The beauty of the Buttefly
[Music]
so
here i am today not to talk about what i
have done
but it’s more about how many times i
have failed in my life
and how much struggle i had in the past
but before i start my story i will just
show you a book people talk a lot about
self-help
so far i brought a book today
and about four weeks ago my best friend
gave me this book the title is your one
word
sorry to advertise the book right here
in the back of the book
the writers say and questions and
challenge yourself
if you use one single word
to describe your whole life the meaning
of your life
the target to your life what would that
word
be and he continues i’m sure
many of you here will not have the
answer yet
is it true yes but things have come
when i read that question about four
weeks ago
two minutes later and say oh i found
mine
it came so easy it came so instantly
and i started to prepare for my ted talk
today and i looked at
my whole life journey 42 years of living
on this earth working as a teacher for
20
nearly 20 years and i started to
look at everything i have gone through
and so that’s what i’m going to
share with you i have my keyword here
but i’m not going to show you until the
end
i’ll keep that as a secret and i want
you to walk through
stories in my life and hopefully
you’ll find out why i came to realize
the purpose of my life and i want to
share with you that
so story time okay um
i was born into a family of six children
five boys and one girl in a very remote
area
in the long province in the 1970s
life was just so huge struggle for many
people and just raising up six children
in a family
was a huge structure for my parents plus
my father used to work
for the u.s navy before 1975.
and so live in the 70s was a little bit
insecure at that time
and everybody in my village at that time
people stopped going to school
all of the kids would just stay at home
and help with the family
and so being born into that family the
first thing i experienced was actually i
had a very carefree life so much fun
as a child in the field with the buffalo
without a friend
but it’s also the first moment in my
life i started to experience
the feeling of shameful the feeling of
being discriminated because you are poor
and i started to see tears from my mom’s
eyes
every time she could experience the
feeling of being looked
at not for her for her children
and deep down i started to realize what
it means to try
and to become successful right at that
time but my life
at that time was so quiet until the age
of five something terrible happened to
me
my parents sent me to school
i have long days just playing with my
friends and i enjoy more
in the field rather than in the school
but i could not understand
in the middle of the village there where
everybody cared more about food
and clothes my father was very committed
to education and i cannot remember how
many times
he asked everybody in the family to sit
down in the evening with the oil line in
the middle
in 1917 1980 and he kept reminding us
about what would happen if we decide to
quit school
the first thing we would do is to get
everybody out
of the family if we ever thought about
not going to school
so he was very committed and it’s still
a very secret to me now like where the
idea came from
in his mind everybody else even in my
family going against
education so
being in that situation and in that
context i
i learned the first lesson of being
grateful
to having such a caring and loving mom
and a committed father in my life
but then you know i know that i could
not escape from education
i prefer sometimes i feel jealous with
other kids
in my village because they have long
days playing i sacrificed half of my day
at school
not enjoying to be honest sorry teachers
um and then i become a teacher right
it’s tricky
but my my life went on to
secondary school and in high school very
quiet the only thing i could do
is to stay focused i was very obedient
at that time just listening to my
parents and my teachers all the time
i tried to study hard strangely
the best score i got in high school was
6.72
i could never be a good student in high
school even i know that i have tried a
lot
i was so bad in high school but i did
start to feel that i enjoy more school
and this is also the stage
at school i started to experience what
people call
fella at the end of year 12
i took the university entrance exam i
failed first year
interestingly i didn’t feel sad not
disappointed but i begin to see in the
eyes of people who loved me and who
wants the best for my life
the look of disappointment and more
expectation
from me so i felt sad for two days
hacked my luggage going back to kentucky
city
spending one year reviewing the lesson
[Music]
taking the exam again the second year
and luckily i passed
becoming a student at the university
[Music]
but i hate the war again right on the
first day i stepped into the university
i was among 255 students at university
at that time
not understanding a word of english
and so in the first months of the
university many times
i have talked about quitting university
going back home
life is easier it’s a partner right
but then i felt so lucky at that time to
have one of my teachers at the
university
he understood all of the psychological
process the students about
he sat down patiently explaining
encouraging and supporting
so we overcame the problem thanks to
that teacher
that’s the second person that i felt so
grateful to
in my life and
all i could do in my four years was to
stay
focused i never considered myself to be
an intelligent person but i did work
very hard
through four years no playing no
no computer at that time luckily so
after four years rewards came i
graduated
top one in my class out of 255 students
it was the biggest achievement
ever in my life at that time
after that i was granted for the
position of the university to become a
lecturer
wow you can fly oh i feel so happy but i
could see the happiness
more in my parents eyes and the people
who have trusted me
rather than for myself so if you look
around you see a lot of successful
people in life
my my success at that time was nothing
compared
to all that but if i put into my
position
that somebody from a poor family from a
remote area
struggling through life to survive at
the university
and achieving such success at the
beginning in their life
is so extraordinary so significant to me
at that time so my journey began here at
this university
in the past 19.5 years i began working
here in 2001
as a teacher as a lecturer the first
five years for me was amazing
i really enjoyed working and
a lot of enjoyment came but then i hit
the wall
again and this time it’s even more
serious
i have enough knowledge and skills that
i learned from university to function
well as a teacher
but then in life i’m so terrible
i look back at my life and it’s like
wait a minute nowhere in your school
and in your life has somebody taught you
how to live a good life
how to stand up when you fall how to
behave well with society and how to be a
good person
not to talk about how to become
successful i didn’t have a clue
and as many times i failed i hit my head
pleading i couldn’t find an answer at
that time
so what i did i observed the way people
around me
how do they leave i started to pick up
wrong ideas
i match on become very competitive
tried to work crazily so to be what i
compete for
money for material
for fame and position and to some extent
i was successful i got promoted
at the university but at the same time i
began my business and started to
try to build my own school i worked
crazily for about five years
and i felt so amazed by the achievement
i’ve got during this time
but then in the year 2012
i began to hit the biggest world in my
life
i lost own sense of meaning
about the reason for my existence in
this life
i started to feel so tired realizing
this is not the way
you should lead your life
and i actually share with
nobody at that time because i put on
myself
the identity of somebody who is quite
successful
and i didn’t allow myself to play
or to complain and to reveal secrets
about
moments in your life that you feel so
weak and you want
somebody to share so
no solution actually i decided to apply
for the scholarship
to go away move away from my comfort
zone
and the first three months in australia
for me was amazing
remember the picture that she shows you
i
feel like i escaped from the noisy line
into traffic
to somewhere very quiet
very peaceful when i have time
and energy to contemplate and to think
carefully
about my life and looking back at the
time that i have tried
for power success money
and position i would say i don’t claim
this time because it has trained me to
become
so strong like a worried but when i look
at that and say
these was the most terrible
the darkest time of my life if i look at
how i experienced that
but thanks for me to experience to
the people that i’ve met in my life back
in australia for four years
new ideas come and the people i have met
during this time have taught me so many
lessons
that i felt like i just been reborn
one more time that is the time
when i actually begin to think more
about the meaning of my life and why
am here
i decided to come back to vietnam out of
finishing
and things become so clear to me about
what i want to do for my future
now when you started to see the light
somewhere about how you are going to
live your life things become
so easy every single decision i met
since then back in the year 2015 becomes
so easy to me
because i do understand who i am
and every decision i make i’m able
to justify and explain clearly
to the people around me and honestly
sharing with you
in the past five years i have made
the biggest number of decisions in my
life i
moved away from being someone
who is more obedient to someone who can
stand on my feet
by myself and a lot of the decisions i
made so far
seemed to depart a little bit from the
traditional values and what
sometimes my parents wanted me to do
but now because i understand me more
and i realize there’s a lot of things
that i need
to challenge not that i don’t show the
respect to them
but i started to question the meaning
for myself
and secretly in the past few years
that they realized that i have to live
my life to the phone
and i started to feel what is journey
and
happiness to people so if you look back
at my live journey it’s not shocking to
what i have been doing
you see deep down every step every
success that i have found
i started to realize that somebody lay
the first step and breaks for you to
step up
it can be your family members your
parents can be your teachers
it can be your friends and if you
observe enough
you started to realize that you should
not feel
brand of yourself too much every time
you achieve something in life because
you are not alone
you have tried your best of course then
underlying every step of success there
is somebody who’s standing and
supporting
and the day i realized how grateful i
should be to life
life has become so beautiful and
fulfilling
and two years ago i began a new habit
but every day
i learned to practice thinking about
how grateful i should be every day two
minutes at least i was thinking about
something or someone i meant happened to
me
in a day that i should feel thankful for
and since then i learned to be more
humble
i learned to be more responsible
i learned to care more for other people
i stop complaining
and i enjoy almost every moment
everything i do
in my life and that is also the time
when i started to realize
the real happiness in your life actually
doesn’t come
from the money it doesn’t come from the
material
that you have simply it doesn’t come
only about your inner peace for yourself
but it comes from
the feeling of sharing and helping other
people and seeing
that they achieve things in their life
and so the works that i have come up for
myself
is the word devoted and that would be
the direction
that i will continue to live my life in
the future
you might have different understanding
of what it means to be devoted
but the work that i want to say in
vietnamese is the work
for me and that is
only when you feel that it’s your
responsibility
to help people and to make them better
and to see the people around you
by their happiness and success that is
when you find
that you really feel happy for yourself
and that a long-lasting
happiness so for the people here out
there
if you are still struggling to find a
way for yourself and you’re hitting the
walls like me in the past
i would kindly advise you to do this
practice with me
every day learn to be grateful
and hopefully you will see life
so beautiful and meaningful to live
thank you
[Applause]