Shift Energy: Michelle Kuei on Why Permission to Reset Is Your Superpower

PITY PARTY OVER

Michelle Kuei is a visibility marketing coach. At age 11, a car accident left Michelle permanently disabled. She shares her journey, highlighting how growth and transformation stem from shifting our mindset, embracing personal responsibility, and allowing ourselves the permission to be vulnerable.

Michelle highlights about the importance of recognizing when we’re stuck in a negative space, allowing ourselves to feel those emotions, and then consciously choosing to move beyond them by focusing on our strengths and making deliberate decisions.

In our conversation, we explore the importance of taking agency over our journey, learning from life's patterns, and showing up authentically while giving ourselves grace along the way.

Listen to the episode on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Amazon Music, or your favorite podcast platform.

Subscribe to Pity Party Over for more insightful episodes. Questions? Email Stephen Matini or send him a message on LinkedIn.

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TRANSCRIPT

Stephen Matini: When you feel the way I do now a little bit overwhelmed, what do you do?

Michelle Kuei: There’s so many things I do. But first of all, what comes up to my mind is when my energy is down, I actually do quite the opposite. I go onto a treadmill, I start working. If I'm feeling stressed, there's a lot of things on my plate. I've learned to drop everything and just go into a physical activity. So a lot of times, you know, when we think about mental stress and burnout, we're in our mind, right?

We're thinking about, oh my God, how am I going to take care of this? How am I going to process this? How am I going to tackle this? So we're doing a lot of thinking. So when we're thinking, our mind is working, but our body is not. And so what I have learned, and that really worked well for me, is if I were to just stop the thinking, stop the thinking mind, and just drop it and go do something that involves my body, activity, running, jogging, walking, whatever it is that you get into that physical mode, then you start taking your mental processing into, OK, I need to make sure that I step at the right place so I don't fall down.

So your mind starts to think about something else other than the things that you're feeling stressed about. And when you start doing that, you're making room and making space for what needs to come. And the creativity comes when you make room for it. And how do we make room for it? When you shift from a mental stress to a physical activity, you allow your energy to flow. And everything is energy in this world, right? So if you shift one energy from one place to another, then things start to shift as well.

When I was overcoming that physical disability, I realized that you know my muscle groups, muscles, they need to learn and get used to the activity I'm giving them. So every single muscle in our body has a job. Just like we have a purpose in this world, they also have a purpose in our body. And so when you give that purpose to the muscle that you're working on, sometimes you need to give it a break, right?

Because when we overwork, the muscle will snap, the muscle will break. And same thing with ourselves, you know if you don't start taking a break or realizing that I need to try something else that will relax me, that will keep me into a calm state. I need to take some vacation. I need to make sure that's in my schedule before I snap and break. And so I feel that a lot of us don't realize that, you know yes, resilience is great. Resilience is powerful.

Being able to bounce back and getting back on your feet and staying strong is important. But it is also important to allow yourself, giving yourself the permission to say, you know what, I'm going to take a day off. I just need a day off, or I just need a week off. And we were talking about this earlier. I took a week off because I needed a week off.

Stephen Matini: My ideal world would be probably work for three months and then take a break, or maybe three, four months, you know, every three, four months, I think it should be a stop, you know, somehow. And I guess it depends also how you work. But I'm one of those people that tend to go, you know, full force. I mean, seriously, there's no a second during the day that is empty. And so after a few months, I do feel it. So you mentioned disability. And in the past, when we talked about it, you mentioned that disability is one of the ingredients that are part of your life. You know, your life is ginormous. What does disability mean to you today?

Michelle Kuei: It means that there's something that I am not gifted. I am not talented to do. And I use the word gifted and talented because we have a lot of talents within ourselves, right? And talent is something that you develop. It's something that you train yourself to recognize that this is what I can do, and this is what I can do well in. And there's other areas where I might not be interested in performing or doing at all. I am not interested to become the next athlete who's running a 10K marathon.

That's not my interest, but someone else is. Someone is really happy to do that as a profession. For me, disability, it just means that there's part of us that we're just not trained and we're not passionate to do. Now I don't see it as a limitation. Rather, it's just like my hair, my finger. It's just a natural part of me of who I am.

And it may be a disability, physical disability on me, but it may be an emotional disability on someone else I cannot see. But that person doesn't mean that that person is not doing well or not performing well. It's just that there's something else that person is so good at that I don't need to see the limitation on that person. It's a change of mindset.

It's a change of feeling about what we choose to see, what we choose to embrace this whole entire self and recognizing that there is something that I'm really good at and nobody can beat me to that. And I'm very proud of it. I'm taking ownership of it. And I can do Christmas countdown whenever I want to. But there's also a part of me that, you know what? Someone else can do that. Someone else has the purpose of doing it. So I'm just going to let them serve. I'm just going to let them do it.

For example, in the past, I go to grocery and there's always stuff on the very top shelf. And the most important item, like your toilet paper, is always on the top shelf. And that is the most essential thing that people need. And so every time I go to a grocery, I'm looking on the top of the shelf and I can't reach it. So in the past, when I felt my limitation, it was a limited ability to me, I hesitated to ask for help.

I hesitated because I was looking at the perspective of I'm not good enough. I'm not normal. I'm too short to reach to the shelf. But then there is a shift. There's a moment where I started to recognize and realize that, hey, yeah, I am short, but this is why we have tall people. Right? This is why we have tall people. The universe makes tall people for a reason. So that's put them to use, right? Because the universe created everybody. And so we're all equal.

Stephen Matini: You make it sound so flowy and real beautiful, you know, when you're talking. And one thing that I always wonder is how is it that some people are able to change their mindset as you did, you know, and to really overcome it and others instead get stuck there, you know? So what did you do? How did you make that humongous shift in yourself?

Michelle Kuei: Before I answer that question, sometimes I joke about myself that I have this young looking Asian body, but my soul is really old. I have a very ancient soul. And so to answer your question is that you have to be ready. And there's no rush into getting ready for that mindset shift.

And so this is something that I observed, also something that I experienced is no matter how I know the podcast is called Pity Party. A lot of us are staying in that pity party for a very, very long time. But it's not because we don't want to get out of that pity party, or we don't want to, you know, advance ourselves or better ourselves. We don't want to look at the positive aspects of things. It's just that we're not ready.

And I think the universe by design has a lesson plan, a giant project plan for everybody. I don't know what it looks like. I don't know what the agenda is, but there is a universal big plan for everybody. And each lesson on that universal plan, it's teaching you a lesson, right? So maybe the lesson I need to learn during this stage of my life is gratitude. I need to learn how to appreciate.

Or the next stage in my life, I need to learn forgiveness. I need to learn how to forgive to people. And so we're going to see evidence and lessons or teaching moments where we continue to experience the emotional triggers or external trigger that teaches the lesson of forgiveness. I want you to forgive this person. I want you to forgive that person. I want you to let go of yourself. And so we continue to find ourselves learning those lessons repeatedly until we can master it.

And once you master it, then you can move on to the next lesson. But how does that agenda look? I have no idea. I don't know, but I trust it. I trust there's a universal plan. And so the people who are stuck in the pity party still in that pity party have, we have everything, the ice cream, the chocolate, everything full on. We're not ready yet. We're not ready to move on to the next stage of life. And so for me, that stage of life, I felt it was evolutional.

It was ever evolving. And when I finally got out of my pity party, I was gifted a book and it was from Eckart Tolle, The Power Now. And he made me realize that there's two thinking mind, right? There's an unconscious mind and there's mind that's just in our everyday evolution, the conscious mind. And so it made me realize that I have this dual identity of myself. One is who I believe I am, and one who I truly am.

And it is the one that I truly am that overrules everything else I experienced in this life. And so I was on a journey to discover who I truly am. And that was the moment that made me realize that, huh, pity party is something I can choose to attend or to choose to thank you very much for the invitation. I am not here to party, right? So you started to see the options of making that choice and making a decision for yourself.

And I think the roots from decision come from a Latin roots of you need to sever, right? You need to decide. It means that you have to pick, choose between the two. You have to make a sever between the choices that you have. And so to me, that was the moment where I realized that, oh, I don't have to feel and think and look at this way about my life, how sorry I am, how small I am. I can choose to see the other way. And that was a pivotal moment for me because everything else changed when I started to recognize the fact that I can choose to see my life differently.

Stephen Matini: Do you ever have sleep ups moments that somehow you may go back to the old behavior?

Michelle Kuei: All the time. I think it's a constant thing because we're living in a real life and there's a lot of things that whether it's causing by ourselves or triggered by someone else, when I see someone else's success, it makes me think about, hmm, what am I not doing to be that person, to be that successful, right?

And so I go into this comparison mode very quickly in comparing myself and how poorly I am doing in my life, how much less money I'm making, how much less title I have and how slow I'm moving. So I'm constantly comparing myself to others.

Stephen Matini: You're describing me? (laughing)

Michelle Kuei: I think I'm describing a lot of people, you know, I would love for people to if you're listening to the podcast, you know, just drop a comment in Stephen’s feed if you resonate with this, because that comparison mind is just never quiet. And one of the good things about comparison is this is how we improve. This is how we become better. And so we can choose to see comparison as, oh, it's something negative.

You should never compare. I would encourage people to actually compare yourself. Use someone else to be your aspiration, right? Compare yourself to that person. But what you want to think about is how can you better yourself to be even better than that person is? And this is how we continue to master our skills, master our knowledge, mastering everything that we do so that we can be better than that person.

I can be a lot more creative. And then that successful person who's making a lot of money, I can outgrow that person. And only if you believe that your ability and your strength and your superpower is within you, nothing else is going to matter.

Stephen Matini: But when you feel that the moment of whatever, you know, self-doubt that you may go back to, you know, to the whole posture, the whole behavior is about to happen. Is there anything specifically you do? You mentioned that you are very physical, you know, is there also other tools that you use in order to make sure, nope, I'm not going to go that way. I'm going to choose, you know, this one, this path, which is more, you know, which is better for me.

Michelle Kuei: I keep a judgment journal. So I have like journals in the back. I have books and everything. I keep judgment journal. And judgment journal, basically, it's very simple, very easy to do. And listeners can do this at home.

You take out a sheet of paper and what you do is you write down the things that you're judging. You're judging whether you're judging someone else, you're judging yourself. What is it that you're saying to yourself right now? And usually it's very negative. It carries a lot of like, I need to be better than this. I should do this. I have to do this. So it's very negative. So you write down that phrase that you're telling yourself that you're judging yourself or others.

And then what you do is your next step is to come up with three different ways of how you're going to say that same thing, but you're going to look at it in a more positive way. So let's say I'm too short. Stephen is too tall. And that's a judgment statement. That's a fact, but it's also a judgment. I'm too short. I wish I can be I can be taller. You know I asked for this for every Christmas, but never, I never got it. And during the Christmas, I don't believe in Santa. No, that's another story.

But so I would write down, I am too short and I feel too short, too small. And I would come up with three different ways of saying this again in a positive way. So I am too short, but I am very gifted in public speaking, for example. I am small, but you know great thing comes in small packages anyway. Like the Tiffany, the Tiffany rings. Everybody wants. It comes in the tiniest, smallest package.

So I'm OK with that. So you come up with three different ways of saying the same thing, but in a positive tone of voice. When you start building a habit in doing that, you'll notice the next time you judge someone or judging yourself, you're very quickly, it's like the muscle that we train in going to the gym, right? So you're very quickly, you're going to come up with an alternative perspective of, eh, yeah, this is what I'm thinking, but this is what I can think. And so now I have choices. Which one do I want to choose?

So you're allowing yourself to giving yourself an option to choose. If you do it regularly and it becomes a habit, it becomes second nature to us. The moment that you judge, you're going to choose the one that's more positive because it makes you feel good.

Stephen Matini: So it's a mental gymnastics, basically.

Michelle Kuei: Mm-hmm. Yep.

Stephen Matini: And by the way, while you're talking, I'm comparing myself to you and I feel a bit of a loser. If I have to be honest, no, I don't do this. I'm not doing that. Not all the time, but you know.

Michelle Kuei: You see, we're all equal. You know, our feeling is all mutual. You know, for me, it was my height. My height was driving me nuts. It was like, I wish I could be taller. I wish I could be prettier. You know, I wish I could be sexier. I wish I could wear this. You know, I can wear that. But, you know, at the end of the day, we all have some similar thoughts and idea around that. Oh, I wish I can talk like her. I wish I have her. Yeah, it's always like that.

Stephen Matini: Last time, there was another, when we talked, there was another word that goes to my head that you mentioned, which is the notion of visibility. And I love the word. So what does visibility mean to you?

Michelle Kuei: Visibility means that you're showing up and being an authentic self. I know it's an overused word, but you know it's about showing up and just genuinely being who you are.

And you know what's interesting is a lot of people think that visibility, whether it's on social media or in person, it's about making yourself high up being perceived as someone who has the authority, someone who is celebrity. But in reality, visibility means that when you have an opinion or when you want to say something, you say it, what's on your mind without thinking that, you know, I'm going to make people feel offended.

I'm going to you know making sure that I side with the popularity of the people pleasing side. Visibility is about being truly who you are, saying what's on your mind, telling people what you truly believe in. So you show up with value, authenticity, you show up with character, your voice, and your opinion. And you do it in a way that is going to elevate everybody.

When I speak, whether it's in person or on social media, I always ask myself, what is the purpose of me talking? And if there's no purpose, then why am I still talking? I'm not teaching anybody. I'm not elevating people's consciousness or mindset, or it makes them feel better for their day, making their day, then why am I still talking? It sends off a message to me that when I'm visible, I'm going to show up with my character.

I'm going to show up with my value. I'm going to show up with my belief. And all this becomes so loud and clear that you don't have to do anything else. People see you, people hear you, people recognize you for who you are. And it's just a natural thing for people who are just attracted to you. And so how do we use this is a lot of time, if you're a business owner, you can use the visibility of what I talked about, the character, the value, and how you're showing up, your voice, your opinion, your beliefs.

This becomes your natural attraction, your client attraction mode. People attract to the people who they resonate with character, values, and beliefs. And so you become this natural attraction magnet that people just draw into you. It doesn't need to have any reason. People will just come to you. And if it's in a everyday activity and interaction, visibility becomes something that you simply living in your purpose.

You're living with the intention of today, this is me. This is how I am. I am true to myself. This is what I believe in. And when everybody starts doing that, our whole world become a better world. And that is my goal.

Stephen Matini: What if someone somehow did not have much of an understanding of her authentic self? You know, just I'm not sure who I am authentically. What could it be the first step to take to go in that direction?

Michelle Kuei: The first step would be to hire a coach. What to start working with, Stephen ..

Stephen: Who’s clueless!

Michelle Kuei: Who’s a little more advanced. The reason why people are not seeing their true authentic self or they don't know who they are is because there's a lot of that beliefs, that unconscious world that we have been conditioned to.

We've been training schools to believe that we need to behave. We need to follow the agenda. We need to follow the classroom. We need to follow the society rule. We need to follow everybody else's rule. But underneath all the rules, the rules are created by people for people. But we're more than just the people. We have the soul. We have the body. We have the thinking. We have the superpower that's within that we don't even recognize that we have the superpower.

And so if you take away all the conditioning, all the teaching, all the rules that we had to follow, it is up to you to decide who are you globally. I think the reason why we have so many different disasters and things and conflicts is because we forget our true identity. And so we find ourselves in this identity crisis. We have no idea why we're doing things for what we do.

I really love Simon Sinek, his book, Start With Why. And when you find yourself in that identity crisis, I call it a crisis. If you don't know who you truly are, then you're in this identity crisis. You're just following everybody else's rule and that you believe that this is who you are. But in reality, you're so much powerful than what you believe in. And in order to recognize what you're capable of, you have to understand your why.

Why are we here? Why are you here? What is your big mission? What is your big purpose? And some people are like, wait, what? You mean I have other purpose than going to a job? Yeah, you have bigger purpose than going to a job. Can you believe that? Yes. You have better, bigger purpose than going to be a husband, a wife, you know, a teenager who take your school bag and go into the school, you have bigger purpose.

But you also have to do the lessons that the universe is showing you and teaching you. Because each time you learn those lessons, it's showing you a piece of who you are. We learn our values. We learn our characters. We learn all these from our life experiences.

Stephen Matini: Michelle, how do you find out what lesson or lessons you're supposed to learn?

Michelle Kuei: I saw patterns in all the things that I have experienced. There was a period of time where I was in my 20s and you know in my twenties and thirties, I was like ready to be in the dating world, right? So I was trying out different dating apps. I went out a couple of dates with guys. And each time I go and I got rejected, I felt bad. I felt terrible. I felt miserable. I felt like there's something wrong with me. And this is why they don't want me. This is why they don't want to be with me.

And initially, that was my thought. That was my idea. But when I started to see the reputation, repetition of people are rejecting because they're going after the physical, the physical appearance, the physical attraction. And what they made me realize was, OK, I don't have that. So that's what you want. Goodbye. That's not me. What I do have, I started to recognize what I do have. I have big heart.

I'm always willing to give. Generosity was one of my big gifts to a lot of people, even in my business today. Generosity is something that I'm very proud of. And so I started to recognize the pattern of what people are showing me by rejection, by telling me that, oh, this is what I'm looking for. And this is what you're presenting. And this is what you don't have. I'm not going to say that at that moment, it was not hurtful.

It was pretty hurtful. And I took a while. I was in my pity party. I had balloons. I had party hats on. I was in the full mode pity party. But then after that pity party, I started to recognize the fact that that may not be something that I have, but I have something else that others don't. And that's okay. So I'm going to embrace what I have and I'm going to stand proud of what I have.

Stephen Matini: So it's about being mindful of patterns and things that repeat patterns and what they're trying to teach you. I agree. I call them whispers because they are all over the place. They are all around us, but you have to be aware of them. You know If you go too fast, if you're not that present, it's very difficult to see them because they're not super loud. They happen all the time, but I always sense they're kind of, you know, whispers, like very subtle sounds, you know, I believe that in your business, you specifically focus on empowering women. Why you decided to the women was your thing?

Michelle Kuei: First of all, I'm a woman. And there's certain things that in a society as that we live today, there's still the community of women who do not get the same equality, who does not get the same treatment compared to the men, compared to all these other people on the top as a leadership.

It's a very unfortunate and very sad moment for us to continue to work on, because the women's history has been over 100, I believe by now it's 105, 105 years, right? So we celebrated women's history. But over the last 100 years, women still remain to be somewhat, I know I'm going to say this and men are not going to like it. We still remain to be the minority in decision-making.

So a lot of the important things that's being made on the top, women are still kind of like, here's your job, you do more, but this is what you're getting paid for, right? And so women, when they come home, not only do they have to do the job, they have to go home and take care of the family, there's still a lot of expectation out of women. But a lot of these women are very, very gifted and talented. Only if the society and the world give them an opportunity, a stage to show their expertise, to show their talent, the world would be a much better place.

Coming from women, you know of course I'm going to say that. But I do believe that if we give women an equal opportunity with pay, with the opportunity, with the leadership, with the expertise that they're capable, they're demonstrating. If we treat everybody the same, then these women are going to move the world. They're going to change the world. So I have this vision in my business where I am that someone who may be a few steps before them, and I'm reaching to the top, almost to the top, I'm turning around and I'm holding on a chain, a woman.

I'm holding on to one woman, and that woman is holding on to the next woman. So we create this human chain one person at a time. And I'm about lifting one woman up so that that woman can go out and create that ripple effect to make a change for anyone who's coming to her world. And so I chose women community because, first of all, I'm one of them.

And when I was building my business, when I was in the world, I wanted to have a community of women where I share the same vision. I share the same energy. You know When we talk, it's like, you know we're having a pajama party. I know yours is pity party, but you know we're having a pajama party. And so it's a very different dynamic when we have a group of women together. I would say that a lot of men nowadays has become the minority on the contrary because the woman empowerment is like all over, right?

So now people are looking at to the equality and diversity. But I think personally, I still have that affinity. It's my sisterhood. And we just need to find our tribe that we feel comfortable in supporting. And sisterhood is where I find my passion. It's where it lights me up, just thinking about them. It brings a smile to my face on a daily basis when I work with them. And so it's in the community that I chose to serve.

Stephen Matini: So does your chain of women have space for a feminist guy like me?

Michelle Kuei: Absolutely. You are invited to our pajama party. You do have to put on your pajama.

Stephen Matini: You know, I'm not a woman and I will never know what it feels to be a woman. So I can only, you know, listen. But I agree with you 100%. And I also do believe, and I sense that the future really needs female leadership for a bunch of different reasons. And you covered a lot of them. But yeah, there's something very distinct about being a woman that I believe the world needs right now. So I agree with you, you know, full heartedly.

Michelle Kuei: I believe the world needs everybody. And so earlier, I talked about the purpose, right? So every single one of us has a purpose. And no matter what gender you are or what identity you choose for yourself, the world needs everybody and everybody has a role in it. There's no exclusion. There's no inclusion.

There's just us. There's just we, right? We're all in this together. And however that you decide to serve in this world, it's good because it's a purpose. You're serving your purpose. And that in itself, it's the ultimate goal of what the world needs to be. So no matter what identity that you choose, the world appreciate you. And that's more important. That's the belief that we need in this world.

Stephen Matini: Yeah, and probably it's a way of being that we need. I know I call it feminist. I don't know what it is, but gender for sure historically has a huge weight. But it's a more distinctive way of being and showing up in the world with the people, you know, and all that. You know, of all possible directions that your career has taken, you have developed such a fond passion for marketing. Why marketing?

Michelle Kuei: Marketing makes me alive. I think I've been, my personality has always been, I'd like to be with people. I'd like to have conversation with people. So people are my people. And I find all ways to be with people in conversation. And marketing in the core of it is about having conversation. It's about building a relationship. It's about serving that person to exactly what that person needs. And you do that by understanding what that person is going through.

And one of the things, I can't remember, it was this week or last week, I was talking about the core of what makes a good marketer or good coach being a good coach. And one of the essence of being a good coach is that you have to have empathy. Empathy is your superpower, both in coaching and both in marketing. Marketing relies on a lot of your empathy.

You have to understand what your client is going through or your customer is going through in order to understand and meet what is it that they're looking for, what their need is so that you can create product, you can create services for that person. And so empathy is really your superpower. And I think empathy has been a big lesson for me to learn from my journey when I was very young. After the accident, I spent five years within a rehab center and I was exposed to a lot of different other children, other teenagers who experienced a similar trauma.

And back then, we had a group of people who are experiencing polio. Back then in the '70s, there was an outbreak of polio in Taiwan, in Asia country. So a lot of these children, they're having polio. And so when I was exposed and saw what they have to go through, it taught me how to empathize with them. I may not look the same way, but I knew their struggle. I knew that, you know, being, bound on a wheelchair, you cannot reach to the top.

And I knew just by interacting with them, I knew what it feels like. And so it was teaching me how to empathize with people who may look different, who feel different. And it taught me to recognize their emotion, their feelings, their limitation, and how I can help them to serve them, to make it easier for them, right? So I learned that skills at a very young age without recognizing that this is empathy.

And so I took that lesson later on in life, and I was still practicing empathy along the way. And when I finally got into marketing, I was like, oh my goodness, this is exactly what I need in order to understand what my client is going through. In order to help them to see that your client is experiencing this, how can you position your service to help your clients?

And so in other words, I wasn't just teaching them about marketing. I was teaching them how to empathize so that they can create the product and services that they can help their clients.

Stephen Matini: We covered so many different things. All of them are really super, super important. If you have to point out, one, that somehow you believe a listeners should pay attention to, what would you say that is?

Michelle Kuei: Permission. I think from what we have talked about today, it's really that permission to be vulnerable in a position or a permission to allow yourself, there's going to be days that totally doesn't make your day look great and you feel miserable. So the permission is to give yourself to have that moment, to OK, to put the balloon up, put your potty hat on, and have that pity party, but give you permission also to get into that moment of, I feel bad about myself, but I'm going to put on the time clock.

I'm going to allow in the next five minutes to feel miserable. But after that five minutes, I'm going to take off my party hat and move on and think about what is the opportunity here? What do I need to learn? But permission is important because it allows us to reset and it allows us to bounce back. So just like the coil, you need to stretch, but you also need to allow it to go back to its original state so you can stretch further.

Stephen Matini: Michelle, you are, to me, you are gigantic. So you feel huge. You feel immense. Thank you so much for all these insights and for your energy. I absolutely love it. Thank you.

Michelle Kuei: Thank you so much for having me. Even though this is our second time meeting each other, but I feel like I know you forever.

Stephen Matini: Me too.