What can we teach our children about a happy life
[Music]
[Applause]
good evening
my name is tan and i am the
product of my parents generation
so as a vietnamese and as an agent
growing up our parents usually tell us
okay you need to be obedient you need to
listen to other people
yes you need to to do well in class
sorry
sorry i can’t get this done
yes you need to do well in class do a
score
you need to find a good job right and
then you need to find a person and get
married
that’s all your life right pretty simple
right
and i did all that yeah i listen to
people
i i score well in school i got a good
job
i marriage i thought my life is done
it shouldn’t be yeah uh along the way
somehow i find that it’s not that easy
and and then many things happen and
sometimes i feel that i am
kind of fat stressed and depressed but
that’s not okay
i think okay my my parents would tell
that there’s
reason for them to tell me that and this
is just part of life i’m okay
is it part of the package view so
sometimes you are good
sometimes you feel stressed that’s fine
but things start to change when i
am repairing myself and i have a kid
and i start to ask myself okay should i
tell myself the same thing and she
should be
do a be a good student and find a good
job and things like that
but the more and i also an educator so i
have to teach children
about about languages about art so i
have the duty to think more
what kind of questions i can ask
how you i can tell our children so the
more i think so that’s why i start to
bring out my crystal ball
i need to look into the future in the 10
15 20 years from now how our children’s
life would be different from us
and the more i look into it the more i
will say like
whoa this is they are totally different
from our life now
so the message that i my parents told me
would not work this is why
in 20 years from now one single computer
can do the tasks of all 10 billions
brave
combined so whatever you can calculate
whatever you can think
they can do it faster than all the 10
billions of
us so whatever you need they will give
you
whatever you want to complete the
machine will do it better
it’s a good thing right you don’t need
to do any thinking that’s good
second thing how can you compete and the
machine has done
so much better than all the jobs that we
know in 10
15 years may then have been gone and
we have to uh there may be not the
accounting job
anymore right there may not be a human
resource job anymore
i don’t know it may change but the good
thing is
my child’s never gonna never have to
entertain the thought of hunger
everything the food will be ready yeah
and
they never may never be entertained the
thought of
no condition air conditioning or
entertainment at the fingertip
all of those are solved right and my
child gonna be happy
they’re gonna live in a box eat from a
box
watch from a box and the light will be
from home to shopping mall
couldn’t be that happy
and however my conscience told me that
there’s something wrong
and i was in singapore i was in asian
countries that
are few years ahead of us in terms of
development
and life can be pressure life can be
stressful
and there’s a lot of pressure for
children to learn
and to get better grades get into better
school to find a job
and in korea in japan that is a very
strong stressful point for young people
and the array is is skyrocketing
and and really how can they be happy
if all they need is another better job
and or whether they they be happy
everything will just speak to them
by a machine they’re not going to be a
happy life
so that’s why i have to think and i have
to dig into my
learning dig into what i know to find
some way
for us to change the conversation we
talk to our
our kids and what can make them
a different way of growing up so i’m
going to share with you three things
that i think our children or some of us
can learn
to incorporate into our life so that we
feel
happier and we can cope with the change
that is so
crushingly fast coming to us
the first thing i want to share is to
nurture your child
superpower i’m not talking about the
superpower that we
we say okay you’re going to be the the
top student in the class
are you going to get the top the best
job in the market
it’s not that kind of superpower
is the superpower that is inside of each
of us
inside of each of the child that is so
beautiful when we look at it
it doesn’t need to be good at math or
good at
english or whatever it’s something
that’s so unique
of that person and
i can share two things that is make up
of that power
one is the natural gift of the ability
and second is the character strength
so growing up i was doing well in school
i went to overseas to study i get job
but along the way i didn’t know what
what i’m really good at
i’m good at scoring in school that’s all
i’m not really sure what i’m really good
at and i just do whatever
people give me the job to do that’s all
i didn’t feel really happy about what i
can do
then along the way when i was 20 28 30
along the way i got some job doing
translation
interpreting and i realized i got the
ability
of my listening my listening skill
my ability of my ear i don’t know what
it is but it’s
it’s something that’s strong there i can
listen i can understand the person
so quicker than any other interpreter so
i can
interpret better or faster it’s just
something so small but it takes me 30
years to realize
during my kid needs 30 years for him to
explore that
i know that someone here they have the
natural ability to roar
but no one tell them that my parents
never tell me that you have a good
listening ear
never told me that you just you you have
to listen to other people and things
like that
right we do that so the first thing
is to find the natural talent and the
second thing is character strength
character strength is something that is
inner
is ourselves that is more only values
across
cultures something like courage
something like curiosity
kindness love for beauty these are
things that make our heart light up
and they feel happy when we start to to
find this thing in ourselves
also leadership these are the things
that really touch ourselves
and the more we do and help our children
to do this they will feel
confident determined tolerated
enthusiastic and this is the size of the
quality of life
so some of the action for parents or for
you guys
can do is that you should be a strength
detector
you should be seeing this goodness in
your cheek and your children right
and if any person have the kid here
yes a few of them yeah yeah we should
look at them and say oh
why don’t you do that that is messy it’s
not not right no
if we think and we change the length and
we look at our kids
we’re gonna see that there’s a lot of
things so beautiful in there
and they want to feel that you accept
them you see them
as they are yeah like and then
and then we can offer them phrases like
if the child have
a strong tendency for kindness
we can say wow i think that you you you
try to
to be kind to someone when you have the
opportunity to do so
and that’s a great thing and i really
like that and i’m proud of you
would you be able to see that and tell
that
i think that makes a huge difference
in your children’s life maybe some if
someone tell you that
at the college it’s also make a
difference to your life as well
and the third thing is we have now we
have time
so we don’t spend time on our phone we
should spend time to
mindfully cultivate those strengths yeah
if your child has the kindness tendency
a kind of strength
then we can bring them to events or
something
some activity that can trigger that or
if he has the curiosity
strength we can do and find a way to do
that and that will bring so much
more and along the way he learns and we
we feel that he are confident
he is confident and he he will use that
in in the future yeah
and that will bring happiness according
to psychologists
the second thing is resilience so when
your child
have something like anger or sadness or
envy
what do you what do you want to do
usually
you say don’t cry just smile
is that something you do right or do we
just okay
this other phone is not your fault yes
oh i will help you so we immediately
help our child
and do not let them handle the
depression
or we just comfort them okay come here
it’s okay baby
is that so would your child be happy
then
would they be they do they do
they do for that moment they do for that
moment
but then along the way when they grow up
when things is
much harder happen they can’t control
they can’t cope with it
they can’t so that’s why resilient now
is so important it’s one of the most
valuable
skill for a person to leave and
within this rapid race of technological
change so you see
all the machine is is is doing much
better
so every day now one day is good next
day is not good
the next day can be worse how can your
child deal with that
yeah how can you charge it with that
they need resilience they need to have
to deal with difficulty
they need to experience they need to
overcome the challenges
and like when they can do that they can
enjoy the happiness
longer because they know okay everything
is easy i can overcome that
yeah so some of the things that we can
instill in our children
is that to step back and let them handle
the fresher
the challenges secondly is give them
situations that challenging
but manageable yes and the third thing
is very important and i learned so much
about it
that’s something that countries like
singapore america
is putting into school from age of
six is that they help the children to
learn about
emotion to recognize their emotions
there are some emotions that are
that make you feel good and they have
emotions that make you
not feel good and it’s it’s your job and
it’s your skill
to recognize that and get over it for
example
if the child will be angry we have to
try to recognize that okay if you feel
that
negative emotion that not feel good
emotion
you can go to a corner by yourself
just take some deep breath
and it will go slowly go away
because emotion is not you that anger is
not your friend
emotion is just something that’s come
and go
so these are the skills that it taught
across
across the world now some of the
countries they are doing and i think
that
is very useful for our kids
the third thing is gratitude gratitude
is is something that makes you happy
very long
who who wants that who wants to feel
to do an act on the behavior and make
it you feel happy for a long time
and if yeah yes yeah
do you have an experience that you you
feel so grateful for someone who had
done something that
touched or changed your life and and you
remember that
so much or do you have
an experience that someone came to you
and
thank you for what you did that changed
their life
how long this is slacks you remember
you remember it for like months or
few years that’s a good right
it’s much better than going to the
cinema and enjoy a little bit and forgot
about it
in the next few hours yeah so
gratefulness gratitude is something that
is very
very important so children learn that
from the age of
five and the more they learn the more
they grow they do better in school
they are more optimistic they can be
able to feel happiness
and overcome challenges so that’s the
good things i want you
to learn and share to your path to your
children
so what we can instill gratitude we can
talk about gratitude
we can learn about how we can thank
someone
daily what we are thankful for daily
we can ask our children what they are
grateful for during the day
and we can discuss how and where and who
we can thanks or some acts of kindness
that we can share with others so these
are the things we should do as a habit
we don’t do it when we like it
yeah we we talk to our children the more
we do that
the more they feel confident about
themselves
so so
with that i would like to to say that
in this life i have been
become the person that my parents want
to be
but somehow i didn’t find who i am
what’s my strengths
i didn’t find the the ability it took me
a long while
to for me to overcome some of my
difficulty
and i now i start to learn to be
grateful
to what have come to me because life
happened for me
not to me so it took me 30 years to
learn these
these things start to learn
and have a long way to go but we have
the opportunity right now
to instill that in our kit when they
were fought
with five or maybe ten have 10 years
20 years for them and they will feel
much more confident
they were able to deal with any hardship
like
deal with them and they will become a
better person
and they won’t be
and they won’t be just
say like this they won’t be a person
with just with curiosity
with vitality with love of life and with
happiness
with that thank you very much