I know full well that neither my destiny chart (命盘) readings nor my knowledge community are accessible to young people from ordinary families. The consultation fee speaks for itself — the vast majority of people who seek me out are adults who have already achieved some measure of success in life. But this also means I’ve been unable to help the many readers still mired in mediocrity.
Well then. Let me write something that distills everything I know.
This is for you — the one stuck in mediocrity, with no clear path ahead.
Pay attention. Every piece of advice below is capable of tearing you out of that trap. Any single one of them could keep you thinking well into the night. Master these, and within three years, you and everyone you care about can live a comfortable, dignified life:
1 — Don’t get sucked into gender wars, grand political narratives, or petty gossip. None of it has anything to do with you. Spending hours arguing about these things is the most foolish waste of time imaginable. You have no platform, no leverage — who’s going to listen? When you have time, the only things truly worth doing are reading books and studying the people around you who are winning. The day you’ve built your own business, accumulated real capital, and have a marriage others envy — whatever you say will be treated as gospel. That’s when your words carry weight.
2 — Perspective matters enormously. Small-town circles are always starved of information and behind the times — and being behind means getting beaten and left behind. Go to the big cities. Go where the good industries are. Go work at major companies. Do whatever it takes to observe the veterans and wealthy individuals who operate at a higher level than you. Once your horizons expand, your thinking comes alive, and you’ll naturally know your next move. That’s just how people work — each step forward reveals the next vista. Climb steadily, and your path will open up.
3 — Character matters more than raw ability. No matter how talented you are, if you don’t know how to conduct yourself, people won’t want to work with you — unless you’re a genius. Many people reach their thirties and forties still baffled by this, convinced they’re talented but somehow unrecognized. Think about it from the other side: why would anyone promote them? With no give-and-take, no returns — that kind of naivety is almost comical. Read situations sharply. Think quickly. Be steady in your conduct. Learn to offer the occasional well-placed compliment and express loyalty and gratitude. Do these things, and you’ll do just fine.
4 — Don’t let your current weakness turn you into a doormat. Excessive submissiveness only earns contempt. Learn humility, yes — but also learn to carry yourself with dignity. At critical moments, know how to express a strong, well-reasoned opinion. That’s often how you attract noble benefactors (Gui Ren) — by earning them, not waiting for them. The middle-aged man who is nothing but obedient is, bluntly put, a spineless workhorse, born to toil for others.
5 — I’ll say it again as I always have: don’t pay much attention to advice from people who are doing worse than you. Chew on their words like sugarcane — if there’s no nutrition, spit it out on the spot and don’t carry it with you. The people you should be learning from are always those who are more accomplished than you right now, with visible results to show for it. That’s a real case study worth following.
6 — Learn social grace. Learn to express care appropriately. Learn to give gifts and maintain relationships. The most foolish people in this world are those who walk around with their chins high, begging heaven for noble benefactors, yet never give a single cent themselves — just waiting to be rescued by others. Such people are both pitiable and infuriating. They’re essentially destined to accomplish nothing, because good fortune will simply walk around them.
7 — You’ll come to understand this: in this society, simply keeping your word, following through on everything, being punctual, and standing by your principles is enough to outperform 99% of ordinary people. Reliability is always the most striking quality a person can have. Other abilities can be developed over time — but if you’re unreliable, no one will ever give you the chance to be developed.
8 — When you are starting out and still weak, your greatest assets are time and energy — use them to their fullest. Don’t let yourself be enslaved by short videos, games, binge-watching, and mindless content. Use that time to sit down and read seriously, read good books. That is the fastest path of evolution available to an ordinary person.
9 — Don’t spend your life as a pure consumer, constantly bleeding money into products. Learn to become a producer — someone whose time and abilities others are scrambling to purchase. At its core, all wealth creation works the same way: as your individual abilities deepen and refine, more and more people will willingly pay a premium to bring you onto their side.
10 — A poor household upbringing tends to breed envy — a base emotion — that leaves you bitter and stubborn. In truth, it’s only the most capable people who have the broadest and most open hearts. They can set aside ego to learn from others’ strengths and absorb what’s best in those around them. So I ask: which kind of person are you?
11 — Don’t be too precious, and don’t have a fragile ego. The grievances you consider so significant are, to anyone operating at a slightly higher level, genuinely too trivial to mention. Spending mental energy on these small things all day is not just pointless — it will make you small and petty.
12 — The most wealth-destroying logic in the world is putting money into things that don’t appreciate — flashy clothes, designer entry-level bags worth tens of thousands, all manner of impulsive purchases that feel good for a moment. Whatever money you have, however small, direct it toward reliable long-term investments. I won’t make specific recommendations, but even saving it beats wasting it.
I’ve said before that I want every reader to become a long-term investment believer. If your income is stable and you’re willing to patiently accumulate over twenty years without venturing into anything too exotic, you’ll eventually find that a tiny fraction of your returns covers every piece of low-grade consumption you were once obsessed with. And by then, you’ll realize how low and provincial those purchases were — you’ll have no interest in them at all.
13 — Physical health is your single most foundational asset. Without it, everything I’ve said above is empty talk. So unless absolutely necessary, never sacrifice your body for anything. Learn to eat with discipline, sleep early and rise early, exercise properly, and get regular health checkups. Don’t dismiss health as unimportant.
My own cousin was once a well-known figure in Shanghai’s old-guard investment circles. Worn down by years of overwork, he ended up in the ICU at a private hospital in Hong Kong at just 56. He struggled to survive for a year and a half, leaving behind a medical bill of over sixteen million yuan and an estate worth over three billion — and then he was gone.
His attending physician said it plainly: caught six months earlier, this could have been treated for under 160,000 yuan with room to spare. Caught six months later, even a god couldn’t have saved him.
14 — You may not believe in Chinese metaphysics (玄学), but you cannot afford to disrespect it. Many people wonder why those at the top take such seemingly arcane things so seriously. It’s because they’ve lived through enough to know that anything passed down by our ancestors for thousands of years didn’t survive through coincidence. They just can’t always speak openly about it — for various reasons, privacy among them.
Think about yourself: you claim to have ability, but have you ever considered what your life pattern (格局) actually is? When are your critical major life cycles (大运) set to arrive? What pitfalls must you avoid at all costs? Which opportunities must you seize and never let go?
Without knowing these things, you’re walking blind. If you don’t fall into a pit, count yourself lucky to have received heaven’s special favor — and don’t expect the road ahead to be smooth or easy.