From The You Journal to a life practice
One seed. One day at a time. One life practice.
#30daychanginghabits #30ngaythaydoithoiquen #jenvuhuong
I started journaling when I was a child. One moment that stayed with me was reading a note from my sister. Her words changed how I saw myself, and they left me with an early realisation: writing can change the way a person sees their own life. Through writing, we can also become more conscious authors of it.
A blank page gave me somewhere to put the person I wanted to become, the life I hoped to create, and the small choices that might take me there. Writing the best page I could each day became a way of living each day as well as I could. That idea has stayed with me ever since.
Around 2006, as an engineering student, I discovered what we now call the personal development field. I began consciously practising habits around productivity, positivity, learning, discipline and growth. Some days genuinely felt like a battle, especially the battle not to sink into negativity, self-doubt or the parts of myself that wanted to stop trying.
I read. I practised. I gave up. I started again.
Underneath all of it were habits I had learned much earlier, from my mother, my father, my family and the village where I grew up. Over the following years came more: from engineering, from living and studying abroad, from trying to build a life and a career with intention. By 2017, after publishing books on purpose, passion and goals, all those pages and practices began gathering into a new manuscript. I called it The You Journal: a collection of the practices that had helped me keep becoming.
When I returned to Vietnam in 2018 with the unpublished manuscript, publishers became interested in The You Journal. They recommended naming it 30 Ngày Thay Đổi Thói Quen (30 Days Changing Habits) to make it more practical and accessible for readers.
The book became an invitation: Choose the seeds worth nurturing. Practise them. Live them. Return tomorrow. One day at a time.
Later, as I took the book into independent publishing with Jen Books, it received a new cover. The first design spoke to achievement, performance and productivity. The second moved closer to what I had always felt was its deeper essence: a seed, planted every day.
Not only the habits of waking early, exercising, focusing better or managing time, but deeper seeds: the values we practise, the choices we repeat, the way we treat ourselves, the way we meet other people, the way we respond when life does not go as planned, and the way we live what we say matters. Every action plants something. Over time, what we repeatedly plant becomes a way of living.
So as 2027 approaches, I see a journey that began ten years ago returning in a new season. And this time, it does not return alone: in 2027, 30 Ngày Thay Đổi Thói Quen walks beside a book that grew from a very different chapter of my life, 1000 Souls in Me.
If 30 Ngày Thay Đổi Thói Quen asks, What do I want to practise, one day at a time?, then 1000 Souls in Me asks, Who in me is making that choice?
Who wants to move forward?
Who is afraid?
Who keeps carrying, and who wants to be needed?
Who dreams, who protects, who is tired?
And who is ready to lead now?
None of us is made of one perfect version of ourselves. We are shaped by many parts. Some were formed in childhood; some helped us survive or achieve. Some learned to care for everyone else, some learned to dream, and some are still waiting to be heard.
None of them alone is the whole of us. They meet, conflict, protect and evolve. And when we learn to relate to them differently, they begin to create a more integrated life together.
This is the bridge between the two books. 30 Ngày Thay Đổi Thói Quen reminds us that who we become is shaped by what we repeatedly practise. 1000 Souls in Me reminds us that every practice is being lived by someone within us. One began more visibly with DOING; the other travels deeper into BEING.
When 1000 Souls in Me walks beside 30 Ngày Thay Đổi Thói Quen, DOING and BEING no longer need to be two separate journeys.
Who we are shapes what we practise.
What we practise shapes who we become.
And life keeps moving between the two.
In the first month of 2027, we will begin another thirty-day journey together as a community of readers. Some of us will be meeting 30 Ngày Thay Đổi Thói Quen for the first time. Some of us will return to a book we once read as a different version of ourselves. And some will hold it beside 1000 Souls in Me, noticing how much both books, and we ourselves, have changed.
YOUR NEXT 10 YEARS
begins with a choice each day, a page each day, and a lifetime of practice.
Thank you for being part of our collective practice journey.
With love and gratitude,
Jen ❤️
#30NgayThayDoiThoiQuen #30NgayTaiTaoCuocDoi #1000SoulsInMe #JenBooks #HabitChange #ManySelvesOneLife #StayGroundedBlossomInfinitely
