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Getting to Know Michael Teh

We have always known Michael Teh as the meditation practitioner and a registered yoga teacher who discovered self-realization. Today, we will be exploring the other side of Michael which is his corporate side that he has well integrated with the practice of meditation to help enhance his business and as an investor and entrepreneur.

“Other than meditation and daily mindfulness, I also cultivated gratitude and thankfulness to stay humble with all my achievements, so that greed and Ego would not take over. “

We have always known Michael Teh as the meditation practitioner and a registered yoga teacher who discovered self-realization. Today, we will be exploring the other side of Michael which is his corporate side that he has well integrated with the practice of meditation to help enhance his business and as an entrepreneur.

 

Q: In short, please share what you do professionally.

Michael Teh (MT): I am an entrepreneur and investor. As an investor, I manage a private fund where I actively invest and trade in the Global Stock Market that specializes in the Australian Stock Exchange (ASX).

While as an entrepreneur, I have co-founded an art gallery called Aureo Gallery in 2017 but have sold my shares in 2020. At the same time, I became a qualified Registered Yoga Teacher 500 (RYT500) in 2020 and have started my journey in teaching and preaching self-realization through meditation, qigong yoga and philosophical understandings. In addition, I started my own personal brand IAMMICHAELTEH of which I conduct my signature program “The Essence of Life Workshops” to help my clients gain better understanding of self-realization and meditation.

 

Q: Was it a natural step for you to be where you are today given the educational background you had?

MT: It was not a natural step for me to be where I am today given the educational background that I obtained. I graduated with a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering (First Class Honor) in 2009 where it had helped me in the early days of my career as an Engineer.

The degree and education background provided me the opportunity to work in Melbourne as well as multinational corporations in Singapore between 2010-2015. However, I did not feel fulfilled as an engineer. At the same time, while I was pursuing my tertiary education, I developed an interest in investments and stocks trading to generate money and wealth.

In 2010, I started investing and realized that I have more interest in the world of finance than the technical knowledge of an engineer. I found joy in reading, researching and scouting for businesses (stocks) to be invested in to generate income and wealth. With the passion and effort, I was blessed to be able to grow my funds throughout and was able to quit full-time employment in late 2015 to focus on the business of trading and investing.

Q: What are the common challenges you face in your professional work and how do you overcome them?

MT: As an investor and trader, it is a very stressful work. And if I am not mindful of my stress, it can lead to many negative emotions that will create negative impacts onto my career and life.

For example, due to the nature of market volatility, I have to endure the cycles of boom and bust and be able to withstand the emotions of seeing funds grow many folds over the years and also to lose in a short period of time when the market crashes.

I have to also learn to find the balance between greed and fearful, more often than not, greed lead to massive losses and fear lead to not able to maximize your profit and returns. These negative emotions disrupt one’s internal peace, confidence, and conviction, leading to poor performance in investing and trading.  Worst, you unconsciously bring home the stress from work and causing the disruption of peace and harmony at home with the family.

To overcome these challenges, I cultivated the habit of daily meditation to alter my state of mind. It has benefited my life tremendously. I was able to attain the wisdom of drawing the power of faith and believe to overcome my internal fear that is derailing me from the confidence and conviction that I had.

Other than meditation and daily mindfulness, I also cultivated gratitude and thankfulness to stay humble with all my achievements, so that greed and Ego would not take over. As a result of daily meditation, I was able to find balance easily and not let the market volatility carry me away easily.

And as a result, my performance in investing and trading have improved markedly and I am able to achieve wealth creation, grow my funds and at the same time living peace and harmony at home.

Q: What are some of the significant changes in how you deal with your work after you discovered meditation and having founded ‘I am Michael Teh’?

MT: There are many significant changes that I have cultivated ever since I discovered meditation and philosophical understanding.  I became more patience and be at peace in every moment. The patience and inner peace have helped me withstand the market volatility, and in return was able to generate better profit and returns with work performance.

The inner peace and clarity of mind have helped me to maintain my confidence and conviction which is very important in my line of business, resulting in better returns. At the same time, the ability to generate faith and believe through meditation have outweigh internal fear leading to much more positivity in life.

As an entrepreneur and investor, it requires a lot of courage and believe in one’s mind to be able to thrive. The fear of unknown, fear of missing out, fear of losing, fear of not being good enough, and many other kinds of fear which can derail us from achieving the success we deserve.

Hence, the cultivation of faith and believe through meditation have helped me overcome most of my fears that I have throughout my journey as an investor and entrepreneur. And as a result of these self-improvement, I then founded “I Am Michael Teh” hoping to share and render my wisdom to as many people as I can to help one remove pain and sufferings in life.

Q: As an entrepreneur, what is it that motivates and drives you?

Throughout the journey of self-realization, to realize my personal mission and the meaning of life, I realized the motivation varies according to your state of mind at various stages of your life.

Prior to my journey of self-realization, achieving material wealth and success were the biggest motivation as it drove me daily as I spend most of the time investing and trading the stock market. However, in the journey of self-realization, my motivation and drive changes as I delved deeper into the meaning of life and the meaning of one’s existence. I was able to realize my higher potential, (besides attaining material wealth, success and to raise a family) – which is to render my service to Humanity through teachings.

Blessed with the skill of meditation, I come to realize now I have the ability to impart the teachings of wisdom and philosophy to help one remove sufferings in life through the right understanding, right knowledge, and right mindset.

Each time I was able to render my teachings and to help my workshop participants realize their own inner light and higher potential, I feel immeasurable happiness, joy, and fulfilment.

So, the biggest motivation that drive me today is to be able to help one see the light in themselves and help one remove of life sufferings to be able to live life of higher potentials. Hence, I have created my signature programs “the Essence of Life” workshop series to help one gain understanding and the skillset.


Q: How would you define success?

In my opinion, success is defined as the realization and actualization of your potential in this lifetime. The state of mind changes as I journey through various stages of life, and in each stage of life, the potential varies accordingly.

I define success as the ability to realize and actualize these various of potentials throughout the journey of life where it brings one ultimate fulfilment, joy, peace and happiness. For example, in the age between 15-25, I realize my potential is to excel in academic study.

Hence, I worked hard and was able to graduate with First Class Honor degree. Between the age 25-35, I realized that my potential was to gain success in material wealth and to raise and build a family. As I work hard and continue to journey through the life, I was able to successfully grow my wealth and also to married with two children.

Now that I’m 35, I realized the next 10 years is to build a personal brand and to render my service to Humanity. Hence, I am now concentrating and putting my effort in it. Each time I am able to realize and actualize my potential, I am immeasurable happy and fulfil. This is the success I would like to define it.

 

Q: What would you say are the key elements for starting and running a successful business?

  1. Visionary- it requires a lot of reading, and understanding the state of the art of the world
  2. Value creation- an entrepreneur is to be able to identify the problems in the world and find solutions to fix it. The solution is often the value creation where it helps people to live a life of higher potential. In “I Am Michael Teh”, I believe in helping humanity to remove pain and suffering in life by awakening to their own inner light filling with wisdom and knowing to realize their higher potential in the journey of life
  3. Discipline, determination and self-confidence

Q: What are your future plans?

My future plans are to continue rendering my teachings through a hybrid of digitalization and physical. Digitalization would mean creating an online presence via social media content creations, video production of teachings and guidance. While continue to hold physical workshop and retreats to help participants adopt holistic approach to wellness and gain better understanding of self-realization through Essence of Life workshops

Michael Teh, 22nd August 2021.

Michael Teh is a meditation coach devoted to a personal mission of awakening more people to higher consciousness. He teaches self-realization through meditation, qigong, yoga and philosophy. Michael Teh Signature Workshop: The Essence of Life Series explores meditation as a powerful tool to realize our true potential. Michael has designed multiple workshops in this series to support his participants’ self-realization journey. Workshop Series 1 is currently running every few months on-ground in Kuala Lumpur, titled “Knowledge of The Self and Fundamentals of Meditation. Be sure to follow Michael’s social media channels and website for more updates: FB: https://www.facebook.com/iammichaelteh IG: https://www.instagram.com/iammichaelteh/   Website: https://iammichaelteh.com/