The Art Of Not Figuring It Out | Ha Minh Chau Tran | TEDxVinschoolHanoi

The speaker, a content creator with over a million followers, shares her personal journey of redefining herself when her career as a food reviewer unexpectedly stalled. She began her career with a viral video in April 2022, which led to significant success, with her videos consistently reaching hundreds of thousands to millions of views. She describes feeling like the platform loved her and that she was born to do this work. However, her success abruptly ended when her statistics dropped dramatically, with her videos consistently falling below 10,000 views for nearly a year. This led to feelings of desperation and a sense of being defined by these digital numbers. Despite working over 12 hours a day and pouring her soul into her content, the lack of engagement felt like singing into an empty room, leading to burnout and self-doubt. She questioned her abilities, wondered if she was outdated, and considered finding a more stable job as her parents had suggested. Fortunately, her stubbornness prevented her from giving up. Hitting rock bottom gave her the courage to try everything, even when scared. Over the next few months, she experimented with various formats, colors, content pillars, and ideas, working creatively non-stop. She even attempted content that made her uncomfortable, but still failed to see the desired growth in numbers. During this period of intense experimentation, she stopped defining herself solely by her pursuit of success and began to see herself as someone who was trying. Through these experiments, she discovered a deeper yearning not just for reviewing good places, but for connection with people. She realized her true passion was to accompany young people on their self-development journey by sharing her own "messy growing up diary," and that this connection was what truly made her heart beat. She reflects that if she had stayed on her original path as a food reviewer, she would likely still be struggling. Instead, the redirection led her to design something better. She concludes that life is not something you possess or a destination to reach, but an experience to be designed, constantly creating, changing, and evolving, with always room for surprise. For those who feel lost and haven't figured out their life's direction, she advises not to search for a road that doesn't yet exist. Instead, she encourages them to start building it brick by brick, letting each step guide the next. She emphasizes that every experience is valuable when the goal is to experience. Standing on stage, she admits she still hasn't figured out the rest of her life, but she remains grateful. She views this uncertainty as a flashlight, contrasting it with a fixed future, which she calls a fixed story. An untold future is a blank canvas with infinite space for growth, change, and trying new things, even failing repeatedly until something works. This, she calls "the art of not figuring it out."