On the first day of the New Year, let Master Chi make you a promise: if you’re willing to follow my guidance and commit to living this coming year with genuine effort and groundedness — then no matter where you stand right now, by 2027, you will very likely see real progress and rewards.
Because “a full year of practical growth and steady cultivation is an immensely powerful force — more than enough to reverse a downward-spiraling destiny.”
Those of you familiar with Master Chi know that my writing style has undergone a dramatic transformation over the past two or three years — shifting from its originally razor-sharp edge to something that carries increasingly more warmth.
Why?
The reason is simple: as I’ve gotten older, and after witnessing more of the lives of ordinary people.
I came to realize: “Not everyone has that drive to turn everything upside down, nor the ambition to pursue tremendous wealth and achievement. In fact, for the vast majority of ordinary people, a plain and stable life is already the most beautiful state of existence.”
The concept of the “American life kill line” has been making the rounds lately, so let me share a few thoughts — and I genuinely hope it serves as a warning to all of you.
Pay special attention to the advice at the end of this article. If you have children studying abroad, or relatives living in North America — please burn these words into your memory.
Alright, let’s first explain what the “kill line” actually is.
When you’re going through a hard time, sitting alone with your thoughts to “reflect and process” is rarely the answer.
The more you try to reflect in isolation, the worse you’ll feel. Slowly, you’ll find yourself drowning in self-reproach and guilt.
The far better approach is to sit down with trustworthy people around you — especially friends who’ve been through business ventures, investments, or personal growth journeys. Listen to their failure stories too. In that moment, your own mental state will ease considerably.
Because the most exhausting thing in this world is being forced, for whatever reason, to spend your energy tangled up with a “low-cognition person.”
This is, without question, the most draining waste of your mental energy, vitality, and spirit.
Because a low-cognition person is, at their core, a combination of stagnant ambition, self-imposed limitations, and thoroughly warped values.
Try to reason with them, and they’ll feel you’re attacking their tiny, brittle ego — then argue with you.
If you’re willing to do the real work of studying history, you’ll find that almost all the major figures in politics, military, business, and technology rarely suffered from what we’d call health problems.
Even looking at the entertainment world — actors and artists — you’ll notice that anyone who truly made it big generally had an almost gifted baseline physical constitution. They could endure endless demands and sheer exhaustion.
So I always remind my brothers and sisters: if you want to build something great, you must have the wisdom of a sage and the body of a beast. You need both.
Let me be direct with you — in today’s environment, Master Chi believes there’s simply no need to blindly throw yourself into the grind, burning your health as the price of admission, fixating single-mindedly on money.
Wealth matters, of course. But if you currently meet the following four standards, I sincerely hope you can ease up a little and actually let yourself enjoy life.
1 — Stable work, decent income. Enough to roughly cover your daily expenses — and you’re confident enough in yourself that even if you left your job tomorrow, you could gradually rebuild a stable foundation.
…is actually not that hard at all.
I have a very good childhood friend from primary school — though we’re both middle-aged men now, I’ve watched him walk a genuinely inspiring and straightforward road in life.
This friend is an interesting case. Because his grades weren’t great, he stopped studying after vocational high school and threw himself entirely into running small businesses.
It started with renting out martial arts novels, VHS tapes, and CDs. Then came an internet café, then a bar, and now he runs a chain of optical stores. All along, he’s been on a slow but steady upward climb.
In Master Chi’s view, this kind of person can be summed up simply:
They argue with fools, reason with the wicked, show magnanimity toward petty people, and stinginess toward noble benefactors (Gui Ren); Controlled by emotion, provoked by impulse, blinded by envy, driven by laziness; They squander their health, waste their wealth, trample on knowledge, and fritter away their time; They want to get rich without ability, rise without connections, attain noble fortune without resources, seek fame without depth, chase achievement without perseverance, and expect good outcomes without character.
Master Chi wants to share a down-to-earth little story with you — and you’ll understand exactly what it means to have a noble benefactor (Gui Ren) point the way.
Not long ago, I had an old classmate I hadn’t been in touch with for nearly a decade. We were both middle-aged now, and he’d been struggling quite a bit in recent years.
With nowhere else to turn, he reached out through our mutual classmate connections — a bit awkwardly — asking for some direction. If possible, he also hoped I could help arrange a job for him.