Day 8 — Hard Lessons
I’m trying something new today. Someone encouraged me to identify one hardship I experienced and then look for one lesson that hardship taught me. Here goes nothing.
Hardship #1 — Growing up as a refugee from the Vietnam War.
One of the things I appreciate most about myself is my enduring sense of hopefulness. I had to cultivate this outlook in order to survive. From childhood, I faced countless challenges and difficulties.
Not only am I an immigrant from Vietnam, but my family also arrived in America as war refugees. Our first home in the United States was a refugee tent at Camp Pendleton Marine Base.
Throughout my life, I struggled with undiagnosed learning difficulties. I nearly flunked out of high school and graduated with an astonishing GPA of 1.6.
However, there was something inside me that wouldn’t accept these challenges as permanent. Today, I am an author, entrepreneur, and ministry leader, with three college degrees: a bachelor’s, master’s, and doctorate.
One of the key lessons from my difficult upbringing is the unbreakable belief that things can improve. It became essential for my survival. If I had a fixed mindset — believing that nothing would change — I would never have tried to better myself. Even worse, if I had adopted a pessimistic mindset — thinking that things would only get worse — I might have lost all hope for life.
I have come to appreciate the tough childhood I had, as it instilled in me a resilient faith and hope for a better tomorrow. The hardships I faced extinguished any fear of failure that paralyzes so many people today. From my perspective, failure is a step up from hopelessness.
I’m not quite ready to look back at the challenges of my childhood and “count it all as pure joy” just yet. However, I can acknowledge that those tough experiences taught me valuable lessons.
How about you? What did your trials teach you?
Always onward,
Thien
