Students often ask me how to improve their professional abilities — is there some shortcut they can take?
I’ve thought about it, and honestly, the paths are few:
Read relentlessly Work relentlessly Keep your body strong That’s it.
For ordinary people without exceptional talent, there’s no special formula for growth. Those legendary stories you’ve heard? They’re written for geniuses — they have nothing to do with us. The only path to success is constant grinding: accumulating experience and building mastery.
In this world, countless cruel and malicious concepts have been invented specifically to describe and demean the poor.
Words like shortsighted, ignorant, lazy, uninformed, reckless, blind… and on and on.
But in my eyes, the poor person’s greatest problem is actually just one thing: chaos.
Why am I so certain in giving this answer?
There was a time when my family’s fortunes collapsed, and I experienced genuine poverty myself — not merely the kind where income drops to zero, but the kind where you’re buried under mountains of debt.
Today I was talking with a friend about social sciences. Even though social science majors aren’t particularly in demand right now and can be tough to find work in, don’t ever make the mistake of thinking they’re useless.
If you want to make sound financial decisions, you need some understanding of political science and economics — to grasp how national policies affect your personal life, and how economic conditions evolve.
The afternoon before, as I finished walking a mother and daughter through their destiny charts (命盘), the mother across from me reached for a tissue and pressed it to her eyes. Her tears soaked through the thick paper in moments.
A few minutes later, she composed herself and explained: “Thank you so much, Master. If you hadn’t analyzed my daughter’s situation through the lens of destiny reading and clear-headed reasoning, I fear her future might have mirrored mine — one stumble after another, full of hurt and hardship.”
Lately, I’ve been receiving all kinds of anxious messages. Brothers and sisters, one after another, spirits sinking low. Either the career path looks unclear, or the road ahead feels rough and uncertain.
Because I move through a wide range of circles and encounter people at many different levels of life, I have some honest thoughts I’d like to share with you.
1 — Much of your anxiety comes from blind comparison.
First, wishing all my brothers and sisters a peaceful and healthy Dragon Boat Festival.
Because this is the first Dragon Boat Festival of the Nine Purple Fire major cycle, there are several things worth paying close attention to — and ideally doing well. From the perspective of traditional customs, these details carry genuine benefit.
1 - You may have noticed that your regular earned income hasn’t been flowing very smoothly this month. Deals that seemed settled keep falling through at the last moment for no apparent reason.
Many people go through their entire lives without ever understanding this: the essence of life is nothing more than a brief experience spanning a few dozen years.
That’s all.
As long as you live comfortably and at ease, honoring yourself and not letting down the people around you — that is the highest form of success in the world.
As for grand ambitions, fame and fortune, being heaven’s favored child — all of that is terribly hollow stuff.
Student Question: I’ve recently noticed that I enjoy buying things. On the positive side, I don’t overspend on food — but on the negative side, I tend to buy a lot of everyday household items: shampoo, body wash, tissues, that sort of thing. When there’s a sale, I want to stock up even more.
This is especially true when I’m in a good mood — after landing a job, or after solving some major problem. The urge becomes particularly strong then. Subconsciously, I feel like I’m rewarding myself through shopping. I’m not sure whether this counts as some kind of psychological issue.
When I write, I have a default reader in mind — someone I’m writing to.
In most cases, that person is a young man or woman who loves learning, works hard to better themselves, and genuinely believes that effort can change their destiny.
Someone like that usually isn’t in terrible financial shape. And even if they are right now, they won’t stay poor.
In other words, my default assumption is that the people following me will keep improving over time — which is why I sometimes share things that may be slightly beyond where you are today. (I’ve already watered it down considerably.)
If you’re a working professional living off a salary, today’s message is one you absolutely need to read carefully.
Because these are words your boss would never say to you. Only your noble benefactor (Gui Ren) would be willing to offer you this kind of counsel — provided, of course, that you’re fortunate enough to encounter one at that level.
Let me start with this: over the years, my personal circle of friends has almost no one left who still works a regular job.