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