The Psychology of Tiny Wins and Why They Matter More Than Big Ones

Why Tiny Wins Deserve Your Attention When people talk about success, the conversation often revolves around big achievements: landing the dream job, running a marathon, launching a business, or writing a bestselling book. These milestones are inspiring, but they are rare and take months or years of effort. What truly sustains us in the long […]

What I Learned from Saying “No” (and Why It’s Powerful)

Calm moment

The Weight of a Small Word For most of my life, “no” was the hardest word to say. I grew up believing that being kind meant being agreeable. I wanted to be helpful, supportive, and available for everyone. Whenever someone asked for my time, my energy, or my attention, my instinctive answer was “yes.” Saying […]

How to Design a “Thinking Space” in a Noisy World

Thinking

A Cup of Ginger Tea and a Moment of Quiet As I write these lines, I am sipping warm ginger tea with honey that my mum made for me. I am still healing from a bone fracture and while the body takes time to recover, I feel deeply fortunate to have her gentle care nearby. […]

Typhoon Bualoi in Ha Tinh: Memories, Destruction, and the Resilient Spirit of My Hometown

Rain

A Storm That Feels Like an Old Friend When I heard the news that Storm No.10 (Bualoi) had slammed into Ha Tinh, my heart sank. It was like stepping back into my childhood, when storm season wasn’t just a headline, it was part of daily life. I remember sitting by the window as a child, […]

Micro-Moments of Learning: What 10 Minutes of Reading Daily Can Do

Reading books

The quiet power of 10 minutes Every night, before I close my eyes, there is a ritual I never skip. After journaling, I pick up a book and spend just 10 minutes reading. Nothing fancy. No marathon chapters. Just a pocket of time for my mind to wander into another world. Lately, it has been […]

Celebrating UWC Day: Education as a Force for Peace and a Sustainable Future

UWC Day

A Moment That Took My Breath Away This year, like the past two, something small yet powerful landed in my inbox – photos from our Vietnamese students currently studying across different UWC campuses worldwide. There they were, standing tall in áo dài and carrying the Vietnamese flag alongside friends from dozens of countries. My chest […]

Finding Awe in Small Moments (and Why It Matters)

Calm moment

A quiet pause that changes everything It was just a normal evening. I was walking home after training, headphones in, the city buzzing around me. Then suddenly, I looked up. The sky was painted in soft shades of pink and purple, and for a moment, everything slowed down. I stopped in my tracks. No rush, […]

How Journaling Clears Mental Clutter and Sparks Creativity

Journaling

A quiet page, a noisy mind The other night I sat down with my notebook, exhausted from training and buzzing with a hundred unfinished thoughts. Work tasks, triathlon schedules, messages I hadn’t replied to, it all felt like a noisy room in my head. I opened a blank page, wrote “Okay, what’s bothering me right […]

Extreme Ownership: Lessons from Navy SEALs and My Triathlon Training Journey

Mountain

A Rainy Swim, A Hard Lesson It was raining the entire day, the kind of Saigon rain that soaks you before you even lock up your bike. Traffic was a mess, puddles splashing everywhere, and honestly, all I wanted was to stay home with a hot tea. But I had swimming practice. When I walked […]

Finding Balance in Busy Seasons

It was a Monday night, around 10:23. The kind of night where the rain had been pouring for hours, the air felt cooler than usual, and all I craved was a bowl of hot soup. That’s exactly what I did after work – gathered with colleagues at a small local spot, laughing and sharing dumplings […]