How I paused in order to press play
and today i’m going to give you
the five frames that’s always stuck with
me
in the year of oxford and even until now
and probably for many years to come
the first picture is actually my first
day in oxford i was
32 years back then and
this is all my life like all
the furnitures and every single
possession of my
back in vietnam i asked all of my staff
and friends
and my students just come to my
apartment whatever you can take away
just took away just leaving me this is
my suitcase
about 32 kilograms this is my the black
one is the backpack of my camera
and lens kit and this is my laptop so 32
years in my life
i didn’t possess anything except for
some saving in my bank account of course
and then these three bags um
and this is my apartment on my room
in oxford and the moment i dropped
so everything’s until the flight was
like a mess trying to
finish work you know transition the work
to other people
trying to say goodbye to everyone you
know because at that moment
i didn’t think i could ever come back to
vietnam
to stay forever that moment i thought
this is it
three years in vietnam was enough and i
could need to build a new life overseas
and i’m literally done with vietnam not
as a home country i guess to come back
to visit my family or for a vocation
but literally i couldn’t see a career
and a life in vietnam
but this is the moment after the whole
crazy mess
and then took on the flight and then
dropped my package here
and this is the photo i took and it
really stuck with me when i look at the
photo
you know i live for 32 years five years
in the uk
five years in the us three years in
vietnam and this is all i got
right but guess what this
emptiness of things just made me feel so
happy
like i did not attach myself to a single
thing
somewhere you know it’s just this
feeling like dropping the package
in the apartment i feel like yeah
when you have so little of course not a
bank account
but when you have so little and not like
looking at the things in the house
full of always full of things another
house is pretty much empty
um i don’t know there was just this
weird feeling that
i felt so fresh i felt like no one is
looking at me
i feel like this is something i can
build and the first thing i learned
is in that year’s a pause it to just
take away the things that make me feel
heavy
and just stick with the thing that is
enough
and i feel i could have something new
with just this amount of thing
and it’s enough so this picture frame
really speak to me
since then and probably four years ago
is i live my life
with not trying to buy a lot of stuff
but try to get rid of a lot of stuffs so
that is the first
lesson i learned in my year pause not
getting stuff and purchasing stuff
but trying to get rid of stuff that i
have somehow purchased along the way
the second picture is the first few
weeks of oxford
was crazy it was like a new world and
you have 300 people from around the
world
flowing flew in and then there’s no
class it’s just time to get to know
people
and get invited to people’s houses for
dinner for
uh drinks or for like overnight chats
right so i got invited to this japanese
couple who are my classmates
and i look at this piece of artwork this
is not their
the piece of artwork in their house but
it’s just something similar i found on
the internet
um i look at this piece of artwork and
for some of you who may have known
so i’m just going to quickly explain
this intrigued me with this piece of
artwork can i ask my friends what was
that and then
he and his wife went on for two hours
talking about this art of japanese
philosophy it’s called kinsagi and kin
mean
gold and sugi means joinery like things
are joined by gold
and the philosophy behind this art is
life
is supposed to be broken
you cannot go through life try to mold a
perfect face
and the perfect face no matter how
beautiful it is it’s still
not complete but life is about
broken things you know money loss
family members passing aways losing jobs
friendship back up get dumped a few
times
get knocked out in business get rejected
by university and
jobs so this is the moment
after i heard the whole thing about how
how
japanese are created this kind of this
kinzuki
i walk from his apartment back to my
home
and as you know oxford is a world where
time seems to stop
for more than 800 years the place
somehow still preserved
as if it was 800 years ago so i walk on
this copper storm
um road by myself amid like chatbots
and you use the charming of the bells
and it’s so quiet that you can hear the
echoes of footsteps and
voices of people from a few alleys away
but it seems like you’re just in this
world
and somehow this image got stuck in my
head
and i i remember during that walk i
visualize in my head
like i’m arriving offspring at 32 years
of age as if like i was a perfect face
people look at me and they say oh he got
a phd from stanford
he was a top student in the uk in 2004
the top students in london 2006 are
seven and the top students
100 students in the world in 2006 and we
got all of these amazing awards
but i and i used to to to live with
those awards and entitles
and now imagine i carry this perfect
base with me
and then sometimes i tripped on the road
over a little storm
and the vase got broken and then you
have two options
number one you just try to collect all
the pieces
and throw away number two you can go out
there
to buy a new perfect face but then i
realized that there’s a third option
which is i would literally
spend every single day in oxford doing
one little exercise
is of all the millions of broken based
broken pieces of the face
every day i could look at each piece and
say one thing is this peace
does this piece belong to mine or is
this the given to me by the society
if this peace is given to me by the
society
and i don’t feel like it belongs to me
just leave it on the road
but this piece belongs to me i would
take it
and so from that moment literally every
single day in oxford is a day i say
i look at money i don’t have two ways to
think about it
which way i’m thinking is mine the next
day i look at family
i have two ways to think about it which
way is mine the next day i look at jobs
i have two ways to think about it which
means which way is mine
so i keep doing this exercise little and
little and little
and by the end of oxford year i end up
with
a vase but it has a lot of empty holes
because of the million pieces that got
broken down i only managed to collect
back a few hundred pieces
but those few hundred pieces were mine
the other pieces were given to me by
society
by expectations by social media by
people who rank me
who like look up to me my people gain
pressure to me
so so this this vase is incomplete
and it has a lot of holes but i found
the beauty of that and i feel
comfortable
with that because after the oxford i
know there’s
one thing i could control over is
control over my thinking
and my thought we are all the god
and kings of our own thoughts and
opinions
but somehow every day we don’t exercise
that power power
our thinking we borrow it we get
influence from other people
without replaying god on our
on our opinions and ideas so from that
you this this image
taught me one thing is every single day
whatever i found i have the power
to choose how i think about something
and it has to fit with me
the things even if they come from the
most respected person
in the society or the most you know like
god like bill gates or matt zucker but
it doesn’t matter
it’s actually just something that has to
fit with me
so that is the art of brokenness and the
second lesson i learned that australia
is
embrace my brokenness in life
the third picture is this beautiful
picture
so on on a day like in the winter
early morning oxford about 7 am i tended
to walk to school
because that is like the first exercise
i tend to do and oscar is such an
amazing place
during the foggy morning and i look at
this photo i
stop and this is the street backer and
you can see here
the black one he has a cup of coffee on
the other side has a cup
empty for the coins that the passenger
will walk by and dropping for him but i
stood there for 10 minutes
and not a single side not for a single
second did he look up
and say like please money or whatever it
is or his eyes banking for any kind of
pt from the passerbys
for the 10 minutes in his hand it’s just
a book
i walked back a few hours later after i
finished the class
and in his hand he steal the book i
didn’t know how much coin he collected
that day
but i knew that he just focused on one
thing and this picture frame
teach me something so powerful and i
want
every single student that i taught since
then
is you only have enough time within a
day
to focus on one thing only and that is
how i work every day i wake up
i say i can only focus on one thing to
do today what could
be that and i will actually finish the
day
wrapping up and completing that’s one
thing i did
because we tend to pack our day with so
many things
that we end up the end of day doing and
achieving nothing
and the cycle continues the next time we
wake up so this
street banker teach me something it
doesn’t matter what’s happening
on the outside environment it doesn’t
matter whether it’s like a minus one
degree celsius on that day
it doesn’t matter that he didn’t get any
coin that day but the power he can focus
on the book is what he can control
so that is the third picture of frame
that touched me
is just focus on one thing at the day no
matter how hard
just get it done right the fourth
picture frame is these of my two
nephews the first one is of my oldest
brother
and the second one is my my second
brother and
when i have the power to focus on things
in a day i set my goal every single day
i could buy a new book i may not finish
the book within the day
but i would go to the bookstore and
there’s this beautiful bookstore in
oxford if you ever come back which is
called border
waterstone sorry waterstone and there’s
a nice little cafe on the second floor
with the glass window overlooking the
entire city of oxford i could go there
buy a book
a day and then just read the first few
pages and put it there
and so basically in that one year i
bought more than 300 books
and i finished 200 books
and then when you suddenly read so much
i read pretty much any view i could
imagine
philosophy economics politics ai
business startups anthropology
archaeology
i start to feel like my mind is
exploding
and like you know like when you start to
feel like knowledgeable
about something your ego could like pick
up a little bit
you know and then these two pictures
came in and taught me
another lesson is it doesn’t matter how
much knowledge i have in here
it doesn’t matter how much i work
and how much people respect me always
wake up and approach something as if you
were a five years-old child
a five-year-old child very simple he
woke up
the day and the negligence embrace the
day as if
he knows nothing about the world of the
past
for him whatever happened two days ago
today is a new day
and he literally pick up throw something
in the hand of a five years old child
he actually explored it and that wise
i told myself it doesn’t matter how much
knowledge i gain
and how much status i get in the society
as long as i approach every single thing
as if i were a five years-old child
always hungry to
learn always curious to explore drop my
ego
and uh you know smile as if you were a
child playing legal for the first time
that’s why every single problem i got
thrown
by business leaders by school by others
i just approach it as if like i’m a
five-years-old child
and this piece of legal that i have to
build and that’s it
and then you can become fearless and
then
the best way to put about this is
imagine your mind is like a bowl of rice
but it’s not
full it’s always empty because you wake
up
with this full bowl of rice there’s no
space
to take in new things you always use
your ego
your assumptions your prejudice to
filter and to fence away a lot of things
that could potentially be so great
but if your bowl of rice is empty you
have more space
to fill in good things of the day so
these two pictures of my
nephews on lunar new year day
taught me always embrace things and
solve problems
as if you were a five-years-old child
trying to solve
your first legal and the final picture
didn’t come to me in oxford it literally
came to me
about a few months ago so after i got
back from oxford
it was a crazy mess so three years i
built a company from nothing
to like a company that did all of those
numbers and
the first slide and then as i started
writing a lot on facebook
i started doing a lot of projects of
course in the way there’s always people
who want to knock you down who want to
stand behind your back
you’re going to blah blah blah blah blah
bad things about you in front of other
people
who want to do something negative and
terrible
about you and i got scared to be honest
i was like one of those like you know
just quite chill and nice and not trying
to be complete or whatever
but then that night i remember it was
incorporate 19
and then it was a stormy day in
in in hanoi and all the big big trees
us outside my apartment got not broken
down you know
but this little chasm flower i got on my
this this is actually the only flower
pot i’ve ever taken care of in my life
it’s still pleasant and then it’s just
like
dancing in the rain all those big trees
got broken down
and this little tiny flimsy flower just
the way swaying
and dancing in the rain and still
blossoming and i felt the puke the
beauty
of the jasmine dancing in the rain which
is
a peace no matter what rain and storm
out there
no matter what tree got broken down as
long as the flower
knows how to bend against the wind and
against the rain
it will do blossom in peace and with
that i actually for the first time in my
life didn’t care about what other people
talk about me anymore
yes it go down like my my my my
sensitivity
to all the other people did go down but
that was the first moment i felt like
looking back at my past
three years journey since oxford for the
first time in my life
like other people’s opinion didn’t
matter to me anymore i don’t care who’s
talking bad about me behind my back
i don’t care who’s trying to knock me
down i don’t care when someone talk nice
to my face and behind my back when the
door is shut
about me and just they may be like the
big trees
and i’m just going to be that jasmine
flower dancing in the ring
because in the rain at least the chest
will find peace
with itself so
these five pictures are what got me
through here today
and i want to share with you is the
first one
is simply to press play i have to put my
life on pause for
long enough to shut down all the voices
and listen to my inner voice
the first thing i learned is try to get
rid of things
as you go through life not to get
yourself heavier and heavier
with a lot of things okay the second
thing is
embrace all the bad things happen in
life embrace the brokenness
the ugliness the not so beauty thing
of you and try not to join them together
and only collect the pieces that belong
to you do not collect the pieces that
belong to others
all that throw to you by others because
at the matter in the
at the end of the day i feel like i’m
happier with less
and all these less on me not the others
the third thing i learned is like the
street beggars always focus on one thing
at a time
and that’s why at the end of the day
when i go to bed i always have this
sense of achievement
the fourth thing is trying to wake up
every day with an
empty bowl in your mind and so that you
have space
to feel things with not to block things
away
so approach things as if you were five
years old child trying to solve the
first legal
puzzle and the final thing is the more
you go on with life
the more problems you sow the more
people you meet the more responsibility
you have
don’t it’s just my personal philosophy
right don’t be a big tree
that don’t know that doesn’t know how to
bend with the wind
be the chasm that blossom and dancing in
the ring
because at least that’s how i found my
piece so with that i place
i hope that you guys can press play and
somehow
find the journey that is waiting for you
so thank you