Foreword
I have always believed that the quiet hours of late night are the perfect time to settle the mind and sort through one’s thoughts. Why squander those hours on meaningless short videos and idle entertainment, when you could find genuine joy in even the smallest forward movement?
Tonight surprised me more than most. As my thoughts wandered, they shaped themselves into something worth writing down — a short essay I’d like to share with you.
1 — People Do Have a Destined Path
I’m not saying this because of what I do, or because I want to force a particular worldview on you.
But most people with genuine insight — around the age of fifty — arrive at the same realization without prompting: the life they’ve lived has been, at its core, a combination of coincidence, opportunity, and forces they never controlled. Full of sudden reversals and unexpected breakthroughs — the kind of reality that even a novelist couldn’t fabricate.
There is, in the unseen fabric of things, a quiet force — half coaxing, half pushing — that has led you to the absurd and wondrous place you stand today.
Smart people sense this force early and follow it intuitively, letting it carry them higher and higher. Those less attuned ignore it, or fight against it, and spend most of their lives being pushed down.
I have always held this conviction: regardless of whether you believe in traditional Chinese metaphysics, respect this one objective principle. If a path in life is genuinely moving upward, and every small effort you make yields visible results — don’t abandon it. Keep walking, even when it gets hard.
But if a path feels easy and comfortable at first, yet trouble keeps appearing every few steps and things keep going sideways — hit the brakes immediately. Adjust your direction and return to the right track.
2 — Most People Don’t Know the “Core Questions” on Life’s Exam
Let me put it in the plainest terms I can: life is like an exam paper worth 100 points, structured as follows.
Worldview and the Capacity to Grow — 30 points Scoring high here is simple. Just keep learning. Continuously dismantle your own mistaken or immature beliefs and replace them with sharper, more sophisticated ones.
Mastery of Your Primary Work, Expansion into Secondary Income — 25 points Not difficult either. Take your work seriously. Map out your entire advancement path with intention. Then choose one investment vehicle you genuinely enjoy and can commit to: property, equities, a side business, a small enterprise.
Choosing the Right Partner with Clear Eyes, and Sustaining That Relationship — 30 points This means using your head to discern which type of person is truly suited to you — someone who understands you and can walk beside you for a lifetime — and then maintaining the kind of genuine connection that keeps both people fulfilled, in body and spirit.
Finding Your Own Joy, and Not Drowning in Misery — 15 points Simply put: knowing how to balance your life so you’re maintaining reasonably good emotions day to day, living something close to a happy existence.
Together, these four categories make a perfect 100. The problem is that most people tend to specialize unevenly — and some simply abandon one or two categories entirely. The result, naturally, is a life in disarray.
Honestly, if you’re willing to be patient and methodical with all four of these areas — grinding through them over time — scoring well and landing above 80 overall is genuinely not hard.
Everything yields to those who put in the effort.
3 — There Is No Obstacle in This World You Cannot Outlast — Endure, and You’ll Come Through
When I look back on my years of striving, I often find myself quietly amused. Almost every crisis that once seemed bigger than the sky — once it has fully exhausted its negative energy — turns out to be just that. Nothing more.
Even the deepest wounds, a year later, have typically been tossed to the back of your mind.
The most telling example: if I hadn’t brought it up just now, you probably wouldn’t have voluntarily recalled anything about the experiences of 2022.
People around me often admire my optimism. But what so-called natural optimist is ever truly born that way? It’s simply that years of accumulated experience — my own and others’ — have shown me clearly: no matter how low the valley, there is always, always, a day you walk out of it.
Without exaggeration — emerging from a low point is as certain as dawn following darkness. It is fated. It is 100,000% guaranteed.
4 — For Adults, What Ultimately Matters Is Self-Repair Ability
When I assess whether someone has what it takes to succeed, the single biggest factor I look for is never their destiny chart (命盘) — even though a destiny chart can reveal roughly 99% of a person’s life trajectory.
My real method for reading people is this: observe their resilience under pressure, and the strength of their emotional recovery.
If those two capacities are strong enough, that person will thrive wherever they land — I guarantee it.
The defining characteristic of both abilities is the speed at which someone can reset their emotional state after criticism or setback, then approach any problem with a constructive attitude — rain or shine, no exceptions.
There’s another type of person I’ve always had little patience for: the kind who constantly dramatizes their own story. The slightest turbulence in career or romance and they immediately spiral into anxiety and dread.
The most common version of this is the young office worker who requires enormous mental energy for every single action. Every minor decision, every small effort demands that she steel herself and summon her courage — just to take one small step forward.
This is fatal, in a practical sense. While others have already shaken off the dirt and walked 500 meters ahead, she’s still stuck back there, unable to move. When your capacity for action collapses like that, it becomes very hard to build anything meaningful with your life.
5 — Life Has No Secret Formula — Grounding Yourself and Moving Forward Step by Step Is the Highest Mastery
I’ve met powerhouses. I’ve met the powerhouses behind those powerhouses. I’ve even watched more than a few of their understudies turn around and become powerhouses themselves.
You’d think people like this must have some secret weapon — some hidden art, some transcendent technique, right?
Honestly, I thought so too when I was younger. But as I gained my own experience and went deep in conversation with many of them, I found: yes, elite cognition and razor-sharp clarity of mind do exist. But at the foundation, it all comes down to the most basic accumulated fundamentals.
What are those fundamentals? They amount to this: whether you took every trial the world threw at you as bitter medicine — and drank it down.
More plainly: every time life slaps you, learn your lesson right there at the spot where the slap landed.
Got into trouble because you couldn’t read the room? Sharpen your eye for people — learn to serve the dish that fits the diner.
Said the wrong thing and caused a mess? Cultivate your restraint — learn when to speak and when to hold your tongue.
The same applies everywhere: how you carry yourself, how you handle situations, your entire style of engagement.
So watch carefully: every person who eventually comes out on top has been through the forge. They emerged from the crucible like thousand-year spirits refined in Laozi’s alchemical furnace — hammered into shape by a process that showed them no mercy.
After that kind of hammering, I have never seen anyone fail to become something.