044: How to Know What to Prioritize in Life

The podcast explores the challenge of balancing multiple interests and priorities in life. The hosts discuss the importance of identifying and focusing on what truly matters, emphasizing work, health, and family as primary areas of focus. They advise against spreading oneself too thin and suggest prioritizing tasks and interests based on their significance and impact on one's life. The conversation highlights the need for individuals to narrow down their interests and commitments to achieve focus and success.

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 one of the things I've noticed within myself and as well as a good amount of people that I speak to is that as a person I'm interested in many different things, , for sure. Number one about mobility and gaining strength, but I'm also into business. And I'm also interested in just seeing what's going on with.

Crypto and what's going on with AI and, just the development of children and the changes that happen there. it can feel from time to time a little bit overwhelming. And then sometimes I also think like I'm spreading myself a little bit too thin. , it does feel like every area is like still growing, and nothing is really stagnant just yet.

But at the same time, where there's that principle of [00:01:00] really honing in and focusing. There's so many different aspects of life though, like, just curious in your point of view, what do you do in situations like this when everybody just has 24 hours in a day? And there's just so many, let's say like different priorities.

Mike: Well, I think when we start to know ourselves more and more, we start to identify things that are more important. They're not all of equal importance. We may have a lot of interests. But there are certain things that are more important for us now than others. And even though that could change as, as time goes on, but at this moment now, there are certain things that have a higher priority.

There are certain things that we would like more now than others. And therefore we should focus on just those things. So if a person goes, well, I'm not [00:02:00] sure. I, like a lot of things. Then what this person is really not sure of is what's important for them. So then they need to just ask themselves, they need to look at what can I not be okay with, like, let's say, if we look at a couple of subjects, we can say, I'm interested in.

The technologies, like the AI technologies, I'm interested in childhood development because I have a child, I'm interested in my health, and I'm interested in the news going on right now. There's so many interesting things. So, and I asked myself, well, which one can I not be okay with if I didn't know, if I wasn't doing?

So, if I wasn't paying attention to the news, , what would be the consequence? And then, well, I wouldn't know what's going on and then how would my life change whenever I'm having conversations about things like that? I would be lost. Okay. What else [00:03:00] is that? I guess that's about it. My business doesn't really revolve around that.

Okay. Then it's not going to be that important. Well, what else? Right? So we just go through the checklist. Childhood development. Okay. So what happened if you don't learn more into childhood development? So we start to ask ourselves these questions. Eventually we start to dial it down to certain areas, , certain topics that are actually important.

Now, if we boil it down to, for example, My child is going through some tough times right now, and if I don't study and learn more about it, what's going to happen? I can't support my child, and what would happen? Every day, he or she is suffering. Every day, we're having a lot of fights. Every day, there's a lot of problems, and this is happening right now as we speak, every day.

Therefore, if I don't focus on that, every single day, there's a big issue here. Okay, right. Then suddenly, all the others may be a little less important right now. And my priority is to focus on that or let's say if we just turn it around, we just give one more example. And we say that I'm focusing a lot of my [00:04:00] health right now.

I'm trying to exercise. I pay attention to my eating. Why? Because right now I just went to the doctor and doctor says, I'm pretty sick right now and I need to change some things around. If not, it's going to get really bad and I'm going to have some type of disease. Um, I'm, I have stage 1 cancer right now and it could turn into stage 3 or 4 really quickly.

So therefore I need to go ahead and pay attention to all the things I'm doing and upgrade my health right away. So, even though, I have other things going on in my life, but what would happen if I don't take care of my health? Let's say I would get some really bad disease. Versus what would happen if I don't keep up with the news?

What would happen if I don't pay attention to what's going on with my child? We're gonna have a bad relationship. So, now we're gonna have to choose. Which one can I be okay with? Is it better for me to Have a bad relationship with my child right now, or would it be worse if I had stage four cancer and there's a chance I might just not even be around [00:05:00] tough one.

But if we were to look at the two, we would probably say, well, I think I probably should take care of myself. And then second priority to me, take care of the child. There's only a few things that we could pick from. We don't have time for everything. So we've got to pick just a handful and there's gotta be a number one, or at least a time.

Yeah. A time to do one and then time to do two and a time to do number three and a lot of times that's all we got, we don't have any more if we do or spread too thin. So I think when we just kind of do this critical thinking and see what's important, then , we'll find that a lot of the other stuff we're just simply interested in, but they're not, really important for us.

Stephen: How many topics or things do you feel people can actually take on at one time? Let's say , you can prioritize it from one to whatever number, but essentially what would you say that number is? three 

Mike: I think each person needs to [00:06:00] focus on work, whatever they do to bring income to their family, to themselves.

That's important. Number two, their health. They always need to make sure that their health is up to speed. And then number three is dependent on what's going on in their life. Maybe it's their family. Maybe it's a, some interest or hobby. A lot of times people are really just, bouncing around between the three.

Which is work, health, and family, because they're the most immediate. And for those that don't work hard or they don't need to work much, then they should take care of their health, take care of their family. And then, on top of that, any other contributions that they can provide, , either for their family or for their personal life in some way.

Three, and usually it's about the, it's about the max and that a person can do well. Yeah. If it's any more, it just gets scattered. Yeah. 

Stephen: Yeah. [00:07:00] I mean, that's, the bit of a challenging aspect, right? Because let's say even, within the work aspect itself, there can be so many different aspects to that.

Like, let's just say, with all the things happening in AI, but it's things are changing so quickly and things are evolving so fast. Like just the other day, I believe it's called like Gemini or something that Google just came out with. And supposedly it's super powerful and you can upload a whole movie or something like that in there and analyze it and do all these things.

And you know, things are happening so rapidly now. And so, yeah, like even within that one department of work, 

Mike: it's impossible to keep up with everything. If somebody is able to keep up with. The changing technologies of AI, then they're not keeping up with the changing technology of plants and of natural medicine.

They're not able to keep up with the, changings of fashion and culture and [00:08:00] et cetera. You know, , everything is evolving constantly. 

Stephen: Mm. 

Mike: There's no need to be able to keep up with everything, you know, and, We just pick the one that's important for us. , that is most relative for our life, you know?

So for you, it's, keeping up with like AI and business and tech, you know, cause you find that's valuable, then yeah, then that's it for you. And if somebody else, finds another thing, then they focus on that. Now it's not needed to focus on everything because we can't do everything.

We only have time to do certain things. And we don't need to do everything what makes our life flourish is doing just certain things that we have an interest that we have a passion that we have a real gift for, and then doing that thing exceptionally well, so well, so that people are willing to pay lots of money and lots of energy for us to continue to do that work because that's how much value we're able to contribute, so now that perspective, there's no issues.

Stephen: I think [00:09:00] a really valuable exercise I did in the past that I'd like to actually revisit sometime soon is just writing all the things that I'm interested in on a piece of paper and then essentially have that list down so I can take a look at just the different aspects that I'm essentially Spending my time and energy on, and then essentially just writing like a, one to five or one to 10 for each one to see, , how important this is for me.

So essentially I can actually start to eliminate some of the ones that really just aren't that important. Like, what you talked about, like political news and things like this. Sometimes I get sucked into it. And really how, much is that going to change or benefit my life from doing something that like that it's, it's quite low compared to a lot of the other ones.

Mike: We can do that, but it'll be slow and you know, it's a slow way because think about it. So what's going to [00:10:00] determine us to, to, from a scale of one to 10, we're going to put what, what's going to stop a person from putting sevens and eights and nines on many of them. 

Stephen: Hmm. 

Mike: Like let's say they make a list of 20 things, and then out of the 20 things, 10 of them have anywhere between a 7 and 

Stephen: a 9.

Mike: And then now they're, looking at these 10, and they see that there are 5 that have a 9, and there are 3 that have an 8, and then there are 2 that have a 7. But, you know, seven can also change to an eight then, and this actual nine can change to an eight and then this eight could actually change to a nine.

And then, so we're sitting there, we end up being more confused because the process, this process of deciding what's important or not in itself has a flaw. And that flaw is we're making things up. We're making it up in our head. We're just making it [00:11:00] up. It's like this, it's like almost like asking somebody, imagine you ask somebody, Hey, how are you feeling right now?

And now if they were to go in their head and think about it, they could just make it up, can't they? Well, uh, I mean, I feel good. I feel good. You know, I feel good because of this reason this happened, this happened, this happened, and I'm thinking this and this, so I feel good. It's 100 percent made up right now because they're just in their mind thinking about it.

So then they would need to go, okay, well, let me check how I'm really feeling. And talk about these sensations. These are the sensations I'm having. And, it's in these areas. And this is the intensity of those sensations. And that's the feeling. But people don't do that. They just literally make it up.

Right? How you feeling? They just make up , something random in their head. Right? They just give a response. And now when they go, what's important? It's the same thing. Now they're just gonna write down random stuff, write down as much stuff as they can, and just give random gradings, and they'll [00:12:00] end up being really confused.

But if we were to ask somebody to go and see how they feel, actually feel the sensations, the sensations that they're experiencing is not made up. They're actually feeling it. There's no making up anything of it. That's what's happening right now in their body. And if we were to ask somebody what's important and have them silence their mind and just go and ask, okay, what's actually important in your life?

Go ahead and silence your mind. Take some time and just don't think and just let the answer come to you. What happens is don't think. So they're going to focus on feeling. They're going to focus on being present. And then from there, what's actually important will show up in their mind. Because they actually know what's important, but they can't access their knowing because their head is too noisy,, and [00:13:00] so they just need to silence their mind.

But you see a person that doesn't silence their mind will never realize this. They'll always think, so if we were to silence our mind and we set an intention to ask ourselves to find out the answer, what's important for me? And just give it a little bit of time. Often this will come to us in a few hours, a few days.

And then from there, we skip all the confusion of trying to analyze with our conscious mind. This is why oftentimes people they take breaks. When we can't figure out something, when our mind is too filled. We don't know what's important. We don't know what to focus on. We don't know the solution.

We don't know which choice to go with. We don't know, because our mind is too busy. [00:14:00] And it's trying to analyze everything. And analyzation is not how we can find the answers a lot of times. Not when it's something that comes from us. That means if I'm analyzing which, tests came out the best option one or option two, based on these data, I need to analyze it.

Right? Because, the data's right there. I need to understand it. But let's say if the question is something that has to do with ourselves. What do I like? What do I want? What's right for me? This type of data cannot be analyzed. Because we're the one that's making up the analyzation. We're making up the data.

Therefore, all data is irrelevant. Whatever we can make up is irrelevant because we're just making it up. You see, that's the problem with that. When we go, Hey, which, option does our customers like more option a or option B? Well, let's [00:15:00] look at the data. We can't make it up because the data is right there.

Which video performed better video one or video to look at the views, look at the engagements, look at the comments, look at, you know, all right. It's very clear, but if we go, what do I like more? Well, we can just keep making it up. And that's why. That approach creates a lot of confusion. So we have to silence out the conscious mind.

And now we listen to our subconscious. We listen to our intuition, our knowingness, and all it takes for a person to do that is just to silence their conscious mind, silence the dialogue, because that's where the challenge comes in. If a person is not used to silencing their conscious mind and suddenly they need to do so because they got a big decision.

Well, it's going to be really tough. They're going to struggle to do that. And the likelihood of being able to, well, I mean, they could still, but it's just going to take a little while longer versus a person that has a meditative practice. [00:16:00] That spends time every day clearing their mind and now when they need to solve something and They need to go in and find out what's the real answer within themselves It's not gonna take that long a lot of times it can happen pretty much instantly the moment they just let go they go Okay, what is the answer comes to them?

That's it This could be really really fast because they're used to silencing their mind and going in and accessing their intuition accessing their knowingness You know that level two thought And now there's no confusion. So in this situation, it's like, what's, what's important for me? I'm spending so much time in here, here, here, here, here, ah, you know, nothing is moving forward.

I feel so busy and I don't feel like I'm, I'm moving forward, but not like the way I could. I need to find out what's really important for me. And they set that intention and they just silence their mind. And from there, the answer appears. They come to a knowingness of the answer. That makes sense.

Stephen: I [00:17:00] mean, the last time that I had a big decision to make, especially around my life, looking back, it was just sitting down and especially the first part was because I was just so exhausted and tired at that time as well. It was just to kind of unclutter that murkiness that I felt inside because I felt like with that murkiness, it's hard to actually make a clear decision.

Yeah. So I can see that and I can notice that that, makes a 

Mike: huge difference. So having a daily meditative practice, that's the key. That's the most important. Then a person will never spend much time being confused. Because they're always able to access what they really want. People don't know what they want.

That's why they don't get it. [00:18:00] They don't get what they want because they don't know what they want. You know, the world will give a person whatever they want, just as long as they know what they want, and take action towards it. And they'll get it. Anything and everything. But that's it. But if a person doesn't know what they want, how are they going to get something?

And that becomes the, real challenge. 

Stephen: And 

Mike: as we say it out loud, it sounds really funny. A person doesn't know what they want. And yeah, a person knows all the, little insignificant things of what they want. You know, I want to eat this. I want to have this thing. I want to buy that.

I want to buy that. I want to buy that. But that's not what they really want deep inside. That's going to bring true fulfillment. That's a. Temporary pleasure, 

Stephen: a 

Mike: temporary desire. The desire is not very deep. And soon the gain of those types of things, it goes [00:19:00] away. And then they're needing to have more of that.

It's like, you want to have that, you want to eat that food. So then you got it, you ate it. And soon after that pleasure is gone. You know, a person wants to have this, have this sexual pleasure, and then they have it. And soon, the pleasure of it is gone. The satisfaction is gone. So, we have to have a meditative practice.

We have, to have a practice where we're able to connect to that part of us inside every day. Because now we're able to stay on track. And whenever we astray, we lose our focus. We know. We can tell we lost our focus. Because we're connected to that part of our mind, the part of our mind that is very clear.

And when we can't hear that part of our mind, Because our conscious mind is too loud. , it's a indicator [00:20:00] to take a little break, spend a little longer time that day in meditation. We're just talking 15, 20 minutes more out of a 24 hour day, you know, spending that little extra time more and we're able to kind of reconnect and that's all it takes, but if we, cause if we do it every day, that's all it takes to kind of reconnect when we have some, challenging times.

And if a person don't connect every day, man, it'll take them days, sometimes weeks. You know, they have to put so much of their life on pause just so they can reconnect. And then after that, and then they don't do it again and it's months and years before they reconnect again.

And all the time in between that they spend lost, confused. When all they have to do is just stay connected to themselves and all the, clarity and the answers will always be available to them. . [00:21:00] 

Stephen: Awesome. Yeah, that just reminds me again the power of the, daily practice as well, because, you know, like you said, or just what I'm experiencing right now, I think I, I haven't had a, a regular meditative practice for at least a couple weeks.

It's kind of sporadic here and there. But I can totally notice if I can integrate into that daily practice once again, like you said, you don't need those kind of longer breaks to be able to gain that clarity once again. And once you get to that place as well, it's, yeah, it's just like 15, 20 minutes. So just another reminder,

all right. Well, thank you guys for listening to another episode of Body Over Mind and we'll see you on the next episode. Again, if you guys want to dive deeper and really incorporate more of what [00:22:00] Mike is talking about into your daily life, into your daily practice, so that it becomes more just a natural part of your life, definitely go take a look at his website, flow60.

com. where you can learn more about his training so that you guys can definitely just dive in deeper and not just listen to it intellectually, like what we've been talking about on this podcast, but really start to, to experience it in your own life. All right, guys.