Recently, many of my brothers and sisters have been telling me they’re already feeling the influence of the Li Fire major cycle (离火大运). Their emotions and mindset have grown increasingly restless and anxious — it’s hard to settle down and get anything done.
So I thought it was time to write something to help cool that inner fire. Let’s talk about how to achieve what the ancients called a state of calm Chi, tranquil spirit — where everything flows smoothly.
Many ordinary people have a fairly narrow worldview — they look at things from a single angle, and they’re easily driven by emotion.
But you still cannot look down on them for this. Their awareness and insight may not match yours, yet at their core, they remain good and simple-hearted people. The key difference is simply that their base of knowledge is more limited.
Not long ago, at a dinner gathering, a young friend turned to me with a question: “Master Chi, why is it that people on the other side of the Pacific always seem to have those who can’t stand to see us doing well?”
There is one thing you absolutely must wake up to as an ordinary person: the wealthy and powerful who stand where they are today got there with very little to do with “hard work.” Who among the ordinary isn’t working hard just to survive?
Remember — moving up comes down to three core things.
First, the accumulated legacy of generations before you. Second, the ruthless willingness to keep seizing era-defining opportunities. Third, deeply-rooted, interlocking networks of resources.
Once a person can recognize patterns, those patterns lose their power over them. This is true not only in chess, but in every other domain of life. If you look back at the formulas used by the most popular magazines of our youth — Reader, Yilin, Zhiyin — you’ll find they didn’t just capture human nature; they captured the core desires of their era. At the very least, their approach to shaping public opinion is worth studying.
As the year draws to a close, many of you have been asking me with concern: Master Chi, what should I be doing right now to make sure the new year goes smoothly?
There are many answers to this question. The most important is to plan your monthly arrangements in advance based on your own destiny framework (格局). Another is to adjust the layout of your office and study desk according to the year’s conditions.
Here’s a message that runs counter to what most people believe: asking a good question is a remarkably high bar to clear.
We always assume that because we don’t understand something, we simply need to voice our confusion — and that constitutes a question. It doesn’t.
Consider this example: How does a person become excellent? That’s a poor question.
How do you define excellence? How do you measure its degree? Suppose we agree that getting into a prestigious university counts as excellence — wouldn’t that mean every textbook that student has read from childhood onward is part of the answer?
Tonight I have an important dinner, so a long piece isn’t in the cards.
But walking home, lost in thought, some ideas came to me — ideas I want to share with you. So let me just follow the rhythm of the highway traffic and talk freely.
My personal read on the next decade goes roughly like this:
First, social stratification will solidify further. For ordinary people trying to leap ahead on pure hard work alone, the difficulty will be immense. But this isn’t entirely bad news — it means the path upward will be clearly defined. Those who can read and apply the wisdom left by those who came before will leave the brute-force grinders in the dust.
I believe every one of us needs to come to terms with a very important reality: we are currently in a critical climbing phase.
By “climbing phase,” I mean that after more than forty years of economic development, we are gradually growing toward becoming a genuine top-tier world power.
This creates an awkward situation, because both the number-one power we’re aiming to surpass and its constellation of allies will do everything in their power to trip us up and lay traps for us.
Student Question:
Hello, Master Chi. Last Saturday at five in the morning, I was jolted awake by an urgent phone call. My business partner was calling to say he was pulling out his investment. On top of that, one of our core marketing people was also resigning. Up until recently, my entrepreneurial journey had been mostly smooth sailing — I genuinely made money. Then in 2023, I got overconfident and decided to jump into live-stream selling myself. It was an absolute disaster.
1 - Even if I possessed the skill to overturn the heavens, there is still one hurdle in this world I cannot clear: helping a weak woman stage her comeback.
Among all the sisters who have come to me for destiny readings (命理) and life planning, I have seen many poor women and many foolish women — but helping them was never truly difficult. You identify the root issues in their wealth fortune and life pattern (格局), and you address them.