaps in trust might be, a natural sense of trust can grow. 
This will lead to more nourishing relationships, increased ease in making decisions, greater personal growth, more frequent experiences of joy and freedom, more collaboration, and ultimately, a more conducive environment for being able to show up as our real selves.

Love In The Workplace

Eight years ago, one of the best bosses I ever had brought me into a conference room after a heated exchange during which I had gone overboard in asserting my authority over a more junior salesperson. We sat down, he looked me in the eye, and he said, “Sloyer, you are good at your job, but you don’t have to prove it to everyone all the time.”

At first I was mortified. I felt so exposed, like I was standing there naked in front of him. He was calling me out for something that I had spent my whole life trying to hide. I, of course, wanted to be admired, but I didn’t want him nor anyone else to know how much I desperately needed it.

When I reflected on this later, however, I realized this was as close to love as I would get on the trading floor at an investment bank. In one simple sentence, he conveyed the duality that I am okay as I am, and yet it is not okay to keep doing what I’ve been doing. Rather than giving feedback about me as a person, he gave feedback about my behavior. He was clear that how I was acting needed to change for the benefit of the team, but he avoided casting doubt on my character or my competency. The way in which he sternly, yet calmly, delivered his message left me feeling like he empathized with the insecurity that was underneath my need to prove myself.

The experience in the conference room that day, which didn’t last more than a minute, had such a profound impact on me that, even eight years later, it has become one of my most referenced stories from my time at the bank. The loving action was truly a black swan event on the trading floor, and it has inspired me to imagine what it might look like if love were to become the standard, rather than the exception, at companies.

What is love?

When we think of love, we usually think of it as a noun: a warm feeling of affection for someone. The problem with thinking about it as a feeling, as the author of Nonviolent Communication Marshall Rosenberg reminds us, is that our feelings can change quite dramatically from moment to moment. So if someone were to ask you if you love someone, you’d have to follow up with a clarifying question: when?

Rather than thinking about love as a noun, it can be beneficial to think of it as a verb. In the Bhakti-yoga tradition, love is defined as devotional service that is free from selfish desires. In order for an action to be truly loving, it must be unconditional. There is no such thing as conditional love. And there is no such thing as love where we are trying to prove something about ourselves. As a result, love is rare. Many of us might think that we offer love to certain people in our lives, but if we were to be deeply honest, is what we are offering really unconditional?

I recently came across an article about unconditional love. The author asked the reader to come up with an individual in their life for whom they have love and posed the following three questions: Have you accepted this person’s failures? Do you see this person’s weaknesses as projects to be fixed? Are you afraid to be honest because this person might not accept you?

If you are like me, your answers don’t paint a resounding portrait of unconditional love. And if most of us don’t offer it to the people we say that we love, it’s very unlikely we offer it to those with whom we work.

Unconditional love at work

Unconditional love is not exactly a frequently spoken phrase in the workplace. This is not surprising given that neither of the individual words that make up the phrase have particular resonance at corporations.

Unconditional

Corporations are built on conditions. Specifically, they are built on the conditions that:

• Customers will buy goods/services if the corporation produces desirable products

• Shareholders will buy more shares if the corporation generates more profits

• Employees will work hard if the corporation pays them salaries and promotes them

Pretty straight forward. The transactional spirit behind these conditions naturally filters through to the relationships among team members. I scratch your back, you scratch mine.

Love

There is a famous verse from Corinthians that starts: Love is patient, love is kind.

Patience and kindness take time. They take dealing with the messy insides of real human beings feeling real human feelings and making real human mistakes. Corporations don’t have time for this. Because if the above conditions are going to be satisfied, then efficiency and productivity cannot be sacrificed!

Insecurity disguised as inspiration

When I worked at the investment bank, I would often write emails to my boss letting him know about the contributions of one of the junior members of my team and would share my perspective that this person was doing a great job. My boss would inevitably respond, “Awesome. Thanks for letting me know,” and then I would forward the email to the junior person.

On one hand, it was an expression of validation and genuinely helpful for this person’s career. But there were unspoken conditions. The conditions were loyalty, compliance with future requests, and having my back if I ever ducked out early for the day. I scratch your back, you scratch mine. There was also an implicit understanding that I would continue to advocate for him in this way as long as my conditions were continuously met.

Another initiative I often took when I worked at the bank was to serve as a mentor for the analysts and associates. I would offer my time for coffee catch ups, guidance on how to navigate company politics, and advice on initiatives they could take to further their careers. On the surface, these were acts of kindness and generosity. Under the surface, these were forums where I could justify my own career choices to a very eager audience and present all the wonderful things that I had done as a model for what could be possible in their careers. I was disguising insecurity as inspiration. I also knew I was earning a reputation as a “culture carrier” that would likely get rewarded in the next promotion cycle.

Our insecure egos

Unconditional love is really hard. The reason why it’s so hard is because of our insecure egos. A key part of the nature of our ego is that it keeps us from feeling complete. This lack of completeness is existential for the ego. It does everything in its power to keep us wanting more.

The Inner Critic, as we share during our Upbuild workshops, is the mouthpiece of the ego. It likes to tell us things like: you are not enough, you’re falling behind, you need more of this, you need more of that. This can be especially true in the work setting because many of us derive the majority of our self-worth from our work. Our Inner Critics lead us to believe that we have a giant hole inside of us that must be filled with stuff from the outside.

We recognize that we can’t meet the relentless demands of our Inner Critics by ourselves, and so we need other people to help us. Really, we are hoping they will do it for us. We also recognize that others are dealing with their own Inner Critics, and so we consciously or unconsciously enroll them as co-conspirators in our quests to prove ourselves to ourselves and to one another. We treat people transactionally and allow others to treat us transactionally as a strategy to get stuff (validation, loyalty, promotions, compensation, etc.) to fill holes that can never be filled with transactions.

But this all needs to change. Love needs to become the standard. Whether it be on Wall Street, in Silicon Valley, or in the two-person lemonade stand startup currently being manifested in your parents’ basement, we need to take steps to make our work environments more reflective of this ideal.

Practical ways to show the love at work

Using the definitions from earlier, love in the workplace means that we unselfishly serve our colleagues and take actions that stem from a deep awareness of and connection to their intrinsic value as people. Love must always have a person as the object, but since it can get confusing when we are also trying to serve other team members and the organization as a whole, we can think about trying to do the most loving thing to serve the situation. In other words, we do what we believe will most beneficially serve the greater good. If we serve the situation, then we also serve the individuals, even if the individuals involved don’t like it in the short run.

This might all feel a bit theoretical, so on a more practical level, here are some ways you can immediately offer love to your colleagues:

As a disclaimer, all of these actions could be motivated by a desire to optimize performance, create a more comfortable work environment, or demonstrate leadership skills. While these motivations can be constructive, they would not constitute love. Love can only come from a pure place in our hearts where we are not trying to get or prove anything.

1. Prioritizing rapport and nuance over efficiency. In our constant quest for performance, we like to give others candid feedback as efficiently as possible. In practice, this usually means squeezing what should be a 30 minute nuanced discussion into a 5 minute blunt-force soliloquy on why the other person sucks. Before taking action, we can ask ourselves the question: What would be most beneficial for this person and our team one year from now?

2. Giving feedback about the behavior, not the person. There is a feedback model that I like to share with my clients called SBI (Situation-Behavior-Impact). As an example, one might say: during our Zoom call with the team yesterday (situation), when you asked David for his point of view without also asking me (behavior), I felt disappointed and like my work on the project wasn’t appreciated (impact). With the SBI model, we keep hearsay and defensiveness to a minimum.

3. Lots of meta-conversations. Meta-conversations are conversations about conversations and relationships. They are not about the work itself, but about how the work is being done. They usually begin with something like: Hey I’m feeling a little tension between us, would you be open to talking about it? or I noticed that you were very patient with me during yesterday’s meeting. Thank you for that.

4. Taking responsibility for our insecure egos. In the mentoring example I shared earlier where I got an ego boost from the validation of my mentees, if I had been more aware of my own insecurities, I could have shifted how I acted and what I shared with them by one degree to better serve them. I could have spent less time telling them the details of my own war stories about great trades that I had made (which were always slightly exaggerated), and more time asking questions to help them discover for themselves about how they might take the next step in their careers given their specific circumstances.

5. Giving validation from the heart, only. Many of us use validation to get others to like us, to win the corporate political game, and as a carrot to keep others performing. Validation should not be used as a currency to get something. It is an expression from our hearts. Before giving validation, we can ask our hearts: what would you like to express to this person? And if the answer is, nothing, then maybe save it for another time.

6. Being clear with boundaries and our needs. Unconditional love does not mean that we are doormats for others. It does mean we clearly outline our boundaries. As Brene Brown suggests, clear is kind. Clarity is a great service to our colleagues, and thus can be an act of love, especially if it makes us uncomfortable in the short run.

7. Taking people at their word and giving the benefit of the doubt. Our egos, under an existential fear of not being seen the way that they want to be seen, are on guard for getting “screwed over” and being let down. This fear leaks into how we treat others. By giving people the benefit of the doubt, we build the trust that is required for two-way unconditional love. And if we don’t trust someone, we need to be able to have nuanced and mature meta-conversations before we move forward with the task at hand (see #1 and #3 above).

As you can see from this list, unconditional love does not always feel good. It doesn’t imply passiveness or inefficiency, and doesn’t preclude actions such as negative feedback or firing someone. Unconditional love takes courage and a sincere effort to determine what would be the most beneficial action to serve one another and the situation as a whole.

“Love is the answer”

Even in our hyper-competitive and ego-driven work environments, underneath the chaos, we are all wanting to give and receive love. There are lots of well-researched benefits to creating a loving workplace environment (higher employee satisfaction, more teamwork, fewer sick days, better client outcomes, etc.), and although all of these are critically important, they don’t quite get at the core of it. The reason why we need to bring love into the workplace is because we are made of love. As espoused by just about every wisdom tradition, unconditional love is the reason for our existence. And we spend a lot of our existence at work.

John Lennon put it precisely when he wrote, “Love is the answer, and you know that for sure.” When we are not operating from unconditional love, we are operating from a place of delusion. Conditional and transactional relationships are based on the false belief that we need to have more and be different than who we are at our core. Unconditional love is based on the truth we have nothing to prove, and so we can love without conditions or fear.

When I was a kid, my siblings used to say to me: Michael, I don’t like you, but I love you. We don’t always have to like the people with whom we work, but let’s take one step toward loving them.

Looking at the ways of expressing unconditional love in the workplace above, which one will you make an effort to do in the next few days? And by doing so, what impact might this have on you, the other person, and the relationship?

The Paradox of Humility

There has been a rising appreciation for humility in leadership circles. The concept of servant-leadership has been widely extolled, and its basis is in being a “humble” leader. In many of my coaching conversations, I hear leaders talk about developing humility because it will make them better leaders. Adam Grant, in his most recent book, Think Again — The Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know, speaks extensively about confident humility in leadership. He strongly emphasizes the need for intellectual humility in leaders, and encourages them to develop a mindset of “rethinking”. All very genuinely helpful!

But the question that really creates the discontent for me is do we truly desire humility or do we desire what humility (or its projection!) can give us — more validation, more influence and more success? Therein lies all the difference.

Recently, I have come across several posts on social media where people talk about humility (and receive a lot of likes!) or post about them being “humbled” by the likes they have received. One of them read, and I paraphrase, “So deeply humbled by (famous person) and how he appreciated my interview. Thank you @(famous person)”. And then that post received a lot of likes, and the interview received an incredible amount of more views!

The origin of the word “humility” lies in the Latin root “humus”, which means, “soil”, “earth”, or “ground”. Humility is to feel like the soil or the earth — a place where we place our feet. Take a moment to notice how you feel or react when you read that statement. Did you feel inspired? Did you feel a need to change the definition of humility so that it can “feel” more appropriate? If you felt inspired, why?

Humility is to be in touch with ground reality, especially about who we truly are. The reason why this definition of humility is perhaps disconcerting is because it is completely antithetical to what our ego desires. At Upbuild, we define the ego as an identity that we think we should be, project outwards, and want to be validated for, rather than who we truly are. And by its very construct, the burden of humility is impossible for the ego to carry. In other words, there is absolutely no place for the ego in humility and vice-versa.

Thomas Merton, the Trappist monk, talks about humility as a self-protecting virtue. When we are truly humble, the ego can’t feel good about being humble! That is the paradox. The moment we say, “Oh, good! I am such a humble person…”, humility disappears. The only thing that humble people experience is full presence in and acceptance of ground reality. And that ground reality is many times not palatable to the ego.

Humility becomes the corridor for genuine empathy, love and deep wisdom for the world. When we are with people who are truly humble, we experience a depth of being and a sense that they are simply instruments for a higher purpose. Humility never announces itself! Nor does it even want to be noticed because it strives to be free from being appropriated by the ego. But others feel extraordinarily uplifted in the presence of such a humble person.

What the ego can do though is appropriate humility for its purposes. That “shadow” humility, as much as it may look like the real one, has one major flaw. It wants the recognition of being “humble” and relishes the recognition when it comes — in that quiet corner after everyone has left! Some of us may ask, “Well, what’s wrong with that? It still produces more good than not!” Very true! But here is the risk and a serious one.

As soon as the ego relishes the recognition, it will only want more! That is the ego’s nature. And before we know it, we will simply be a shell of humility that will choose to dilute the definition of humility itself, and everyone will feel its inauthenticity. Most will, unfortunately, choose to follow that example, because it is much easier than working towards true humility. As a society, we are already heading in this direction. Which is why it is important to ask the question — do we desire true humility or simply its projection?

True humility begins when the ego becomes ready to die. That journey is not an easy one, although it is a necessary one, if we are to ever realize who we are as separate from the ego and return to that ground reality. Humility is the reward for striving to walk the journey towards the real self, and is the only means to separate the real self from the ego. It is only when we strive to separate our true self from the ego’s stronghold, do we even begin to understand how trapped we are in our ego patterns. We begin to honestly acknowledge how mired we are in the insecurities of the ego, and in pursuit of the ego’s desires for validation. In that acknowledgement are the seeds of humility. In that humility is the freedom from our ego. Which is why humility is not cheap. It’s presence signifies actual freedom from the ego, which is never a small thing!

As C.S. Lewis so eloquently states in his book, The Problem Of Pain, “Humiliation comes before humility”. That “humiliation” is the clear recognition that the ego is always inadequate because it can never be our true self. We begin to call out (or call in!) the repeated patterns of our ego. Herein lies the true usage of tools like the Enneagram. As the ego learns to truly let go, we will begin to experience the dawning of humility. And when it gets recognized, it knows all too well what the ego’s game is, and does not indulge in it!

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The Thin Line Between Authenticity and Diplomacy

Picture an elderly man, a king of ancient times, sitting in a giant stadium in the best seats of the house, overlooking a competition between two sets of young men. On one side are his sons, and on the other side are his nephews, whom he raised as sons after his dear brother departed the world prematurely. This competition is important because it symbolizes the future path for the kingdom. 

The king is blind. He can’t see any of the skills being exhibited as the young men display their martial prowess. All he can do is hear. His wise advisor narrates to him what is happening. 

His nephews are putting his own sons to shame. The king wants to be neutral. He’s expected to be neutral. He is, after all, the king of the land. Justice lies in his hands. It would be petty to choose favorites, period, what to speak of with such pure, innocent young men who know him as their very father. 

The king’s heart sinks. His sons, in contrast to the virtuous nature of his nephews, are narcissistic and would do anything for their own aggrandizement. His sons want to destroy their cousins to eliminate the competition, literally. The king’s weakness is that he feels his sons reflect more on him than do his nephews. 

In his heart, the king knows that the kingdom depends on his ability to muster the courage of disciplining his tyrannical sons and setting a clear, firm, empathetic and altruistic culture. And even deeper in his heart, he knows the kingdom would be in the very best hands if his nephews were to eventually inherit the throne. What does the king do?

This is the scene that struck me profoundly while reading the great Indian epic, Mahabharata (translated literally to mean “The History of Greater India”). It is within this exceptional work that the Bhagavad-Gita is derived – a tiny fragment at the center of the epic, made into a book of its own for its intensely concentrated delivery of wisdom.

The king begins speaking poetically to his advisor about how absolutely wonderful his beloved nephews are. Does he feel that? No. He holds in his angst and doesn’t let it leak out even slightly.

How mature of him, no? He won’t let the negativity out. He protects his nephews and the kingdom from any ill feeling.

But then where does the negativity go?

Nowhere. It stays. It stews.

The king is seething with envy and anger, but he cannot admit it to himself, much less anyone else. Instead, he tries to suppress. Tries to pretend. That always backfires…

He uses diplomacy to make everything sound nice and pacify all parties. But it’s utterly inauthentic. He hasn’t examined his real feelings and has no intention of doing so. It’s easier to do what’s expected. 

We often follow the same pattern. Just say what needs to be said. We reason that it’s doing the right thing, anyway. We’re just speaking what’s right…

The moral dilemma is that sometimes diplomacy is necessary. If we always spoke our minds uncensored, we’d be in a lot of hot water! Even if we were mild in the way we shared our honest thoughts, without sufficient diplomacy, we’d simply not be fit to navigate this complex world. 

It’s naïve to think we need no filter. Child-like innocence is attractive, but practicality, and people’s feelings, as well as the necessity to get things done, demand that we do not show up like a child. That’s called immature.

So then what of authenticity? Isn’t this one of the most honorable values of all? Do we all just grow cynical and lose ourselves to practical necessity where we can never again trust in real sincerity?

I faced an incident in my life that came to mind spontaneously and helped inform me of the line we need to walk with authenticity and diplomacy.

I was celebrating a sacred day at a spiritual gathering outside of New York City. There was a man hosting the event, whom I just so happened to know too much about… I’d never seen or met him before. Just knew of him. What I knew of his actions disturbed me deeply, but it was not my place to judge, nor did I have any influence to leverage. I planned to, instead, steer clear.

Then I had to pass him by. 

I said nothing. 

He stopped me.

“Hari Prasada!” 

Oh my…

He embraced me. Tightly.

“What an honor to have you!” 

‘Thanks,’ I smiled back. ‘Honor to be here…’

“I hope you enjoyed the program. I know it’s not New York, but we try to reach New York standard. What do you think?”

‘Yeah! Very nice! Really appreciate your service. Thanks for welcoming me.’

“You know, you should really speak the next time we have a gathering! We need your wisdom and experiences. That would be fantastic.”

I bowed shyly.

‘You know, I don’t have much wisdom but some experiences. I’m just a struggling soul trying my best to walk the spiritual path. Really… But thank you.’

“Man, you have the real thing – humility. Says a lot about you.”

He embraced me. Tightly.

“Have a wonderful night! So great to have you.”

I wished him the same.

Was I diplomatic in my approach? Certainly.

Was I inauthentic?

That’s trickier. I didn’t reveal all that was in my heart. You rarely can find a soul with whom you can play all your cards. I was definitely not going to find that in this soul… There must be trust.

But was I really inauthentic by not revealing all that was in my heart? I meant all that I spoke. I tried to view him as a soul. Tried to reciprocate with his gestures. Tried not to be colored.

Would I work with him? No. Would I engage intimately? No. But would I be kind? Yes. I decided I would be. Actually, he decided that first. I simply reciprocated…

The measure of authenticity is two-fold, based upon intention and result. 

Is your intention to get something for yourself? Or are you trying to be of genuine service? Are you trying to hurt? Or trying to heal? Suppress? Or progress? 

Then judge the tree by its fruit. What momentum has been created as a result of your approach? Greater desire to get or to serve? To hurt or to heal? Suppress or progress?

It’s easy to say, “that’s an ugly shirt… I’m just being honest.” It’s likewise easy in the work world to point out how someone’s performance doesn’t cut it and consider that noble with the self-identity that “I’m straightforward,” “I’m direct,” “I don’t BS,” “I breed performers,” “I tell it like it is,” “I win.” And people will often admire me. But there are heavy human costs. And those build up to heavy costs in inspiration and typically in performance. 

What we want is to walk the line of being authentic while also diplomatic so that we don’t lose consideration for the other person, our relationship, and what will genuinely offer inspiration that every human being needs. The Bhagavad-Gita teaches that our communication should be “truthful, beneficial, and pleasing.” That is the bar. And that will make the biggest impact. 

People often rise to the occasion when we treat them as people. And if there’s an issue, and certainly with workplace performance, we can still speak about it directly and authentically. We just need to always keep the dignity of diplomacy rather than give mouthpiece to our wild, uncontrolled, unfiltered minds (and all the more so when we’re feeling heated), if we want the best effect for ourselves, the other, and our culture.

I learned an invaluable lesson from this unexpected and unwanted interaction, which really hit home much later during the discussion in one of our Bhagavad-Gita classes. This is why we must take our experiences with us and process them in the right environment, if we wish to really profit from them for personal growth.

When I left the gathering that night with this man I’d need diplomacy for, rather than feeling I had sold out, I felt infinitely lighter. Something substantial had been lifted. My heart felt for this person. And even as he fished for compliments, I could feel the external sheen concealing a fragile ego, which we all have and deal with in different ways. I could empathize without condoning or speaking anything I didn’t mean. My heart felt for him. And I was grateful for his stepping forward so I could come to this realization.

My only intention was to be cordial and gentlemanly to a fellow spiritualist in a complex situation that was very challenging for me. The result was a powerful release that I pray always stays with me, and for which, I am grateful.

By contrast, the old, blind king's poetry to his advisor in the martial arena about how wonderful his nephews are was an unconscious ruse with the intention of pacifying everyone so he could go on seething with envy and anger that would ultimately result in a world war. It was on that battlefield that the Bhagavad-Gita was spoken.

Were the king to have examined his intentions, he would have seen the illness within, and the result would have been vastly different. He would not be able to whitewash the envy of his nephews who were pure at heart and extremely talented, overshadowing his sons in lovability and skill. Kind words and saying the right things wouldn’t suffice. He’d have to get advice from his advisor and work through the pain in his heart. An entire war would have been prevented by this simple, humble, honest act of seeing the negativity at heart and asking for help to work through it.

We each have the choice to live examined lives or unexamined lives. The consequences of the latter are heavy. Let us begin by measuring the authenticity behind our necessary diplomacy. 

When was the last time you needed to be diplomatic? What was your intention, and what was the result?