founder's journal #0: on self-confidence

the year is 2020

• I just cruised to 12 countries in 109 days, on a full scholarship, in my gap semester.

• I toured 11 cities across Vietnam in 14 days, meeting more than 600 readers of the blog.

• I gave my first TED talk at 20, as the youngest speaker in a line-up with my educator idol.

• I was nominated in “The Inspirer” category of the WeChoice Award.

• On my 21st birthday, I had a business idea, gathered a team in 10 days, and launched our first product in 3 months. (It’s still going.)

• By the end of 2020, I was financially comfortable, had a lot of free time to travel, a great network of cool, diverse friends, and appeared in a few national newspapers.

In 2020, I’m a gap year student and “self-employed”, crushing all the life quests known to a 20-year-old: finance, work-life balance, learning and growth, network, fame…

Not only did I FEEL confident, I EXUDED it.

now, the year is 2023.

• I just graduated with a degree I will probably never use in my life.

• I’m moving to a new city in Vietnam, feeling the weight of paying for rent, food, gas, and everything for the first time.

• I have no idea how I will set up and navigate my social circles as a “full-time adult”.

• I’m “self-employed” and while trying to figure out my life, I need to be responsible for the monthly paycheck of 12 other human beings on my team.

• The only thing in common with 2020? The only insurance plan I know is “Don’t get sick”.

In 2023, I’m a clueless fresh graduate and founder of a tiny startup, asking all the existential questions known to a 24-year-old:

• Who am I?

• Who do I want to become?

• Can I actually do that?

Since the day I came back to Vietnam close to 3 months ago, there hasn’t been a week gone by that I didn’t experience some feeling of inferiority and self-doubt. Some weeks are worse than others.

There’s a degradation in my self-confidence between 2020 to 2023, despite the fact that I’ve improved a lot, growing my skills, knowledge, influence, network, and experience over those years.

I came up with a hypothesis:

When there’s a shift in one’s personal values ranking, there will be a reassessment of one’s self-confidence.

In 2020, my value ranking probably looks like this:

1. Impact

2. Learning

3. New Experience

4. Network

5. Free Time

6. Money

As a “student” on a full scholarship, I didn’t care too much about making money. I was a lot more interested in how to do work that’s meaningful (Impact) or work that has the steepest learning curve (Learning). I made money, with the primary goal to afford New Experiences with the people I love (Network), and NEVER at the cost of too much free time.

This Value Ranking helps me tell a very coherent story of Who I am? What are the things that are important to me? And in which order? I call this my “Value Story”.

I lived by this story sacrilegiously in 2020. Every big decision I made that year was based on the priorities set in this narrative. My self-confidence that year came from me knowing EXACTLY who I am, what I want, and my belief that I can accomplish it.

When I tried to create a Value Story for 2023 as I was writing this post, the versions I created didn’t feel true to me. My lack of self-confidence this year came from me not knowing who I am or what I want, with the same level of certainty that I had 3 years back.

As I enter this new stage of life, the shifts in my personal values ranking can feel very shaky. With new values emerging and old ones submerging, it will take me time to learn who I am again.

This exercise of ranking my personal values taught me that there are 3 fundamental steps to self-confidence:

1. Knowing where you are,

2. Knowing where you want to be,

3. And believing that you have what it takes to go from where you are to where you want to be.

In times of transition like this, I am trying to unlearn the “Value Story” I’ve told myself for a big part of my life.

I'm trying to tell myself every day that it's okay if you haven't figured it out.

"It's okay if you haven't figured it out."

Answering these questions takes time!

Be patient. Take your time.

I'll take the time to write, learn, and tell a new story about myself.

I'll take the time to let go of who I was, and search for who I could be.