034: How Mike Deals with Hackers Who Took Over his Social Media

The podcast episode focuses on a recent event where the host, Mike Chang, experienced a hack on his social media accounts, leading to significant damage in terms of followers and reputation. He shares the emotional and logistical challenges he faced in dealing with the situation and how it affected his nervous system. Despite the stress, Mike emphasizes the importance of staying relaxed and focused during such crises, highlighting the role of the nervous system in managing emotions and tension.

It then revolves around the theme of mindfulness and focus, particularly in relation to performance. It explores how being mentally present in the moment enhances performance, while distractions and preoccupations detract from it. The conversation delves into examples from various fields, emphasizing the importance of staying focused on the present to achieve optimal results. Additionally, it discusses personal experiences and lessons learned, such as the aftermath of a hacking incident, and highlights the necessity of being vigilant and adaptable in an increasingly digital world.

Connect with Mike Chang:
- Instagram: @mikechangofficial
-Youtube: Mike Chang
- Website: www.flow60.com

Connect with Stephen Yeh:
-Instagram: @iamstephenyeh
-Twitter: @iamstephenyeh

Transcript

​[00:00:00] 

Stephen: Welcome to another episode of Body Over Mind. This is your host Stephen Yeh with your co host Mike Chang. And today we will be talking about a very, very eventful week. You've been having to put out some fires. And, certain things have been happening to your account. So I just want to dive into this situation where hackers have come in and, did some things to your account and how you've been managing to handle it and how it has been for your nervous system, physically, mentally, emotionally, and what you've been doing to.

To stay in good alignment. Let's dive in. So exactly when did this happen? And, how did it go about? 

Mike: So it's been about six days now, I think, or maybe even close to about a week, [00:01:00] actually might be even about a week or so. I kind of lost track now. Six days to a week and basically I was scammed this guy, said that, Hey, you know, there's this opportunity do a podcast show and a collab with another person.

And basically he just needed to help me, do the prep call before the podcast, before the show, which is the normal thing. And then as we started going through that, he started asking me about. Making sure my Facebook account is activated and set up. And, you know, as we went through it, I don't know exactly what he did, but he was able to go and go through the back door and hack the account.

So from there, it's been, just pretty much nonstop, you know, nonstop to go ahead and do two main things. Number one, try to get the account back. Number two, damage control, there's a lot of porn being posted, a lot of inappropriate stuff, and we were receiving a lot of messages a day, coming from every angle, , from my personal friends, to DMs, to emails, to the flooding of comments, [00:02:00] and seeing subscribers, Drop like flies, uh, we were at 885, 000, uh, followers at the time.

And I think within less than, I think it was like maybe 12 hours and we are already down 30, 000 followers. And And then from there, I think another 12 hours in, I think we were like a 50, 000 down now. And then fast forward about like 40 hours in, we were like 75, almost 80, 000 down. So it just keeps dropping fast.

As of right now, We are close to, I don't know, 180, 000 less followers now, you know, something like that. So then you're asking like, how do we deal with all of this stuff and still stay? Well, I guess the question was, How did it go on your nervous system? , how was that?

Like, you know, tough things happen in life. And because [00:03:00] this is what I do for a living, I help people be able to navigate through any situation. It doesn't matter if it's something like a Facebook hack or somebody very close to you passing away. It's all the same. It's all the same.

Your nervous system, you get upset, you get angry, you get scared, your mind starts to race into all the dark places. And then from there, the body responds in the same way, and there's usually one response, tightness. From the tightness, different emotions come up. But tightness, tension, holding on the breath, all of these things.

So because I already knew that, so then when I was going through all this, I stayed as relaxed as possible. Now, there was a lot of things to handle. So when I say relax as possible, well, , there's left and right because we have our full blown operation, which is usually keeping me very busy. And then on top of this new thing.

So what I did was I stayed really, really focused and here's the key. It's about [00:04:00] getting so crystal clear, so laser focused on the tasks that you need to do while at the same time staying as calm and relaxed as you can. The combination of those two things puts a person into another level of consciousness.

People usually are just not familiar with this type of state, they usually can do maybe, at best, one or the other. At best, somebody can stay really focused, and they are tense as a rock. Or, at best, they're really relaxed, but they're not focused on anything. They're not getting things done. They're not making 101 decisions constantly.

So to be able to do both things simultaneously, that allows a person to access a whole another level of performance. And that's what was required because we had a full, blown operation. We've got a lot of people running multiple companies here. So it's like, it's not a, easy task [00:05:00] to go ahead and deal with this when this was happening in real time, right?

Stories and all this inappropriate stuff. And we're just seeing this happen. So we didn't have any time to sit there, think about a plan. It was only respond. Respond, respond. Now I have to say there's one thing that did hurt me and, Natalia pretty bad and lack of sleep. That was difficult.

I think, for you guys listening to the podcast, we talk about the three foundational things, sleep, nutrition, movement. I was getting my movement in. I was. Doing my three o'clock, both of us were, um, nutrition, I stayed even clean, even cleaner than usual plus I'm so busy, I don't even got time to eat.

There were times where I was eating breakfast at like nine this one night. That was my first meal. I fasted by accident because I didn't have time to go. It was just nonstop. But the sleep, we did not get enough sleep. There was [00:06:00] just too much work. There was too much work to do. And so we just. Kept working, kept working, kept working, kept staying up.

And that, you know, that was tough. That was tough. 

Stephen: Mm hmm. 

Mike: Currently, I, I caught up. So so. So so. I would say, give me another few days and I'll be completely caught up. You know, Natalia is having a fever because you know, one week of this and yeah, your body will get sick. You know, and that's a big lesson for, everybody listening.

When we get sick, it has nothing to do with the bacteria, and then nothing to do with the diseases, the food, the people. The situations, it's because our immune system, it's low, our immune system is low. When that happens, you can't withstand anything, anything will get you sick. So it's never the thing that actually gets you sick, that's the problem.

It's the fact that our immune system is weak. And, her and I, both of our immune system got a really big hit because of the lack of sleep. Because we were spending so much time trying to fix everything and patch everything up. That was, that was tough. [00:07:00] 

Stephen: So when you're saying that it's tough, how did you actually experience that?

Like, was it affecting your ability to stay focused and relax at the same time? Did you find that it was just much harder to stay in that state? 

Mike: For me? Nah, because I've been training in this state for years now, so many years now, there's a specific thing that needs to happen in order for somebody to stay in the state.

and have their body, not feel good. My body was hurting. My body was low in energy. I had pains and aches everywhere because I'm not getting enough sleep. But when we don't judge the sensations, when we don't judge the feelings in our body and they are now separate from what we think about them, we don't think about them.

We feel them. But we don't judge them when you can do that your body can be in a lot of pain you can be in a lot of physical [00:08:00] suffering but mentally you are clear you are focused and Not disturbed. So that's basically what I was doing while my body was going through it, but I was still staying on. Now I had to do what I could because, I'm operating in this physical body.

So it was not like I was able to move in with the same amount of energy, but my mind was not wavering. There wasn't any, Oh my God, I'm afraid of this and that. And what if there wasn't that it was just, I had to tailor some of the amounts of energy that I'm putting out because I just didn't have it.

But as far as staying focused, as far as doing what was needed, staying on top of it, that was still the same. 

Stephen: That's amazing. That's just over time of just training and practice and really refining. And essentially, like what you're saying is no judging,

Mike: don't judge the sensation. It's like, you feel pain, right?

You feel low energy. . Don't think about it in your mind. That it's bad. Don't [00:09:00] say that is bad. That's worse . The one that's a little better than that is thinking about it, but not saying it. But then what's even better than thinking about it is don't think about it.

Don't be aware of the fact that you are painful, but you are feeling the pain, but you're not judging yourself. As a, I have pain, there is pain, I feel the pain, there's pain, but I am not creating a mental judgment that I have pain because I don't think about, I, I, I, you see, we always talk about this and I think for some people, they may have to listen to this for years and suddenly one day it's going to click because I know there's a lot of people that go, I hear what you're saying, but I don't quite grasp what you are saying.

And. Don't worry. You know, I was like that for years, years. That's why I keep going back to that one thing because when you listen to these type of things, you've heard a lot of these things enough, but there are certain things you don't hear much. [00:10:00] Because it's so complex, people don't talk about it.

And, but I want to talk about it. Because that is the thing that's when somebody gets it, everything changes. Until then, they're standing behind the wall. Still looking through, going, how do I get in? So I keep talking about the same thing. We keep thinking so much about I, me, me, me, me. To the fact that we're always judging our life, our feeling, our body, our situation, our business, our relationships, me, me, me, me, me.

And people do it as if it's like, Oh, great. everybody's doing that. Right. And that's why everybody's suffering. When we let go of that, when we stop constantly thinking about ourself, now there's only things that need to be done and we do it, but we don't think about, I like it, I don't like it. What's the situation.

What needs to be done, do it. And that's it. If you don't have the energy, then don't do it. It's very, very simple. And then we stop putting [00:11:00] ourself as the main focus. You see, so in other words, we can focus on an action without focusing on ourself. Because a lot of times people go, well, I don't get it. You mean, but isn't I the one that's doing it?

Yes, you're the one doing it, but you're not constantly thinking of you doing it. You're just thinking of the doing it part, the action without the you part. Imagine every time when you're walking, do you go, I am walking, right? Or do you just walk right now? A person may be drifting off in their mind about other stuff, right?

But then , they're walking. There's just walking. There is no, I am walking, right? There's not a consciousness of self. Now, if somebody wants to go ahead and do something that's more complex, then they may have to go, maybe, right. I am doing this thing. Now, if they did that, they wouldn't be able to do it as well.

If a person [00:12:00] knows how to do what I'm talking about here. Stop thinking about themselves, even if it was complex, then they would do it at the best possible level that they could because they're not thinking about me doing this complex thing. They're just doing the complex thing and whatever skill set, whatever ability that the body can move into or whatever it is, they will perform at the max of that.

The moment when they go, I am doing this thing, they already lost it. They already put a big filter. They already put the resistance, which is the judgment of me doing this activity. And then from there, there is, do I like this activity? Am I doing it well?, what do other people think about me? You see all of these things that everybody worries about.

Everybody talks about, everybody has problems with because they keep thinking about themselves. Therefore they put themselves in front of everything that they do. 

Stephen: Based on what I'm hearing right now. It's like there's nothing wrong with I But what [00:13:00] happens is I is the identity and when you say I am walking Now before you actually take the action of walking like what you said you have all of these filters That you have to go through before getting to the stage of just walking.

Well, if you just eliminate the I, you can just go walk. And that essentially reduces all of that extra friction of who you are in your identity. Am I getting that right? 

Mike: Yes, that would be a way of explaining it. Exactly. There's just walking, but if we make up all these stories, because there are stories about, I, I remember when, 

Stephen: um, I was spending a good amount of time just around this monk.

And, essentially it's the same concept. And one of the ways that he was [00:14:00] describing it is the difference between pain and suffering and pain. Kind of like what you are going through this time of no sleep is just the body feels very achy. And it's just presently there. And when you start to really suffer is when you start talking about it or liking it or disliking it, resisting it and saying, resisting it and saying, ah, This is shit.

Uh, I don't like this feeling. Uh, and what you do, what you end up doing is the pain is just going to be presently there. But what happens is the suffering is the magnifier that makes it 1, 2, 10, 20, 100 times worse than it actually is. And when I even say a hundred times worse is cause I can imagine my parents fighting over something that happened 30 years ago and they were still fighting over the same thing [00:15:00] and they fought over that a thousand times.

And that's how things magnify. One thing magnifies when you keep that story alive. 

Mike: Yes. It's like, imagine a person sits down, nothing's happening, nothing is wrong. Everything is fine. And then now, they get news of something bad in their life. And at this point, if they don't judge this news, everything's still fine.

They feel the same, because it's just information. But the moment that they judge this information, and they go, Oh my god, this is really bad, and this is gonna hurt me. Now, without anything around them physically harming them, they can go from feeling fine, to feeling very, very stressed. Very afraid. Those feelings, that came because they resisted the [00:16:00] news.

They resisted that information. If they were to just accept that that was happening, and they don't judge it as good or bad, then they don't respond in that way. So, but because they judged it, now, no physical attack is happening, right? We're not talking about lack of sleep or anything, we're just talking about a normal case.

And now this person is now going to be suffering. Nobody's doing anything to them physically, but mentally, they are judging this news as bad. And now they are creating the pain in their body through their mind. And now, let's go ahead and add in another element here. So now let's say a person , like myself before, didn't get enough sleep, so they wake up next day and they're aching and they're in pain.

So now we can either accept that this is here, Which means we don't judge that pain, or we can go ahead and judge the pain as bad. I don't like it. I don't want it to be here. I [00:17:00] want it to go away. And when we judge it, now there's an emotion behind it. That emotion is, let's say, frustration and anger. And maybe worry.

So then that frustration, anger, and worry itself creates a lot of pain. Remember the first example, right? Mentally, we create that pain in the body. Now imagine a person who does have pain in the body and then they judge that pain, they amplify it big time. So when we don't judge the physical pain discomforts in our body, we now are able to only experience.

The physical discomfort and pain in the body without the suffering, like you're mentioning. So when a person is experiencing pain, they'll realize that in reality, the pain that they're experiencing is not as bad as they would think it is. Because most people don't [00:18:00] experience pain, they experience the suffering, because they don't know how to not judge the way they feel.

So therefore, when they feel pain, whether it's coming from an injury, lack of sleep, anything, they always judge it in their mind. So they never experience the raw pain itself. Which actually is not that bad. This is how people are able to do such extraordinary things. Like you ever hear about people not getting anesthesia, getting surgery, cutting open all this stuff.

Like people do some really interesting, courageous things. And people are thinking, how could a person really do that? But that's what it is, is they are surrendering to the pain. And when we say surrender, what that really means is not judging it. And now, they only experience the pain, and they don't experience the psychological [00:19:00] amplifier, that emotional pain that people usually put onto everything.

Stephen: I just want to point out, that was a really good way of talking about it. Describing what surrendering means, essentially not judging, like forever. I was just trying to find a way of like, okay, you hear about some people are like, no, never surrender. And then other people are like, Hey, if you want to get to the next level, you have to surrender.

And then it's like, if you think about it, okay, what does that even mean? And then now you've actually given. In essence, like a practical way of sharing with people what surrendering actually means, what letting go actually means is to not judge then. So you release the restriction. And so you feel more free 

Mike: and you release the resistance, resisting, it's [00:20:00] like release 

Stephen: the resistance by not judging.

Mike: Yeah. It's like, imagine a knife is coming at you and now you can do one thing. You can resist it. So you can go hold your hand out to it and let it cut through your hand and try to keep pushing it back. Or you can get out of the way and not, you're not resistant. Imagine it's like. They may not be the best example, we'll have to find another.

Yeah, I was like, what? Hold on, wait, yeah, let's rephrase that one, right? Yeah, that's like, someone's like, wait about the knife. Yeah, 

Stephen: it's like, whoa, that sounds, that sounds pretty intense, bro. 

Mike: Let's just, uh, let's, 

Stephen: yeah, 

Mike: here's, here's one more. A lot of things happen in life , I think you were talking about, like, imagine parents, right?

Fighting about something so many years later. Yeah. Right. Things happen, it's already happened. We can't go back in time and change it. So then when we are surrendering to what happened, what we're saying is that we accept [00:21:00] it. We don't wish that it didn't happen. We are not wanting it to not have happened because it's already happened.

So any type of wanting, desiring it to not happen, wishing it would not have happened, that is what we call regret. Yeah, that's resistance, that's, and behind that is judgment. Yeah, regrets. Exactly. , guilt. It's all the same. So behind that is judging that situation, that event as something bad. And therefore, when we judge things automatically from there, we get emotional, because if we judge it as good, we feel good emotions, we judge it as bad, bad emotions.

Stephen: So something comes to mind. And I guess it really just depends On the type of [00:22:00] life or the experience of life that you're looking for. And what I'm saying right now is I have seen and read of super high performers. Let's say for example, Michael Jordan, I was watching a documentary about him and it was clearly showing that one of the things that really made him push and get him to succeed, to become the GOAT was to hold on to resentments.

And angers and even sometimes if someone was even nice to him, let's say someone else, someone on the other team was even nice to him, he would imagine that they actually did something wrong to him so that he would get the competitive edge to play at the top level. And so it sounds like in a case like that, there holds a tremendous amount of resistance.

And that's what fuels [00:23:00] people to get to the top. 

Mike: It may fuel them to get to the top, but it doesn't allow them to perform at their best. And when it comes to Michael Jordan, I've heard the opposite. I've heard that when Michael Jordan talks about his philosophy, his mental thing, some people think he was really talented, and I was absolutely, physically, very talented.

But we talk about his mental game. He talked about staying so present, letting go, letting go, letting go, just staying present, aiming for what he wants to do and , not treating anything as obstacles. A person can use all kinds of things to fuel them. They can use anger, they can use resentment, they can use guilt, they can use all these things to fuel them to go ahead and drive to do things. but 

Driving to do things doesn't mean that a person will perform the best that they could be. It just means that they have the drive to do something. Performance is entirely different. If a person wants to perform well, don't we agree that they need to be paying attention, [00:24:00] right? To what's happening right now.

If I want to perform at playing basketball, , should I be A paying attention to exactly what's happening, where all the other players are at, where they're positioning, where they look like they're going to run to who has the ball right now? What's going on? What's the time? On the clock, right? There's a lot of elements to be present about.

Now, if I was in my head thinking about what that person told me, then part of my attention can't be present here in the game. And if part of my attention can't be here in the game, then that means I am aware of less things in front of me. Now, does that help me be able to respond faster by being less aware of what's happening?

If I'm going to be responding, am I going to respond to what I think is happening in my mind? Right? My mental story, or am I going to respond to what's actually happening right now in front of me? If my goal is [00:25:00] to perform the best that I can perform right now, not the best that I can perform in my mind and my mental story, right.

But right now at this moment, right, it's one thing. If someone goes, Hey, okay, now I want you to go now imagine the most elaborate thing in your mind. Now, are you going to be staying present? No, you better get into your mind and build that elaboration thing. Right? But if we talk about performance in real life here, then that means our attention has to be here in the present moment.

So when we are holding on to guilt and memories and what people said and how they hurt us, those informations are playing in our mind. And when we give our attention to that, that is attention that we could have gave to the present moment in what we're doing right now. So automatically, our performance.

decreases. It doesn't matter how talented we are. It doesn't matter how bad we want to [00:26:00] win. It only matters how much we're able to pay attention to what's happening right now. If we want to perform the best we can right now. So this is a general rule of thumb. When we look at extreme athletes, When we look at people that are at the top of their game, this is a common thread.

If you go and talk about certain people, like let's say, people that don't need to be fully present and paying attention. Like, let's say musicians, , oftentimes we, we see like musicians or actors, right? You know, they are just taking so many things. They have all this, you know, all these substance abuse type of things , you know, getting on stage performing while being under the influence of something.

And you may go, well, then this person, well, how about them? Right. But they seem to be performing well. And actually the fact is they aren't performing as well as they could. That is usually also the downhill for [00:27:00] every one of them. If we go ahead and just look into the history of what happens to each one of those people that went down that route.

It's always the same pattern. They start off clean, right? They're not under the influence. When they're under influence, they're not present, right? , their attention's not here. And then they're good, they're talented, everything's great. They experienced massive success and there comes all the substance stuff.

And now before I know it, their performance starts to drop and drop and drop until they're washed out and they're done.

Stephen: It makes a lot of sense. So if we go back to the actual situation now with your account being hacked a week ago, what are your action steps moving forward? What are some shifts that you'll be making? 

Mike: Well, uh, first of all, I'm going to pay a lot more attention to deals that get presented. We get a lot of opportunities, a lot of emails, a lot of [00:28:00] people sending us requests for all kinds of things.

And, it wasn't something that I would think. , people are somehow trying to trick us. Now it's going to be different. We're going to be paying close attention. And especially when we are agreeing or even considering deals, we're going to ask for verifications. How do we know that we were talking to this person?

When this person says, I know this and this and this prove it. You don't want to prove it. Okay. Well, that's okay we don't care to work with you. We're coming into a world to where it's, , these types of things are becoming more. Easier to do, the frauds and the hacks and things like that.

And as a technology increases, we have to be more careful. So that's one thing for sure. And also another thing is, you know, on the other note, I want to thank those people that hacked my account because it gave me another reason to go ahead and work even harder [00:29:00] to go ahead and build more social media channels to go ahead and get the content out to more people.

Because I realized that when we were sitting there and we didn't have access to the accounts, it helped me recognize like how vulnerable, , our operation really is. We depend on a few sources to be able to connect to the people that need our services and our products. And these sources can get taken away pretty easily.

So just like how people talk about diversifying their income , and all these different things, this is something that's really important. We need to focus more on that. And that's something that we're doing now. And we're going to be on making that a high priority. And there's now a very strong reason.

You know, events in our life are not good or bad. They're just events that happen. And from events, there are cause and effects. And one of the effects of this event is giving me the fuel to go ahead and work harder [00:30:00] and to really focus more on building out different platforms so that this way, the content that we want to share is not going to be able to be taken away so easily.

So that I'm very thankful for. 

Stephen: Beautiful. Well, thank you guys for listening to another episode of Body over Mind and we will see you on the next episode.