052: 3 Levels of Mind for Best Decision-Making Abilities

The podcast discusses the importance of training the mind to focus on the present moment to reduce the dominance of incessant thoughts. By redirecting attention away from constant mental activity, individuals can diminish the influence of their conscious mind. This practice involves consistent daily efforts, such as meditation and mindfulness exercises, to cultivate a quieter and more focused state of mind. Emphasis is placed on the practical implementation of these practices rather than merely accumulating theoretical knowledge, highlighting the role of regular practice in achieving mental clarity and empowerment.

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

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

Transcript

Mike: [00:00:00] You know, we as human beings have more than just one mind, it's important to understand the layers because making decisions. If we use the wrong layer of mind, we end up being confused. We end up making bad decisions. So the mind can be split up into three different ways. We have our conscious, subconscious, unconscious, or what I would call level one, two, and three.

And the level one mind is the conscious thoughts. So, these are the thoughts that are loud, they are the dialogue in our mind. They're also the images, it's the sound in your mind. This level of mind, we have to understand something very important. It's the easiest to be influenced, it's constantly being imprinted on, and it's not the [00:01:00] mind that we can trust.

And I can't say this enough, because people think that because they are thinking this thing, that it's real. That I must believe this because it's real. I should do it because I'm thinking it. No, absolutely not. Absolutely not. That's. As if we were to say, whatever you say, you're going to do. And you know how people would joke and say something.

Well, imagine if there was no joke, right? And someone says something and they would need to do it. Hey, you think I can fly off of this thing? Yeah. And you got to go do it now. Well, no, no, no, no. I'm not going to do it. Yeah, you did. You just said it. Like, no, people joke around when they say things, right? We don't mean everything we say.

Same thing with our conscious mind. We don't mean everything we think. And many times, these thoughts aren't even [00:02:00] ours. They're things that we've heard from other people. their influence of things that we watch that we're exposed to. So we've got to remember that. And so when it comes to decision making, when it comes to creating our best life, we can't follow that top mind.

So this is why we have to be able to become aware of the second mind, the subconscious mind, the level two thoughts, knowingness, awareness, intuition, feelings. My feeling says this, that is the mind that is much more accurate, not a hundred percent, but it's much more accurate. It's the one that would be able to be the compass or to be able to guide us the best overall.

And this is because this mind is deeper. It's not so easily [00:03:00] imprinted. It takes a lot of repetition to imprint into that mind because this mind is directly connected to the way we feel. So today we're going to dive understanding these different layers of mind. 

Stephen: So I've got a question for you because you're talking about your feelings is, it has a lot of truth in it.

I feel that a lot of people get emotions and feelings mixed up. And I know that previously you said that, Hey, be careful of your motions. So how do you distinguish between those two? 

Mike: So emotions are when we are judging a situation, judging a thing, a person, and the result of judging it creates emotion. So to be even more specific, we can say emotion is energy in motion.

Yes. But even when energy is. In motion, it's not always going to have an emotion behind it. [00:04:00] So, we have to understand like how emotions actually get created. If a person is not constantly having a strong ego, if they don't have a big ego, then, let's say they have a very small ego, Ego is sense of self is story, our identity, our story of ourself.

If we don't have a big ego, we don't create a lot of emotion and vice versa. If we have a big ego, big story about ourself that we are attached to, which means we believe it, we act upon it, then we create a lot of emotion. So feelings is different. Because with feelings, it's just a sensation in the body.

It has nothing to do with judgment. We can touch our arm and we can rub our arm and now we feel. We can eat something and this food goes into our body and then makes us feel a certain way. That feeling [00:05:00] has nothing to do with I think this is good or bad. That's just the effect. It's just a sensation. And so a lot of times when people are thinking feelings, emotion, they think it's the same thing, but in reality it's different.

When we are connecting to our body, we want to connect to the feeling. We want to connect to the sensation. When we are experiencing emotions, this is because we had a judgment on a certain thing and the outcome of the judgment. It either made our sense of self, our ego, happy in some way, so we have positive emotion, or it made our sense of self, ego, unhappy and disturbed, which then we have negative emotions.

Emotions have feelings, because the way energy circulates through the body, there's a sensation in which we experience it through our body. But [00:06:00] feelings does not have to have emotions. I can sit here. Meditate, and be very calm, and have no emotion. But there is a feeling in my body that I'm aware of. So all emotions have feelings.

All emotions have a sensation in the body. But not all sensations have emotions. 

Stephen: How would you say someone can get to the point where they can feel the feelings and not be lost in their thoughts or not be lost in their emotions? 

Mike: If they train their attention to remain in the present moment, then they will just feel the sensation in their body without the emotion.

Because the emotion can only happen when somebody's attention is in their mind, thinking about something. And then the act of thinking about something, judging that something, creates the emotion. [00:07:00] So if I'm here in the present moment, and I'm just observing my body, I'm observing the feeling, but I don't judge the feeling as anything, it's just a sensation.

But that sensation could be painful, that sensation could be sharp, that sensation could be tight, it could burn, it could be different things. But that's just what it is. I'm not judging it as good or bad. I'm not judging it as a story about it. If I do that, then this feeling would remain just what it is.

A feeling. But the moment if I feel this and then I say, I don't like this. And I say, well, this is bad. This must be this and this and this. The moment when I start to create some stories around this feeling, now I start to create emotions because I'm judging the feeling. So we just need to be able to practice taking our attention and placing it here in the moment.

But because [00:08:00] people don't practice this long enough and they do meditation, but then they listen to guided meditations, they listen to music, I have meditations there. Doing all these things, they just call it meditation. So they're never really training their attention. And if you don't have control over your attention, then you have no control over yourself.

Because your self is all through where your attention is located. A whole experience of a person is based on their attention, based on their consciousness. A person's reality is based on it. So if they don't have control over their attention, then their attention is most likely not here in the present moment most of the time.

It will be in their mind, thinking about these things. So they're not even experiencing life here. And they're not able to pay attention to things here and whatever's happening here, they are paying attention to a mental story of here, [00:09:00] not here itself. So it's all about controlling attention. And that takes time, takes a lot of training.

Somebody has to keep training at this, but the more that they control their attention, the more that they access their power, you know, when you, we hear somebody say like access your inner power, or someone goes, I don't feel connected to my power. people think that. To be in power, that they should go and, not let someone pick on them and speak up their, you know, that's like, that's, speak up their voice, express what you want, that's being in power and, and not being in power is that people step all over you and those are sometimes effects of somebody who's in power or who's not in power, but that doesn't define it.

What being in power really means people think that's what it is, but it's not that's not gonna affect of it if a person is in power, they have control over their attention [00:10:00] and If they want to fixate their attention on this goal this idea this objective That's also attention If they want to fixate it on this outcome, that's also attention.

And a person who fixate on this outcome without seeing an alternate outcome, that's what we call focus to a very high level. And when a person can't focus like that, then their energy is aligned with what they're paying attention to. And then follows their actions and their thoughts, their feelings. So that's how a person really accesses their power, not through, all the other stuff.

Stephen: So what I'm hearing from right now is in general, people are in their level one thoughts, more surface level. And if you wanted to really access your power and really harness the power of your attention, then you need to start to get yourself [00:11:00] into your level two thoughts. And. , based on how you're describing right now, these type of thoughts are, are very different, you talk about a knowingness or an awareness with these, I'm, I'm assuming it's not really like words.

Am I getting that right? 

Mike: A lot of times they're not words. Sometimes they can come through as very, very low whispers. It's never going to be loud. Hmm. It's never gonna be like loud like your conscious mind loud, but sometimes they'll come in as very low volume words. 

Stephen: But you're so, still and quiet that you'll be able to hear it.

And even though that it's quiet, it's still very powerful. 

Mike: Well, imagine like this. If your attention is your energy, then that means if you have control over your attention, you have control over your energy. [00:12:00] Your energy is your power. So all we have to do is take back our attention. That's it. So then what's capturing a person's attention?

Their mind. The conscious chatter. So when they take their attention back from the chatter, they take back their attention, their energy. So if their conscious mind is not chattering, or we can say, if a person takes their attention out of their conscious mind, then they regain that much energy, that much power back.

But their conscious mind is saying, you should be doing this, you should be doing that. How could you do that? You should feel bad about this. Etcetera. So then that is energetically draining. That's derailing their focus. So then now when they take their attention out of their conscious mind, place it here in the present moment where no mind exists.

They take back all of that energy that [00:13:00] was used to run that conscious mind used to entertain those thoughts. They take that energy back. They take that attention back and then they place it here in the present moment. Because the present moment is where life exists, it's where a person can be the most impactful, actually create life.

And then when they do, now they have more attention available here in the present moment. And then they can access that second layer of mind. And that second layer is very different. Knowingness, Intuition, awareness, gut feeling, higher self, my soul is saying this and that. There's a lot more information in the second mind, it's a lot more accurate as well because it's harder to imprint into this mind.

So that means that's what we are really wanting, what we really feel, what our real intention is. [00:14:00] Remember, the conscious mind is constantly being imprinted with all kinds of things. So even if we say, I want this in our mind, it doesn't mean that we really want it. But if we are aware that we want this thing.

If we know that we want this thing, that's different than just saying, I want this thing or I like this thing, but we need to access that second layer of mind. And all that is, is taking the attention to the present moment and automatically that first layer slows down and shuts off. And it's not like it's going to shut off forever.

It's not like that. It's just that in the moment where we don't need to constantly think, in the moment that we want to be more present and we want to access more information, we bring our attention here in the present moment. 

Stephen: To really access. People need to be able to weave through and release all of those level one thoughts.

I'm just imagining people are just beginning this journey or even [00:15:00] have tried to meditate or to relax their minds. They don't need to release it. And they'll just say things like, this is not for me. 

Mike: That's because , they don't have it right. They think they need to release it. Just like what you said there.

They're going to ask the question, right? How do I release it? The conscious mind is only existing because we pay attention to it. It's like the analogy of the two wolves, like, uh, one that you shared before, right? There's two wolves or one that's light and one wolf darkness, right?

Which one is going to thrive inside of you? And the answer is, well, the one you feed. So, this is the same thing. If we feed our conscious mind by giving our attention to it, then the conscious mind will grow. The thoughts become louder, faster, , and more of it. So if we take our attention and we bring it here to the present moment, then the present moment will grow.

It will become [00:16:00] more expansive. We will be able to assess. And access more information. So then in the wolf analogy, if you're feeding the light wolf, what happened to the dark wolf? Starts to shrink down, starts to do it all away. Doesn't disappear forever, but it decreases, right? It's not thriving. The light wolf is.

So now same thing. When we take our attention and we practice bringing it to the present moment. Then what happens to our mind, our conscious mind decreases, right? It's not thriving with all this thoughts constantly, right? So it goes down. That's how we can cut out the thoughts. Not by thinking about the thoughts, but by taking our attention and bringing it here to the present moment, then all of those thoughts automatically slow down.

The reason why people struggle with this is because when they first try, they try it for like 20, 30 seconds. They try for a few minutes and they go, [00:17:00] Oh, so hard. I can't do it. And then from there, they start to think, think, think, think, why can't I do it? How can I do it? And they keep thinking about it. When all they needed to do was just keep trying and all the time that they're sitting there, that's the 

Stephen: hardest hurdle as well 

Mike: To actually do the work to actually go and attempt silence the mind again after somebody's failed To do so and they couldn't even silence it for five seconds and they're on their 20th try.

Yes. Okay, then keep going Yeah, you're on the 20th. Great. Keep going You're on the 50th. Great. Keep going because there's a rule. I guess it's, 

Stephen: it's, it's a very humbling experience because you would imagine you would be able to just be here and all of a sudden you have all these intruding thoughts that constantly just come in.

Even when you focus on the present moment, it'll just start to come in and come in and come in. [00:18:00] 

Mike: That's why we always go back to practice. The people that are practicing, that are training, , those are the people that are taking action. Those are the people that will progress.

Everybody wants to think about things. Everybody wants to try to understand things. They want to analyze things. They want to figure things out. They want to plan things. But people spend too much energy on that and not enough energy and time on practicing, implementing, action. So, you know, for my life Let me say 

Stephen: this.

How does this relate to, what we're talking about in terms of level two thoughts? 

Mike: Well, instead of doing the most obvious thing, which is bring your attention to the present moment, do practice, meditate, breathe, , stretch, do the Flow60 practice and get the body to be calm. Get the mind to be still.

Instead of spending time doing that every single day, every morning, every evening. Instead, people spend time learning, constantly learning, constantly reading, constantly studying, thinking that if they were to learn more, [00:19:00] constantly 

Stephen: listening in podcasts, , . 

Mike: Yeah, let this be the be the last one, and then just go and practice

I think like if they were to go and learn more, that they would somehow be able to do it better. That's not, that's not true. The only way they're gonna do it better is by doing it more. But we only have a certain amount of time. And people waste their time learning. People waste their time studying.

They waste their time planning. They don't spend enough time implementing. They don't spend enough time failing. People are afraid to fail. People are afraid to go ahead and not do it right. People are afraid of the outcome. People are so afraid of those things that they avoid those things and they do everything else.

And that's why progress is so slow. Every day, go and meditate. Every day, do practice. I always tell my students, man, , you can do 5 minutes in the morning, 7 minutes in the morning, [00:20:00] and then 5 7 minutes in the evening. Do the bare minimum, it's okay. If you haven't done much of, much, then even the bare minimum is good progress.

People look at it as if they're failing, as if they're doing something bad if they did the minimum. Alright, let go of that. Just, Do the practice to go and start moving this direction because if a person tries to just do this, it'll become very tough because their attention, they haven't allowed their body to be able to relax.

So it's hard to keep their attention here in the present moment. Cause they're going to feel their body and their body's going to feel very uncomfortable. They haven't practiced controlling their attention. So then they just try to do so with everyday life, but they got so many challenges happening right now that they don't create the time to just Practice being present.

They're constantly having to think and figure out stuff. So when they spend time practicing, doesn't matter how long it is, every morning and every evening, it's like a window for them to practice this. And then from [00:21:00] there, they take it into everyday life practice as well. But there needs to be this consistent morning practice and this consistent daily practice.

Just like brushing your teeth and taking a shower, people are consistent at it, and that's why they stay clean and their teeth is good enough.

Stephen: You know, you make a good point about brushing your teeth and just being clean because I'm just imagining that when we're young, we actually stayed more in that knowingness, in that awareness state. And as we started to get older, that's when we started to have more of those level one thoughts.

And it is a process of us to, in some ways, remember how to clean from the inside so that we can bring ourself back into that space once again and experience more of that clarity that we can all have in our life. 

Mike: [00:22:00] And how to do it is just practicing bringing the attention to the present moment, to the body, to the way it feels, to the breath.

And also focusing on what's actually in front of you, with all of your focus. If we practice these things, we train our attention, we train the conscious mind to be more silent. And now we can expand our awareness, expand our consciousness, expand our knowingness. And operate at a much higher level.

Stephen: All right, everyone.

Hopefully that helps you again. You're not really going to learn this from listening to these podcasts over and over. It can help to remind you, but the true, true power. All of this is just doing the practice, just staying in the moment. If you guys want to get guided through the process of that, definitely go check out flow 60.

com. Right. See you guys on next [00:23:00] episode.