When I was 26, I stood on a big stage for the first time, with around 500 people below me. I still remember the light shining straight into my face, the sound of the microphone in the hall, and the feeling of being both overwhelmed and excited as I looked down at all those eyes waiting for me to say something that could inspire them. When my talk ended, the whole room applauded loudly. Then people came up to me, congratulated me, and wanted to hear more. I truly liked that feeling. The feeling of being seen, being admired, being recognized, as if everything I had worked for was finally being confirmed in front of everyone.

But after enough moments like that, the applause, the praise, and the feeling of victory began to repeat themselves. Only then did I slowly realize that something inside me no longer felt the same. After those moments in front of the crowd, I started to move to a corner and sit by myself. When the noise faded, a strange silence appeared inside me.

It was not sadness exactly. It was not disappointment either. From the outside, nothing was wrong. The talk had gone well. People were kind. The applause was real.

But something in me remained untouched.

I was being recognized more, but I felt less known. For a long time, I thought being seen meant becoming someone people could admire. In the world I came from, that belief made sense. I had learned early that people look differently at those who have less, and I did not want to carry that old gaze for the rest of my life.

And for a while, it worked. Praise reached a part of me that had been hungry for years. Each milestone gave me a short relief, as if I was finally becoming someone worthy of being seen. Because that feeling only came when I achieved something, I slowly learned to keep achieving in order to keep feeling seen. But the more I was seen through achievement, the more I abandoned the parts of me that had nothing to prove.

I did not know it then, but the kind of seeing I was hungry for would not come from a bigger stage. It would come later, in a much quieter room, when I stopped trying to be impressive and let the hidden parts of me be seen.

That was when I began to understand: there are two ways to be seen. One makes you perform more. The other lets you come home.

I Thought Being Seen Meant Being Admired

Before I ever stood on a stage, I had already learned another kind of being seen. I grew up with the feeling that my family was different from other families, and that difference was not something I knew how to carry easily as a child. There was illness, poverty, and a heaviness in my home that I did not see in the homes of other children. Very early, I learned to notice what could be looked at, what might be laughed at, and what I should quietly hide. When your living conditions are worse than other people’s, you are not only easier to overlook. You also begin to learn how to make yourself smaller.

There is one memory from elementary school that has stayed with me very clearly. One time, my teacher asked in front of the class whether any student belonged to a poor household so that the school could offer support. I remember my classmates laughing and teasing. I knew my family needed that support, but I did not dare raise my hand. In that moment, what frightened me was not only the fact of being seen as poor, but the feeling that if I raised my hand, I would be seen as a person with less value. Looking back, I see that this was not just a sad childhood memory. It was one of the first moments I learned that being seen could also make me feel smaller. What stayed with me was not only the shame of being poor, but how early I learned to see myself through that same gaze.

In that world, I slowly absorbed a belief that felt natural: if I wanted to hold my head high, I had to rise above. I did not want my family to be seen with pity or disrespect. So achievement became more than success. It became the way I tried to be seen without feeling ashamed.

Achievement Gave Me Recognition, But Pulled Me Away From Myself

Achievement did not feel empty at first. It began with things that were real.
In 2022, my family built a new house. The old house I had lived in since I was born had become too old to hold us well, and I wanted my mother to have a decent place to live — a place I could also return to.

For many people around me, building a house was not unusual. But for my family, it felt almost impossible. We had been one of the families no one expected to rise quickly. And then, almost suddenly, we built one. A beautiful one.

I could feel the gaze around us change. People began to look at my family differently. And they began to look at me differently too. I was no longer only the quiet, hesitant boy they used to know. I was still the same person on the outside, still ordinary in many ways, but something about how people saw me had changed. It was as if they could now sense a different weight inside me: this quiet kid had actually done something. He had made money. He had built a house for his family. His family no longer had to live the same hard way anymore.

And I cannot pretend that this recognition did nothing for me. People began to treat my words differently. They asked for my advice, invited me to speak, wanted to work with me, and listened to me in ways they had not before. Even inside my family, my opinion carried more weight.

Something in me opened too. I became less shy, more willing to speak, and less afraid of being wrong. Recognition did not only change how people saw me. It changed how I moved through the world.

I do not want to make achievement the enemy here. It was not. Money helped my family breathe. Recognition gave me confidence. Success opened doors that had once felt closed. These things were real, and I am grateful for them. The problem began when I stopped treating them as things that supported my life, and started treating them as things that defined who I was.

The shift was subtle. The things that began from real needs slowly hardened into symbols of who I was. The person who could build a house. The person who could travel the world. The person who invested in expensive courses and lived boldly. At first, these things came from life. Later, they became an image I felt I had to keep feeding.

Slowly, I stopped asking what I truly wanted and started asking what this image required from me.

It usually came at night, after the day had already given me enough proof that I was still moving forward. Everything looked fine on the surface.

But when the evening became quiet and there was no one around to reflect me back to myself, something hollow started to appear. I would reach for my phone, looking for someone to call or somewhere to go. Not because I truly wanted anything in particular, but because being with someone felt easier than being alone with that emptiness.

I was not looking for a deep answer then. I just wanted to feel, for a moment, that I was still seen.

That was the emptiness underneath the image. The sadness, the loneliness, the fear, the tired parts of me — none of them fit the life I had learned to perform. So I moved faster, chasing the next moment that could make me feel visible again.

Achievement had given me recognition. But it was also pulling me away from the parts of myself that most needed to be seen.

The First Time I Was Seen Without Performing

For years, those parts had nowhere to go. I kept them hidden even from the people closest to me. I believed they were too shameful to say out loud, and that if people saw them, they would laugh, judge me, or look at me differently. The more visible the outside of my life became, the farther these hidden parts fell behind.

Until one day when I was 25, after an intensive program, a small group of us stayed behind after class. The teacher said each person could share something they had never told anyone before. No one was forced. Whoever was ready could speak. The rest of us would only listen — no questions, no advice.

That rule mattered. It meant I would not have to explain myself, defend myself, or make my pain easier for other people to understand.

At that point, something in me had already begun to move, but I was still not fully ready. There were still too many people in the room, and the things I was carrying felt too private, too shameful, too exposed. But after the first few people shared their hidden stories, I saw the relief on their faces. They looked as if they had finally been released from something they had carried for years. Watching them, I felt as if I had received an invitation. Something in me started pushing forward. If not now, I thought, when?

So I raised my hand before I could talk myself out of it.

I did not think anymore. There was no script, no preparation, no careful way to make the story sound acceptable. Once I began, it just came out. I spoke about my father, about poverty, about the shame I had carried around my family, and about the hurt I had never known how to put into words. I cried as I spoke. And after I finished, when the room became quiet, I cried even harder. It felt as if something underground in me had finally opened, and all the water I had held back for years began to move.

For the first time, I had risked letting other people see the parts of me I had believed were too shameful to be seen. I thought they would laugh, judge me, or look at me differently. But they did not. They stayed. They listened.

That was the first time I was seen without performing. Not because I had achieved something. Not because I had become impressive. But because I had stopped hiding.

Afterward, a few people told me they felt closer to me. They respected my honesty and courage. Something old in me cracked: maybe if people saw the weak, ashamed, wounded parts of me, they would not necessarily reject me. Maybe they could even love me more honestly.

After that day, I felt as if I had been born again. Not because the wounds disappeared. They were still there. But they no longer had to live underground. They could exist beside my achievements, beside recognition, beside the strong parts of me.

Something in me realized: I did not have to perform my way into being seen.

But I did not know how to live from that realization yet. I had seen another possibility, but it would take years, another country, and a quieter life for that possibility to become a practice.

Truth Made Me Visible to Myself

Being seen by others had opened something in me. But it also revealed something uncomfortable: for years, I had not only hidden those parts from other people. I had hidden them from myself.

When I came to America, the version of me that people recognized back home did not come with me. No one knew the stages I had stood on, the things I had built, or the person others used to ask for advice. I was simply another student in a new country, trying to understand English, trying to express myself, trying to find my place among strangers.

I still remember sitting in English class while the teacher was speaking and the other students were discussing around me. I could barely follow what was happening. When people laughed, I did not know what they were laughing about. During the break, when everyone gathered and talked, I did not know where to stand, where to sit, or how to begin a conversation. I felt so awkward that I wanted to disappear.

In those moments, the old small part of me returned very clearly — the shy, hesitant part that did not feel good enough and did not know how to speak. The confident Nam who could stand on a stage, inspire a room, and be admired by others seemed to have vanished.

I did not move through that period easily. Every day, I still tried to hold myself together, to look like I understood, to look like I was keeping up, to look like I was not lost. But slowly, I began to realize something: no one here was asking me to be the version of myself I had been back home. No one expected me to be impressive. No one needed me to perform the old image.

That was uncomfortable, but it was also strangely freeing. If no one knew the image, I did not have to protect it. I did not have to introduce myself through what I had achieved. In fact, the few times I tried to bring that old image forward, I could feel it creating more distance than closeness.

So I started again, almost like a child: learning the language, learning how to speak, learning how to build relationships from the beginning. I let myself be awkward, shy, unsure, sometimes lonely. I did not have to escape those feelings immediately. I could stay with them. And the more I allowed myself to stay, the more I began to hear what was actually true in me.

That was when I began to notice the small truths inside me more clearly. I wanted to connect with new friends, so I let myself sit closer before I knew what to say. I wanted to understand the culture around me, so I joined the trips, the meals, and the small moments of being together, even when I could not follow every conversation. In class, when something touched a real place in me, I let myself speak before my thoughts were fully clear and before my English felt ready.

None of this was because I wanted to stand out. It was because I wanted to live more honestly with what was moving inside me, before fear, shame, or the need to look good covered it again.

Over time, that practice led me to a larger question: if I did not have to choose for money, approval, status, or anyone else’s expectation, what would I actually want to give the next five or ten years of my life to?

I sat with that question for a long time. There were more practical paths I could have followed, especially while living in San Francisco, where everyone seemed to be talking about AI, startups, and the future. But something in me kept turning toward a quieter direction. I chose East-West Psychology at CIIS not because it was impressive, not because it would make money right away, and not because it could prove anything to anyone. I chose it because I genuinely wanted to understand myself, psychology, and human beings more deeply.

The point is not what I chose. The point is where the choice came from.

During my first semester, I remember one in-person class where the teacher gave our group an open-ended exercise. There was no fixed script. We could respond in whatever way felt natural.

For some reason, something in me wanted to dance.

I did not know how to dance. The whole class was there. People could see me. For a few seconds, I felt the old hesitation rise again: What if I look strange? What if I do it badly?

But this time, I did not let that fear decide for me. I closed my eyes and listened to what was moving in my body. Then I started to move with the music. Not beautifully. Not confidently. Just honestly.

I did not dance because I knew I would look good. I danced because, in that moment, dancing was true.

It was a small moment, but I could feel what had happened: I had followed something real before fear turned it into performance.

And that was not the only time. Throughout the semester, I kept practicing this in small ways: speaking when my thoughts were not fully clear, asking when I did not understand, and noticing my shame, fear, and confusion without rushing to reject them. Slowly, I began to see it: each time I followed something true, even in a small way, I became a little more visible to myself.

By the final class of the semester, in Psychology of Death and Dying, I remember feeling surprised by how quickly time had passed. It felt like I had just walked into that classroom for the first time, barely understanding what was happening around me. And yet, something in me knew it had been enough.

I had lived inside the time of that class fully. I had spoken enough, received enough, and worked with myself seriously. Not superficially. Not like a machine trying to optimize everything. But like a person willing to be touched by what he was learning.

There was no applause. No milestone. No one praising me. But inside my chest, I felt full. It was a quiet fullness, cool and light, filled with a kind of satisfaction I knew well, but in a different form. It felt almost like being recognized — except this time, the recognition was coming from within.

I was not celebrating a victory. I was not proving anything. I was simply seeing myself, staying with myself, and recognizing the parts of me I used to leave behind.

Something else was beginning to return too: energy. Not the loud energy of achievement or applause, but a quieter aliveness that came from not abandoning what was true in me.

Fear Did Not Disappear, But Energy Returned

The energy did not return because I became fearless. It returned because I stopped using so much of myself to hide from fear.

The fear was still there. It still appeared when I wanted to approach someone new, when I had to speak in class, when I sat in a conversation and could not follow everything being said. A part of me still wanted to shrink, to disappear, to protect myself from being seen as not enough.

But now I could name it more clearly. I could say to myself, I am feeling shy right now. I am afraid I will not speak well. I am worried I might act awkwardly. I feel anxious because my English still feels limited.

Sometimes I named it out loud to the person in front of me. I remember moments in conversation when English was moving too fast and I could feel myself pretending to understand. Before, I would have nodded, smiled, and tried to hide the panic. But now I could say, “I’m losing the thread a little. Can you say that again?” The moment I said it, something in my body softened. The conversation did not collapse. It simply continued.

Then I had more room to be in the moment itself. Instead of spending all my attention worrying about what might happen, I could listen more freely, speak more naturally, and return to what was actually happening.

Over time, that small shift began to change the way I moved through life. The energy I had used to protect myself became available for something else: staying in a conversation, speaking before my thoughts were perfect, learning the language more patiently, and following what felt alive. I was no longer only organizing myself around avoiding fear. I was beginning to move toward what felt alive.

That was when the image of a flower began to make sense to me.

The Flower Does Not Bloom to Be Admired

The flower does not ask whether it is safe to bloom. It blooms because it is alive.

It does not wait for a world without danger. It does not wait until its roots are guaranteed to hold, until the wind promises not to break it, or until the sun promises not to burn it. It can still be broken. It can still be burned. It can still bloom for one brief moment and be gone tomorrow.

But today, it still turns toward life. This is not recklessness or pretending danger does not exist. It is simply life moving in the direction it was meant to move.

For a long time, my old way of shining needed an audience. I wanted to become someone people could admire, someone whose life proved that I was no longer small, ashamed, or easy to overlook. But the flower showed me another kind of radiance. It does not bloom to prove that it is worthy. It blooms because blooming is what happens when life is no longer held back.

I still want to be seen.

I do not think that desire is wrong anymore. The need to be seen, heard, and recognized is real. But I no longer want to be seen only through what I can achieve, explain, or make impressive. I want to be seen in the parts of me that are still afraid, still tender, still awkward, still becoming.

And maybe more importantly, I want to see those parts myself.

I want to notice the fear without immediately turning it into a project. I want to notice the shame without dressing it up to look beautiful. I want to notice the life moving in me before vanity, performance, or the need for approval covers it again.

Maybe a radiant life is not a life without fear. Maybe it is a life that no longer abandons what is true inside in order to be loved.

I used to think living brightly meant becoming someone worth admiring. Now I am beginning to see it differently.

A flower does not bloom to be seen. It blooms because it is alive.

- Nam

“I really admire you. You live in a beautiful apartment in a luxury high-rise. You travel the world. You’ve done things many people dream of doing. To me, that looks like a life well lived.”

A younger friend once said that to me over coffee.

I just smiled. Because the life he called “well lived” had started to feel foreign to me.

I knew exactly what he was seeing. It was the same thing I had wanted five years earlier: to escape a difficult, humiliating life and step into something freer.

At that moment, something small moved inside me. It was as if everything I had achieved did not make me feel as proud or as happy as it looked from the outside. But I just smiled and let it pass.

I did not know how to tell him that I had once thought this was the life I wanted. But now I felt tired, lost, and unsure what I actually wanted anymore.

I wanted to open myself up and let him see the wounds I had carried through the whole journey. That was the real story. That was the part below the surface. The glow was only the performance, the part people could easily see.

But at that time, I could not do that.

Later, I realized I had smiled that same smile many times. Every time someone praised me for a life I was no longer sure I wanted to live, I smiled. No disagreement. No explanation.

I used to think that smile was maturity. Humility.

But now I understand that sometimes an awkward smile is a very small sign of a very large gap: between what people see from the outside, and what you actually feel inside.

That was when I began to realize that maybe I had not been living a life of my own. Maybe I was only living a life many other people would call well lived.

I used to think my life was measured by the peaks I climbed, the achievements I collected, and the praise that made people want to learn from me.

But later, I started to ask myself: if no one was watching, if no one was praising me, if there was no reward waiting at the end, would I still want to live that life?

It took me a long time to even begin answering that question.

Through two ladders, one collapse, and one mountain.

THE MONEY LADDER

At 25, I thought I had reached the answer.

I rebuilt a new house for my family. I enrolled in expensive programs I could only look at from a distance before. And for the first time, I felt like I had gone far enough from the poor, humiliated version of myself I used to be.

I had spent almost all of my early youth climbing that ladder. The ladder of money.

Because deep down, I believed that if I made enough money, I would no longer have to feel small and unsafe.

That same year, Covid became serious. I had to isolate at home, alone with four walls. Work was still running. Money was still coming in every month.

But when all the noise outside stopped, I began to hear something I had avoided for a long time. When I was busy making money, I did not have to look at it. When I could still go out, meet friends, and work, I could temporarily forget it.

But in that room, there was nowhere left to hide.

A heavy, dull, gloomy boredom began to rise. Not the kind of boredom that comes from having nothing to do, but the feeling of an old part of me that had never been listened to, never been understood, and never really been touched.

My body had grown up. But the child was still there.

And after years of being ignored, it started to scream like a starving animal.

At that time, I did not know how to name what was happening. I only knew there was a deep part of me that money could not reach.

So I started to turn inward more often, to understand the part inside me I had ignored for too long.

Only later did I understand: money did not fail because it was meaningless. Money failed because it was answering the wrong question. The 21-year-old version of me was not really asking, “How do I become rich?” He was asking, “How do I finally feel safe?”

Money looks like the answer until you sit alone in a quiet room with wounds that have not healed.

When money was no longer enough, I did what many people do. I went looking for another ladder. A ladder that seemed deeper, more human, and more worthy of pride.

But in the end, it was still a ladder.

THE RECOGNITION LADDER

One time, in a business class, my mentor asked the whole room, “Who here has a marathon medal? Please stand up.”

At that time, I did not have one. I did not even understand what running a marathon really required. I could not stand up like some of the others. But inside, I felt lesser. So I signed up for a marathon too.

Another time, he asked the room, “Who here has an Ironman medal? Please stand up.”

Only a few people did. And I wanted even more to belong to that small group. To stand out. To be valued. To be seen differently. So I signed up for an Ironman too.

I am not saying my mentor encouraged people to chase recognition. His point was that marathon training builds discipline and willpower, things that are very important for an entrepreneur. That is a good reason to run a marathon.

But at that time, “discipline” was a very distant concept to me. “Medal,” “standing up,” “being seen” — those felt much closer.

I wanted to feel proud that I had a medal too.

He said Ironman was a three-sport race, a way to train business strategy. But I heard something else: if I could do it, people would value me more. They would see me differently.

Same lesson. Same teacher. Other people heard one thing. I heard another.

What I heard depended on what I was hungry for.

And I trained like a machine.

During each run, I was not really listening to my body. I only looked at my pace, my training plan, the distance still missing, as if each kilometer was another piece of proof that I was moving closer to a version of myself worthy of recognition.

In other advanced classes, I was also very active. I hosted. I raised my hand to share. I passed the microphone around. I helped people.

At the end of one class, everyone went out to celebrate. I ate with them for a while, then quietly went upstairs. I watched everyone laughing, dancing, drinking beer.

I looked at them.

I looked at the ocean.

At that time, I did not know what to call that feeling. I only knew the party below was not where I belonged. And I did not know where I belonged either.

I could have climbed that ladder for another ten years.

Then November 2022 came.

THE COLLAPSE

On November 11, 2022, I was invited for the first time to speak for 30 minutes on stage at a large Internet Marketing event in Vietnam.

That afternoon, I received the news that the crypto exchange FTX had collapsed. It was the source behind 80% of my monthly income.

I was stunned for a long time. I could not believe what I was seeing and hearing. How could one of the biggest exchanges in the world collapse?

It was too big to fail.

My presentation was coming soon. I had prepared carefully. And even though it was my first time speaking on stage, I felt quite confident.

But from the moment I heard that FTX had collapsed, I felt something inside me begin to fall.

Not just my income.

But the credit that made me feel I had the right to stand on that stage that day. Before that, I had a result to lean on. A story to tell. Something that made me feel that what I was about to say was real.

But if the thing behind that result had just collapsed, then who was I standing on that stage as?

Were the things I had prepared still true? Or was I just bullshitting?

My mentor began introducing my presentation, and I froze even more. My heart was beating fast, like a drum before battle. I did not know what to say anymore. I felt like a person who had lost his soul. I knew I had to wake myself up, but I did not know how.

That day, instead of introducing me for two to five minutes, my mentor spoke for almost twenty minutes. I stood there, dazed, for what felt like forever.

Finally, I decided to run outside to the restroom. In those few minutes, I tried to pull myself back. Inside, I was still falling. But outside, I still had to walk onto that stage and perform a steady version of myself.

And I did.

I came back. I regained my confidence. The talk went well.

From the outside, everything seemed fine. But inside, something had cracked.

I thought that was the collapse.

It turned out to be only the surface collapse.

After that, I rushed to try almost everything I could to rebuild my income.

I studied more. I tried new business models. I started again in different directions. Every time I began, I thought: maybe this is the new path. Maybe this time I can make a lot of money again, without going back to the old work I no longer liked.

But after a while, I would stop again.

Not because those models did not work. But because the deeper I went, the more I realized I did not actually want to live the kind of life those models required.

From the outside, it looked like I was constantly searching for a new job.

But in reality, I was trying to rebuild a new identity: someone who could still make a lot of money, still feel proud of himself, but no longer have to be my old self.

I thought that meant I had left the money ladder.

But really, I was only looking for another ladder to climb back to the same place.

The surface was different. But underneath, it was still the same old question: how do I feel safe again, valuable again, and avoid facing the emptiness inside?

There were periods when I tried to force myself to be more disciplined. Do a little more. Endure a little more. I told myself that once I got results, everything would become easier and more enjoyable.

But the more I pushed, the more I felt something was not right.

It was not the kind of boredom that comes from hard work. It was the feeling that I was using discipline to keep myself inside a life that no longer felt like mine.

Until one day, I began to ask myself: why do I have to choose to live like this?

If I made money from this, would I be happier?

The answer was no.

I had made a lot of money before. I knew money could bring temporary joy. But it could not answer the question for me: how do I actually want to live?

Then I asked myself another question: if I do not live like this, then how do I live?

And I truly did not know.

Because the second question had no answer yet, the first one had not fully collapsed.

Every day, I kept forcing myself to continue. I thought: just endure a little longer.

At the beginning of 2026, I finally saw something I had not been able to see for the past three years.

At first, I thought it was just the boredom of a job that did not fit. But the longer I lived inside it, the more I realized that feeling was frighteningly familiar.

From childhood until I was 18, I had lived in boredom. But back then, I had no other choice. I did not know what else to do. No one saved me. And I did not know how to save myself.

At 29, after almost a year of living with that feeling day after day, I finally realized: I was no longer that poor, timid, humiliated 15-year-old boy.

I could choose differently.

And live differently.

That was when the real collapse happened.

Not when the money collapsed.

But when the belief, “I have no other choice,” collapsed.

But realizing I could choose differently was one thing. Knowing what to choose was another.

I still did not know what was truly mine.

I only knew it had to begin with something no longer chosen for other people’s eyes.

Something without an audience. Something that, even if no one forced me, even if no one clapped, I would still want to come back to every day.

THE MOUNTAIN

13:59:47.

I crossed the finish line with only 13 seconds left before the 14-hour cutoff.

Not 13 minutes. 13 seconds.

50 miles of trail. Alone in the mountains of America. No audience. No reward except finishing.

This was one of the first things I chose after stepping down from the old ladders. No one told me I had to run. No one would know if I quit halfway.

This time, there was no one left to prove anything to.

Just me and the thing I had chosen.

Before the race, I thought I would finish in around 11 or 12 hours. I had run many marathons. I had just finished a 50K trail race and felt strong.

I thought I could just keep the old strategy: walk the uphills, run the downhills.

But this race did not go the way I imagined.

Both calves tightened from the beginning.

At kilometer 30, both feet were blistered and aching.

At kilometer 40, I looked at my watch.

7 hours.

I had used half the time for half the distance.

And for the first time in this race, I began to seriously think about the possibility of… not finishing.

For the first time in my life during a race, I started asking other runners, “What is the cutoff for the next aid station?”

Before that, I was still running inside my plan. From that point on, I had to start running inside the reality of the race.

The sky began to get dark.

And right then, I realized I did not have my headlamp.

The forest trail became completely dark. My eyesight was poor. All I had left was the flashlight on my phone to light the path in front of me, one small section at a time.

The clock kept counting down.

20 minutes.

10 minutes.

I could hear the cheering at the finish line, but I still could not see where it was.

Then I heard someone shout, “One minute left!”

At that moment, I had nothing left to save.

I ran down the final stretch.

13:59:47.

One of the last three people to finish the race.

While I was still on the trail, I thought I had almost paid the price for being too relaxed.

But after I calmed down and looked back, I understood that the story was not that simple.

I had been trying the whole time. I had still walked the uphills and run the downhills, the same strategy that had helped me in previous races.

But this time, my body was different. The course was different.

What almost cost me the race was not simply that I was too relaxed. It was that I had kept using an old plan after reality had changed.

On the trail, it took me almost 14 hours to realize that.

In life, it took me three years.

The mountain did not teach me that I had to be more stubborn.

The mountain taught me that if something is my choice, I have to truly be present with it.

But being present does not mean holding tightly to an old plan.

Being present means looking directly at the reality in front of me, changing rhythm when needed, and continuing to move.

BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE

I am still walking on another mountain of my own.

There are parts that are still unclear. There are days when I am still not sure if I am walking in the right direction.

But after the old ladders, after one collapse, and after a real mountain, I have started to believe one thing more deeply.

If something inside you has been quietly saying that the way you are living no longer feels right, listen to it sooner.

Because the cost often does not arrive as one big pain. It arrives quietly. You get used to a rhythm that no longer makes you feel alive. And then one day, continuing becomes easier than stopping, even though continuing is the very thing that is slowly wearing you down.

From the outside, everything looks fine. Inside, you have been tired for a long time.

A life well lived is not the kind of life that makes other people look at it with admiration.

It is the kind of life where, when someone calls it well lived, I no longer have to smile an awkward smile to hide the gap inside.

Not because I know the whole road ahead.

But because, this time,

I no longer want to look past the quiet misalignment inside me.

- Nam

I once lost 80% of my income overnight.

At that time, it was something I could not have imagined even in my dreams.

I was doing affiliate marketing in the crypto space, working with one of the biggest exchanges in the world at that time. A steady stream of income for almost two years made me believe I was standing in a very safe place.

So safe that even if someone told me the exchange was under attack, caught in scandal, or had some kind of problem, I did not pay much attention. In my mind back then, it was like a pillar holding up the whole market. It Could Not Fall.

Until one day, at the end of November 2022, the storm came and swept almost everything away. That was the first time I clearly saw that what I had built for so long was actually just a castle made of sand.

I thought that with what I had at that time, I could already “finish early.” But in truth, I was just standing on something that could disappear in one night.

That shock did not only take away most of my income. It forced me to see a deeper mistake: I had fallen into the “illusion of safety.” I thought that what was fine today would stay fine for a long time.

The most dangerous part was not losing money. The most dangerous part was that when I believed everything would stay fine forever, I stopped preparing for the day life might suddenly turn. I was still learning, still working, but inside, I was no longer living with the feeling that I still needed to grow up.

Looking back, I see that I was not the only one living like this. Many young people, whether they work a job or run their own business, can easily fall into the same trap: when things go well for long enough, we start to confuse the feeling of stability with the real strength of our life.

That is why I want to share the 5 stupid mistakes I made in my 20s. Because my mistakes did not begin on the day I lost money. They began with the wrong beliefs I had been living with for a very long time.

1. I was wrong to wait for luck instead of building ability

Back then, I did not hate hard work. I just thought it was too slow. I looked around and saw many people working extremely hard every day, yet their lives were still just enough to survive. So I believed that if I wanted to change my life, I needed one big breakthrough.

I used to gamble and play the lottery because I believed that if I just won one big time, my life would turn to a new page. And a few real wins were exactly what pulled me deeper. I started playing more, betting bigger, and always thinking the next round would be bigger than the last.

But money that is easy to win is not easy to keep. When I won, I spent it all. When I lost, the money I had kept getting smaller. And luck did not stay forever. Very quickly, I ran out of money and fell into debt.

Instead of using my time and money to read one more book or learn one more skill, I wasted them on games of chance and hoped luck would smile at me.

Maybe stories about people getting rich overnight made that belief feel more reasonable. Especially because I had tasted that feeling myself. It made me believe in it more, and sink deeper into that path. And once you have tasted fast wins, slow things stop looking attractive.

Only after I went through the feeling of losing everything because of gambling, and then heard people talk about the value of learning and effort, did I start to believe that some things must be learned, trained, and built step by step. But those are the things that truly stay with you for a long time.

And I realized that if I wanted to go in a different direction, I could not keep living in the exact same way.

If I wanted someone to recommend me for a job, I needed to have some skill first.

If I wanted someone to give me a chance, I needed to prove that I had the ability to carry it.

And at the very least, I needed to show up in places where people who could help me actually existed. It could be a self-development class, a skill-building class, or a networking event.

No one could know me or help me if the places I kept going to were gaming cafés, drinking spots, or just staying at home all day.

So I studied more. I joined self-development classes and skill-building classes. I read more books and really felt like my mind became brighter. I used the internet not to play games anymore, but to find ways to make money.

In the end, I really did make money, through my own ability, steadily and sustainably for the years that followed.

I realized that luck may help me win once.
Only ability can help me win many times.

That was in my early 20s. And after I stopped believing in luck and started making money through ability, I stepped into another mistake.

2. I was wrong to make money but not know how to keep it

Making money is one skill. Keeping money, using money well, and allocating money are completely different skills.

Even after I started making money through my ability, I still made mistakes. The money I made was more than enough for my student life, but I still spent it very quickly every month. I raised my lifestyle, spent more, for a reason that sounded very reasonable: improving my quality of life was necessary, and it would also help me make more money later.

I always saw money as something to release pressure, to upgrade right away, to reward myself in the present, not as something that needed to be kept to build a foundation for the future.

I thought I just needed to “make more.”

But the truth is, if the root is wrong, then no matter how much I make, the result will still be the same. If I always spend everything I earn, I will stay poor forever.

This was not an easy lesson for me.

By nature, I love experiences. I love new things. When I had money, I quickly spent it on lifestyle.

Even later, when I was making much more money, my lifestyle also grew like crazy: the most expensive memberships that I never fully used, expensive courses that I cannot even remember what I learned from, one luxurious trip after another...

Even investments that were supposed to “help me keep money” turned into “burning money” because of carelessness and lack of understanding.

Many of my expenses did not look stupid. In fact, they looked very reasonable. But that was exactly the biggest trap. If I did not have a clear principle for keeping and allocating money, then many times I was only spending money under a better name.

When you do not respect money, money will not stay with you. It leaves one way or another.

You may think: I’m still making little money, so why should I care about keeping or allocating it?

But that is exactly when those skills need to be built first. If you do not learn them early, then even when you make more later, many times you will only spend more. When you have little, it matters even more to know how to save, accumulate, and prepare for the opportunities ahead.

Also, the most dangerous part of always spending everything you have is this: if your cash flow suddenly stops, but your costs do not stop, and you do not have enough saved for the next six months, that is when it becomes truly dangerous.

I was the victim of this belief myself. I did not only not know how to keep money. I also thought that income stream would stay there for a very long time.

3. I was wrong to think the good days would keep going on by themselves

There was a period when I truly believed I had almost solved the money problem.

At that time, money was coming in very steadily and very well for almost two years. It came from affiliate work in the crypto market, where I had brought more than 50,000 users to some of the biggest exchanges in the world. And that steady flow made me believe it would stay there for a long time.

When something good repeats itself long enough, we no longer see it as a favorable phase. We start seeing it as the normal state of our life.

I stopped giving all my attention to building more, and allowed myself to step outside and live more.

During that time, I lived like a young boy who had just stepped out into the world for the first time, with a pocket full of money.

I traveled across many places, from Asia to Europe to America, not only for myself, but bringing my family too.

I also threw myself into the most expensive self-development and business programs, as if I was trying to live out all the years before.

I thought everything would keep going like that forever.

Until one day at the end of 2022, the real storm came. One of the biggest exchanges I was working with collapsed, and it also took away 80% of my income in a single night.

I realized a painful truth: being at the top of the market does not mean being impossible to defeat.

Those easy days made me confuse “I am doing well” with “everything will stay like this forever.” I had fallen asleep inside that feeling of comfort, until life slapped me hard enough to wake me up and look at reality again.

Cash flow is not safety. Real safety is the ability to create cash flow again when circumstances change. Like a bird standing on a branch, it is never afraid that the branch may break. Because what it trusts is not the branch, but its own wings.

After the shock passed, I had to face an even harder truth: even when I had money, I was still not truly happy.

4. I was wrong to think money would make me happy

What made me run after money was never only about survival. I did not want to be pitied. I did not want to be looked down on. And more than anything, I wanted that when my family needed me, I could say: I am here.

From a very young age, I carried shame and insecurity because of my poor family situation, the conflict at home, the fighting. Later my father became seriously ill, and my family did not have money to treat him. I grew up with the feeling that my family was too poor, too miserable, too easy to be looked down on and stepped on.

Maybe from very early on, I was no longer only afraid of lacking money. I was afraid of feeling too small, too weak, and not strong enough to protect the people I loved.

I thought I had to make a lot of money, build a big house, and become someone no one could pity anymore. From there, I created another version of myself: someone who always had to be successful, always had to prove his worth, and always had to be strong enough to protect his family. I believed that if I could live like that, then I would finally be happy.

I left behind my old self. I left behind close friends. I left behind endless drinking nights. I left the safe life in the city where I was born and raised. I even left the person I loved, so I could build a stronger life.

After so much nonstop effort, I finally got the things I once wanted. I built a house for my family. My family’s life became better. People admired me as a symbol of success.

But... deep inside, only I knew that I always felt empty after each milestone.

People praised me, but the truth was, there was no one I could truly share my inner world with. After those fast trips and beautiful experiences, deep inside there was still a deep loneliness.

During the Covid period, when I could not go outside or meet anyone, and I stayed home alone, I realized an even deeper pain: all the old wounds inside me were still there. They had never disappeared. It was only because I was so focused on the outside that I could not see them. But once I slowed down, they came up, like a starving animal that had been left unfed for too long, now crying out.

Even after I had achieved the things I once wanted, the wounds inside me still could not heal by themselves.

Money could make my outer life fuller. But it could not heal the wounds that had made me chase it in the first place.

That was when I began to slow down and learn how to hold myself.

5. I was wrong to let success decide the direction of my life

I did many things right. But the more I lived by other people’s standards, the farther I felt from what I truly wanted.

From that old feeling of being looked down on, I slowly built a shell that always had to succeed. It did not only push me to chase money. It also quietly shaped my later choices: choosing a hot major, a high-income job, the milestones that everybody wants.

At that time, I thought that if I just followed the path that most people called “the right path,” then my life would also be okay. Every time I reached one more recognized milestone, I believed I was going in the right direction. But later I realized: many of the things I tried so hard to reach were never truly what I wanted.

Looking back, I now understand that the most dangerous thing is not failing to succeed. The most dangerous thing is living by other people’s expectations for so long that you no longer know what you truly want.

Only when I came to the US, where no one knew who I was and no one cared about what I had achieved before, did I feel something for the first time... light.

Light because I no longer had to keep performing the role of a successful person. Light because I no longer had to tense myself up just to prove something. Light because, for the first time, I was standing in a place where my past no longer decided in advance who I had to be.

I realized I had spent too many years living someone else’s life without ever truly asking: what do I actually want?

Money can open many choices for me. But I need to start choosing my own life. If I do not choose what I want, I will keep living by momentum and by standards other people chose for me long ago.

From there, I started learning how to choose again. No longer choosing what only sounds right in the eyes of the crowd. I returned to the things that truly make me feel alive. I chose to study psychology. I paused running to get to know yoga. I began building my personal brand to share my experiences.

On the outside, those may look like just a few new choices. But for me, that was the first time I stopped living on autopilot and started choosing the direction of my life for myself.

That was when I understood that freedom does not only come from having more choices. Freedom is also the ability to truly choose what you want, instead of continuing to live by what other people chose for you long ago.

If you are in the beginning, middle, or end of your 20s, maybe you cannot avoid every mistake. I am also not sure that if I could go back, I would do everything completely differently.

But looking back, losing 80% of my income in one night was not the thing that destroyed my life. It was the thing that forced me to see clearly that I had placed my life on things that were too fragile.

From there, I understood that some things look like they are protecting us, but in truth they only give us a temporary feeling of safety. Cash flow can disappear. Achievement may heal nothing. Other people’s approval also cannot choose a life worth living for us.

If there is one thing I want to keep from all those mistakes, it is this: do not place your life on something that can disappear overnight. Build wings of ability. Learn how to keep your money, keep yourself, and choose your own direction.

The rest of your life will begin from there.

- Nam