Coaching vs. Therapy, The Tension Between Ego and Success, and Spirituality in Coaching—Michael Sloyer on the Lovelink Podcast

This is an automated transcript and may contain minor errors.

Hari Prasada: Hi, this is Hari Prasada. Today we're sharing something a little different. Michael was recently a guest on the Love Link podcast hosted by Brooklyn based therapists Sina and Simone. Their show has featured a number of prominent guests and in this episode they sit down with Michael to explore the differences between coaching and therapy.

The tension between the ego and success and much more. We're really excited to share this conversation with you.

Host: Thank you for joining us, Michael. Maybe to start us off, could you just tell us a little bit about what coaching is and how it's different from psychotherapy and yeah, maybe that's a good way to start this off.

Michael: Beautiful. Yeah. Thanks for having me. So the way that we define coaching at Upbuild, is serving as a human mirror to help our clients see themselves and their lives more clearly. So the role of a coach is really about being with someone and witnessing someone as they figure out who they are and what's really important to them and then help them design and take action that supports that understanding.

So another way that we talk about coaching at is a process that helps people align their internals. with their externals. And for that, we need three things, awareness, accountability, and action. So awareness that's grounded in insight, then action that is grounded in that awareness, and then accountability to accompany that action.

And in terms of how it's different than psychotherapy, I have never been a psychotherapist, but I actually think there's More in common than there are differences because from my understanding psychotherapy is about helping people live healthier and better lives as a result of insights that they get about themselves and Coaching is no different.

Also all of the progress that comes as a result of of the relationship comes in the context and foundationally from the relationship between the practitioner and the client. And so I think that's very similar for both psychotherapy and coaching. But this is a common question that we get. And so what I like to share are three main differences between coaching and therapy.

So the first is that therapy tends to have more of an emphasis on looking at the past. and digging into the past, and that might include childhood, where coaching tends to be more emphasizing the present and the future. Now it's still the case in coaching that we will have to look at the past, because as human beings we tend to take our past And put it in our present and put it in our future.

And so, over the course of a coaching relationship, we usually do need to do some digging around in the past. So, the second key difference is that for people who are going through some sort of mental health challenge or experiencing some sort of trauma or depression or intense anxiety, usually therapy is much more well suited for those types of people because The therapist is trained in dealing with those sorts of things, whereas in coaching, it's often the case that we are not trained to work through those sorts of things.

And then finally, I would say the third key difference is that in coaching, there tends to be more of an emphasis on action, which is why we can see a lot of progress very early on in a coaching relationship because of people getting into action and actually moving towards their goals. So what that means in practice.

Is that the end of almost every session? I will ask some version of the question. So what are you going to do about it? You've gotten a bunch of insights from our conversation today, what action or behavior or practice will actually support you in moving toward your goals. So the majority of the work of coaching occurs in between sessions rather than in sessions.

Host 2: How did you personally come into coaching? What led you to this field?

Michael: Yeah, that's a fun story. So out of college, I went to Duke University and like many of my classmates went to Wall Street right from school. So I was. Working as an equity derivatives trader at Goldman Sachs, and in many ways, that was the perfect career for me.

It was intense. It was competitive. It was an environment where you could be aggressive and loud, and that was actually rewarded rather than looked down upon. So in many ways, I love the job in the career, and I could see myself there long term. But also, as I was getting started in my first couple of years, I was Experiencing a suffering underneath all of that that came from a disconnection from myself from my real self and also because as part of that culture, there was greed and arrogance and it wasn't that the culture gave me those things.

Those things were certainly there inside of me before I got there, but it was a place where those things were sort of par for the course. And so I saw myself Giving in to those ways of being and that was that was definitely causing me a lot of suffering so at night and on the weekends, I was doing a lot of searching and I was studying meditation and Getting a meditation practice myself.

I was also studying a lot of Eastern religion and philosophy and becoming very interested in that. I'd also experimented with psychedelics and exploring different states of consciousness through that. And this all led to a single interaction that I had with a friend of mine who forwarded me an email that listed a bunch of really cool events that were taking place in, in New York city.

I was living in New York city at the time. And one of the events that he thought I might be most interested in from that Email was called have dinner with an investment banker turned monk. So given my career as an investment banker and also my interest in the monk life, this was the perfect opportunity for me.

So I signed up for the event. I went down to the monastery, which is still there in the East village of Manhattan. It's called the Bakhti center. And I met this man, this monk named Rasanath. He was wearing his white robes and. This was the first of three very profound experiences that I would have in relationship to him.

So he, for the first time, was someone that I had met who really had this incredible understanding of areas of the world like science and math and economics and very analytical ways of thinking. But he combined that with a very deep faith based and spiritual view of the world. And he had an extreme dedication to his own spiritual practice.

And I could see the benefits just in how he interacted with me of that dedication. So I knew that I wanted more and more of his association because. These worldviews didn't conflict for him. They actually supported each other. I remember him explaining to me quantum physics through the lens of spirituality and spirituality through the lens of quantum physics and I was like I need more of what this guy is offering and A few months after I met him him and his monk partner in crime a man named Hari Prasada offered A course on the Enneagram, a workshop, a six day workshop on the Enneagram.

And this was the second of the three very profound experiences that I would have in relationship to these guys, because through that experience, it was the first time that I got a real language to talk about my own insecurities and motivations in a very clear way. So all of a sudden I had a, an understanding of why I was doing all of the things.

That I was doing and behavioral change is really hard. And if we don't understand why it's basically impossible and any sort of behavioral change that we're going to have is not going to be sustainable. But the Enneagram gave me a very clear look at, at the why, but a few weeks after that, the universe had different plans and I had been bugging my bosses at Goldman for a few years at that point to have.

Uh, in a broad experience to be able to move offices and actually do what I was doing, which is trading derivatives. From Asia, which is really where I wanted to go. And so a couple of weeks after that Enneagram workshop, my bosses at Goldman told me that my wish had come true and I was able to move out to Hong Kong.

And so it was a little bittersweet because I was getting what I wanted, but at the same time, this relationship that became so important to me, it felt like it got taken away. I spent a few years in Hong Kong. Things went fairly well out there. I stayed in touch with Hari and Rasmus. As often as I could, and then at some point, Goldman asked me to move from Hong Kong to Tokyo for a better job and for an interesting opportunity out there.

And about that same time, Hari and Rasanath, with the blessings of their spiritual teachers, decided to leave the monastery and move out of the monastery, but still bring everything that they were teaching and learning. Into the world. So now they started doing the work that they were doing in the monastery with organizations and with individuals with leaders, and this was the official start of up build.

As a leadership development coaching company. So I use that opportunity to talk to the powers at be at Goldman in Asia to fly them out to start to do some work with my teams out in Asia. So the first year we did a big Enneagram workshop in Tokyo and the next year in Hong Kong. And this was the third of the three profound experiences that I had in relationship to them because all of a sudden I saw an environment where there was.

Not a lot of vulnerability, not a lot of relatability, people not openly expressing themselves and in just a few hours. These men had created this incredible container where people felt safe to share themselves. There were analysts all the way up to partners at this workshop. And we actually had a woman come up to us during the lunch break and just start crying tears of feeling understood and loved.

It was, it was really beautiful. And I started to get the sense that actually This is the type of work that I need to be doing. So we would have meetings where it would be the Goldman team on one side of the table and the up build team on the other side of the table. And I always sat with the Goldman team because that's where I worked.

But it was through those meetings that I started to get a sense. Actually, I want to be sitting on the other side of the table.

Host 2: It's amazing and so brave. And I think it's. It's so clear, and I think maybe it speaks to the way that you were inspired, but I think it also speaks to the demand of having those two worlds bridged together.

The spiritual, the kind of vulnerable, the more tender part, but also the corporate anchoring. Someone who can explain things, someone who understands the professional world. As a way to kind of translate things for people who I think sometimes have a hard time connecting to whether it's just personal growth for personal growth sake or the more kind of spiritual sides of themselves.

Michael: Yeah, beautiful and a lot of people will on 1st glance feel like spirituality and practicality are mutually exclusive like they don't go hand in hand. But when I think about what spirituality really is, it's becoming. Less and less of what we're not and becoming more and more of what we are and There's not really a more practical pursuit than that.

Host: I'm so curious what you learned about yourself Like when through these three experiences, transformative experiences that you had that led you to become an up build coach, I wonder, you know, what were the openings there through those experience where you were like, Oh, I am like learning something new about myself and my motivation.

And these are the things I need to work on in myself.

Michael: What I learned was that my biggest ego insecurity is about my own value. And so as a compensation for that, it's very easy for me to slide into some sort of performance mode, to slide into a mode of being where I am trying to prove and defend how valuable I actually am.

And While that got me a lot of success and achievement in life, there was also a big limitation to that because it would mean that I might show up in this sort of way with this group and then this sort of way with this group. So there'd be a chameleonic way of being in the world. Or I would name drop or, you know, do these things that would, might seem harmless on the surface, but in a deeper way was taking me away from who I actually am and the best version of myself.

So rather than shying away from that, I learned how important it is to actually step into those things, to shine a light on those things, to take responsibility for those things. And then once. The awareness is starting to get cultivated. Then there's choice. Do I play into it or do I not play into that?

And hopefully over time, the courage builds to not play into it as much, which automatically gets us closer to who we actually are.

Host 2: Yeah. Thank you for sharing that. That's, it's so relatable. I think so many people struggle with that. Can you explain, I mean, ego is such a big word and there's so many ways that we use it, especially in, in, you know, the work that we do.

I'm wondering if you can explain the way that you, you define ego in your work and, and why it seems to be, be so critical to kind of working towards. your clients or your goals.

Michael: Yeah. So the way we define ego at Upbuild is the identity of who we think we should be. So for all of us, for different reasons, and depending on our personality type, and also depending on the nurture that we had.

So depending on both nature and nurture, we come into this world and then get developed into this world as feeling not enough of something. For me, it's often around my value and As I talked a little bit about earlier, the compensation is then proving and defending those identities of who we think we should be.

So at Upbuild, we think about there being a spectrum between ego and self. And all of us are somewhere on the spectrum depending on how identified and how fixated we are in the ego's agenda for us. And by bringing light and awareness to those fixations, That helps us move along the spectrum from ego towards the self, which is who we actually are deep down.

Host 2: So in some ways the ego is a little bit like a false self, like the should rather than the desire, the want, the authentic parts of ourselves.

Michael: Exactly. We speak about it exactly as that, the false self.

Host: Mm. Yeah. So maybe walk us through like somebody, a client comes to you and what are the types of reasons that somebody might seek you out for coaching and how does that course of coaching go?

What are you helping people with in that process?

Michael: Because of our own backgrounds, we tend to work with a lot of people in the business world. So we work with a lot of startups, founders, CEOs, executives, leaders. Because of my own background, I also work with a lot of people in the finance world, lawyers, architects, so there isn't a, you know, a single profession that people tend to come from, but there's really this thread of highly ambitious, success oriented, achievement oriented who are looking for a more fulfilling reality.

I mean, I, I don't think it's so different than people who come to therapy. It's like something's not working in my life and I want it to be working or it's working, but I think it can be working better. And so that's why people come. Now, given our spiritual heart and the training of our co founders and my partners in the monastery, it might be the case that at some point in the journey of coaching, The conversations turn to a more spiritual angle.

We also offer courses on the Bhagavad Gita and other courses that go much more directly towards spirituality, but usually it starts out with this work on the ego. So what's getting in the way of you being your best self? What are the patterns? So these are the types of questions that we will ask early on in our relationships to help people see themselves more clearly.

And then over time, it's about. Taking responsibility, what actions you need to do, what further reflections you need to do to help you actually take responsibility for these egoic patterns so that they don't become the driving force for your actions,

Host: right? Yeah, that's actually a big question. I have is, you know, because we live in this.

capitalist society and you're working with a lot of people who are very ambitious and driven and that their egos drive them and they're still they're staying in their professional path perhaps but wanting to be less driven by the ego and I guess I wonder how how you think about ambition and and its place in in a person's life.

Michael: Yeah I really appreciate this question. I think there's not an inherent tension between ambition and work on the ego, because working on the ego is an incredibly difficult pursuit. It's not a small goal at all. And so how are you supposed to achieve anything unless you have ambition? And similarly, if you are doing acts of service for people.

Acts of service with ambition is way better than acts of service without ambition, right? You're going to be a lot more effective. So actually people with ambition who come to this work have a big leg up compared to people with less ambition. So I actually, I think it can be very supportive. Now, when we look around in our society and our world, and even if we are honest and look in ourselves, we can see that ambition is often laced with a lot of selfishness and arrogance.

And so there are a bunch of ways that we work with people to help them cultivate humility. The first is to help them see that actually anything that I am, anything that I've gotten in this life, any achievements that I've had, actually come because people have contributed to me in some sort of way. My teachers have contributed to me, my parents, any mentors, and even beyond that, where did I get the ability that I have that all had to come from somewhere?

And it certainly didn't come from me. So this is also where the spiritual work, it's really interesting because we trace like, you know, why am I here? What am I all about? And that helps when we can really see that, not just as a nice thing that we would post on social media, but like really deeply get that anything that I have is not because of me, but actually comes from the people that contributed to me and the universe and the divine, then I can start to see that it's not really about me and that I'm just lucky to have everything that I have in this life.

And then the second piece that really helps with the humility is that when people start doing the ego work, no matter how much success, no matter how big their bank accounts are, no matter how important they are, quote unquote, in their positions at work or at home, they still see, man, this is hard work.

This ego work is not easy. This is a thing that keeps running my life and I'm suffering because of it. And when we do the digging, we start to get closer to our own shame. And that can be painful. That's a long and hard process, but actually in getting closer to our own shame, the humility naturally starts to take place because we see how hard that is.

to be able to do that work. And from there, it creates a lot of purification, which is what's needed to take that next step towards the real self.

Host 2: Do you get a lot of people with, um, career changes after their work with you?

Michael: Is that a common outcome?

Host 2: That's a great question.

Michael: You know, we try not to tell people anything.

We have a belief that People have the answers inside them, at least most of their answers. Uh, with that being said, I think a lot of people come to us having some sense that a career transition is probably necessary for them. But as people are staying in the jobs or lives that they have, hopefully there's a mindset shift.

And the how of what they're doing becomes different, even if the what of what they're doing is the same,

Host: you describe that, that woman in the workshop at Goldman, I guess, who came and she was in tears, right? And so, so thankful for the workshop. And it just makes me think about like, yeah, once people's hearts are open.

And they can also feel the way they're driven by their ego and maybe they also begin to feel some self compassion too and gratitude and sort of these more softer emotions that it's very hard to be with the harshness in the culture of an organization, you know, where everybody else is like in this other mode would start.

I would imagine it would start to feel exhausting.

Michael: Yeah, my partner, Rasanath, likes to talk about it as it being a literal crisis of belonging. Like, once you start walking down the path, it's like, I don't belong here anymore. And that can even happen not only in our organizations, but even in our own families, which we're not going to leave.

So that's, that's a pretty difficult situation. And it requires having support, having someone to be able to walk alongside you. who may have much more relatability to what you're actually going through.

Host 2: I'd love to hear more about the spiritual component of Upbuild because it seems like that's, that's a really unique component of, of your coaching company.

Like typically when I think about coaching, I don't think about the spiritual aspect of it. It sounds like it's not always part of the work, but that for patients that are interested, you integrate it and you It sounds like a specific spiritual practice like Buddhist or Hindu. Yeah, I mean, I'm, I'd love to hear more about what spiritual approach you're using and how that really plays a role in the work.

Michael: Yeah. So, I mean, first and foremost, the thing is that that's where we are coming from. And so everything that we can offer to our clients stems from our own personal work on ourselves. I talked a little bit of earlier about how the definition of coaching is serving as a human mirror. So coaching is all about mirroring and we can only be an effective mirror if we're not trapped in our own.

Egoic patterns. And so first and foremost, it starts with the work on ourselves. And a lot of that work is spiritual. So even if we're not talking to clients, and I've had clients that I've worked with for five years or more than five years, where spirituality has never really become a topic in our work.

And that's completely fine there. If they're not interested in it, then that's not. Where we need to go now, we'll still hold it in our hearts of where we are coming from and how our spiritual work can help us. In that relationship, but it's not something that we are necessarily speaking to clients about unless there's an opening.

With that being said, there's a lot of very practical principles that we will bring into our work. So one that I would share with you is something called the four levels of motivation. And this is a framework that comes directly from the Bhagavad Gita, which is the sacred text that really forms the centerpiece of a lot of the work that we do at Upbuild.

The, the Bhagavad Gita is sort of the classic on yoga wisdom from ancient India. And so the four levels of motivation is a framework that comes from chapter seven of the Gita, where Krishna, who's the speaker of the Gita, is talking about the four different reasons that people approach spiritual life.

And the universality of this is that those four reasons translate into the four motivations that we have for doing anything, whether it's being involved in relationships, making big decisions, making a job decision, how we show up in our personal or professional lives. And so the four levels of motivation are.

motivation by fear, and this level is characterized by avoidance. We want to avoid some sort of consequence that we see as negative. And so at this level, our relationships are formed. Based on survival. We're just trying to survive and not experience the negative consequences that we don't want to experience.

So that's level one. Then level two is motivation by prospect, where we have a strong attachment to results. So we have goals and these goals are very me oriented at level two and we're trying to achieve them. But there's always a restlessness and a feeling of dissatisfaction and Relationships at this level are very transactional and there's a lot of objectification at this level and objectification can seem like a very intense word, but it's actually happening all of the time where I'm looking at other people as objects to help me get.

What I want and level one and level two are really the default way of operating. This is how we are operating probably 99 percent of the time. And also how our organizations are political systems. This, these are their level one and level two systems. So there's a big jump from level two to level three and level three is motivation by a sense of duty and responsibility.

This is where we've done the work to actually understand what are my values. What are truly important to me? What are the qualities that start to make up who I actually am? And we're striving to live in alignment with those values. So there's a sense, a real sense of inspired duty that I'm going to do this because it's the right thing to do.

And then level four is motivation by love. Only unconditional love is actually real love. And so at this level, there's. Just this incredible feeling, a spaciousness, a freedom of like, how could I not do this? So to bring it back to your question, a lot of our coaching work is about helping people see how level one and level two are at play in their lives and then doing the work to help them move to level three.

So doing the values work of what's truly important to me, what gives my life heart and meaning, who am I at my core? And then what do I need to do to take steps to move? Towards those values and actually live them and then only from that platform of level three Do we have a chance of experiencing level four?

We can't skip steps So the coaching work is very much about moving into level three so that we have just a little chance to experience level four

Host: And what do you what do you notice in clients once they maybe touch level three or? Get a little taste of level four, maybe like, what, what do you notice?

What shifts do you notice in them?

Michael: I was speaking to somebody yesterday, who's a brother of a client that I've had for a long time, and he was talking about how he was noticing in The family dynamic that his brother was just very different from how he used to show up and I think that's usually the first sign.

It can be really hard to recognize this stuff in ourselves as we are changing. But hopefully what starts to happen is the experience of the people around us. Actually get better because we're less trapped in who we think we need to be. And so there's more of a freedom to show up and let other people be themselves and let other people operate in a way where it doesn't feel like I'm being constrained because of how somebody else is operating.

So there's more of that unconditionality and. ability to see people for who they are rather than who I need them to be so that I can be who I think I need to be. What we often see is that the lives of the people around them get better. And that includes in organizations. You know, one of the reasons why we feel so passionate about working with leaders is because.

When you work with a leader, the ripple effects are not just for that person, but they can be huge in terms of the number of people that they work with. So things like freedom, compassion, generosity, all of these become natural symptoms of the, of the self worth and the ego.

Host 2: That's such big work. Because there's so many leaders and there's so many owners of companies that are led by ego, and part of the reason that they got to the successful place that they did is partially because of that ego.

I think ego and fear are very motivating forces, which is its positive effect. I feel like so much of the work that I do with, with my clients is working in these toxic environments and trying to help them sort of manage themselves and, and eventually either recognize whether they can work within this culture or decide that it's not okay.

To work in this unhealthy environment and find something healthier. But when you can really change a leader and you change a whole culture, I mean, I just, it can change the lives of so many people.

Michael: Yeah. Thank you for sharing that. The number one trait that we see in leaders, good leaders is one of self awareness.

So there are lots of skills like communication and creating systems and all of that stuff, which can be really helpful for leaders. But actually, if you want to make the most change, it just starts with the leader seeing themselves more clearly.

Host 2: I was also thinking, too, this idea of living a life with intentionality, which I think becomes progressively more difficult when we have so many screens and when there's just so much distraction and when we're living in a city environment where there's just so much noise.

To live a life of intention kind of takes a lot of work and effort, and I hear that being Sort of a big part of the work that you're doing and I'm having this awareness so you can make choice But also thinking about values and whether or not you're living a life aligned to those values Which I think is also very parallel to to psychotherapy in many ways

Michael: Yeah, I love that idea of intentionality and think that that's not a small thing, right?

It's like when people come to therapy or in my case when they come to coaching That is a huge, huge, huge moment in their life because they're, they're waking up and they're saying, I want to be more intentional about my life. I'm sick of the old way of being. And there's, even if I don't have the language yet, there's something that I'm wanting.

And I just want to bow to that because it's such a beautiful gesture of I'm ready to do this work.

Host: Yeah. It's a big deal. And we don't have much time here on planet earth. Yeah. So it's important. It's important. I'm curious if You have any advice or, you know, what are some key practices or habits that you recommend to help people let go of being driven by the, their ego, or just in general, any practices that you think are helpful for people.

Michael: So, my partner, Hari Prasada, who is Rasa Nath's partner in the monastery and is now one of my partners at UpBuild, he will often share that when he is not seeing his ego, he does not celebrate. Instead, he sounds the alarm. Because when we're not seeing it, that's when it's most dangerous. That's when it's very likely in the driver's seat.

So the key practices that we often recommend are ones that help us become experts in our own consciousness, help us really become experts in identifying when the ego is present. So one of the practices that I will often offer to my clients is one where they make a log. any of the behaviors that we're working on and see it show up in real time.

So We often meet every two weeks with our clients, which means there are 14 days where they're living their life. And so it can be very powerful in our session to look at the past and see where it's shown up in the past, but then what an opportunity over those 14 days to actually identify it in the present.

So I'm going to share a little embarrassing anecdote from yesterday, where I shared earlier that one of the things that I'm working on around my Ego structures where I go into performance mode or start trying to impress people in some sort of way. And I live in Tokyo. I was at the national sumo wrestling tournament yesterday and I went with a neighbor of mine and it was getting sort of towards the evening time.

And so he asked me, do you have any work tonight? And I said, yeah, I have, I have a coaching session. And then I went on to share, even though it wasn't a part of the conversation. And by the way, tomorrow morning, I have this podcast that I'm doing with these two really cool therapists from Brooklyn. And they've had all these impressive people on their podcasts.

And I was at the end of that conversation, I was like, why did I need to share that? That was so unnecessary. But it was, it was just a very embarrassing example of my ego showing up in real time. And when we get a lot of clarity on that stuff, not only in the past, but in the present, then we can actually make a lot of change.

And even if I don't make any change in that moment, It's still an opportunity for, for, for me to see it show up in my life so that next time I have the choice to actually make a different choice, which is the only way our lives are going to change.

Host 2: Beautiful. Yeah, it's, it's, we all have that, and there's always the ego at play, but if you can catch it, that's just one step towards recognizing it and moving beyond it.

Michael: Yeah, so we have this phrase, which is a phrase that was given to us by our teachers at the Enneagram Institute, Don Riso and Russell. Hudson, which is a very simple phrase, there I go again, there I go again, just four little words and it sort of gently and humorously allows us to take responsibility for our egos.

And when we say there I go again, we don't actually mean I, the real I, we mean there my ego goes again. And it allows us. to really take responsibility for when it shows up.

Host 2: That's a great, that's kind of sweet, I know. And it's gentle too, like, oh, there I go again. There my ego goes again. Like it's going to happen.

Yeah. Yeah. If

Michael: we're beating the crap out of ourselves, we're never going to actually make progress. So we have to be clear that I don't want this. The ego is not me. And we have to be firm in that sort of way. But the way that we actually work on it needs to be gentle and loving.

Host: Yeah, I love that. And thank you for your honesty.

It's a good model. It's a good one. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, where can we find you and your work? Where should people go?

Michael: Our website, upbuild.com, is the best place to find us and our work. And then, uh, to connect with me, you can also check out LinkedIn and just my name.

Host: Great. Thank you so much.