035: How Mike Deals with Extreme Challenges

The episode discusses stress and changes in energy levels. They explore various factors contributing to increased stress, including workload and recent events like a Facebook hack. Mike specifically attributes heightened energy demands to constant focus and engagement across various tasks. He identifies caffeine intake as a significant factor affecting his stress levels and describes the impact of cutting it out on his overall sense of centeredness and calmness. The conversation delves into the perception of energy as agitation within the body and the tendency to interpret it as motivation to keep moving.

Then continues with the strategies for managing stress and maintaining high energy levels in demanding situations. Mike and Stephen explore the impact of factors such as workload, caffeine intake, meditation, and sleep on energy and focus. They emphasize the importance of prioritizing sleep, nutrition, and exercise while cutting down on caffeine consumption to sustain long-term energy levels. The conversation highlights the relationship between energy, focus, and overall performance, drawing insights from personal experiences and observations of successful individuals.

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

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

Transcript

Stephen: [00:00:00] So, Mike, I, I've noticed in the past couple of weeks or a month or so, you've been a little bit more stressed than I generally know you as. Cause I just remember you almost in any situation, any scenario, generally you're just very, pretty much like in the same state, but just recently, it feels like things have been shifting a bit.

I mean, do you feel that it's, because of the workload because of, the diets, because of relationships, what do you think has shifted and changed? 

Mike: You know, if I think about the, what's been new in the last couple of weeks. You know, I would say the hack, the Facebook hack that we were dealing with in order to deal with it, like right now, as we're talking, I have my phone up and I look and I just got a message in, I'm in this conversation with somebody that is working at Facebook, through a friend referral, not through [00:01:00] Facebook reaching out, but it, caused me to have to stay really, really focused.

But also have my energy cranked up high, constant on high before I would, I can adjust it, you know, it's like I, it's high, I'm showing up, I'm doing this thing and then I turn it down and there's a more of a, downtime, not a lot. I'm so busy, but there's, I'm not constantly having to fully show up and really push things forward.

But now for the last few weeks, I feel like it's just, it's, it's been like that. It's been like that. Not only do I need to stay really, really focused. But I have to show up on a really high level. It's like constant meetings, live sessions, coachings, trainings, make this video, figure out what to write here.

It's just, it's nonstop and every one of these things , it's not like just participate a little, this is like everything it [00:02:00] requires focus. And it requires energy, like not just normal energy, like a lot of energy, like when we're making videos, if I sit there and I talk, hi, today we're going to be talking about, dude, it's nobody's going to, nobody's going to watch it, you know, they're not going to watch it.

So we have to come up with this energy, like, hey, here's this, we're this, this, this. And then suddenly it's like, now I'm motivating the sales team, the sales department and same thing. I'd say, can't be, hello, how are you guys? It's, it just doesn't work. 

Stephen (2): So then 

Mike: suddenly I have to, the energy is cranked up there and then now it's just, it's constantly showing up like that in the, because there's a lot of these moving parts with the hack stuff.

And then there's a lot of, on top of that, there's a lot of new projects we're working on. And so there's. There's a lot of different ideas of what could work, what not, and the people don't understand it because things are changing really fast. So to convey the [00:03:00] information , it takes a lot of energy.

So then I find myself just cranked up high and some days I definitely feel like there are some stress coming through. I don't, mentally, I'm not registering it, but physically I can feel it. Mentally, I'm focused on, I'm just going to get it done, but then physically this is the way that I know at night when I'm sitting there, if I was stressed throughout the day and I sit there and I try to relax, it won't relax.

I could feel that the body feels uneasy, uncomfortable. There's almost like maybe a slight sense of nervousness. Now, if I am really, really focused and centered I can have a really long day, but at night I can just stop the body feels like really. calm There's one more thing I would add to this as I'm sharing this with you right now, it just came to me, you know, a, [00:04:00] a big thing, caffeine staying up, we had to stay up on a lot of nights to go ahead and deal with the hack stuff between, answering.

10 times more comments and these comments aren't, 

Stephen (2): you know, 

Mike: they're very concerned comments about, what's being posted, you know, the hack stuff. And so having to navigate that and having to constantly change up passwords on accounts and moving things back and forth, people are getting logged off.

Our team operates in all these accounts and all the accounts are all linked up to different platforms. So everything has been knocked off constantly. So that type of things. I remember to show up in that way, I started to drink coffee. I started to drink coffee and, a lot of teas and my coffee and caffeine intake increased a lot.

And that I think is the biggest thing because the last, about the last [00:05:00] five days or so, almost about a week now, I just cut it out before I would take, I would drink a little bit, but during those weeks, it got, the intake got higher and I, I cut it out cause I realized it's the caffeine, it's the caffeine, so I cut it out and now I'm able to still operate with a lot of energy, but at the end of the night.

When I connect to my body, there's that sense of centeredness. It's not that chaotic feeling. And so if I had to backtrack into one major thing, it would be to cut out the caffeine. No matter what's going on in somebody's life, for most people, they're so used to that feeling, they call it energy. Because you sit there, And you can't be still, you have to move around, right?

There's like something you always need to do that feeling. People call that energy. 

Stephen: It's almost like [00:06:00] agitation in the body. Like, 

Mike: yeah, it's the agitation, which gives us energy to go and consistently do things because we're agitated when we sit and feel the body. So we have to get up, getting up and doing something feels more comfortable.

It's almost like getting whipped. It's like saying that I sit down, I get whipped. So therefore I'm always up and doing things. You see how much more drive I'm getting? Well, you're getting whipped. You know, you can't sit down and just relax. He's getting whipped and that's, what's happening internally. When we sit and relax, we are feeling so agitated, so uncomfortable that it feels more comfortable to get up and keep going.

So we consider that to be energy. And then when we don't have that feeling in the body, we actually long for it. We go, something is different. It feels weird. I feel like I have low energy because when I sit still, I don't have That driving force [00:07:00] inside. I don't feel like I'm being whipped. There's not that uneasiness that makes me want to get up.

It's like taking too much pre workout, you know, when you take a lot of pre workout, you can't sit still, you have to move because your body's just going haywire. So it's the same idea, with, caffeine. And that's what I was experiencing. When I cut that out this past about five days, it's been so much.

Better so much better, the work hasn't decreased, but it's been so much better as far as feeling the level of stress in my body.

Stephen: And I'm curious as well, when you're going through that stage, knowing you, I'm also assuming you drink. A crazy amount of coffee as well. 

Mike: Well, I wasn't drinking that much, but my body is pretty sensitive now to coffee.

I mean, you should have seen me before, before , in my twenties, I drank a lot, a lot. I would make these [00:08:00] super, super strong coffees. I mean, I would, drink two or three and I can fall asleep at night. Like nothing. 

Stephen: Damn. 

Mike: Yeah. I can have six, eight cups of coffee. I drink them. I drink it like water.

Like the way I chased down, I drink coffee like water before. So now if I drink one cup, I feel a little bit already. There is a light sense of agitation. Two cups and I feel a light sense of anxiety and nervousness. If I do three cups, oh man, , the body is stressed. The body's really stressed.

Mentally for me, I still stay very focused. I stay focused without coffee or with coffee, but my body, 

Stephen (2): my 

Mike: body is stressed, feeling always like something is not okay right now. I always need to do something. And that feeling is that restless feeling is, is, yeah, it's terrible. [00:09:00] Yeah. 

Stephen: It's fascinating. I'm, I'm also, I'm also curious if people have an association to that agitation as like you said, more energy, more aliveness, right?

It 

Mike: gets people to want to do stuff because like, , somebody would sit there and they'll say, I don't have motivation to get up. I don't have motivation to go work on that thing. So then they chase a cup of coffee and then this coffee, the caffeine gets them that, that jitteriness, it gets them that uneasy feeling inside.

Which means they don't want to sit down. They have to get up because it feels uncomfortable to sit there because they feel their body and their body feels uncomfortable. So then they get up, they get up and then they go move around. And now it feels more comfortable when they move around because they're not connected to their body as much.

Stephen: So cutting out the caffeine, that definitely helps. I mean, it sounds like you're getting more and more of your [00:10:00] Facebook account under control as well. So it sounds like the peak is pretty much over and then now you're finding your way back to that more centeredness and getting more of that, it's that not just your mind is more clear, but also in your body.

Is there any other changes that you feel like you've been making in order to get back into that space?, 

Mike: Catching up on sleep. 

Stephen: Yeah, because I remember during that time, you weren't sleeping really at night time. You guys were going to sleep at like 4 or 5. 

Mike: Yeah, it was tough. We would be Yeah, we would stay up and we would sleep for like four hours, five hours.

We just totally drained and trying to function the next day. And there was a, there was definitely a lot of days like that.

Stephen: Sleep as I don't know how you guys do it. Like you've trained yourself and naturally just have this like robust body. Right. Cause for sure, if I did that [00:11:00] for a certain amount of days, like I'll be out.

Even like one or two days, I feel like, okay, I need to recover now. I mean, Natalia, I, I think she, she redlined it quite a bit during that time as well, and caught 

Mike: like a fever. 

Stephen: Yeah. So, yeah, I mean, again, essentially just all goes back to the basics once again. Right. So it's just sleep, nutrition, movement, exercise.

And for sure during that time, just keeping your energy inside. But yeah, I mean, it's good to hear that, the roughness is, is mostly over. And, you're starting to find your balance again, once more. 

Mike: Well, something else that I didn't do as much during those days was meditation. I meditated, but not, not enough because my output was increased.

The caffeines was causing my body to be more agitated. So [00:12:00] that means I also needed to increase in meditation, but the total opposite happened. It was a decrease in meditation. So that also, uh, caused, uh, physical agitation. The last week or so, I started to increase meditation again and just to kind of come back to normal, normal amounts.

The good thing about the habits here is that, , we train every day at three right now, just for internally for the team. So our meditations, we get in our practice, get in the workouts, right? Our meditations are anywhere from 10 minutes up to at the max 20. Yesterday we did. About like 17 minute meditation.

On average, I would say about 10 to 15. But it's like a full practice. So that helps because every day you've got that in the middle, I would meditate sometimes in the morning time upon waking up a little bit in the evening time. And since I've been increasing that as well, and all of [00:13:00] that is getting my body to become calmer again, and it gives me the energy to be able to stay, focused 

Stephen (2): and, 

Mike: Having, staying focused is like the superpower.

It's like the superpower because. Without that don't have the capacity to handle it. You know, when I was not getting those sleep and had to start chasing the coffees to try to stay up, it was tougher to stay focused because my energy level was lower. So now, I cut out the coffee, I started to get more sleep, I still have some days I'm not getting enough, but the focus is directly based on our energy.

When people have struggled to stay focused, it's just that their energy levels are, not very high. Because focus is just attention, and attention is just energy. So for anybody that struggles to, stay focused on what they need to do, their energy is too low. So then [00:14:00] it's not a focus problem, it's more of like an energy problem.

And then now we need to practice generating that energy, getting the energy up. And that's where we train and we sleep and we do that. Now we've got the energy, now we want to direct that energy, which is what we will call focus. And then we have to maintain those two things, right? We want to maintain doing the movements, doing the things to maintain the extra amount of energy.

And then we practice focusing or directing that energy. And the combination of those two things allows us to be able to perform at the highest. And I've been just practicing those main two things, over the years. And it's been. It's the one thing that allows me to perform and to show up, and look at yesterday I was watching a Gary Vee live, he was on Twitch, I was just watching him live, I think it was live, it said live on there, and I'm seeing him, I think he's like a VCon or something, and he's, you know, he's like meeting all these people.

And I'm [00:15:00] like watching him and he's doing the same thing. He's meeting one person after another person after another person. And I'm hearing the questions that is being asked. They're not simple, easy questions. You know, they're like, okay, here's my, and he's got a very, very short period of time to answer it.

You know, and he's not giving just robotic answers. They're thought out answers , and he's being present with what's being asked. And I remember watching him and he's consistent with his energy. He's focused. , and while he's signing and doing all that, he's also being present with what they're saying, because he has to sign, he has to fold.

He has to do that while still paying attention. And then after that, when he's done signing, then he goes, looks at the person and then he explains his feedback, his intake about it, and then they respond and then he's responding and then they shake their hands, do a little picture and then boom, the next person comes and then here [00:16:00] we go again.

And this is like nonstop. So I remember I'm watching this. And I'm going, whether or not Gary's talking about this, he knows what's up. He's doing it that level of energy and attention. That's no joke. That's fully showing up. And so there are so many people out there doing it and that's the magic.

That's the magic that I see for people that are game changers. In this world right now, they have to have this level of energy. If not, they're limited, whether they're in the front, you know, being a limelight or they're in the back, but either way, like that level of energy and focus is that driver is that driver.

And. If I was to list a couple of things, cut out all the, in the amounts of caffeine, and those are short term energy boosts is that are going to drain the heck out of a person and just leave them feeling like crap, you know? So we've got to cut that out. We've got to meditate because that level of focus, we need to [00:17:00] take a break in the mind.

And that break in the mind, isn't just not working because the mind will still be running. We literally have to meditate to slow it down. And oftentimes when we're busy, we miss out on the sleep. So getting to sleep and then that's when we cover the three things, which is sleep, nutrition, right? Eating clean and working out every day, doing something.

And then this gives us that energy and that focus. And then man, we get to show up no matter what happens. All 

Stephen: right. Hopefully you guys got quite a bit of value once again, and we will see you on the next episode.