Recently, I sat down with family to watch a few episodes of a currently popular TV drama. I knew the content had been around for a while, but I still found myself cringing more with each episode.
The female lead’s relentless climb reminded me of a student who consistently scores 75 — painfully average — who somehow manages to compile a “study guide” and parade it as hard-earned wisdom. Forced confidence with nothing real behind it.
This article went through two rounds of revisions before it could finally be published.
Honestly, at first I didn’t even understand which parts were so sensitive. Then I realized — a great deal of what I wrote was simply too sharp, not exactly what the general public would comfortably absorb.
Fine. Some things got softened. But the core hasn’t changed.
It’s still brutally honest. Read at your own risk — and once you’re done, I’d suggest saving it somewhere you won’t lose it.
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.
Yesterday, a reader asked me: Master Chi, why were you able to summon the courage to break through your own darkest moments — and yet here I am, trapped in the same abyss, completely crushed by pressure, drowning in despair and helplessness, without even a trace of will to fight back? Please, I’m reaching out for help — what should I do?
After reading this question, I paused to reflect. What came to me is something I can only describe as half-wisdom, half-instinct — yet it cuts straight to the core.
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.
At our age, we naturally begin to find peace with our parents.
Because enough awareness and maturity will eventually help us understand that every generation has its own limits — and its own limitations.
So much of the past is no longer worth dwelling on.
Take the baton, and simply do better in your own generation — that’s enough.
When you truly think this through, you’ll find that that generation was actually very endearing, humble, and kind-hearted.
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.
Some insider, high-level thinking is the kind you’ll never hear anywhere else in your lifetime. This article is exactly that. Brothers and sisters, I am Master Chi. Let me walk you through this.
Do not — I cannot stress this enough — do not carry any notion of “overnight success” into the business of making money. Because nearly everyone who holds this reckless idea ends up shattered to pieces in the pursuit of wealth.
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.