Trading Derivatives and the Shame-Based Fear of Being Ordinary

This is an automated transcript and may contain minor errors.

Hari Prasada: Hello, welcome everyone to Upbuilding the Self. I'm Hari Prasada here with Michael. And the idea for today is to bring back a reflection that Michael had written a few years ago now called Trading Derivatives and the Shame Based Fear of Being Ordinary.

For anyone who's read this reflection, Shame. You've, I'm sure, been impacted by it quite a bit, and for those of you who've not read it, I would highly, highly encourage you to read it after this episode. It's truly amazing, it impacted me deeply, and it's quite an honor for me to then get to speak to you, Michael, about it, and try to bring out more for everyone who's listening.

Michael: Thank you, Hari. I've written many pieces over the years and it's very clear to me that this was the piece that had to be written more than any other piece that I've written.

This was the piece that was just itching to come out of me. So I'm both nervous and excited to be able to talk to you about it today.

Hari Prasada: That's really special. I didn't know that you felt that way about this and it's all the more of an honor to be able to speak to you about it and share.

Let us start with the opening scene of the Goldman Sachs trading floor. Can you please bring us in?

Michael: So the opening scene of the piece takes place on the equities trading floor of Goldman Sachs in New York City. It's 2010. So we're two years removed from the global financial crisis, which took place in 2008.

It's also a few years into my career at Goldman Sachs, and I was an index derivatives trader, which meant that I traded options, on the big U.S. equity indices, like the S& P 500. It's a morning in November in 2010, and for anyone who knows finance or remembers this particular period in history, you'll know that the stock market was on a very good run at this point.

Markets had crashed in 2008, but then governments around the world, including the U. S. and the Federal Reserve, were printing a lot of money at this time. Which supported the economy and made stock prices go up a lot.

And on this morning, the Fed had just announced that the second round of quantitative easing, which is just a fancy term for printing more money, would be taking place. So markets were very bullish. And it's 9. 30 in the morning, so the opening bell for the stock market rings,

and I hear over the overhead hoot. So we had a trading floor that was about the size of a football field. There were 600, maybe 700 people on the trading floor. And I hear my name immediately called. Over the overhead who we had an, uh, system where

Anyone could press a button on their phone and speak to everyone on the trading floor. Everyone could hear their voice. So somebody presses the button and scream, slow dog, slow dog, pick up at one, this slow dog was a term of endearment used by many people on the trading floor to refer to me.

Slayer is my last name. This was being screamed by a particular salesperson, who I call John, in the piece. So I went on to line one, he went on to line one, and he says, I need a offer on 5, 000 S& P 500, 1300 calls. expiring in March, which was a certain derivative linked to the S& P 500. So now it's my job to look at everything that was happening in the market, all of the prices, look at the currencies, look at the commodities, look at the stock price, look at the volatility, look at what happened in Asia, what happened in Europe, look at everything that was going on, kind of weave together a narrative for myself of what was going on and come up with a price for him.

And John was asking on behalf of his hedge fund client. So it wasn't John asking for a price, but it was a large hedge fund, which was a client of Goldman Sachs So I needed to check out everything and come up with a price that I could show to John, who would then show it to his client.

When John called my name, what was very striking was that it felt like a big rush of validation because everyone on the trading floor could hear that John was calling my name and that I would be the one making this price for him. And just as I'm doing that, I then hear my name again over the overhead hoot.

And now it's a person I call Julie. Julie is John's boss. She was one of the most important salespeople at Goldman Sachs. And she says, Slawyer, pick up at line two. So now I need to jump onto line two. And I scream, Julie, wait, you gotta wait. I'm on, I'm on the phone with John. I'm giving him a price.

So I go back to John's line, I give him the price, then I hop back onto Julie's line and I tell her, I ask her, what does she need? She tells me she needs an offer on a similar call option on the S& P 500. So now I go back to my screens, I have to take all of that into account,

Julie covered some of the biggest hedge funds, some of the biggest clients that Goldman had, even bigger than John. So that was all being factored in. I give Julie a price. John shouts, Slawyer, you're done! Which means that his client wants to trade. That was the Wall Street lingo for I want to trade. So now I have to go and cover the risk.

And all of this is happening in just a span of a couple of minutes. I talked about the piece beginning at 9. 30, now it's only 9. 35, only five minutes have gone by, and all of this craziness has happened, and my mind must have been exhausted, my body must have been exhausted from all of this. And yet I end the opening scene of the piece by saying that I never would have known it.

I never would have been even able to feel what was really going on inside me because there was so much adrenaline, so much validation, so much excitement going through my body that none of that was perceptible to me because all I could feel was that validation,

Hari Prasada: Thank you so much. It's such a unique lens, and I find it so vivid and compelling, the way that experience was, and also the way that you describe it, and I'm curious, what was it you mentioned earlier, that this was the piece that you've written that most needed to come out of you? What inspired you to go back to the trading floor and tell this story?

Michael: There are two reasons that I needed to write this piece. First of all, I had an 11 year career at Goldman, and It was wild. It was chaotic. In some ways, it felt like I was on a bender for 11 years with validation and status as the drug.

So when you're on a bender like that, it's very hard to really see what's actually going on. It's very hard to process anything in a meaningful way.

And for myself, I know that when I have an audience and when I do things publicly, it can actually be very helpful for me to go even deeper.

It gives me a lot of motivation and drive And when I'm writing a piece, I feel the presence of the audience. when I started thinking about what had happened over those 11 years, and looking underneath the surface, I could see that a lot of it was driven by the shame and a feeling of not enoughness.

And by writing this piece, it was a way of me processing all of that. and helping to heal my own shame. So I needed to write the piece for that reason for myself. The second reason that I needed to write this piece is summed up very well by something that Hari, your guru, Satchinanda Swami shared with me last year when I was on a retreat with a big group of people.

And he shared this line that we tell stories to kids to put them to sleep, and we tell stories to adults to wake them up. And one of the main reasons why I needed to write this piece was to serve our community, to help wake us all up to how shame is there beneath the surface and can impact our lives in many ways.

Hari Prasada: Amazing. And I absolutely love that adage Satyanandana Swami shares. Yeah, we really do need to wake up. So what I'm hearing from you is And this is quite intuitive and in line with what we always want to do in our self work and certainly at Upbuild, that first it's for yourself.

To process things and to make sure that you're progressing in your own personal development and then secondly to give others that opportunity and it's really difficult to give other people that opportunity if you're not setting the example and doing it yourself, which clearly you're doing here.

Michael: Yeah, and I think there needs to be a certain relatability

The opening scene, the fact that it was very finance specific also meant that I was hoping to be in touch with the deeper part of especially many people in that industry or many people in other industries that also experience a similar, very competitive, very ambitious.

Hari Prasada: very fast moving work environment where there's a lot of validation, a lot of status being thrown around, but where it's not culturally and socially acceptable to be talking about things like vulnerability or shame, Yeah. And when this was released, Article. It created quite a stir. I mean, there were many, many comments pouring in this also I think was published in other publications as well. And you talk about universality being important. There was such a resonance and also. What I felt was a call to action to become introspective in an environment that is lost to the rush of validation and all of the externals around it.

Michael: And I want to be clear that I don't blame the industry for myself falling prey to a lot of the things that I fell prey to. Now, there is a certain culture there. And that does have a major impact. But all of this stuff was there in me before I ever entered the industry.

Hari Prasada: Yeah, I guess that's what draws not just you to that industry, but so many people. And for those who don't get to go there, they're still marveling.

I mean, people like Rasanath, who is also on Wall Street, describes watching the film, the Oliver Stone film, Wall Street. as a kid and just ogling over, Oh my God, these heroes, look at what they're doing. Look at how fast paced and adventurous and exciting. And they're calling the shots and they're making so much money.

I guess there's all this glitter around that lifestyle. And what you're doing is you're also exposing what's beneath the surface. That is not quite as glittery.

Michael: Yeah, the glitter is only there as a cover up for what's underneath the surface.

Hari Prasada: So what I got from you and the title of this piece. Is I think really the underpinning so what's beneath the surface you mentioned is shame and fear and you call it the shame based fear of being ordinary a nod to Brene Brown's coining of this term the shame based fear of being ordinary.

what is that shame based fear of being ordinary? Can you describe that for us?

Michael: Brede Brown actually uses it in her work to define narcissism. She defines narcissism as the shame based fear of being ordinary and one of the defining characteristics of a narcissist is that there is an insatiable need for admiration and I wrote this piece many years ago but I have been thinking about this a lot more recently how so much of my life and the life of many people that I work with and know is driven by this insatiable need for admiration.

The other thing that comes to mind when thinking about this idea of shame based fear being ordinary is the word ordinary itself. And if you look up ordinary in the dictionary, you'll see words like normal or standard or commonplace.

Ordinary is meant to be a very neutral word, and yet the way that it's used, especially in environments like the corporate world or in sports, when somebody is called ordinary, there's a negative connotation to it. It's not a good thing to be called ordinary. Even when we talk about our day being ordinary, we usually mean it wasn't great.

ordinary was one of the biggest insults you could have thrown at me, I think underneath what was there, it was a fear of being invisible, a fear of not being seen, of not being appreciated and valued.

This is what the shame based fear of being ordinary is all about. This deep fear of not being seen, of not being valued by others. and not knowing where my worth is. So it comes from a feeling of worthlessness. So what you

Hari Prasada: were experiencing in that trading scene was actually an insatiable need for admiration and a fear of being ordinary that would render you

Michael: invisible.

It's funny when you say that because that feels very extreme. To say that that's what I was experiencing when I was trading and doing my job, I didn't know, I didn't feel like that, that was what was happening, I was just doing my job, and I would have told you at the time that I loved it, and There was a lot of aspects of the jobs that I truly did love.

and yet, if I look at the deepest motivations for what I was doing, it's.

I can see that it comes from the shame based fear of being ordinary.

Hari Prasada: So, what you're saying is that there was something genuinely Good or pleasing about the experience.

You have a real interest that continues to this day in the markets and in finance, but when you go really deep to the bottom of what's driving you, there's something that's not so nice that you find. Is

Michael: Yeah. And it's how it would come out. So one of the things that. I talk about in the piece is how there was this very intense experience of me feeling exposed because there was one particular formula in the derivatives world.

called the Black Scholes formula, and this is a very complicated formula. it is, it describes how one should price an option based on the time to maturity in that option and the volatility of the underlying index.

Things that are not that important for this conversation, all to say that there's a lot of different inputs into that formula and an output and the way that the inputs are put together is quite complex. And yet I was one of the main derivatives trader at Goldman Sachs. And I never fully understood this formula.

I knew how to make money trading options. I knew how to buy things at a low price and sell them at a high price. But I didn't actually understand the underlying formula for how options were priced.

So there would be a lot of overcompensation, or a lot of withdrawal. I would disengage from certain conversations. I would make sure not to find myself in certain conversations with certain people so that I didn't get found out.

Or I would talk very enthusiastically about things. in a way that was actually a projection of confidence to show how much I know, even though, and I put that in air quotes for anyone who's listening on audio, because It was just a way to cover up how much I actually did know.

It always felt like I was on thin ice. And so that came out in different ways,

Hari Prasada: and I remember reading one comment that said, actually, there were so many people in your shoes who didn't know the formula and they weren't likely advertising that they were probably playing a similar game. But clearly you weren't alone in that, but I guess it felt very alone and nobody's talking about it.

Michael: Yeah, and this is where I think the idea of ego identities comes into play. I was the trader. It was maybe it's okay for the sales people to not know the formula, but as the trader and the best trader doing the most important index, and I'm putting all of this stuff in air quotes, I should have known it.

And I also hinged my identity on being a pretty quantitative person.

Hari Prasada: Okay. That's helpful. So then what stopped you from actually getting extra help and learning about the formula? Wouldn't that have been easier than playing this whole charade around like, yes, I know it, I know it, I know it, nobody should find out that I don't know it?

Michael: A hundred percent. And I did, but it was hard and I couldn't fully grasp it. But I've done hard things in my life before, so hard things don't necessarily deter me. But you know what really stopped me? It was this shame based fear of being ordinary. It was having to come in touch by doing the work, by actually getting in there and asking for support.

And I think this is applicable in a much broader sense. When we actually get in there and do the work, we come in touch with our failure. We come in touch with, The gap between where we are and where we would like to be.

Hari Prasada:

So if I'm listening, I might think, but it was quite an exciting time. There were many things that were positive about it.

And sure, there was some insecurity, but there's always insecurity. Everybody has insecurity. And Okay, you play into it from time to time, or maybe you play into it a lot. That's very human. What's the problem? What's the cost here?

Michael: When we're dealing with the ego, the cost is always our freedom.

So in this desire to be extraordinary, there was almost inherently in that desire, a lack of humility, a thinking of myself as better than others. And thinking of myself as the projection of how I wanted to be seen. And so when those things are there, we lose our freedom.

We lose our freedom to actually act as we are.

Hari Prasada: And how did you feel the cost of that at that time?

Michael: The image that comes to mind is like a pendulum. It would be a constant swinging between extreme self doubt, this fear of being exposed, and then. displays of confidence, of grandiosity, of projection, and that felt very ungrounded.

It felt like I was all over the place that I didn't really know who I was, that I didn't have a core. So I would show up like this in this situation and like that in that situation, speak to these people in this kind of way, speak to my friends who are not in finance in a completely different way, and I was losing who I actually was at my core.

Hari Prasada: I really appreciate that. So you're losing yourself, you're losing your freedom, and How much did that matter to you at that time?

Michael: Good question. It mattered. I could feel it when I got into bed at night. I would know it. I could sense it in my body, in my relationships also, but it seemed like the cost was worth paying at the time.

And I think that was the problem.

Hari Prasada: That's great. So then the question is, what would have happened if you just continued like that? If you continued making that calculation that the cost is worth the price?

Michael: I probably would have gotten more and more successful in material terms.

Hari Prasada: So everybody listening, you hear that?

This is the answer. If you want to become successful, just do all of these things.

Michael: Yeah, I think I would have gotten more successful, more promotions, more money. But I think at the cost of my authenticity, cost of deep and meaningful relationships. and the cost of my spiritual life as well. It's very hard to make progress in that arena of life, which has become so much more important to me over the last three or four years.

When there's not this grounding, when there's not a strong sense of who am I and what is my actual mission in this world, what can I feel proud of? And I still have a lot, a lot of work to do in that arena, but there's a much stronger grounding now that wasn't there back then because there was a lack of awareness.

Hari Prasada: I find that very poignant. So for everyone who's thinking, well, wait a minute, if I actually follow the guidance that's given in this podcast, I'm going to lose my material success. And maybe I'll have a little bit of a better spiritual life. What would you say to that?

Michael: There is some truth to the understanding that shame can be a fuel for hard work and discipline and forgetting places in life.

But when you look at cost of that fuel, it's like putting fuel that is not so great into a car. The car might run for a certain period of time, but over time, it's going to, it's break the engine or cause some sort of damage, and the car's not going to be able to run in its optimal way for significant periods of time.

So you might be feeling that, yeah, this is the fuel I need. First of all, and Razanov and I spoke about this in our podcast, which will be the one before this. That comes up on people's feed, and never ending supply of, if that, if shame is my fuel, then I require a never ending amount of shame in order to keep going.

And so there's a cost to that, because I'm never actually able to switch out my fuel for something that's more healthy and more inspiring. And the second thing is that it's exhausting. It's absolutely exhausting because I'm not going towards something. I'm just running away from something. And so I don't know what my north star is.

I need to be in constant motion to get away from where I'm going rather than feeling a sense of clarity or grounding about where I'm headed to.

Hari Prasada: Very stark. But the thing is, when you talk to somebody, like if you were to talk to your former self, It's I'm going for something. I know what I want and I'm charging hard.

I'm charging harder than most people. So it seems like I'm not running away, but I'm running toward, but what you're illuminating is that there's a lot that's being obscured in that process and you can. Pin it on something that is positive, when in fact, if we're very painfully honest with ourselves, we'll see that's not the case.

So, it can be presented, even to ourselves, as if we're running towards something that's very good, very nice. But actually on a much deeper level, it is not that it is not that we're running away from something that will catch up to us. It's unsustainable. The shame has to be confronted. It cannot serve as an ongoing fuel without wrecking

Michael: the engine.

Yeah, the ego can justify anything. It can obscure a lot of things for a long time. So the call to action here is Not wait for a crash to start exploring some of that stuff really be willing to start exploring it now to get underneath What might be going on in on the surface so that we can get a much better sense of what's actually going on

Hari Prasada: Yeah, so I want to zoom out and we've touched on this already quite a bit, especially in what you just said, and I hope as a result, there are alarm bells going off for some people for all of us to some degree, if not to a large degree.

Why is this so important? Why is this so important for everyone to take stock of? I just want to be

Michael: very pointed. Because our insecurities are running us. And if we are not aware of our insecurities, they will run us on autopilot for the rest of our life.

Hari Prasada: I'm with you. And you also said, and I was feeling this even from reading the piece, it's so exhausting.

It's just like, you know, we can pump ourselves up, but how long are we going to live the pumped up life and just like artificially pumping ourselves, pumping ourselves, pumping ourselves. It's what are we pumping ourselves with? It's really hot air, actually. It's not substance, doesn't work. It doesn't actually feed who we really are

Michael: at all.

In fact, quite the opposite. Yeah. And if you ask most people, including myself at any point in my life, do you want to be a humble person? Yes, I did. And I do, I really strive to be that way. So what does it actually mean? And in the piece, I talk about four specific things that define the definition of humility, which comes from our work at Upbuild and what all of you do.

as my teachers and partners have offered to me over the years. So these four things are nothing that I have is really mine. Anything that I am is mostly due to my teachers. I can't figure it out on my own. And it's not about me. And if we think about how this insatiable need for admiration or this desire to be extraordinary in an egoic way, not in a way where I'm serving and I'm impacting people in a way that's truly selfless and beneficial for others.

But when I have this desire to be extraordinary because I want my life to be the shining example for everyone to be looking at, then it's impossible to actually take on any of these four Thoughts behind humility, because I start believing that everything that I have is really mine. My job title, my status, my money, all of that is mine, and now I need to build walls to protect it.

I start believing that, yeah, maybe I have some teachers, but it's mostly due to my mind, my body, my work ethic. There's a lot of my's that can permeate our consciousness. And so we lose the reality of how actually everything's been given to us. We start feeling like we're the ultimate controller and that I can figure it out on my own.

I can do it and only I can do it and so I don't need to rely on anyone else. And so that creates a lot of disconnection in our relationships. And it becomes all about me. It becomes all about me and my ego and what I want and my desires. And so it makes it very hard to serve and benefit other people in any sort of way.

And so there's no humility that can actually be there, or very little humility that can be there when we have this desire to be extraordinary.

Hari Prasada: Yeah, it's fantastic how you captured that in the piece, these aspects of humility that are really core to the self. And without that humility, We're not in touch with reality.

We're just again playing the game, which becomes a futile exercise. We don't want to live in a game. We want to live our real life. Talk about wanting to be your best self. What does that mean? It means being real, actually being in touch with who you are, not projecting. So, so much of this is, as you've been pointing out, it's about dispelling the projections and getting super, super grounded and in touch with reality and therefore also having healthier relationships and people not being objects.

In my world, which is the default because the ego only knows how to objectify in gross or subtle ways in innocent and not so innocent ways. And even the most innocent ways of objectifying are ultimately not that innocent. And there's a high price tag on them as well. So unless we're actually seeing everybody else as a subject, which to do that, it's required to become humble.

Not self obsessed, not run based on my validation hits and my projections and me, me, me, me, me, but actually being in touch with the self as a servant of all living beings and part of a greater fabric of the spiritual reality, if you will. This doesn't just happen magically. And you can't just say these things in name.

You have to put your money where your mouth is. You also mentioned about being extraordinary.

You don't want to do it to be the shining example for everybody else. But the irony is that if you actually want to be a shining example, then you have to be humble. So if you actually want to be an extraordinary shining example, then this is the way, not by trying to puff out your chest and be like, look at how amazing I am.

I'm going to be amazing. I'm going to be amazing. I'm going to be amazing. And then you can actually really inspire people. By the nature of your own depth and authenticity and the power of that humility and care for

Michael: others.

It's extraordinary to be extraordinary. It's just that people who are extraordinary don't think they're extraordinary and they're not gunning to be extraordinary for the identities of who they think they should be. They're gunning to be extraordinary for the impact that they can have on people and for the service that they can provide for people.

Hari Prasada: Absolutely. Is there anything more that you would want to share about what you learned at that time at Goldman?

Michael: There's a quote from Kurt Vonnegut that we are who we pretend to be. So we better be very careful about who we pretend to be. And what I saw over those years was that the more success. that came, the more I convinced myself that the identity of who I truly was, was a successful person.

And that was defined as material success. I work with a lot of people who, it always feels like, I'm just doing this for now. I'm just making these sacrifices now, because as soon as I get to my number, or as soon as I get to this place, Where I have this kind of material success, then I'll really be able to support my family and give gifts.

To the people who have contributed to me, or I'll be able to be in enough of a situation where then I can go do the passion project that I've always wanted to do, or then I'll be able to serve other people and there can absolutely be a truth to that. And in fact, I experienced that in my own life because I actually needed.

some of the ego victories along the way to get myself into a place where I felt secure enough to be able to leave Goldman to join UpBuild. So there's something there that's not completely delusional, but there can also be a lot of delusion in thinking like that. And one year can turn into two years, which can turn into ten years, which can turn into an entire career, an entire lifetime.

So, I like to keep this Kurt Vonnegut quote in my mind, because if I see myself pretending to be a certain way for a certain period of time, it's very dangerous. It's very dangerous territory, because that can turn into who I actually am.

Hari Prasada: And when you say who you actually are, it's on top of who you actually are.

Michael: Yeah, yeah, I don't mean who I actually am at the deepest. I mean, how I live my life. Another

Hari Prasada: ironic thing. Yeah, I really appreciate that. So then how are you doing with this shame based fear of being ordinary today now at up build and many years later, it's

Michael: a struggle, but there's some things that are different about the struggle today than back then.

So it shows up in my life today and up builds when new coaching clients come along or. people share appreciations for my work or my writing.

I still feel the impulse for the admiration and the validation. What I think is different is that there's much more awareness of what's going on. There's an excitement about sharing those things with other people in service of being able to process it, and to not have it have such a strong hold on my life.

And then the last piece, which I think is critical, is that there's less of a Playing into it because of that awareness. So I had a very very small example that happened this morning we had a registration come in for a course that we're teaching and Our partner Vipin had emailed me asking how we know this person and I had spoken to this person I was in a breakout room with them during one of our webinars and So I could feel myself in crafting the response taking credit for this person's registration.

I actually don't deserve credit for this person's registration. Like we did have a small interaction and we were in touch over email, but it was very much outside of my impact on this person. But I could sense just in the way I was going to respond that there'd be a subtle implication that I had.

impacted this person enough to inspire them to register. And I caught myself before I sent it, and I was thinking, first of all, this doesn't feel humble, and I'm striving to be that way. So regardless of what the truth is, I want to make sure that I'm not emphasizing my impact on the person. And secondly, I really want to get at the truth here

And so I deleted what I had written and just wrote something that felt much more authentic and neutral. And it's just a small example, but it was one of being aware of.

What a deeper motivation might have been than the surface impulse that I felt, and then actually adjusting my action That's

Hari Prasada: really heart melting. So, so endearing, Michael. Yeah, thank you for sharing all of that and the example. I was also thinking, you do.

deserve credit for the way that you impact people. And then it becomes sometimes harder to not take credit when there's something that actually you've done. And so I was thinking, well, what to do in that circumstance. And then it's actually just being an instrument that, okay, I'm so honored. That I could play some part that I could do something, which was really meaningful and which was helpful.

Wow. That's a rush that actually can replace the rush of validation. It's a different quality to it.

Michael: So it's possible in those situations where the message itself. wouldn't have even changed, assuming what I was writing was true, but it's the internal consciousness that's so important.

Where am I coming from? What am I emphasizing? What am I focusing on? That's it. And

Hari Prasada: As you were speaking, I was just thinking, Michael, you are a shining example. I'm so excited because clearly you have had such an amazing journey. And from knowing you from the time when you were at Goldman in the earlier days to wherever you are today, I mean, I can attest it's, it's unbelievable the transformation.

And so this process really works. I just want to ask you one last question.

What step can we take to work through The fear, the shame based fear of being ordinary.

Michael: With shame, because it's such a complex and intense emotion, it can be very hard to handle it ourselves. We really need support. Rosinoth, in that podcast that we recorded a couple of weeks ago, was talking about how we, he had actually given me this example in a coaching conversation a while back, where we carry bags of shame with us and how those bags of shame are often colliding in to other people.

They're getting in the way of our life. they're so heavy, they've collected so much stuff over the years as a result of our experiences. and they can be very hard to carry alone.

And I think if We're talking about one step. The one step is really about owning our insecurity. And for that, we often need someone to be able to speak about that with. And so encouraging people to think about who in my life, and maybe that's a friend, maybe that's a family member, maybe that's a professional coach.

Maybe that's a co worker, but where do I feel safe enough to be able to start talking about some of my insecurities and vulnerabilities so that I can start to process it, really see myself in a much deeper and more authentic way. And then when I start to process my shame, that is the ultimate experience of authenticity.

That is me stepping into who I actually am because I'm not running away from the insecurities that are driving me. Thank you.

Hari Prasada: Yeah, being able to look fearlessly into our hearts And then having somebody who inspires us, holds us accountable, helps us to do that is necessary.

You cannot really do it on your own. That's the lack of humility that, oh, yeah, I can figure it all out on my own, as you were saying. We really need that support. The Sanskrit term that we often use is Sangha. It's impossible without Sangha, without connection, someone who's like minded, and ideally someone who's further along on the path to becoming their real self.

what we're craving is to feel seen and to feel accepted and to feel loved, to love and be loved. And this is a major, major step in that direction. So. Let us be inspired to take that risk and open up to a trustworthy person. Is there anything that you would want to share in closing, Michael?

Michael: No, I think you said it so well, and I'm just so grateful that you are that person for me, along with the other members of the Upbuild team.

And In the beginning, we talked about how it can be this insatiable need for admiration that drives us down this path, and we don't want to deny that we might have that impulse within us, but can we also offer that to other people? Can we be the person to really see and admire other people in a very authentic way, which will give them some ground to stand on?

So I've seen how you've been a model of that for me in my life, not only in relationship to me, but also in relationship to so many other people. So thank you for doing that work on yourself, which then allows you. To offer it out to other people.

Hari Prasada: That's really touching. Well, I humbled by your words. And again, I'm so inspired just by your journey and what you offer to so many people.

So your friendship is such a. Shelter and this working relationship. it's proof positive that we can find people who can be that safe space and who can inspire us to do the hard work that is necessary for us to become who we really are. Thank you very much, Michael. Thanks for all of your wisdom and experience.

Amazing to be with you, and thank you to everyone listening. Very, very grateful.