From the perspective of Chinese metaphysics (玄学), there is a truth you may find hard to believe.
When you have decided that something is worth doing — just do it. Commit fully. Don’t let a tangle of scattered thoughts pull you off course.
Put in enough sustained effort, and when the time is right, good fruit will naturally emerge on its own.
But most people don’t work this way. They hesitate. They second-guess themselves. They’re afraid of what lies ahead and what lurks behind. The result? An incalculable waste of time and energy — and nothing to show for it in the end.
I’ve also met plenty of fools who spend all day churning through idea after idea, convinced that this endless thinking is proof of sharp intelligence. Yet not one of them ever takes an idea and follows through with real, grounded effort.
I often tell the brothers and sisters whose destiny charts (命盘) I read: there is no problem under heaven so difficult that, given enough time and deep enough effort, it cannot eventually be broken through. It’s only ever a matter of when.
The truly intelligent person is the one who knows which hard problems must be conquered — and then drives at them with singular, unwavering focus.
I don’t want you to know things every day. I want you to do things every day.
The truth is, whatever you commit to in this world will always bring a mingling of good fruit and bitter trials. What do I mean?
As long as you act, it will keep giving you good fruit — experience, money, reputation, noble benefactors (贵人, Gui Ren), opportunities, and every kind of blessing.
At the same time, it will keep sending you bitter trials — resistance, fear, obstacles, rejection, pressure, and every kind of hardship.
This is where the strength of your resolve is tested.
Grit your teeth. Don’t quit. Slowly, you will enter a state of flow where all negative energy simply cannot reach you. You will come to understand — truly understand — what it means when people say: the more you think, the more fear grows; the more you act, the smoother the path.
So much of life comes down to learning how to champion yourself.
Learn to encourage yourself. Affirm yourself. Recognize your own worth. Trust yourself. Give yourself credit.
Never let the defeated stragglers around you — those already left behind by life — pull your spirit down. Their failures are their own. Their hardship and misfortune is their fate. It has nothing to do with you.
The moment their negative energy starts seeping into you, create distance immediately. One vile person can shatter nine cycles of fortune. Let yourself be infected by their energy, and that is when things truly fall apart.
Every time I sit down to read a destiny chart for one of my students, I remind them of the same thing: you have decided to climb upward — so don’t look back at the abyss stretching endlessly below.
Once Master Chi has mapped out the road ahead clearly through your destiny chart, all you need to do is follow the guidance, one step at a time, moving upward. Do not let fear or doubt slow your footing.
There are two truly tragic forms of failure in life.
One is the timid soul who spends an entire lifetime unable to take a single step forward. The other is the indecisive soul who spends every single day spinning in circles in the exact same spot.
What is there to be afraid of? Just move forward. As long as you walk, there is a path.
I’ll leave you with a line I’ve been especially fond of lately:
Setting out on the pilgrimage is more important than arriving at the sacred mountain. (In Journey to the West, the monk Xuanzang embarks on a perilous journey to Lingshan — the sacred mountain — to retrieve the Buddhist scriptures. Master Chi’s point: the transformation happens on the road, not at the destination.)