064: How to increase creativity through shifting mind states

This episode focuses on accessing higher states of consciousness to enhance creative power. The hosts discuss how elevating one's energetic vibration can shift perspectives, reduce mental limitations, and foster a greater sense of possibility. They emphasize techniques to cultivate presence and awareness, moving beyond the constraints of habitual negative thinking, and highlight practical exercises to facilitate this transformation. 

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] Welcome to another podcast of Body Over Mind, this is Mike Chang, co host Stephen Yeh, and today we're going to be talking about accessing higher states of consciousness to increase your creative power. So when we're accessing higher states of consciousness, what that really means is that our energetic vibration in our body is at a higher frequency.

And therefore it affects what we see, it affects how we see things, it affects the thoughts that we have and pretty much every aspect of our state of being. And today we're going to dive into it and we're going to explain how is this increasing your creative power? What does that really mean? And we'll dive into some tips on how to do so.

So let's go ahead and begin. [00:01:00] What would you like to share on this topic, Stephen? 

Stephen: This has been a pretty big one for me recently as well, just because I noticed in the last couple of weeks, my kind of state of consciousness was at a lower level. There was More blocks kind of coming along inside of my system.

And with that comes a certain limited type of thoughts and feelings that I was experiencing. And during this period, I could feel that there was a lot more feeling of lack, a lot more stress, a lot more tiredness. And so what I've been doing recently, which has helped a lot is really just a take some time in the day.

It could be 30 minutes, it could be an hour a day. And then really just going internal and then noticing those blocks, but then also noticing what's truly there, which is the expansiveness of my being. And in that case, what ends up helping me do is to start [00:02:00] to connect and more of an expansive state of consciousness.

And when I do that, and the more that I'm in there, I can notice that , the quality of my thoughts and the quality of how I feel shifts. 

Mike: So when you said, go inwards and notice your being, can you elaborate on that? 

Stephen: Yeah. Like I'll do, I'm going to do my best to describe it because sometimes it's not so easy because , in general, our lives are so external where we're very five sense oriented.

And so, but I'm going to do my best explaining and the way that I see is like, sometimes I'm just sitting. If I sit and I reduce the noise from outside, the phone is aside. There is no screen that I'm looking at. I'm just sitting and I close my eyes and I just observe what is in kind of what in my experience at the moment.

And initially I'll really just [00:03:00] start to notice the type of thoughts that are coming along. And then eventually what ends up happening as well is that I can start to feel where my body is tense, where it's hard to breathe. , and in those moments, when I notice those things, I can also see the quality of my thoughts.

For example, when I'm breathing in and there's somewhere where it's tight and somewhere where it's uncomfortable, the thoughts are going to be associated with that kind of stress, with that kind of tightness. So besides the feeling of tightness in the body, you'll also start to put a mad memories in mind where it kind of reminds me of feeling restricted, or it'll start to make me imagine of some type of the future where I feel restricted.

So when I kind of shift my state of consciousness into, instead of focusing on those, really start to focus. On the [00:04:00] possibility of being fully, fully expanded, then things, then, then my experience and, and how I feel and how I think starts to shift as well. 

Mike: So when you say a focus on possibilities of being expanded, are, would you say like, that's like focusing on what you want to create, like the possibilities of like, like you imagine yourself being more free or being stronger or healthier, or what would you say that is?

Stephen: I think everybody is different for, for myself, you know, I tried to mainly focus on, let's say images and, having more visuals, but in general, if we talk about visual auditory kinesthetic, I am much more kinesthetic than I am visual , and auditory. So for me, how I actually experienced that is almost like this bodily feel of, it's almost like I'm, I'm having like a MDMA trip.

Or some type of taking a substance to kind of change your state of, of [00:05:00] how, how you're, how you're being. And I'm just doing it in a just natural way by just sitting, breathing and, and feeling into it. So, so what, for me, what ends up happening is as I start to feel the expansiveness of the present moment, What happens is I'm starting to get glimpses of images at first, and then eventually it starts to stream together almost like a movie.

Mike: So I think, I think you hit it there about present moment, , going back into, diving in to feel like the uncomfortableness and things like that, and you talked about how you had thoughts that were kind of associated to uncomfortable, you know, the uncomfortable feelings. Well, it's happening because.

If we have certain blockages in our body, certain discomforts, there a lot of times is a natural reaction to certain [00:06:00] ideas, certain thoughts, certain perspectives, certain images that could be associated to a feeling of discomfort. Now, it doesn't have to associate to it. We can stop the reaction. We can stop the reaction from feelings of discomfort.

Into those type of thoughts, because what's really happening is those feelings of discomfort, it triggers certain emotions, certain energies inside the body. And then those emotions are connected to those thoughts. But if we stop the reaction, we stop the trigger. All we have is just feelings of discomfort.

Therefore, we can still be at peace. We can still be centered. In our mind, there's no emotional charge in the body. I want to dive more into talking about elevating our states of consciousness, , for increasing our creative power. So when our states of consciousness is higher, we tend to have a more expanded viewpoint and this expanded viewpoint, I want to be very, very specific.

What it really means is [00:07:00] that we're not trapped by the limitations of our mind. Cause when we are in our head. , our consciousness is very low. It's very limited because we're limited to the mind. No matter how old you are, 20 years old, 30 years old, 70 years old. You've only have 70 years of experience or 50 years of experience.

But when you get out of your head, that means you take your attention out of your mind. And now you are accessing present moment. You are also accessing a different type of intelligence. So we'll call this intelligence knowingness. Okay, we'll call this intelligence awareness, but not just in the limits of our mind, thoughts.

When we're accessing this intelligence, this consciousness and awareness, the information that we can access is infinitely more vast than the limited 70 years, 50 years, 20 years, a hundred years. And so therefore we [00:08:00] can now become more creative. We can now access. The collective consciousness, which is the consciousness of others as well.

And the ideas expand, the possibilities expand. If you're looking at an issue and you can't figure out the solution to this issue, well, now that you're out of the limitations of your own mind, you might be able to see it in a different perspective. And so this is why a lot of very, very creative people tend to want to take substances, psychedelic substances of sorts.

To try to expand their mind. That's really what they're doing is they go, I want to get out of my head because I know it's limiting me from seeing this thing, from seeing it another way. And then when they do, they can see in this way. The problem with that is number one, it is addictive. So I do not recommend that.

Oh, I'm going to expand my consciousness. I'm going to take this substance. You're just going to be high all day [00:09:00] long and just messed up, you know? Yes. You can see all kinds of cool stuff, but you ain't gonna get nothing done. Okay. You're just going to be floating in the air. You got to be balanced. You got to be grounded in order to go ahead and make things happen.

You're just end up going to be just all over the place. Okay. So that's not what I'm recommending, but that is what people do sometimes. Okay. Now I think what we're talking about here and what I want to share is more of how do we do that without going into all the substances? So based on what, like what Stephen was sharing about, you're talking about like presence, right?

So when we are present now, our mind is still. And now, automatically, our attention can access that intelligence. Automatically, our attention, if it's not in the mind, it's in the present moment. And the present moment, whether it's inside of our body, present of the feelings, or outside of our body, which is everything else around, the present moment allows us to become fully aware of [00:10:00] everything that exists.

And now we are not trapped by the limitations of our mind and now things can expand and now we can create a lot more because we can see more possibilities and we're not bounded by all the constant non stop self doubt chatters, analyzation, chatters, and all this stuff in our mind that actually limits us from doing more stuff.

We actually end up doing less because we're just caught up. Wasting all this energy overthinking instead of actually doing the work and getting real feedback, which is just cause and effect. Real feedback, much better than assumption. This is why high level marketers, if you talk to any of the high level marketers, you go, what should we do?

This and this, they're always going to tell you, well, we can try this, this and this, but ultimately you got to test. Everything is testing. Testing is another way of saying cause and effect, because we can have our assumptions and we do, and we do our best with it, ultimately you have to test. And then when you test, you get the results.

But testing, again, [00:11:00] it's just cause and effect. And so that's what we do. We would take action. Now we can test out our action and find out whether or not it produces the results that we want or not. But that means getting out of our head and actually doing more work, which is why elevating higher states of consciousness helps because we literally are getting out of our head when we are accessing higher states.

Stephen: So, so let me ask you this because I can totally tell that, let's say me 10 years ago, not exploring any of this. In my head is going to be like, I don't know what you even mean. Get out of your head. How do you get out of your head? We are our minds in some way. This is who we 

Mike: are. So when a person thinks that they're in their mind, well, that they are their mind, what they're saying is I am that voice in my head and no, you're not.

Who else can we be? Mike Chang. So, Stephen's probably having a slick, I'm looking at him right now, he's like, has that slick smile, like, he knows he's not that, but he just, just for the sake of the conversation, alright, yeah, let's [00:12:00] dive into it, right? So, I think most of you guys may understand this concept, but it's always good to just get another perspective.

Right. So what are we, are we the voice in the head? What do you mean I'm not the voice in my head? I'm talking right now, right? So , if this is your first time listening to this, it will be kind of mind blowing, you know, crazy, but if it's not, , okay. So it's just hearing it again. And so the voice in our head, we can create a voice in our head or we can just be silent, but if we are silent, that doesn't mean we, or you don't exist.

Okay. You still exist. So, the voice is something that you create, but it is not you. You see? Just like hair is something that you create, you grow, but if you cut the hair, does that mean you are gone? You know, you still exist. You can say the [00:13:00] arm is part of you, but it is not you. So if you lose your right arm, do you still exist?

Yes, you do exist, right? Because it's not you, just like your thoughts in your head. If you don't have thoughts, do you still exist? Absolutely. You're still here. So thoughts is something that you create. It's part of your creative power, just like your feelings. You feel your feelings. You can experience them, but they're not you, just like your clothes and everything else.

So another way to look at this is. Looking at it in a more subjective, objective point of view, which means subjective, that's you, object, the thing that you are observing. There's always a subject and an object. If there's something that is there, there has to be another thing that is observing the something.

So, there's you. The awareness, the consciousness, the watcher, there's many names, those are the ones that I can come up with right now, and then it's [00:14:00] observing your thoughts, it's observing your feelings, it's observing the things, and then, but there's you, right, you are observing everything else, so everything else is what we call object, and then you are the subject, so subject and object are not the same, right, they're obviously very different.

So thoughts is object, you is subject observing thoughts. So this is just a way of explaining that you are not the thoughts. So why is this important? Well, it's important because now you realize you're not your thoughts. Well, heck, you don't have to constantly believe all the thoughts you have. Right? So now you can go, well, if I think negative about this and that, well, I don't have to listen to it.

I just created this negativity, but I'm used to creating this negativity because I'm used to thinking this way, but it doesn't mean that I have to take action on it because it's just something that I'm creating, that I'm used to creating, kind of like, we know that when we have a bad habit and we [00:15:00] know it's a bad habit, but because we know it's a bad habit, we try to do our best to stop.

That's the same thing with negative thoughts or whatever thoughts in general that we have in our mind. The moment that we realize we are not the thought in our head, we are the We just create the thought, but we are not the thought. Well, then if these thoughts don't align with your life, don't listen to it.

Take your attention away and put it in the present moment. 

Stephen: Now, now with that said, what, do you think would be a really good practice in terms of getting into a higher state of consciousness so that we can utilize that present moment space in order to start to direct our lives towards where we really want to start going?

Mike: So, something that I teach to my students is practicing on bringing your attention to three areas of focus. The three areas is number one, your eyes. And that is practicing on not blinking, not looking away, and finding a point in [00:16:00] front of you. And when you're doing this practice, make sure that the point that you look at is something that is very neutral, very generic, and not something like a picture of a loved one or something super cool, because all you're going to do is just think more.

You know? So, something very generic. Eyes. Doing so stills your mind. You can try it now. Take a look at a point. Just take a moment here. Take a look at a point. Look at it. Now don't blink. Don't look away. And don't glare your eyes. You know, just relax your eyes and just look at the point. The smaller the point, the more attention it takes for you to look at it.

And you'll notice the power of your attention, your ability to focus, will depend on how well you can look at this point. If you're not really good at focusing, you'll find your eyes kind of jumping around like you don't have control over it because at this point you don't. So your point needs to be bigger, right?

If you look at a tiny speck on the wall, you'll find maybe your eyes can't focus on it. [00:17:00] And so, but this is a practice that stills your mind. And if your mind is racing, then what you're going to find is you're going to constantly blink. And every time when you blink, it's because mind thoughts are coming through.

So you have to blink. So the next thing is breathing. So that means you just consciously breathe through your nose. The moment that you consciously breathe, you take your attention right to the breath, right to that air that's going through your nose and automatically it connects you with the third area, which is feeling you start to feel your body.

And feeling your body is also the present moment because your body is here in the moment right now. So these three areas of attention. Eyes fixated on the point, present moment, outer presence, nose, breathing, and feeling in the body. Those are inner presence, they're all presence. So those are three things that will help you come to the present moment.

And so one big tip here is you don't try to [00:18:00] think about being in the present moment. You can't go and constantly think and think that your mind is going to stop because you think about stopping, right? You need to take your attention and bring it to the present moment. So you literally stop the thinking, but you stop thinking not by trying.

Okay. I'm going to say this a couple of times. You stop the thinking of your mind by taking your attention and bringing it to one of those three areas. And then when you do. Automatically, your mind stops because you take your attention to the present. The moment when you start to realize that you're not thinking is when you'll start to think again.

And so just, you'll see when that happens. And then when that happens, , you practice, bring it back to those three areas again. 

Stephen: Those focus eyes aspect was really interesting because I I've done a lot of the other two, which is focusing on the breath as well as at the feeling inside, but I was just practicing the eyes, just staring at the wall while you're talking about it.

And I can see as I started to just look at one [00:19:00] point, it was almost impossible to have thoughts. Just because I had to bring my concentration and awareness there. So that was very, very fascinating. And another point is in terms of feeling the body. One thing that I've been doing recently is that I've been really focusing on the chest area, on the heart area, because just recently I was just reminded that, that the heart has this, huge magnetic field that can go out, which is this like generator that we have.

And so as I start to focus on that point, I can feel that there's just a lot more energy being released, and this is something that I will play around with more because previous to that. I was just doing just normal breathing, a natural, casual breathing. But this is something interesting that I'm going to just start incorporating from every now and then.

Mike: So there's an advanced tip about, what you just said there, like focusing [00:20:00] on your heart, right? Cause it is true, right? There's a lot of energy that's coming from, the heart. A little bit more coming from the heart than the brain. However, this is, it's advanced tip. So. If you are focusing on the heart, you want to make sure that you are feeling the heart, but you are not judging or you're not analyzing the action.

That means you're not visualizing that the action is happening. You're not, well, let's, let's, let's reframe that. you want to just fully feel by feeling it, everything else will happen. If you're visualizing, you're in a orb or you're visualizing the elevation, all that stuff, actually in reality, that will be fine.

But what you don't want to do is you don't want to create the association that you are becoming more open or that you are expanding or that you are improving in shape or form. And this is very, very counterintuitive. And most people are probably very puzzled scratching their heads on this one. [00:21:00] So 

Stephen: I'm assuming what you're talking about is like, there can be an association where people are trying to use their minds.

To basically say that my heart is open, my heart is open or, or, or what 

Mike: I'm saying is like when someone's feeling their heart and then they envisioned whatever is happening, they envision of some people may visionable orb or vision of light or vision, the energy or vision, this expansion, the vision is fine, the feeling is fine, but the moment that they create this association, this awareness of them improving in some way, they now brought the attention to them.

They brought the attention and when they now, again, I'm going to rephrase, I'm going to say that again, when they have the awareness that they are improving, changing in some way, automatically they embody the state that there is something wrong with them and that they need to change. And when this happens, our [00:22:00] frequency drops down, our consciousness is stagnated.

Because until then, focusing on the heart is great because we connect to the body and we feel the body. Well, what part of the body do you want to feel? Let's say you want to feel the heart. Great. It's a strong energy. So let's say you want to go and you're envisioning energy expansion. Great. But as of right now, there's no sense of identity.

There's not this, I am getting better. I am experiencing this thing. I am that. I am this. There's only present of what's happening. All of that stuff, it was in the present moment. The moment we start to associate that. I am getting better, I am expanding, I am improving, I am empowered. 

Stephen: That's when you go into your mind.

Mike: Now we go into our mind. Yeah. And now the idea, the desire that we need to expand, we need to get better, we need to improve, we need to get stronger, we need to elevate. All of those things, the state and when we say I need all this stuff automatically means that you are not that and you are the opposite.[00:23:00] 

Mmm. Because whatever you 

need. means you lack. That's because if you don't lack it, you don't need it. If you are sure of something, you don't question. It's the same idea. If you're a man, you don't walk around going, am I a man right now? Hmm. You know, if you can walk fine, you don't think, Hey, can I walk?

Am I able to walk? Am I able to take this step? You're not aware of the fact that you are taking steps really strongly, right? But now if you just broke your legs and now you're getting out of the hospital and you're trying to walk and now you're in the rehab, you will consciously be aware that, Oh my God, I'm walking, I'm walking, I'm walking, right?

Because there is this lack of ability to walk. 

But when you are strong at walking, think about it. Do you think every day, Oh my God, I'm walking good. No, you walk because you have no doubt. But the moment you start to question what it is that you're able to do, that you're doing, the moment you question it, there is doubt automatically that comes in because No question is needed if there is no doubt, [00:24:00] you see, so now the same thing here, if we are desiring to be better, better, better, then that is because there is an idea that we need it, 

Stephen: and you don't have it,

Mike: and that you don't have it, you know, this is a basic law of attraction stuff, a lot of law of attraction community would understand this just fine, 

Stephen: well, this is just one of those things where it's the game of the mind, the mind always in some ways wants to slip in.

Wherever it can, and I've been finding this out, like, as I've been kind of expanding myself and learning more about this, the mind gets trickier and trickier as well. It'll start to come in from many different angles and it becomes even more and more subtle as we become more subtle as well. So it's a very interesting game to play.

But eventually, as you stay in a conscious state, you'll be able to catch it much, much quicker. Even if it's subtle. 

Mike: Well, there's 

like three levels of mind that I, that I [00:25:00] categorize it at to make it simple. One of them is like the loud mind. It's like the voice. It's like the voice in our head that we hear when we have an internal dialogue, you know, but then there's the one that's lower, that's like a whisper.

And it's not very easy to hear it. You gotta be in like a silent room. You gotta be in some quiet space. This is why people like to go to nature. , this is a reason why somebody likes to go into a place that's quiet. So this way they can hear this level two voice, and then there's a level three one, and this one has no sound.

This one is just a sense of awareness of what's going on. You know, this is thoughts that do not have sound. And most people , they're not aware of the level three and most cannot even hear level two. So they're only observing the level one, the loud one. So when the loud one is not happening, they go, I'm present.

Well, you're more present, but you're not actually fully present because there's just thoughts you're not able to hear at this moment. 

Stephen: The loud one's also the one who's listening [00:26:00] to this going, this is all woo woo BS.

Mike: Yeah, well, you know, it is what it is. Everybody's at a , different stage, so it's all good. 

Stephen: Something that just came up to the top of my mind as well. Something that's helped me with this heart meditation and, and just let's not even call it meditation, just, paying attention to the heart is putting my hands to my chest and then just breathing to that area.

Another kind of tip that I've been. Playing with as well as instead of nose breathing, which is just my normal breathing to get to the heart. I felt that it's actually a lot more expansive to actually breathe with the mouth. And so with that, I can feel that the chest area expands a lot more.

Definitely not something I recommend for just like an everyday normal breath for this particular exercise. I do feel it expands a lot more in that area. 

Mike: Yeah, , I can see that. And I agree with what you're [00:27:00] saying on. Yeah. Normal breathing, it's not something you want to do, but for this exercise, it would be good.

And again, doing all these exercises, remember that you want to stay present. You know, we talked about elevating in higher states and the fact that when you are present is when you can access it. If you're not present, then it doesn't matter what you are doing. It doesn't matter all the exercise that you're doing and it doesn't matter what you learn.

Really, it doesn't. So many people get caught up in learning these things, learning all the cool stuff , and having so much awesome knowledge to have great conversations about, but they never actually experience enough present moment awareness. So therefore they never actually access higher states of consciousness.

They only learn about higher states of consciousness. So to actually experience it. We need to be present. So when we're doing these exercises and there are so many awesome, great exercises to help us connect, just remember that presence is the key. So let's say if, you're doing that exercise, you [00:28:00] can put your hand on your chest and you're breathing through your mouth so you can feel your chest, right?

When you place your hand there, you bring more awareness there. And so when you're doing that, make sure that your attention is in your chest feeling. The moment that your attention is in your mind, thinking about how great this exercise is, thinking about how expansive you are, all that stuff, you are not present anymore and you lost the actual benefit of this exercise.

Awesome. Well, again, guys, these are just kind of exercises that you can do to, to really just help you start to expand the state of awareness that you are in and it's When you do this, you'll start to find that it's really shifts the thinking patterns that you have and also the way that you feel. And with that as well, in terms of how it associates , with the type of work that you do, it just come from a very different angle, kind of like [00:29:00] a bird's eye view.

And you get all these different creative ways to put things together. And especially in today's world, a lot of creativity is needed, especially now. So hope you guys have benefited. From this, Mike, do you have any last words before we move forward? 

I've got 10 last words. Let's just share it. Let's just share one idea.

Last thing I want to talk about this is when you shift in adding on to what Stephen is saying, you get to see differently and particularly the perspective that you see when you are in a higher state of consciousness is one that's more expansive, is one that's more creative, that has more possibilities.

And when you are in a lower state. The perspective that you see is one that is more fear based, one that is more about what if there's all these problems, what should I do? You start to see obstacles instead of the possibilities of what it is that could happen, you see? [00:30:00] So if you're wondering, okay, cause I think a lot of people when they're listening to this, they're like, okay, well, this sounds great.

I want to expand my consciousness. It makes perfect sense. They would need to know, A, where is my consciousness currently at? And then B, what do I need to do to expand it? And A, how do you know where your consciousness is at? Here's a way to find out. Look at your work, look at your life, , take just one category.

You know, let's just say, let's say you look at your business. Are you constantly focusing on how things will work out? how are you going to reach this goal? How things are going to work out to accomplish your milestones, accomplish your goals, make more money, help more customers. Or are you constantly doing action to prevent from failing?

Are you constantly doing action to prevent, to save things when it goes south? Okay. Are you constantly looking at what's all the obstacles, all the problems and why the problems are there? Or are you spending your attention on the [00:31:00] actions that is needed to reach your goals? If you're looking at problems all the time, there's a high chance that you are operating in a lower state of consciousness because the energy in your body is low.

So therefore the filter in your mind is only seeing that perspective. So no matter what, you're going to constantly look for ways to prevent bad things from happening, because all you see is the possibilities of bad stuff. Now. When you're in a higher state, you will see the total opposite. What you see is the possibilities of how you're going to crush it, how you're going to reach that so fast, how everybody's going to be so excited about what it is you got to share.

And therefore, when your attention is there, all of your actions, all of your, what you see and the opportunities you bring in are people that share the same viewpoint, vice versa with the other one. So now that you know, if you're in a low state, what do you do? Well, then I think we talked a lot about that coming into the present moment, coming to the present moment.

You know, what I'd recommend everybody is bring your attention to those three areas. [00:32:00] Eyes, breath, and feeling. No matter what exercises you do, just know that present moment awareness is what you want to experience because that is what allows your mind to elevate to a higher state of consciousness and then the ripple effect of being a more powerful creator.

Stephen: Awesome. 

Mike: All right. I think that was about 10 words. 

Stephen: More like five. 

Mike: Yeah, five. 

Stephen: Awesome. 

Thanks guys for listening to another episode of Body Over Mind. This is Mike Chang as well as Stephen Yeh and we are here just to help as much as we can with what we have learned over the years. Thank you guys.