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Are There Such Things as Good Secrets?

May 26, 2014 · By Vincent Nguyen · 13 Comments

Are There Such Things as Good Secrets?

Something funny happened this weekend.

I woke up to a text from my uncle saying, “Hey, Tommy [my other uncle] knows your blog now lol.”

Huh, interesting. It was 6am and I was just grabbing my phone to check some emails, but I was curious and had to find out how he knew. If Tommy knew, then everyone else knows because information spreads faster than anything else in this world (when it comes to Asian families.)

I’ve been writing since January 2013 and I never mentioned this website to anyone in my family except for the first uncle that messaged me. No reason really, it just never came up.

I talked to them about some of my internships in the past, I talked about my current job and what it’s like to live in the Philippines, but running a website isn’t exactly a table topic.

They know now though, so… I guess it’s time to close down. Ha, yeah right!

Hi family!
Incriminating Evidence
The detective leading the case turned out to be my little brother, who found an interview I did on Christina Buiza’s blog, took a screenshot, and posted a Facebook status that said, “You’re famous!”

It’s funny that my family never knew because this site has quite literally been a life-changer for me—hopefully for others too.

All of this has me thinking, wow, I’m glad this is what they found out about me. This “secret” is actually a good one. I write every week to try to motivate people to improve themselves. Awesome!

Now I’m wondering what other good secrets do I have? I don’t go around saving cats from trees or anything, but I like to think there are other positive aspects about me that others would enjoy discovering on their own.

Do good things and ask yourself, “If someone close to me discovered this, would they be proud?”

If the answer is yes, you’re more than likely onto something great.

You and I both need to make more positive secrets. If we hold ourselves accountable to making at least one a week, we’d have created 52 more by the end of the year for someone else to discover.

What positive secrets do the people closest to you not know about?

Photo Credit: Sage Ross – Flickr

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. LudvigSunstrom says

    May 26, 2014 at 1:24 pm

    Haha, that’s funny.

    It’s the exact same thing for me. There are plenty of people I know who don’t know of my site.

    Reply
    • Vincent Nguyen says

      May 26, 2014 at 6:27 pm

      They’ll eventually find out. They always do! 😛

      Reply
  2. Don (@breatheoptimism) says

    May 27, 2014 at 7:48 pm

    Hmmm very interesting convo – positive secrets. Makes me think what I can get going on in my life!

    Reply
    • Vincent Nguyen says

      May 28, 2014 at 4:10 am

      I’m more than sure that you’ve got a lot more than you think!

      Reply
  3. Joel Richardson says

    May 28, 2014 at 6:50 am

    Fantastic Vincent!! I’m sure a lot of people would be WOWED just as I am from your work on Self Stairway just out of curiosity how much does all this cost you to maintain and run?

    Reply
    • Vincent Nguyen says

      May 28, 2014 at 7:39 am

      Let’s see…

      Hosting: $30/mo. + $1/1000 visitor over 25,000 visitors. Typically this all equals to about $60-80 depending on the month.

      MailChimp: $30/mo.

      Gmail for the domain: $5/mo.

      FeedBlitz (RSS): $2/mo

      Coffee shop food/drinks: $X,XXX/mo. (kidding)

      So monthly expenses are about $100/mo, give or take.

      Reply
      • Joel Richardson says

        May 29, 2014 at 12:13 am

        Beautiful thanks for your contribution!! 🙂 now get going with Self Stairway merchandise 😉

        Reply
        • Vincent Nguyen says

          May 29, 2014 at 1:06 am

          I was playing with the idea of using TeeSpring and making t-shirts with famous quotes on them. Shot out an email to the email list to see if there was interest but not enough people showing they would want to buy, so I scrapped the idea. 😛

          Reply
          • Joel Richardson says

            May 29, 2014 at 9:05 am

            Fair enough mate gotta give the people what they want and show interest in maybe we could partner up and deliver some online Leadership/ Fitness coaching/ training package program

            Reply
            • Vincent Nguyen says

              May 29, 2014 at 6:01 pm

              Sorry, Joel, but something like that would really distract me from my work over at Empire Flippers. They’re my #1 priority right now.

            • Joel Richardson says

              May 29, 2014 at 11:01 pm

              Haha was just talking possibilities and ideas all good Vincent 🙂

  4. Melissa Wilson says

    May 28, 2014 at 1:45 pm

    This is funny because I actually haven’t told my family (aside from my parents) about my site either. For me it’s kind of deliberate though. My site is for people who’ve been bullied (as I was) and I never really talked about that with my family, so I didn’t feel comfortable telling them about my site. It’s kind of strange because of course they could come across it, but I guess I’d rather them find out about my past that way. I do think that if they knew about what I am doing online that they would be proud of me. So I guess it’s my positive secret. 🙂

    Reply
    • Vincent Nguyen says

      May 28, 2014 at 8:05 pm

      That’s very humble of you, Melissa! I think most people in your situation wouldn’t be able to wait to boast about that sort of thing to their family. 🙂

      Reply

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