My journey to America!

 

It has been a long time I did not have the chance to reflect on my life and appreciate all the intensive experiences that have been given to me to show up in this world! With a heart full of gratitude, I am writing these words to honor the stories that brought me to where I am today and  helped shaping my life into my current profession: a professional life coach who is fully committed to serve and to help people to transform their lives through heart-to-heart connections.

It was a dark night in a southern rural town of Vietnam, I was in my late teen at the time, and was ready to embark on a journey on a boat with my brother to escape communism. The boat was 15 meters long, but there were 300 people on that boat. We made it to the international border, and there were two big holes in the boat that caused issues. The captain decided to take the boat back to the shore… about 300 meters from the shore, the boat started sinking.. three hundred people crowd became so chaotic. Those who could swim jumped into the water and tried to swim to the shore, those who couldn’t hold on to the boat. My brother and I did what we need to do, swam to the shore and escaped the capture of local police officers and finally made it back to Saigon safely. Not everyone on that boat was that lucky. Half of the people died. I witnessed the first time in my life the fine line between life and death, and never forget those people who paid the highest price for freedom: their own life. This intensive experience stayed with me until today and became a flame in my heart reminding me how much blessed I am to achieve the freedom of living in America, the blessing that half of those people on that boat died without achieving it. Not every moment staying alive that I do not appreciate the gift of life, the gift of freedom that I receive from this country whom I am honored to call “home” in these past so many years. I am a proud Vietnamese American!

Fast forward, I came to Canada after several unsuccessful escapes, became Canadian citizen, graduated from college, found the love of my life and got married and moved to the United States, became active with the communities and became American citizen in 2000. It has been a beautiful journey for me to serve this great country as a proud citizen in the past 18 years. I remember vividly as I stood in front of 700 ladies and gentlemen (mostly ladies) to deliver my acceptance speech for the Americanism medal awarded by the Honor Society of the Daughters of American Revolution (DAR), listening to the national anthem being sung with so much patriotism… and given that I just lost my own mother a week before, I was deeply moved and touched. A sense of gratitude and loving was just so overwhelmingly felt in my body and I said the word “THANK YOU” again with a new meaning, the meaning of commitment to give back to deserve this precious freedom that I am given, the meaning of commitment to serve and to give! It was the night when I became solid about the new mission and the new purpose of my life: living a life of service through loving, giving and serving.

The year of 2017 was the year of transformation when I had to go through quite a few setback in life with my husband’s hospitalization in which I nearly lost him, followed by my mother’s departure, and then my father’s passing only six weeks afterward… Within the first six months of the year, I lost the two rocks of my life, my beloved parents, and coping with my husband’s illness while making the decision of stopping my corporate work to dedicate full time for the non-profit organization that my husband founded 12 years before. And yet, I never felt so much alive and full of an inexplicable energy that lifted  my spirit up and carry me so far! It was also through this turbulent time that I learned about the power of life coaching and how coaching can transform my life from darkness to light, from the deepest sorrow of my soul to the highest level of fulfillment. Going through these experience myself truly confirmed the mission in life for my next chapter: to bring more lights to this world through a life of service, through the non-profit work that my husband and I have been involved in the past three decades, and through the work of a professional life coach to help transform my clients’ life through a heart-to-heart connection, one person at a time!

I know that in my heart, I am ready to serve, to love and to give! I would like to end this note with Mother’s Teresa’s beautiful words

Daily Ritual that will help me to boost my productivity and happiness

I want to create this note to share with my FB friends some of the great insights from my leadership mentor John C. Maxwell.  I will pledge to follow this daily routine  in the next 3 months to see if it makes big difference and will share back with my friends.

Twelve (12) Pledges for daily routine

1. Attitude: I will display the right outlook daily.

2. Priorities: I will act on the things that are most important to me daily.

3. Health: I will follow healthy guidelines daily.

4. Family: I will communicate with and care for my loved ones daily.

5. Thinking: I wil practice good thoughts daily.

6. Commitment: I will make and keep proper promises daily.

7. Finances: I will properly manage dollars daily.

8. Faith: I will deepen and live out my faith daily.

9. Relationships: I will initiate and invest in solid relationships dailyl.

10. Generosity: I will model kindness daily.

11. Values: I will embrace good standards daily (in my case, I will embrace G.R.A.C.E. daily).

12. Growth: I will seek improvements daily.

Five things I will do every day:

1. READ:  at least 30 minutes – one hour will be dedicated for reading every day (can be reading books from my kindle, my iPAD, my online cloud reader, or listening to audio books, podcast, magazine..)

2. FILE:  at least 30 minutes to file my emails, documents, important artifacts in my system so that I can easily find it when I need it (this area, I am pretty bad, so I do need to revamp my system).

3. WRITE: at least 30 minutes of writing either by sharing on FB posts, or writing in my journal, or putting in a notes on my computer..

4. THINK: meditate at least 30 minutes per day, stop acting or doing and just reflect on things, reflect at the end of the day on things happening during the day and pray God for guidance. Practice and develop my spiritual wellness.

5. QUESTION: reflect and ask myself can something be done differently, or just question on the things around me during my daily routine, look for areas for improvements consistently on every single thing that I am doing… be curious and challenging myself on the things that I have been doing the same way even for a long time…

These are great thoughts shared by John C. Maxwell and it motivates me to practice starting TODAY!

The spirit of Giving – Choose to Give!

(Note: I want to share this talk I delivered at the Nguyen-Hoang Foundation fundraising event on October 22, 2016).

“We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.”

Our lives are defined by what we give. Sir Winston Churchill says it best. What are we giving today? How are we impacting someone’s life through our giving? How can we change someone’s world just by giving? And it doesn’t always have to be money. Give a smile, a compliment, buy a lunch, give the gift of your time to help out someone, giving can be done in so many different forms.

Someone might say, “but wait! I am poor, I do not have enough money to make ends meet, how can I give when I do not have enough food to put on the table for my own family?” What I am talking about here is the mindset of giving, yes, your money might be limited, but your love and your kindness can be given without limit. And it is a choice that you can make every single day – Choose to GIVE (being giving your love, delivering a random act of kindness, or giving your smiles, the opportunities are endless). The beauty of love and kindness is that the more you give, the more you have them.

There are so many ways to give and when your nurture the love and the kindness in YOURSELF, you become a beautiful spirit that in turn, impacts everyone who comes into contact with you. You can become the first candle to light up hundreds or thousands other candles, like Buddha’s saying “Thousands of candles can be lighted from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared.” Same as Love and Kindness.

To practice this spirit of giving, I would suggest that you use the GRACE framework to assist you in your giving journey, and remember this is a mindset… you do not need to have lots of money in the bank to practice this. You can start practicing it today and observe the results. The word GRACE, according to the new Testament, means “God’s love in action toward men who merited the opposite of love”.

In this speech, I use GRACE as a framework that stands for the following:

G stands for Gratitude

R stands for Respect

A stands for Accountability

C stands for Courage

E stands for Engagement

This is a mindset that we teach the youths at our Annual Youth Leadership Development camp Len Duong that Nguyen Hoang Foundation supports annually. What is so valuable about this mindset is that it can also be applied in any situation in your life journey.

Let us look more closely of what it means by GRACE with the Giving spirit.

G – Gratitude – is a deep appreciation of life in all forms, valuing both its gifts and lessons. Practicing Gratitude on a daily basis truly helps you create an abundance mindset… if we focus on all the blessings we receive every day, the sun shine, the beautiful nature around us, the blessing of being able to move around, to see the beautiful sky, the blessing of having a home and a family who cares about us… all of those blessings that we took for granted. If we practice gratitude, it gives you peace in your heart and it enables you to have more acts of loving and giving.

R – Respect is the practice of awareness and openness to others and respect other different perspectives. When we practice respect toward others, we tend to be more open for the differences we experience and it also enables us to practice active listening, kindness and love toward others, even in a hostile environment. Practicing Gratitude easily leads to practicing Respect and then together they lead to the third value “Accountability”.

A – Accountability is not just taking responsibility for our own actions, thoughts and emotions but also accountable for everything occurring in our life, being the good and the bad. Although sometimes we cannot change the circumstances that happened to us, we still can always have the choice for the right responses upon these circumstances. Choose to love – Choose kindness – and the LOVE here is not the kind of love that means “I love you because you love me”… it is a higher level of love, it is your inner compassion, you love others because they are also a human being, regardless whether they love you or not… I am talking about Unconditional Love that mother Teresa, Buddha, Jesus Christ have taught throughout their lives and be a role model for us to follow. Be accountable to practice love and kindness in all situations can be the best gifts you can give in any circumstances. However, it is easier said than done, isn’t it? How can I love my enemy? How can I practice kindness while everyone around me is so hostile and unfriendly… in order to practice this, you need the fourth values – the C, which stands for Courage.

C – Courage is the ability to act differently from what you feel and in the case of giving, it is the strength you need to be able to act out of love and a giving spirit despite how hard the circumstances might be. Courage allows us to take the risk to grow and to be better. And when you choose love and kindness, you will surely grow since you have aligned yourself with God in the spirit of Giving.

The last value in GRACE is truly reflecting the spirit of giving: Engagement! Engagement is the intention to wholeheartedly contribute our gifts and our talents in a way that benefits our communities as well as our natural environments. As a human being, we are all inter-connected with other 8 billion people around the world. We are different in race, color, language, culture and background, but we all belong to the same world. The world of humanity, where each human being has a unique gift and talent that can be used to serve others. Practice giving, being giving your gifts and talents, or your time, or your money to help create a difference in other people’s life is the best thing you can do to live a meaningful life… since as Sir Winston Churchill has said and Tony Robbins also re-iterated in the following thought

“Life is really about creating meaning. And meaning does not come from what you get, it comes from what you give. Ultimately, what you get will never make you happy in the long term.. but who you become and what you contribute will.” (Tony Robbins)

I would encourage you to practice GRACE in the spirit of GIVING and you will live a meaningful life with so much joy and happiness. When you fill your heart with just Love and Kindness, you are truly aligned with God and with God, everything is possible! I want to conclude this talk with the following poem that is posted on the wall of Mother’s Teresa’s home which truly reflects the Spirit of Giving.

People are often unreasonable, irrational and self-centered. FORGIVE them anyway.

If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motive. BE KIND anyway.

If you are successful, you will win some unfaithful friends and some genuine enemies. SUCCEED anyway.

If you are honest and sincere, people may deceive you. BE HONEST and SINCERE anyway.

What you spend years creating, others could destroy overnight. CREATE anyway.

If you find serenity and happiness, some may be jealous. BE HAPPY anyway.

The good you do today, will often be forgotten. DO GOOD anyway.

Give the best you have, and it will never be enough. GIVE YOUR BEST anyway.

In the final analysis, it is between you and God. It was never between you and them anyway!

(Mother Teresa)

Choose to Love

A GREAT CHOICE IN LIFE – CHOOSE TO LOVE!

Notes: Below are the notes I shared on my Facebook wall about the choice of LOVE! Although Valentine’s Day has been passed, it is still relevant to re-emphasize the importance of practicing LOVE in your life.

Valentine’s Day is a very special occasion to celebrate LOVE… but I think we should honor LOVE each and every single day in our life.  As Jesus has stated in the Bible “Love never fails!”…  As I grow older and become wiser, I realized how important it is to practice loving and giving love at every chance you have in our lives. You do not need to wait until Valentine’s Day to show your love to others… it is a 24 hour daily business.

Practicing LOVE in our mind to have compassion to those who are not as fortunate as ourselves… thinking about others who do not have a family around to love and be loved, thinking about millions of people around the world who do not have enough food on the table as we are.. thinking about those people who cannot see the beautiful sky like we can, who cannot hear the birds singing like we can, or who cannot walk around and running like we do because they either born without those capabilities or got some accident that cause them losing those abilities… whichever it is… practicing LOVE makes us feel better and more tuned in with people around us and I am talking about the LOVE that does not require to be loved back… I am talking about the 100/0 LOVE that will bring you peace, joy and happiness regardless of what life throws at us… It is the INNER LOVE that no-one can take it away because is it OUR CHOICE.

One of the philosophers has a very good comparison between Love and Money.  He said,  everyone loves to have some money since it gives you the power to do a lot of things, but when you have money and you give it out, the more money you give, the less you have in your bank account.  Love, on the other hand, is not like that… the more LOVE you give to others, the more you have and you never run out of love like you run out of money! What a profound thought! When talking about LOVE, I am not talking about the feeling toward someone with the expectation that someone will have to love you back or give the same love back to you… this LOVE should be bigger than that, bigger than your ego, bigger than yourself… it is the LOVE that Jesus had in him that drove him to live his life and sacrificed for all his people… it is the unconditional love that parents give to their children regardless of whether their children will give love back to them or not. How wonderful it is of the choice TO LOVE and there is no limits.

You can say “Wow, that is hard, how can I love someone whom I hate? that is impossible!”… or you may say “I will love him/her if he/she loves me first”… it is the expectation that will disturb your inner peace and make you angry if things did not happen as you expected. It is not that mindset that I am talking about… I am talking about the inner compassion that is automatic and you just give out unselfishly to the people around you, especially to those who are close to you.. It is a change in the mindset and will set you free from anger, hostility, jealousy, negative feelings toward others etc. and the most amazing thing is that LOVE IS FREE… it does not cost you money to practice it and the more you practice the MORE LOVE you have to give out… how wonderful is that?

I want to share with you a picture that my husband and I took as we were in ER section of the hospital waiting to be treated. It was November 17 as we were involved in a serious car accident that nearly took our lives. I was in excruciating pain and a Truong was a bit better – and we were brought to the hospital by the ambulance, stressed (of course) and beaten up pretty bad… and our sister-in-law took this picture for us.. You could tell that my smile was a bit crooked since I was in so much pain, it took me great effort to crack the half smile (:-)), but look at my husband… he never stopped to amaze me with his inner strength… he still managed to crack a beautiful smile in this picture… how wonderful it was… it showed how love and inner peace are inter-related…. As you practicing love and giving.. you will find the joy and the happiness inside you that no-one can take it away, even as bad as the accident that nearly killed you..  I am not saying that we have mastered that mindset, but we are on a journey toward it… the more love you practice the better you will be… trust me!

On Valentine’s Day, I would like to share these thoughts with a challenge to all of you to choose LOVE as a choice, not a chance and practicing LOVE will help you build your inner strength and find your happiness in life.

 

The Journey Begins

Thanks for joining me!

Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton