How do honor students break through? By ascending dimensions — using their mastery of the rules to escape the rules’ grip. How do poor students break through? By striking downward — using raw courage and audacity to flip the table and play their own game. And what about the ordinary person who has neither guts nor brilliance? Simple: follow the rising stars and settle for a share of whatever they carve out.
(For the essence, skip to the end.)
Main Article:
Once, two diametrically opposed philosophies dominated society. The first was the “education supremacy” camp — its followers firmly believed that as long as a child excelled academically, their future success was guaranteed. The second was the “education is useless” camp — its followers were equally convinced that book knowledge has little real-world value, especially once you enter society, where the tricks of survival cannot be learned from any textbook. For twenty years, these two schools of thought remained locked in constant opposition.
But Master Chi has noticed something fascinating — particularly in recent years, after observing the life patterns of countless distinguished figures and people of real influence, this pattern has become increasingly clear.
Specifically: both honor students and poor students from their school days are the groups most likely to produce outliers. Among those who truly make their mark in society, honor students and poor students each account for roughly half — both groups comprise about 40% of the absolute elite, with the remaining 20% coming from average students.
After thinking about it, I realized this makes perfect sense. Honor students generally represent those who are most adept at understanding and navigating rules. Yes — exam-based education is itself a game with rules, and those who can truly master any game are always those who know the rules best and embrace them most willingly.
So we find that the standouts among honor students are consistently associated with elite universities, major corporations, management trainee programs, core leadership roles, and rapid upward trajectories.
Poor students, however, represent those who utterly refuse to bow to any rules. Some people are simply born that way — they hate playing by the book, insist on doing everything their own way, and if they can’t play by their own rules, they’d rather flip the table and walk away entirely.
So we find that those who rise from among poor students are typically associated with business ventures, street-level hustle, rough-and-tumble circles, sudden windfalls and losses, and out-of-nowhere rises to prominence. (Of course, the vast majority of this group ends up as cannon fodder at the bottom of society — I’m speaking here of the exceptional cases.)
This is also why, in today’s world, masters and legends in any field tend to embody one of two completely opposite personas: the establishment heavyweight, or the maverick rebel.
Yet despite their radically different methods, there is one thing that ultimately unites them: whether honor student or poor student, whether establishment heavyweight or maverick rebel — they all chose to be the chess player, not the chess piece. They all decided to be the card player, not the card being played.
In other words: everything else is secondary — only the Self stands supreme. And that “Self” refers to you, the one reading these words right now.
And if you can hold this mindset, your future will almost certainly rise above mediocrity. At the very least, stepping a rank above the masses is well within reach. As for the rest — given the right fortune cycle (流年), entering the inner circle is simply a matter of time.
Take a walk through most companies and organizations. You’ll notice that the middle and lower tiers are filled with remarkably “well-behaved” people — regardless of age, they carry an unmistakable sense of quiet compliance.
The reason is simple: they are intensely preoccupied with unwritten social norms and the opinions of those around them. They carry all manner of unfounded fears — fear of stepping out of line, fear that their actions might draw attention or displeasure.
In reality, this is a subconscious act of self-imprisonment.
Understand this: rules exist for one purpose — to protect the interests of the platform and the collective. So when the rules conflict with your personal interests, what do you do?
Remember: only the mediocre ordinary person quietly tolerates rules and the watchful eyes of others on a given platform. (Not that there’s anything wrong with being ordinary — living a steady, compliant life is entirely valid. The question is simply: are you truly content with that?)
What people should fear most is not being constrained by rules — it is being constrained by themselves. The moment you stop struggling and pushing through, a life of going along with the crowd is all that awaits you.
From that point on, all your talent, all your courage, every ounce of your potential — all of it will be ground away, until you dissolve into the undifferentiated mass of ordinary people.
So let me be direct — no more circling around. All of this comes down to two paths: either follow the honor student’s approach of ascending dimensions — master the rules, find the loopholes, break free from the cage as quickly as possible — or follow the poor student’s approach of striking downward — use your raw courage and audacity to go somewhere without rules and dominate there.
But if we distill this further into something you can apply directly, here are the principles you must internalize:
1 — In your career, do not let hollow social morality constrain you. Especially when you are walking your path alone, you must forge a code of ethics that is uniquely your own.
I’ll admit it — when Master Chi was young, much of conventional morality seemed noble and romantic. But after years of interacting with countless officials and people of power, it became clear: all those spoken rules and ethical codes exist to control other people.
In this world, as long as you don’t commit truly unforgivable errors, everything in your past eventually becomes a faded anecdote. Your current capability is the only currency that truly matters.
If there is one rule worth keeping, it is this: “Don’t climb over others to get ahead. And if you must — at least make it a fair transaction.”
(Of course, many virtues remain worth upholding — but these belong to the domain of being a good person, not to the domain of advancing your career.)
The same logic applies to the unwritten codes of every world you move in. We sometimes say rules are made to be broken; other times we say breaking rules carries a price. In reality, neither is quite right. A smart person reads rules at two levels: first, learn to do business with the rules — can what you gain outweigh the cost of breaking them? Second, learn to master and even weaponize the rules — can you turn them into a tool that serves your purposes?
2 — All meaningful progress in life is driven by two qualities: purpose and finality. Everything else is not worth overthinking.
First, purpose. Most people make the mistake of setting goals based only on what they currently have — in plain terms, “cut your coat according to your cloth.” This is the quintessential small-workshop mentality — a cramped, limiting life pattern (格局) that will sooner or later squeeze you into failure. (People who live by this saying rarely achieve anything significant.)
To truly rise fast, you must replace that logic with a series of targets you can just barely reach on tiptoe — and keep updating them as you progress.
Take “Old Wang’s modest goal of 100 million” — obviously that’s a stretch for someone from humble origins. But that shouldn’t stop you from setting targets like: “first make 100K,” then “make 100K a week routine,” then “double that weekly 100K.” That’s the chain.
Once you do this, your thinking expands, you become more proactive in seeking solutions, and most critically — you will always be in motion, always moving forward. And once you’re moving, things take care of themselves: without an external force stopping you, you will simply keep going.
Now for finality. You may not have much use for this concept yet, because you haven’t grown powerful enough to hit a real plateau.
What Master Chi means by “finality” is this: every time you reach a certain stage or threshold, you must stop, lay out all your cards, and see whether new combinations are possible. After all, when you’re buried in the hustle, you have no mental bandwidth left to examine yourself. (You probably don’t fully grasp this now — but once you’ve grown large enough, you will.)
So: purpose drives you ceaselessly forward, and finality tells you when to stop without hesitation. The two alternate, thought and action feeding each other — this is the true path to sustained, undefeated progress.
3 — Your life has only one solution path — your own. Do not copy someone else’s answers.
People often fall into a strange delusion: if I just replicate what successful people did — their investments, their moves, their methods — can’t I succeed without all the hard thinking?
This is the ultimate extension of the rules-based mentality that so many people love: “assembly-line success.” It is a profound absurdity.
The reason it’s absurd is simple: the subtle differences between any two situations are precisely what a copycat outsider cannot judge.
If your imitation fails, you’ll conclude it was all a lie. If it succeeds, it was pure luck — and sooner or later, one variable outside your control will bring total and catastrophic collapse.
This applies equally to investing and to life development as a whole. External factors matter, yes — but so do the unique variables within you.
This is why, after consuming countless articles and pieces of wisdom, so many people find their lives unchanged — still drifting, still going nowhere.
It is also why Master Chi has never been inclined to share techniques at the “method” level of the Dao-Method-Technique triad.
Why? Because the moment your ambition is truly ignited, I don’t need to teach you anything. The hunger for real estate, assets, stocks, and business — it will rise within you naturally. And with it comes relentless drive and tenacity. No instruction needed. You will naturally develop your own skills and your own game.
In the same way, once your understanding of relationships and marriage is sharpened, I don’t need to guide you step by step — you’ll figure out for yourself which men are spineless and not worth relying on, and which women are wolves in sheep’s clothing not to be trusted.
Understand this: the passing of mastery between chess players cannot happen through a handful of moves and techniques. It can only happen through the gradual, imperceptible absorption of strategy and mindset.
So when it comes down to it, Master Chi’s greatest wish is not your approval — it is this one sentence I have repeated countless times: “You must distill and discover your own inner power and your own game.”
Only then, building on the approach that truly fits who you are, will you be able to refine and perfect it continuously — and walk out your own destiny.