[Paid subscriber note: This article is written specifically for ordinary young people aged 18–35 from humble backgrounds. Read it carefully — it can genuinely change the course of your destiny.]
Also: if your parents’ net worth is under nine figures, or if they are not particularly distinguished within their own circles, then it is essentially impossible for them to have distilled the wisdom in this article into the kind of family knowledge that gets passed down to you.
Career content online will constantly — and unconsciously — tell you to master your craft, to specialize deeper, because expertise is the path to promotions and raises.
In reality, this thinking is completely wrong. You should never let your job title limit or define who you are.
The correct logic is: companies exist to make money → your expertise helps the company make money → the company hires you.
In other words, if your skills can’t generate revenue for the company, it doesn’t matter how brilliant you are. And if they can, whether you’re a polished “specialist” or not is completely irrelevant.
The truth is, most content about work that circulates online is wrong. The more you consume it, the more damage it does. Yet this kind of counter-consumerist message will always lose out — bad money drives out good.
Let me give you an example.
If someone is constantly being manipulated by their boss and pushed around by senior colleagues, what should they do?
The correct answer is: get out of that environment as soon as possible.
For a woman to live well, there is only one path in this life: keep shining, keep making yourself radiate.
The moment a woman decides to lower her standards and settle for a man, her life’s tragedy begins.
If you enter a relationship having already established an attitude of tolerance and accommodation from the very start — you have already written your own tragic ending.
A man who isn’t up to your level will naturally reflect certain traits. First, he will begin constantly probing and pushing past your boundaries. Second — because people are mirrors for one another — your caliber will trigger a kind of illusion in him. He’ll start to wonder: am I really this exceptional, that a woman of her quality is chasing after me? He begins to drift. He starts trying to validate this inflated sense of his own worth out in the broader market. In the end, a man like this won’t cherish you — he’ll wreck your peace of mind.
In real life, there are plenty of men with money who have it but won’t let you spend it. Then there are men who aren’t as wealthy, but they don’t want your family’s money either — and they’re willing to spend what they earn on you.
Being well-matched in social standing is of course ideal. But if you’ve met many men like that and simply don’t click with any of them, it’s perfectly fine to choose someone who isn’t as well-off — as long as he’s ambitious, capable in what he does, and above all, a man of good character.
Why, in this one life you have, should you escape a low-level environment as quickly as possible? My answer may sound a little dark, but it is completely true.
You should know that I, Master Chi, was once poor myself. Due to a reversal of family fortune, I lived for a time at the very bottom of society.
And that is precisely why I came to understand this truth so deeply in my bones: whenever you get the chance, do not — under any circumstances — stay at the bottom for too long. Because a prolonged life at the low end of society will genuinely corrupt and distort a person’s character and values.
After all these years, social media platforms have ultimately confirmed the most basic economic truth: creating genuinely good content is extraordinarily costly. That is why, when you scroll through your phone, the odds of stumbling upon high-quality, non-entertainment content are quite low.
Some students worry that staying off their phones means missing out on something. In reality, there is absolutely no need for that concern. The far better use of your time is work and reading.
Sometimes, I genuinely feel that you are exhausted — you’ve placed far too much pressure on yourself.
Do you know what? Life’s margin for error is actually quite high.
Especially after you’ve been through a few things, you’ll gradually discover that many of the situations people make such a big deal about are, at their core, really not that important.
Take a difficult family upbringing — it’s really not that critical. If you slowly learn to understand your parents’ limitations and shortsightedness with clear eyes, you’ll develop the insight to see through their flaws and ultimately surpass them.
Over the years, I’ve arrived at one profound realization: the reason people struggle is almost always because they’ve made their lives too complicated.
If you don’t believe me, take a close look at the people around you who are stuck in poverty, chaos, and constant drama.
Their lives are invariably packed with people and situations that consume enormous amounts of their energy — while producing absolutely nothing useful in return.
Student Question: After reading your articles, I realize that as someone in the tech field, I tend to be a wallflower in social situations. How do I develop my own social tree? How do I find and connect with the “hidden small wealthy people in the city” or the “hidden local money in smaller towns”?
Master Chi’s Response: What you’re describing comes down to a fundamental question of sequence. The four steps are: Step One — do things; Step Two — establish your name; Step Three — enter circles; Step Four — build your network.