E38: Mike Chang - Why being Fit, Rich and Successful won’t make you happy

50:30You're not aware of all the stuff. It doesn't matter. Great. Just start. so now someone goes okay now what do i need to do for the rest on the mind part realize that things can change right now you're having all these thoughts and all this stuff here's the biggest thing if i had to pinpoint to one thing i would say this those thoughts that you have in your head you have the thoughts but the thoughts aren't um they're not the only perspective let's to say it like that. There are one perspective, but there are a lot of different perspectives. So are you going to make decisions in your life based on that one perspective when you're upset, stressed, worried, and afraid?

51:13Or are you going to make decisions in your life based on a perspective that you feel a little more empowered on, you feel a little at peace with? Which one would you rather make decisions on? And it becomes really obvious. Of course, I don't want to decide when I'm okay. then when you are having those thoughts of complaining blaming you know but the world is so bad just realize that you are emotionally charged you are feeling afraid that's why you're thinking that so in other words don't believe your thoughts don't believe them when you're having that and they will happen and don't believe it that's one of the key principles of meditation learning to take some distance it doesn't mean fight your thoughts but take some distance and look watch your thoughts, just look at them, label them, be okay with them, and realize that you're always going to have these thoughts, you're always going to have some unhelpful thoughts, but the way you look at them can impact completely, can impact your life basically, and the way you react to these thoughts.

52:19Right. And when somebody's having these thoughts, instead of believing it to be true, just go back to number one. relax, move, and breathe. And what happens is the thoughts start to change because the body starts to feel more calm. They start to move towards peace. And then when they move towards peace, the thoughts go from, man, things are so bad. I don't know what to do to, you know, actually, I think I can be able to handle it. And I'm just going to try this out and see how it goes. The thoughts will move into that. You see, they have the capacity to think that, but what determines whether or not someone thinks everything's so bad and it's gonna all fall to shit you know what i got what it takes i can just give it a shot see what happens these seem very very similar but one perspective is fear-based perspective the fear-based one is everything's gonna be really bad the more peaceful one is i'm gonna give a shot and see what happens it's all But work needs to be done by everyone because as human, we are not, let's say we're not favored by the way the human brain evolved in terms of fear.

53:29Because the way we evolved was the human brain is basically feeding itself naturally by fear. Because we had to survive. We have a survivor, basically, survival instinct. So therefore, we're much more likely to see the negative side on every situation just because of how we evolved. Because we needed the food, because we needed to escape this bear. Yeah, but that's not. So the work needs to be done by everyone. That's, there's a, it's a nice story. so you don't believe in the story of i see the snake instead of the rope right like naturally everyone tends towards this because of how our brain evolved

54:24if we are in fear right now we will look at a rope and we will think it's a snake but we live in this technological world and we evolved already but yet it will still happen and based on your beliefs you see you you're there's a dark area and you go oh i see a ghost there the evolving yes things evolve but what's really determining the fear with the way we perceive reality is just the emotion that we have it determines their perspective the lens that we see through this has always been now yes things things evolve you know the bodies are evolving yeah things evolve but what's really driving the way that we perceive things is the energy in the body it's always been because what is mind we can't poke at it right this is my no it's not this is my head this is my hair we can't even touch the mind but yet we all have it so what is affecting the mind we have to know if we were going to talk about you know thoughts

55:40and if a person ever did a little bit of self-inquiry self-awareness to where they observe the way their mind is and now let's say they go and eat a lot of food now observe how does your mind go oh yeah i can barely pay attention i i'm i'm dull i can't really think okay and like what we talked about earlier okay now stop eating and stop eating for 16 hours now what happens to your mind oh well it's more light and it's yeah i feel like clear okay so you see the mind changed based on these things. These things was a change in the body, a change in energy. So then now if we were to go ahead and talk about all these different things like, okay, get into an argument with your girlfriend, with your spouse, right?

56:31Get into argument with your employees. And now look at your mind. So we start to see that all of these things are influencing the mind. So we go, whoa, there's a lot of different things. How can we pinpoint one thing? And because we look at everything there is a common denominator that is changing that's on the basis of energy because we can say this is food and this is person and this is an activity so they're all seem to be different but yet the mind is constantly being influenced because all these things are changing that one common thing which is the energy inside and so therefore the energy no matter how it gets changed but when it changes the mind changes and so therefore if we look at the rope in the snake analogy again, what determines on how we see something is based on the energy inside.

57:20But how the energy changes is a lot of different variables. So you talked about the emotional aspect, the physical aspect. What is the mental aspect? the mental aspect so remember earlier we talked about three stages so if somebody's in the first stage their goal is to go from victimhood complaining blaming i don't have any power they need to go from that to the opposite learn how to think positive they may not be able to see it positive i still see the snake but i know that's not a snake i know it's just a rope oh man that's so scary over there so dark i might get robbed and but i know that the chances are probably gonna be right so they know positive thinking they start to develop it and they take responsibility for themselves right this is my life i'm responsible for it so that's what's needed on the mind for stage one stage two once they develop that now these are the type of people walking around hey how you doing i'm doing great how you doing i'm doing great high five everybody's positive good So now at this point, they need to move into stage two.

58:36Stage two is we shut off the conscious mind. So it's not about learning more positivity. It doesn't do you any good anymore. Why? Because in stage two, we are needing to increase our awareness, access more information. You want to level up. You want to access more information, process more information, understand more information. To do that, we have to remove the information in which we're focused on. So if I'm thinking about something, then my attention goes to this thought. Now, how much more things can I be aware of? Well, at this moment, I guess the answer is a lot. But if I am thinking of this, how much of my attention is being taken here?

59:30Let's say if I have 100 units of attention and I'm thinking here and I'm really focused on it, it may take 80 % of my attention to focus here. So I have 20 % to be aware of everything else. Now, there's a lot of everything else happening. So if I want to be able to know more things, become more intelligent, then I take my attention back and I don't focus on here. So now if I don't think about this thing, do I actually still know this thing? that becomes the next question here's like a real life example so i grab this cup of water and then i drink this cup some people will say in their mind in their mind right now oh man i'm thirsty i'm gonna drink this cup of water oh wow this cup of water tastes a little like lemony oh so good oh man i'm glad this water is here now they could have this dialogue right this commentary always thinking about something now the question goes did they need to have those thoughts in order to do this action could they just do this action without the thinking without the conscious thinking without the voice in their head absolutely right complex things maybe not but simple things yes where I go pee.

1:00:51Do I need to go, hey man, I need to go pee. Oh man, where's the restroom at? This is a dialogue in somebody's head. Is it necessary? Absolutely not. But yet, this is what happens. They do have this dialogue for some. And the people that have this dialogue, their attention is not able to be aware of all the infinite amount of things because their attention is sitting there talking about things that is unnecessary so now their awareness attention is limited so so then we when we start to silence the conscious mind there are a lot of things that we can still do without having to have a dialogue about it we can walk we can type do we need to go a d j f no drive we can drive we can do so many things right so many so now all of the attention that was utilized before in thinking about this and that is now freed up when you're talking to somebody do you need to go wow he's thinking this oh man what should i say next not necessary Because if we did, less awareness can be paying attention to what's happening.

1:02:09So therefore, when we silence our mind, what naturally happens is that our awareness is available, our attention is available, and this attention can gather more data at any given moment. And this data that we are aware of, that we know of, allows us to make better decisions, better choices. basically the principle of becoming an expert you're building these neural pathways that enable you to do these brain shortcuts so you don't have to do all this thinking anymore so you can be more efficient and then you're basically adding the level of saying once I have these shortcuts it's not only helpful because I can do things faster and better but I also have much more it's not a shortcut

1:03:05it's not a shortcut it's it's it's more like increasing your memory in your computer increasing your RAM right the computer if it has really low RAM it can only process a little bit at a time you try to get processed to something else it just spins and doesn't do anything so now us same thing if we are constantly processing processing we have all these windows open and then we try to open up a new thing it's so slow but then if we close up all the windows we have all of the ROM to go ahead and process whatever we put on there and now same thing so now if we are not constantly processing information our awareness our attention is fully available to go and do the higher thinking tasks the tasks that require more attention right it doesn't require much attention to go use the restroom grab a water or go type for some people you see so this higher level task is directly based on somebody's skill set somebody's experience what somebody knows so it's different for everybody right somebody that doesn't know how to type oh they are focused somebody doesn't know how to drive they are you know paying attention you and i we drive we don't we don't have to pay attention we know how to drive but the same idea still applies when we can take back our attention because our mind is silent that attention can be applied to higher level tasks whatever that higher level task may be for that person so is this answering the question of what is the mental component of these three components physical emotional and mental so i meditate every morning 15 minutes what should i do concretely upon waking up at home before meditating to be able to to go deeper and strengthen my energy and my frequency so here's what i recommend i do five things first thing is i shake the body i shake the body because it's a really fast way to warm up the body we shake the body vibrate the body i tap throughout the body so this way i can activate the nervous system.

1:05:19After that, do a little bit of strength training. Exert some energy. Okay, get the cardiovascular system activated. Get the lymphatic system activated. Generate a little bit of heat. From there, you need to go and bring it back down. Relax. Stretch. Stretch. Bend the body around. So now the body feels really loose. You see, if the body, if we didn't do strength training and you just shaked it and then you stretch, then there can be a lot of pent-up emotions that need to be released. And it's not going to be released really effectively through just stretching. Shaking helped, but there needs to be some exertion.

1:05:57You know, when somebody gets mad, they go, boom, right? They don't go, um, no. So we need to exert. So then after that, you stretch. And after that, breathe. Open up the lung capacity. Increase the amount of energy in the body. Because now when we increase the amount of energy in the body, when we meditate, we can stay awake. You know how many people fall asleep? Not enough attention. After breathing, then meditate. Okay. Yeah. And when they meditate, now we get into a whole other story of different types of meditations. You know, the simple thing I'll say with that, if I had to say one way without diving into all these other things, simple way, follow your breath and feel in your body.

1:06:38Mentally, here's what someone should do. Let go of trying to accomplish anything. let go try to solve anything let go trying to gain anything someone goes i want to gain a good meditation you've already failed before you even start right let go of it you are literally checking out you're going to check out for the next how long you meditate 15 you're going to check out for 15 minutes can you give yourself permission to check out is are is your if your is your relaxation are you that valuable to where you can give yourself 15 minutes to check out yes okay do that that means their next 15 minutes you have no responsibilities right and then you can pick up all of your problems and responsibilities 15 minutes after can you give can you do that for yourself yes good now i call that meditation because now there's nothing to figure out so now my mind doesn't need to go and talk because what happens when we meditate i got an idea oh man yeah this and this all this is gonna be great i open my eyes i'm so motivated yes great but you didn't let your mind relax.

1:07:41You didn't go ahead and let go. You just used this as a way to brainstorm an idea, brainstorm for your business, brainstorm for life. That's great, but you didn't meditate. Meditation, real meditation is taking a break, is letting your mind be at peace. So that's why I always tell people, just actually give yourself a break and just step away from life. because when you meditate, you're going to automatically think about life. Step away from life just for 15 minutes. That's all. And then you can pick it up afterwards. And later on, you want to close your eyes and mind map. Cool. But you already did 15 minutes of a break.

1:08:19And you do that 15 minutes every day. It's a wonderful thing, even if it's just 15. what would you tell people who still think that meditation, yoga massages are some sort of charlatanism do we say basically they don't believe in it they don't need to believe it just try it try it and forget what people are saying forget the studies, forget the scientific research if you really feel that there is a need if you know that you need to change something the best way to do it is try because who cares if you believe it doesn't do anything until you actually try and see it for yourself even someone goes this is the best food to eat you eat it it doesn't feel good for you so what are you gonna do keep eating it my stomach hurts but i'm gonna keep eating it because no this this comes back to our discussion from last time which is maybe the pain is not just big enough.

1:09:22Yeah. So therefore somebody, if the pain is not big enough, they're not willing to go and do any work. They're just sitting there dabbling. When the pain is big, people don't waste time dabbling. They are taking action. What would you tell to someone who says, I can't meditate. I'm not able to.

1:09:44well when somebody first tried to do anything the act of trying is the learning process but they have to learn but if they don't do the learning process how do they expect to do it it's it's like you know when someone goes i can't meditate what they're really saying is i'm not willing to learn because if they sat every day and tried to meditate they will start to meditate it happens slowly but it will happen but if someone goes they try it a few times then you go I can't meditate what they're really saying is I'm not willing to learn if you're not willing to learn then you're not going to gain anything from that it's like someone goes I can't I you know I try business but I can't do business what'd you do and then they tell you you're right then they tell you And you're like, bro, yeah, that's it.

1:10:36But you just need to keep going. But you stopped. So you're not willing to learn to do what it takes. So yeah, you're never going to succeed. It's the same thing. Because I hear this a lot. I talk to a lot of, especially women who have sleep, basically have insomnia. They have anxiety. I'm like, there's two things you should try. Go to acupuncture. It's amazing. Ah, but I'm scared of needles. So they're not going. Okay. try to meditate I tried but it's impossible I cannot there's too many thoughts I'm like if you cannot it's probably because you need it in the first place what I was saying earlier would be would honestly be the best suggestion now if they continue to try it would eventually start to slow down but the faster way to do it is to prepare the body and mind okay so these four exercises before the meditation it will completely change how they feel when they enter into meditation yeah it will completely do it i i realized this because i had the same problem i remember when i started meditating i will set my timer on my phone for five minutes two minutes in i'm sitting there going it's it's endless i think i forgot to set the timer i think I forgot to set start.

1:11:55And I look. Yeah. Only two minutes. It's like 145. Oh. And I'm staring at it just to make sure it's like not still. And then you see it 145, 146, 147. Okay. I guess that was all right. That's really interesting because when you meditate every day, you start to really enjoy the process. You can get kind of some euphoric and some highs. If you go on holidays and you stop for a couple of days, the day you'll start again, it's going to be that again. You're like, did I forget? to set up my alarm. 15 minutes, I feel like it's one hour. I'm going to miss my meeting. And then the whole thing is fucked up.

1:12:33How do I realize if I'm stressed? A lot of different ways. One way is look for the tension. If you're tense, you are stressed. Now, if someone goes, but I'm tense all the time. Well, there's your answer. Yes, then you're stressed all the time. Another thing is pay attention to your tonality. There's so many because stress, when we say stress, what we're saying is like, how do I know when my energy is this way? Every part of our expression changes. It matches. So one of them is tonality, the way we speak. Another one is looking at our behavior. when I'm stressed what do I usually do right do I eat smoke drink do I go and get defensive do I um you know do I start to think in this way this way can be um you know I don't like what's happening I don't like this person I don't like what's being said I don't I don't like I don't there are certain clues and then once we start to when we have the intention of finding when we are stressed and we start to have that intention we start to pay attention and when we pay attention we start to see and every and you don't need to find everything you can just find certain things that are very easy for you to spot over time you can find many things you know but somebody can just find one thing for somebody for an emotional eater the way they know is when i'm stressed i i'm hungry and i want to eat so okay great so when you're wanting to eat you know you're stressed you don't have to wait till you start yelling at this person you know for a smoker it could be smoking for someone who's really tense it's like when i'm stressed i can start to feel the tension here not just anywhere here okay so then now all you do is practice bring your awareness here so this way when you start to feel that you're tensing up here automatically you already know you're stressed and you need to relax because by relaxing you actually start to let go of the stress because that stress that emotion has an ability to move instead of getting stuck in certain parts so that's what we do we just look for certain things that um that's showing up somebody can look for thoughts but you know it's different for each person look for the thing that's obvious for them how does stress affect people I mean it affects uh it affects everything on the level of the mind this is the part this is the part that I that I I really like to share because sometimes people kind of forget you know we were talking a little bit about this earlier if we're stressed then the way that we see things change this is so important because some people go I'm stressed and I do this and I do this, but it doesn't matter that much.

1:15:31But if we pinpoint something that they really care about, imagine when somebody realizes that if I'm stressed, I see scenarios differently. I see my business differently. I see my team members differently. I make different decisions. Someone goes, hey, Kevin, you know, which way should we go? This or this? If you're stressed, you will make a different decision than the way you're peaceful. And that decision ripples affecting everybody affecting the business affecting customers that's how big stress is so now when someone goes well i'm stressed but it's okay i can handle it so what they're saying is you're making um well i don't want to call it bad decisions we'll just call it not the best decisions and you're okay with it you're are you well no no i mean i'm just i can handle no but are you okay with making so-so decisions because you can make better ones but are you okay with making so-so well no i'm making really good decisions yeah based on your stressful perspective but when you're not stressed you will take a look at the same scenario and you will make a better decision because remember when you're not stressed you're not constantly thinking you're able to have that attention back expanded attention which means you can access more information which means every single business decision or any decision you're able to have more data and to say and we're talking about business here but it's definitely not the most important relationship if you don't know how to manage your stress this could result into you leaving a relationship or breaking up or divorcing and and not get the things that you deserve the most in life because you have this program this stress program that is making you act a certain way in a very unhelpful way but that you might not realize right now and that's even more important because we're talking about relationships and happiness and not just purely career or business outcomes.

1:17:25Yeah, so when it comes to relationships, now this perspective, you know, when we're upset at somebody and we see them, we only can pinpoint the things we don't like about them, the things we want them to change, the things that they are doing that's causing problems for us. And even though we technically know that there's a lot of other things, but we can't see it. That's the issue. We can't see it. when we are stressed, when we're emotional. So it's really important that when we are feeling this stress, feeling this worry, we need to relax. We need to come back to center before we make any big decisions.

1:18:02And if we can do it, even in medium to small decisions, let it go. So I'm always showing people how to go ahead and let it go on the spot. It takes practice. So someone can't just do it but if they keep practicing they can let it go on the spot so now all of their decisions become better how do you do that so when we're doing practice every morning every evening this is why i teach people we do 60 minutes in the morning 20 and 25 minutes in the evening they learn how to do this practice they start to identify which moves out of this practice is really effective for them there are 60 moves in this practice and they're all designed to go ahead and basically release change the energy get into a meditative state after this person's doing this same practice every single day they start to realize that move number seven move 13 14 15 really really helps me relax and for somebody else could be something different so now they take let's say these five moves and they execute them they do them when they feel stressed so i'm having a partner with my i'm having a conversation with my partner and suddenly i can feel this stress i'm getting worked up and getting defensive so now instead of going i need a break at this very moment, I can either sit here or I can stand up and I can go ahead and do these five moves.

1:19:18And I can do it in 60 seconds or less. And now I come back down and sit down and talk. And within 60 seconds, my stress level was reaching 85, 90, and now it decreased to 40. And maybe not all the way because it's too short, but 85 versus 40 is a big difference. This changes how I'm going to interact with my partner, for example. And that's what we need. We need very quick solutions that can be executed on the spot. Absolutely. Somebody just needs to be able to, and this happens naturally, because when somebody's doing this practice every single day, it's the same moves. So they eventually get really good at it, and certain moves really stand out to help them.

1:19:59And they memorize it, so it's not like you need to watch a video, plug in a device, do something. No. At the spot, in whatever you're doing, someone goes, I'm on the laptop, and I get really tensed up. you know and i'm stressed i'm on this meeting what do i do okay same thing except you would need to learn how to move sitting down not even getting up and you can do that because all we're doing here is learning how to let go of tension and when we let go of tension automatically this stress has an ability to move until then it's stuck and it's building up and now when it has ability to move, it can work its way out.

1:20:40Yeah. How does nutrition play a crucial role in supporting mental clarity and emotional stability? Well, so with nutrition, if we look at the basis of what we're talking about, which is the energy and how that affects the mind, how it affects our choices, we have to make sure that the nutrition is allowing the body to stay open to stay open for energy to circulate you see a lot of times people look at nutrition as what's going to get me to lose weight or gain weight you know and they're just looking at just aesthetics but they aren't looking at it in if it's going to keep the energy circulating or if it's going to block the energy you know i used to i used to eat a lot and get in bulk and do all that stuff you know the cut bulk i just stayed mostly in bulk for a while and i just looked at it as am i gaining weight how's my muscles feel and i didn't even think it didn't even cross my mind about how it's affecting my energy yeah so we need to eat things that are easy to digest because if it's hard to digest it stays in the body too long And if it stays in the body, it creates blockages.

1:22:02Your guts and stomach is your second brain, essentially. We have to be able to fully feel. Imagine this is like an energy container. Now, if this container has a lot of food in it, then less energy can be in it. It's like a balloon. you put this balloon is filled up with with food then there's less space for air less space for energy and then the energy that's that's taken up in this food is very dense because this food is very dense it's much it's much denser than energy so therefore when our stomach is clear we can have higher vibrational energy and we can have more energy so we have to make sure that when we eat we don't stuff ourselves we don't ever overeat that's just a general rule the food that we eat needs to digest easily and let's say if we eat something we get bloated well then that shows that the digestion process something is wrong and therefore either it's your broad body or most likely it's the food that you're eating right so then now a person when they're choosing how then how they're going to do their nutrition it's based on digestion it's based on keeping their body clear versus just on aesthetics and then now they can combine the two together because just because their body is open doesn't mean that it's always helping aesthetics most of the time it's pretty aligned sometimes it's a little bit different but most time it's pretty aligned if it digests quickly then doesn't get stored right if it doesn't get stored a person doesn't really get overweight so hand in hand when I feel down I want to eat that cheesecake or that cookie or I want to drink that kind of coke

1:23:54how do I stay committed to a healthy lifestyle even when I feel down and we all feel down well sometimes yeah yeah absolutely you know the first thing is if we are eating the cheesecake or the coke be okay with the fact that it happened because usually people are having this double negative the first negative is making a decision that isn't really good for us eating uh eating a whole bunch of cake the second negative is being upset that the fact that we made that decision the upset that we that that happened and this is what doesn't allow us to move on something happened okay but if we always just accepted that it happened and moved on we get past things much faster how fast the moment is done we're past it there are some effects right you eat cake it's gonna take a little while to digest you know a relationship breakup okay so then it broke up all right but now if you let it go and you're okay with it that happened then you move on much quicker but when somebody doesn't isn't okay with what happened it's that double negative one bad thing that happened and then upset about the thing that happened so that's the first thing because sometimes you know it takes it takes time to go ahead and let go of the cravings let go of the behaviors let go of cleaning out the fridge the pantry letting go of negative people these things take time it's just not snapping a finger but what somebody can do right away that will change instantly is being okay with the fact that these things are happening and the moment they do that already all the negative effects have dramatically reduced on the spot automatically this is by far the fastest thing and people don't look at that way they constantly try to change things and they're always constantly experiencing in that double negative or the triple.

1:25:58Triple is like something happened. I'm upset that it happened. And then I'm upset at myself for being upset for me. You see, it just, it's all just make-believe. So when somebody can just do this one thing, they may not have perfect, you know, perfect action, perfect decisions, but they can move on from any decision and they're able to make new choices, be clear more clear when they're making new choices and eventually the choices become much much higher quality for their life because that second negative that comes in affects the next choice so they're never able to be clear and to be centered and peaceful because they're always experiencing all of this upsetness of what's happening i don't like what's happening so influences every choice after that becomes a ripple i make a bad choice i just drank this ate this, did this, I'm okay with it.

1:26:56Now I set myself up for a good choice after. If I'm not okay with it, it carries on into another not good choice just because I feel upset about the last. It makes a lot of sense. More and more people feel depressed, sad, and some don't even feel anything anymore. Their emotions have shut down. so how can someone who has realized they are numb to most of their emotions get out of this vicious cycle of numbness and bring back the happiness that they experienced that they experienced as a child or as a teenager three things those three things that we talked about earlier first thing is on the physical body they need to relax okay when somebody is depressed when someone's experiencing all of that they're tense they're not able to go and let the energy circulate that's why depression is just a a name for energy name for a low vibrational energy but depression is different than anger anger is more energy but low vibration depression is less energy and low vibration so they need to a relax b move do something they'd like to do but move move move and make sure you're breathing that in itself will instantly change the energy the energy may go suddenly it becomes anger now anger is better than depression because depression somebody don't want to do anything they lack the ability to take action when someone's angry at least they can take action even if it's i'm going to get back at them i'm going to take action i'm going to prove them wrong they're angry so they need to do that that's the first step and that step alone focus all on doing that and automatically the mind starts to change because the energy is changing anger is actually a good source or fuel for change and a lot of people stay in it that's the it's a it's a good place to change because it drives it gives someone enough energy to take action but at some point they need to get out of it if not they cannot move forward i was angry for a very long time most of most of my life and when i am conscious and oak and just operating normally everything is fine i'm this happy guy and then when i get drunk all the anger comes out because i'm not consciously holding it back so my subconscious comes to the surface right i'm not consciously controlling things what's the subconscious i'm gonna prove everything wrong don't fuck with me so that comes out so then we have to but it's what it was the fuel that drove me to work so hard needing to prove i don't like this all that stuff it's it allow things to happen but it does not have a there's no longevity in it that's why the things that was built would crumple eventually you know so that energy has to change it's good for what it is when somebody's super low but it needs to change once somebody is on their way up they have to let it go which leads us to the highlight of this podcast which is how do we find happiness and I actually made some research about that and I found a few kind of elements that could help us discuss this and the audience think about that the first one is authenticity authenticity authenticity sorry people struggle to identify with their work and feel like they aren't being there to themselves.

1:30:59Freedom. People don't feel as though they are in control of their lives. Purpose. People don't believe that they're contributing to positive change. So they all are connected. They're all one thing. Just explained in different perspectives.

1:31:23So there was freedom, purpose, authenticity. When somebody is authentic that means they're able to express without stopping themselves and then when they're able to express then naturally what they are passionate about comes out whatever it is because they don't try to they don't try to do something to to they don't try to do something for somebody else they don't try to show off for somebody else they do what they naturally are drawn to do now that automatically leads to purpose why purpose right couldn't it just be a hobby couldn't just be passion the reason why it leads to purpose is because when somebody is authentic that means they're okay with who they are right they accept themselves that's how they can just naturally express and then when they are okay with who they are they start to need less things because they're okay with who they are i'm not lacking you know and when i'm not lacking i don't have to constantly think about me me me so much you know right now every day every day people walk around and they're always thinking about themselves constantly what is this person going to do for me what am i going to gain out of this?

1:32:41What am I going to get out of this? How is this going to affect my life? What do I want? What do I prefer? Me, me, me, me. When somebody, this type of person is also not authentic, they can't because they are constantly needing so much to be more, to be better. When somebody's authentic, now they aren't constantly looking at themselves all the time because they don't need things so much anymore some basic things but very very basic roof over your head some clothes some food survival things so then now when they're not caring about all these things then what would they bring their attention to if they are feeling fine and feeling fine this is what we call abundance when they feel like i have everything that i need so now when i have everything that i need naturally where where's my attention going to go to if i don't need any more well we can call it outside of me yes now outside of me can be people nature it can be a certain cause it doesn't matter it's up to that person that's the definition of spirituality basically right because because the next question is what's spirituality spirituality's potential impact on people's happiness and if you study if you study tribes so I watched recently a TED talk by a Rick Warren titled a life of purpose and in this Rick explains what he believes is missing from the life of many today he says spiritual emptiness is a universal disease I think inside at some point we put our heads down on the pillow and think there's gonna be more to life than this when we reach adulthood many of us accidentally fall into this routine wake up go to work come home eat dinner go to bed repeat we start living for a weekend instead of feeling alive every single day of the week but why do we wake up suddenly one day feeling lost and without purpose what is causing this spiritual emptiness it comes down to the issue of meaning of significant of significance of purpose.

1:34:51Why am I here? What am I here for? Where am I going? And these are not religious issues, these are human issues. And then if you look at tribes in the Amazon, that's really interesting. That's what he talks about too. They stand out because people in tribes are just happy. And it's not because they don't have much or because their genetics are built different or they have higher levels serotonin, but but it's because their happiness comes from an innate sense of purpose, and their sense of purpose comes from their deep connection with spirituality, which basically is thinking about outside of yourself.

1:35:31Well, in order to look at this, we have to look, what is spirituality? For me, it's thinking about something that is greater than yourself. So it could be, for some people, religion. It could be for some people, I have a family. for example for a man because we're men I have a wife, I have a child and I take, basically I love them, it's loving something else greater than yourself more than you love yourself and therefore you find your meaning in life you understand why you're here but that's just my definition, or my understanding of it yeah, and that's the thing spirituality as people dive more into this words become very limited because it puts everything in a box right and then this box might be different than that box right so what does spiritual have to do with it Well, the way that I've seen spirituality, it can get explained by a lot of different ways.

1:36:46One way to explain it would be connecting to our spirit. The part of us that is beyond the physical body, beyond the voice in our head. So that means when the voice in the head is not there and it's quiet, we still exist. we're still there right so when someone's constantly talking and they're like oh this is me i'm in here i'm in here i'm in here okay right and then don't talk are you still in there yeah yeah you can tell so you're still there so you're not the voice well if you're not the voice and you're not this body how do you know well cut off your arm you still exist cut off the hair you still exist right you're still there so you're not the body you have a body but you're not the body just like i have a shirt but i'm not the shirt i have a voice in my head but i'm not the voice because i still exist without it so then what is this this consciousness this awareness so some people call it spirit but of course this is just one perspective of many in this subject you know but being able to connect to this spirit connect to this consciousness we can say it's also energy because it's all one the same to become aware of it to connect to it which is to bring our attention to it to disconnect and to not have the physical body be where all of our attention is to not have our mind to be where all the attention is so therefore taking our attention away from those and being able to connect to our spirit connect to this energy by doing so the result of that is a different experience of life.

1:38:37This is where somebody feels connected. How do they find purpose from that? Because when they are connected to this part of them, they're not in their mind, constantly chattering. Remember earlier we talked about when they're in their mind, constantly chattering, the awareness is very small because our attention is all taken there. and now our attention can expand so which means what what's my purpose right if i have to ask that's because i don't know i don't know because my attention is very limited i'm always distracted but then when my attention is not distracted it becomes very clear what my purpose is i know i don't have to think about it have you have you found your purpose yes yeah very very very clear Our purpose, we can think about it and try to connect the dots.

1:39:31We can access it by knowing. If we think about it and connect the dots, here's how we know. We are all equipped with what we need for our purpose. Nobody is left without the things they need. But what they need is a variety of things. You need certain experiences. You need certain skill sets. You need certain drives. lives remember earlier talking about right somebody suffers that suffering becomes their drive to do something right and so they need certain people somebody goes hey man you should do this you did this and it's like oh man why are you in my life well they're in your life because they're supposed to be in your life right now don't think that something is wrong with what's happening certain things are needed when a person can when a person can actually let go for a moment if they don't know their purpose let go for a moment and just take a look at what has happened in their life this is what we call life leaves clues when they can take a look at what happened in their life and they see i have done this i have skill sets in this and then they can also combine it to the skill sets in this i have skill sets in this because i have done it a lot i have done it a lot because i was either interested or there was a need but let me tell you how to go very direct but it took time to get there because i didn't understand what i understand now and then if we look at my entrepreneurship path i cannot go and fully explain and teach this if i don't understand enough about business because i don't know how to create a microphone i don't know how to build a team all this is necessary to get certain information now right and then if we look at my struggles right my addiction to everything under to sun you know smoking drinking food porn um gambling you name it substances you name it so then you know that means i kind of understand a little bit about addictions i understand about structure i understand about lack of willpower i understand how to get up when i fall because i fall in a lot so then now we look at all the clues it's like and then here's the thing here's the funny part so you know what i wanted to do i wanted to be a farmer not before just you know a few years ago i said i'm done with all this you know coaching and training and fitness stuff internet marketing and i'm done with social media i'm gonna be a farmer i can be i can live in peace be close to nature meditate relax deep in my practice is yeah yeah that's what i'm gonna do so i tried i really tried i currently own a farm right now in the philippines so that's the philippine story okay yeah that's the one about it yeah yeah so that you were supposed to move there but then you moved to bali instead because things kind of fell apart okay so long story short didn't happen even though i tried did all i could it fell apart and then as it was falling apart people are still going hey mike can you help me with training i go man hey mike when you're gonna do this entrepreneurs go hey mike you're gonna start this thing and we want to and then for a long time i said no guys i'm not interested that was the old me and then when i took a step back and realized wait let me let go of my idea of what i think i should have my control right i want to control my life i took a step back and let it go and go what's actually being being called yeah and then it became really obvious but i had to go through hitting a lot of walls first.

1:43:06What's my destiny? How can a mid-twenties man or woman find their purpose as quickly as possible? They don't have control over this. Now we're back to that. We never really covered deep into it. We won't have time today. But to answer this question, how do you find your purpose as quickly as possible? Keep taking action. Keep moving forward. there will be some times to where a person may need to withdraw and not take a lot of action because they need to go ahead and understand, figure out things before they move forward. Nothing is wrong with that. It happens.

1:43:49But that's not going to happen for every single person all the time. They should focus on moving forward, focus on doing what they really want. they need to learn and practice making decisions based on feeling good centered based on what they want to create and not constantly fear-based people make a lot of fear-based decisions and ultimately realize that nothing is wrong with your life your life is going exactly the way it should be nothing is wrong with it thank you so much for doing this mike where can the audience find you and connect with you? Instagram, MikeChainOfficial. YouTube, MikeChain.

1:44:39They can go to flow6c.com and learn about this practice that I teach. Amazing. Thank you so much. My pleasure.