LESSONS IN LIFE
Just my two cents worth
#reflectingaboutlife
I did a little reflecting with my journey in magic today and wanted to share with you all the thoughts I had running through my mind
In 2009 I was in my final year of Accounting at the Adelaide University, I was doing placement at an accounting firm and it was in that experience that I learned I was in the wrong profession. It wasn’t just a feeling of bordem or discomfort it was my entire mind and soul repelling what I was doing (quite an intense feeling to be honest and no jokes implied here!). I realised in that moment that I have neglected my dreams and passions in life for far too long. I was about to commit my self to a life of doing something that I hated, to make money that I didn’t need, to buy things I didn’t want so that I could impress people I didn’t care about – it completely didn’t make sense to me . This hit me at 100 kmph smack bang in the face, I pretty much had a early life crisis. That very week I went into University and quit my degree with 6 months left, to me the purpose of being alive is to do what you love and are passionate about, I felt so strongly about this and was not about to settle for anything else. People often search for the meaning of life or the purpose of life etc but what they don’t realise is that the meaning and purpose of life is what you make it. You don’t find the meaning to life, you create the meaning with the decisions that you make.
There I was 22 and starting my career as a magician, I had about $50,000 of savings (thank goodness my parents instilled great saving habits in me). This meant I had a runway that was about 2 years long, this was the most exhilarating and amazing time of my life. I felt like I broke free of the mould and was pursing a life that I’ve always wanted. Don’t get me wrong, it was one of the most difficult journeys of my life I failed so many times but with passion by my side and an amazing family I’ve been able to get to where I am today. Today I’ve been able to build a successful online business called Encyclopedia of Magic and last year won South Australian Young Entrepreneur of the year a couple of years ago, I am a professional speaker and have spoken at over 100 events last year all over the world.
*Quick disclaimer: There is 100% nothing amazing about me, I was the one oriental kid at school that was bad at maths, I did year 12 twice, I moved schools 4 times in 5 years and the list goes on. I’m just a normal guy who was born and lives in South Australia, Adelaide. Again nothing special about me but there’s something very special in the lesson I am about to share with you that made me the man I am today.
The message here is simple, in life I feel like we are all getting ready at the start line of a race. You know when you are on the race line and you’re about to run your heart out! and there’s an umpire who yells “Get ready – get set……GO!”. Here’s the problem, I feel like so many of us in life get ready and get set but we never GO. We spend so much time planning about what we want to do, it might be fitness goals, financial goals or simply spend more time with family goals. We spend so much time getting ready to do these things but we just never GO! I guess I just wanted to share with you what happened the moment after I said GO, sure there were a lot of challenging and scary things but imagine the life you are not living as a result of not going. Find one thing that you want to do this year in 2015 and give yourself the permission to GO! and fire that gun at the start line and run your hardest.
“A ship in the harbour is safe, but that’s not what ships are built for..”
"He who lives by the sword, dies by the sword."
This quote has always intrigued me, I’ve always wondered about the meaning behind this quote. What does it really mean? I know that it can be interpreted in many ways but I’ve recently come across this definition in conversation with some great minds!
“We attract to ourselves and weave into our own character and personalities those qualities which our influence is helping to create in others.”
If this is true, then it means if we help others to develop positive habits in life we, in turn, develop the same habits! To be great in life all we need to do is help others become great, what a beautiful philosophy to live by.
Don't try to please everyone.
As an entrepreneur, speaker and a magician my biggest problem is that I try to please everyone. The moment someone isn’t happy with what I am doing it causes me a lot of pain and misery but what I’ve come to realise is that if I try to make everyone happy I actually end up making no one happy. The same goes in my business, every time I tried to be good at everything, I was good at nothing which means that to truly be great at something you have to be truly bad at something else.
I won’t sit on the fence anymore. I know what I want and I’m going for it
Failure.
It’s so strange to see myself in this magazine, growing up in the Asian community I was always the black sheep who wanted to do something that everyone thought was just crazy. I never focused on my studies, all through out my childhood I would never be the one that anyone talked about and this was a good thing! It gave me the freedom to fly under the radar and do what I wanted to do. But I will admit that there were times where it sucked not getting any attention from your own community, the kids who did exceptionally well academically got all the attention and praise. I was always compared to the smart students who were extremely studious but I was lucky I had an amazing mum and dad.
Both my parents always gave me so much support, even when I was failing at school and in my entrepreneurial ventures they would always find something good in me. I’ll never forget what they said when everything in my life was falling a part..
“Son, no one gets back up like you do. No matter how many times you get hit, I see you always dust yourself off and get right back up. Son if there was any trait that I wish I was able to give you this is the one! Look at me and your mother we’ve had to rebuild our lives time and time again and no matter how hard things got we’re all still here standing strong.”
My mum always instilled so much confidence in me, I remember what she’d always say as well!
“Have confidence in your capabilities, don’t wait until you’ve done something to be competent. You need to believe that you are capable and let your confidence be born from there. If you have to wait until you’ve done something to feel confident and competent then there are many things you won’t even begin to do.”
This was the key lesson that helped me take action right away. Taking massive imperfect action was how I become successful, I guess you can call it failing your way to success.
Just incase you’re wondering, the big print you see in the magazine “That Bai” means Failure. I feel that a lot of people now aren’t patient enough, they will pursue something and the moment they hit a road block or they fail they just give up and throw in the towel. It’s scary because it seems that the fear of failure trumps the excitement of success. The reason I wanted my article to be about failure and not my successes is because I want to share with my community that failure isn’t a dead end it’s just a detour that leads us to our dreams. The path to what we love isn’t a straight line, it’s filled with detours and we have to be willing to stay on course no matter how hard things get.
So I guess the answer to the question
“Vinh how did you get to where you are today?”
is really a much simpler answer than I thought. I failed my way here. How about you? Where are you headed?
It all begins in the space between your ears!
One of the many great things about traveling is that it gives me a lot of time where I am able to sit and read, recently I stumbled across a beautiful poem that I want to share with you.
If you think you are beaten, you are;
If you think you dare not, you don’t;
If you like to win, but you think you can’t,
It’s is almost certain you won’t.
If you think you’ll lose you’ve lost,
For out of the world we find
Success begins with a fellow’s will –
It’s all in the state of mind.
If you think you are outclassed, you are –
You’ve got to think high to rise.
You’ve got to be sure of yourself before
You can ever win a prize. Life’s battles don’t always go
To the stronger or faster man; But soon or late the man who wins
Is the man who thinks he can.
Do you think you can? 😉
How I stay motivated when things get
Just a mindset I like to have when things get tough! As a keynote speaker traveling around the world and also running 2 businesses it sometimes can get really hard but if you learn to control your thoughts you'll be surprised how much of a difference it can make.
27 Magic shows in a row… Lesson learnt: Role Clarity
It’s scary how fast time flies. I felt like I just blinked and it’s now nearing the end of February 2015! How does this happen!?
I am currently in the middle of 27 Magic shows at the Adelaide Fringe festival and I am just having a ball. I still am speaking at a few keynotes interstate during this month of madness and I am keeping things together (only just!).
Preparing for the 27 shows, last minute changes.
A big lesson that I’ve learnt during this crazy month is role clarity. As a leader in the team what I realised is that each team member needs to know what they are supposed to do exactly.
On our first night at the Adelaide Fringe festival my team and I had 3 hours to set up, it took us literally the full 3 hours to set up and everyone was running around like headless chooks! It was so stressful, we had literally 2 minutes to spare before the audience walked in. As a result of this rush I was not in the right mindset to put on my best performance and as a result the show was extremely disappointing. I couldn’t understand what happened that evening, I made sure we had extra staff back stage yet still we struggled immensely! (I was losing my mind).
After the show, I went home and sat in my room for hours reviewing what had just happened and that’s when I realised that as a leader I didn’t give team clarity in what their roles were – I failed my team. Everyone literally just did everything, being an entrepreneur we get used to doing everything ourselves and when we have extra resources sometimes it can throw us off. I spent the entire night staying up feeling extremely upset that I put on a rubbish show and at the same time started writing out the tasks for each team member. It was like a schedule for each person back stage including my self. The next evening arrived and 4 hours before we were due on stage I sat down with everyone and made sure that everyone knew what they were in charge of, I told my team I trust that they would complete each task without me looking over it. What took us 3 hours to do on the first night we did in less than 30 minutes on that second night once everyone had clarity in their roles.
A simple business lesson that I already knew but had forgotten. No matter what business you are in remember to sit down and spend time ensuring that your entire team knows what their role is and don’t try to control everything. The moment I started to trust my team more and delegate more tasks to them, it allowed me to work on my magic shows more as opposed to just working in them night in and night out.
Learning this lesson alone has already helped me grow my businesses and improve my magic show by leaps and bounds!
2015… Bring it on!
Family and friends coming out to support me!
An evening with an honest liar! OMG IT'S JAMES RANDI!
One of my greatest hero's since I was a kid!
Let me give you a little background info on James Randi, he is an amazing stage magician who retired from this when he was 60 years old and since then has devoted his life to challenging paranormal claims and pseudoscience.
As a young magician I’ve always looked up to this man here, I remember when I used to read his books and look at his pictures and wonder where in the world this man lives! He looked like a character that was out of a fiction book, he actually encapsulates the image of a magician quite perfectly. I honestly never thought there would come a day where I would be able to spend an evening with Randi. I can’t even begin to explain how I felt that night, it’s just absolutely marvellous when you are able to meet with one of your heroes. It does something to you, a dose of inspiration, motivation, drive, ambition, I could literally name all the positive emotions a human being could experience and it still wouldn’t be enough to explain how I felt.
I feel like there are times in our lives we are so quick to rule out things like this, I hear my friends say all the time that they wish they could meet this person or that person but they never try. The moment we label something as being impossible we literally seize to try which means that we’ll never achieve that goal. The benefits of being able to meet and engage with one of our heroes does wonders for our minds, I really feel like he unlocked something in me that evening and I feel this new strong sense of purpose as a speaker and magician.
My message in this post is simple, I know we have a hero that we would love to meet. Believe it’s possible and do what ever it takes to cross paths with that person, when we get to spend time with great minds it changes us, it change the path of our lives. Keep dreaming like our lives depended on it!
If for some super strange and unfortunate reason you do not know anything about this man (which I highly doubt could be possible), you need to watch his TED video!!
My Ted talk was featured on TED.com!
Vinh on the TED stage
This year in 2014 I was invited to speak at Ted x Macquarie University in Sydney. I recall watching so many Ted speakers in the past 6 – 7 years and they have all been amazing. One in particular that really inspired me was a talk by Simon Sinek – Start with why. If you haven’t seen that yet you need to go to youtube and search that right now! Do it, right now!
Ever since watching these videos, I began to think about how I would be able to get onto the stages of Ted one day. It’s been a long journey but I finally made it. It was just such a surreal day, I had my friends and family come and support me in Sydney! It was just so exciting. I arrived the evening before and asked if I could jump on the stage to rehearse, you know just to get comfortable with the layout. I normally don’t get that nervous anymore before going on stage but wow when I walked onto the platform I felt so nervous! It reminded me of the first time I ever got up on a stage to speak. I was scared stiff! I think it had something to do with the fact that this talk could open up many doors for me.
The morning of the talk came faster than I thought. I didn’t sleep much that night, I was in the hotel rehearsing and rehearsing till about 3am in the morning. Once it was 8am I felt like I had only slept for like 1 hour! So much adrenalin was pumping through my body, I felt great! Long story short it was my turn to go on stage and the rest is just a blur. I remember walking off stage and asking my family and friends “What happened??! was it good?!?!”. I got into some kind of zone like state when I was one stage and the performer in me just took over and before I knew it, it was over.
3 weeks later the video was released and within a week of being released my Tedx video was picked up by the editors at ted.com as being one of their weekly favourites!!! This was amazing, I can’t believe the editors at ted.com picked my video! I took a screen shot of it to remind me of this little milestone. Thanks for putting up with my extremely boastful post.
This immediately opened up doors for me in the US, it’s amazing what happens when you start to put yourself out there in the world. In life it’s all about taking risks, people get so caught up in “What happens if this goes wrong?” or “What happens if that goes wrong?”. We get so consumed in these thoughts that we end up doing nothing, this is why I love the entrepreneurial world so much, I love taking risks it really makes me feel alive. As they say the greatest risk of all to me is to risk nothing at all!
“If you are not willing to risk the unusual you will have to settle for the ordinary.”