Introduction: This year has been hard on all of you — and I know full well what you’ve been through these past six months. From the bottom of my heart, I hope this article helps you find your footing again, gather your strength, and face whatever comes next — together. (This is a revised repost of a classic piece.)
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I waited three years, just for a chance.
I needed to prove a point — not to show how great I am.
Only to prove that what I lost, I will take back.
These lines are from the classic film A Better Tomorrow.
Master Chi offers them now to you — to anyone walking through their lowest valley.
And at the same time, I want to tell you something: though we’ve never met, though I don’t know your name or your story, though I’ve never seen your destiny chart (命盘) — Master Chi is absolutely certain that what belongs to you will return. I have no doubt in you. None.
You need to understand this: success and failure in a person’s life come down to talent, timing, and fortune. Destiny itself is made of countless chapters and rises and falls. This means no matter how brilliant, how hardworking, how exceptional you are — you cannot avoid seasons of ease and seasons of hardship.
You cannot refuse them. You cannot summon them at will.
Think of the business titans, the celebrated artists, the great figures you genuinely admire. How many of them didn’t bleed and sweat their way to where they are today, fortunes rising and falling all along? How many of them never tasted devastating failure before rising again, more determined than ever?
Yes — life cannot be lived without failure. Unless, of course, you never attempt anything at all. Only those who accomplish nothing have nothing to lose.
Having witnessed countless life collapses, Master Chi is firmly convinced: many of the failures you’ve endured are, in fact, another form of accumulation.
Let me speak from my own experience. When I was young, I achieved real success and recognition in other fields. It felt like the wind was always at my back — confident, full of fire.
But tell me — what does early success really mean? Those of you who’ve been reading these articles know the saying: “The spring winds of youth don’t last; only the evening breeze truly soothes.”
When a person is riding high, they always — always — believe it’s because they fought their way there. Fighting heaven, fighting earth, fighting people — they fight with such joy that they begin to think they’re invincible. An undefeatable warrior monk, forever ferocious.
Sure. You’re impressive. You think you’re unstoppable?
That’s exactly the moment fate watches. It lets the wins keep coming, lets you soar higher and higher — and then, the very moment you’re most full of yourself, it shoves you off the peak and lets you crash hard.
Looking back now, every one of those early victories was like drinking poison to quench thirst, eating poison fruit to fill my belly. Not only did they fail to build any real foundation — they loaded me with far more pressure and pain when the failures eventually came.
And they did come. No surprise. After touching my little cloud, I crashed — a complete, cliff-edge collapse.
That period was blow after blow. There were moments I truly believed I could never rise again. The dread, the humiliation, the restlessness, the anxiety — it filled every second of those years. If you’re in a valley right now, you know exactly what I mean. Truly: I couldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep.
But as time passed, and as I clawed my way out inch by inch, I looked back and realized: those years of “bitter work” became the greatest treasure I’ve ever earned.
That treasure is this — you finally get to observe everything around you from the perspective of someone who has failed. A perspective you never had before.
Here’s the truth: when a person is riding high, they are utterly incapable of listening or seeing clearly, because they’re full of themselves. And worse — those fleeting achievements make them feel they’ve actually earned the right to be full of themselves.
There is no “standing atop the mountain, surveying all beneath you.” In reality, near and far, high and low — everything looks different depending on where you stand.
There are things you cannot see clearly from a triumphant summit. There are things you can only see when your face is pressed into the mud.
Seen this way, the lowest point of a person’s life is precisely the most transformative, most reflective, most important period of their entire journey.
Only when you’ve fallen will you see clearly how the very things you built crumbled apart. You’ll realize just how blind, arrogant, and shortsighted you were back then.
Only when you’ve fallen will you see through the so-called friends, connections, and circles around you — and how transactional and self-serving they really are.
You’ll come to understand that the family members, partners, true friends, and noble benefactors (贵人, Gui Ren) by your side are the ones who actually matter.
And most importantly — only when you’ve fallen will you finally understand what your actual boundaries and capabilities are. What your core is — the thing that is uniquely, precisely yours, the thing that can truly ground you and let you expand from there.
Do not underestimate those three points. Master Chi’s circle isn’t enormous, but it isn’t small either — and among them are many who’ve been through life-altering upheavals. You likely know someone like that. You may be that person yourself. If you are — you already feel this in your bones.
So now I want to share five pieces of guidance for anyone in a low valley. These aren’t five things you should do. They’re five things you should not do.
Don’t Be Afraid#
Anyone who has gone through a massive collapse will feel something carved into their very marrow: “So I’m not as invincible as I thought.”
This feeling hits regardless of whether you were building a business, making investments, or navigating a particular world. Once you’ve lived through that big defeat, the shock of it is overwhelming.
Some people get completely destroyed by it — not physically, but psychologically. Their will and resilience just disappear.
No one who hasn’t lived it can truly claim to understand this.
Here’s what you need to know: when you fail in a big way, the loss of capital and resources is not the deepest wound. The deepest wound is the profound, crushing self-doubt it throws you into.
Am I thinking about this right? Are my instincts reliable? Is my foundation solid? Can I trust the people around me?
All roads lead to one final, terrifying question: “Am I still capable?”
Don’t underestimate this. For most ordinary people, this question never arises — because they’ve never carried anything heavy enough to crush them. But for someone genuinely building something, this becomes a devastating internal demon.
Why else do you think so many powerful figures, after just one serious setback, choose to walk away and never return? It isn’t that they can’t fight anymore. It’s that they’ve stopped trusting themselves.
But Master Chi wants to tell you — don’t be afraid. Really, don’t.
In all the destiny charts I’ve ever read, I have never — not once — seen a truly capable person escape the refiner’s fire. It has never happened.
Many abilities and insights can only be forged in those flames. Nowhere else.
So treat every failure and hardship as a brutal, blood-soaked lesson that fate itself is teaching you — a trial to be endured. It’s painful. But it will not kill you.
And when you’ve survived it, you are still you. Your talents, your abilities — they remain. Plus, purgatory has gifted you something extra: eyes that see through illusions and bones tempered like iron.
The truth is — you are objectively stronger, wiser, more mature. Once you rebuild your resolve, you will absolutely open a new chapter in a new world.
Don’t Panic#
Hardship and setback can sometimes cling to you like a stubborn ailment — nearly impossible to shake completely. Even as you step into a new phase, old problems and old grudges may follow close behind.
And so many people begin to panic — reaching for any instinctive escape route.
Don’t panic. Look around and tell me: which successful person walked away spotless, untouched? Even in academia — which has the least to do with profit — how many can honestly say their entire life was without a single stain?
Learn to give yourself time. Learn to give the past time. Especially those messy, tangled situations — stop trying to resolve them through confrontation and conflict alone.
The more aggression you bring, the more it becomes an insurmountable wall. The years pass, but you’re still standing at that same point, not an inch further.
Take debt as an example. Learn to address it proactively — not reactively. Go to the other party honestly, sincerely explain your current situation and difficulties, and genuinely share your prospects and capabilities.
Trust me — many of those long-standing disputes involve people who once trusted and cared about you the most. The reason they’ve turned cold is precisely because of your opposition. Learn to let time settle and soften things. Then, once the heat has died down, begin fresh with a new approach.
This is the method seasoned masters have always used best.
Never let panic breed agitation, and never let agitation breed hatred. Down that road, you’ll be trapped by the past forever — unable to take a single new step.
In the language of Chinese tradition: “Long imprisoned by old karmic bonds, one cannot open new horizons.”
Don’t Rush#
When your cooking oil catches fire and the flames are shooting up — what do you do?
You don’t grab a bucket of water and throw it on. You stay calm. Find a cloth. Dampen it. Cover the pan. Then put the lid on to cut off the air.
The same applies to life’s out-of-control moments and collapses. Do not, out of panic, immediately start scrambling for solutions in every direction.
What you need to do first is hold steady. For small setbacks — pause and breathe for a moment. For major ones — settle for months. Either is wisdom.
Especially after you’ve been through a defeat and do a full post-mortem, you’ll discover something illuminating: in almost every collapse that felt like an unstoppable avalanche, the “events” you thought caused it were really just small pieces of a much larger picture.
The real force that made things spiral — that made everything worse and eventually collapse entirely — was often a series of wrong decisions made in desperate urgency.
Why do young people lose their heads and act impulsively, while seasoned veterans remain unmoved? Because the veteran knows: rushed moves produce no winning plays; calm is where the winning odds live.
Let me give you an example. The year before last, a senior figure I deeply respect re-emerged after years of hardship. Already past fifty — by conventional wisdom, he should either be quietly retiring or quietly anxious.
Neither. Not rushed, not agitated. He quietly made the rounds — old friends, old brothers — rebuilding relationships and goodwill one by one. He listened to everyone, gathered perspectives, heard out every bit of news and opinion.
And quickly, he rewove his network of resources. In just a year or so, he had quietly returned to something resembling his former stature.
Not quite at the summit yet — but as the saying goes, heaven never seals all paths. The danger is when you rush and lose your way.
And I ask you again: what do you have to rush for? Your talent, your character, your vision, your insight — these things follow you for life. You cannot lose them. So why were you composed before, and less so now?
Don’t Be Arrogant#
Times have changed. They really have.
The rules and models for many things are completely different from what they were before — in capital, in business, in every domain. The change is literal and relentless.
This means that what worked for you in the past may be entirely impossible to execute today.
As I said at the beginning — people fail precisely because they once succeeded. But past success is also the most likely thing to calcify into a useless trophy you can’t stop polishing.
Think about it — isn’t this exactly the pattern of the people around you who once had tremendous influence, and then faded into obscurity? Always talking about the past, always reliving the glory days. A record of achievement from their thirties, recited well into their sixties.
This is another great internal hazard: arrogance.
At the root of it — collapse happens because old methods and old skills stopped working. So regardless of how formidable you once were: lift your head. Look honestly at the new world.
This is what Master Chi finds hardest of all. Why?
Human beings are social creatures. A person often can’t break out of old patterns precisely because everyone around them is also stuck in the past — old guards, old circles, all soaking together in nostalgia — unaware that the world has already turned over to a new generation.
In front of others, “arrogance” can sometimes be a pose, a facade. But toward yourself — arrogance is stagnation and self-delusion.
An old man of seventy who still carries himself with fierce pride? We can admire that. But a man of forty or fifty who is stiff with arrogance? That person has essentially capped their own ceiling. Because arrogance becomes a cage — one that prevents any forward movement — until eventually they are overtaken by a younger generation or made obsolete by the age itself.
Don’t Be Chaotic#
When friends come to me with their problems — and they do, because who goes to ask about their fortune or destiny chart when everything is fine? — I usually don’t rush to read the chart right away. I first ask them to tell me the full picture.
For one, sometimes your life experience and your own judgment are enough to offer sound, rational guidance.
For another, only when you understand the complete situation can you make a truly clear assessment.
But here’s what I want to address: what happens when someone in a low valley becomes chaotic in their thinking?
First — understand this: any situation is easiest to navigate when you start from a clean, clear foundation. Whether in relationships, career, or investment — starting fresh is always the path of least resistance.
But some people love operating in the middle of chaos — winning from within disorder. That’s not wrong. It’s a gift, a particular type of destiny framework (格局). Some people are born with this ability.
But for most of you reading this, Master Chi still advises: don’t begin anything in chaos, and don’t let any crisis end in chaos.
What does that mean? Even if the sky is falling — give yourself time to figure out what is actually happening.
Don’t try to tackle all your problems at once, throwing yourself flat on every front. Trust me — I’ve been through things, and so have you. Think carefully: isn’t there always a single central thread running through any situation, no matter how large or small?
That’s it — that thread. Keep it clear, and everything flows. Lose track of it while chasing secondary problems, and that’s when real trouble begins. That’s where disasters are born.
The same applies when you’re in a defeat. What you need to do is find that central thread:
Right now — is my state and my fortune (运势) in a good place?
If neither your state nor your fortune is good, don’t rush to expand. If you do, you’ll be fighting a second battle before the first is settled.
Am I the main actor in this situation?
If yes — how do I gather favorable resources in this comeback hand?
If no — which side do I align with? How do I weigh the trade-offs? And should I go all in?
In this particular circle — what am I lacking? What can I borrow?
Along the way — can I ride someone else’s tailwind and grow while doing so?
Don’t be chaotic. Never be chaotic. Remember: life is a game — like chess, like cards, like a destiny framework. Ultimately, it comes down to playing your own rhythm and strategy.
“Chaos” is the root of all collapse — because mistakes can be corrected, but chaos requires a long and painful cycle to untangle and recover from.
A Closing Thought:
In many branches of Chinese metaphysics (玄学), the palace of career and achievement and the palace of marriage and family are mirror images of each other.
Ultimately, it’s because career and love are structures that give rise to and sustain each other.
Why do so many women not understand this — in TV dramas, the more accomplished the woman, the lonelier and more unlucky she is in love. Yet in real life, the more accomplished a woman, the more likely she is to have both a great career and a great marriage?
The logic is simple. Strong career fortune naturally attracts a higher-caliber circle. And within that circle, the probability of meeting someone who is genuinely willing to build a life with you — steadily, loyally — is far higher.
Conversely, the less a woman has going for her, the more likely she is to encounter the wrong people. Those without much to offer tend to settle lower — and thus encounter others who are similarly situated.
Simple enough?
Now, what about men?
The saying “a virtuous wife reduces a husband’s misfortunes” is absolutely not just an old cliché.
Men may be the ones charging at the world — that’s true. But a high-caliber woman never just stays quietly at home.
What role does a great woman play? One type, as Master Chi has written before, is the woman who conquers the world on her own terms — the phoenix-serpent archetype, formidable in her own right.
But there is another type — one I once neglected to write about: the “gentle and wise crane” (鹤贤, Hè Xián).
She strategizes for her partner. She steadies his mind. She maps out the larger plan.
She is his most clear-sighted advisor — holding the center while he battles at the front.
(The phoenix, the serpent, the crane — these are all one-in-a-hundred qualities, and even then, only forged through the crucible of real experience. This topic alone deserves its own article.)