Yesterday, a newly subscribed reader left a comment: “Master, I started following you on a friend’s recommendation. My friend speaks very highly of you, so I went through all your past articles and found them quite rewarding. But I always feel your words are a bit too sharp — won’t other readers find them hurtful?”
To this, I — Master Chi — would like to take the opportunity to respond: You should know, I’ve never enjoyed pouring cheap, feel-good content into my readers’ minds. In an era already drowning in motivational platitudes, what I prefer is to distill my own hard-won insights so that you walk away with genuine wisdom that leads to more wealth and a better life.
Over the years — whether through BaZi (Four Pillars of Destiny) readings or community sharing — I have genuinely helped many brothers and sisters achieve real financial advancement and move up in the world.
So, politeness and gentle phrasing? Not worth mentioning. What I want is clarity, precision, directness, and sharpness. That’s what real insight requires.
Tonight’s article is no different — it will sting many of you, but it will also cut through a great deal of the fog you’re wandering in.
1
Many of you have been “nice people” your whole lives — and I mean that in the worst way. You’ve never truly steered your own course. From youth to middle age, someone else has always been at the wheel.
As children, you were managed day-to-day by parents and teachers who were themselves mediocre. As young adults, you were directed by narrow-minded supervisors who barely had more vision than you did. And then finally, when middle age arrives and it’s supposedly your turn to lead — you discover you’ve long since lost the ability to command your own life.
This is what it means to become a bolt when you’ve spent your whole life being a bolt: you lose the capacity to think like a processor. Spend your life as a lamb, and you’ll forget you ever had the instincts of a sheepdog.
What can you do?
It’s actually straightforward. Tell yourself quietly, from this point on: everything that happens to you — good or bad, high or low — is the result of your own decisions. Stop shuffling through your days, waiting for someone else to give you orders.
Be proactive. Actively seek out every challenge that can make you stronger, and every opportunity that can push the boundaries of what you’re capable of. Don’t be afraid — and don’t blindly cling to comfort. As long as it’s legal and reasonable, grinding harder today and suffering a little more now is exactly how you build the financial foundation for a life lived on your own terms.
2
Here’s something you might struggle to accept: 90% of the people in this world are foolish, weak, and incompetent. So why do some of them live better than you?
There’s only one reason: at some early point in their lives, purely by luck, they happened to go just a little deeper than you in some particular area of knowledge or skill. That tiny edge — that sliver of insight — became the chip they’ve been cashing in on you ever since.
But if you can develop the habit of staying calm under pressure, not retreating when things get hard, always digging to understand the root cause of everything, and maintaining an unquenchable desire to keep learning — then those 90% of mediocre people will have no defense against your brilliance and drive.
Take a moment right now and think honestly: how much smarter is your boss than you? Why are they sitting above you? And from what angle can you surpass them — and how will you do it, step by step?
3
Here is something truly sad: even after I’ve laid out these first two points this clearly, the vast majority of ordinary people who read this will still experience nothing more than “a moment of passion, then a lifetime of sleepwalking.”
Why? Because sustained thinking is genuinely grueling. It burns through blood oxygen, glucose, dopamine — it depletes you. So the human instinct is to avoid it.
But here’s the flip side: if you build a genuine habit of thinking, you will never be poor. You will never drift aimlessly through your career. You will never spend your life being ridden over by people who are spectacularly, offensively stupid.
I used to scold the people who came to me for destiny readings: “How on earth did you take such a strong destiny chart — such natural talent and insight — and play every one of those good cards into an absolute disaster?”
Go ahead. Tell me how you pulled that off.
4
Let me share one more “hidden truth” that defies most people’s intuitions — because many people naively believe that the only thing standing between them and financial success is a single opportunity they’ve never been given. This belief, they think, explains why their life has turned out the way it has.
This is precisely the backwards, inverted thinking that guarantees they will never find the path to wealth.
Let Master Chi clarify the logic for you: always remember, what you call “legitimate wealth flowing into your pocket” is never the starting point — it is always the natural result of your abilities reaching a certain threshold.
It works like this: you develop the habit of frequent, disciplined thinking. You then pour serious effort into building up your capabilities across every dimension. You become increasingly skilled at solving difficult problems. You become increasingly effective at navigating all kinds of people and situations.
And eventually — when you’ve become reliable, grounded, powerful, and pragmatic — clean, legitimate money begins flowing into your pocket, steadily and continuously.
This is also why, whenever I conduct a destiny reading, wealth fortune (财运) is always the last topic I address.
The formula is simple: maintain a healthy lifestyle, carry a responsible work ethic, pursue progress with real effort, choose a partner wisely, and rid yourself of the habit of chasing easy money and quick windfalls.
With all of that in place — how could genuine wealth not come to you?
You tell me. Isn’t that right?
5
Finally, let me talk about how to actually build real wealth — what the path actually looks like.
Start by taking a hard look at your current life. Identify every distraction and time-wasting obligation pulling at your attention, and temporarily quarantine all of it. Give yourself a clean slate for the next several months.
Then take that reclaimed time, pool it together, and spend the first two months throwing yourself wholeheartedly into one small, positive pursuit.
That pursuit could be deeply studying the advancement path within your own industry. It could be analyzing and learning from businesspeople who have actually achieved results. It could be dissecting the content formula of a short-video creator you admire.
Then, in the following two months, take everything you’ve learned and boldly run your first experiments.
For example: start proactively asking to take ownership of complex, specific work projects. Then approach your superiors and leaders with a new presence — to communicate, to learn, to absorb their wisdom.
For example: start offering genuine, no-strings-attached help to entrepreneur friends. Let them give you real feedback on how you handle things. Then improve — continuously.
For example: start creating short videos on topics you’re passionate about. Compare your work against excellent creators from the audience’s perspective. Identify the gaps. Then keep raising the quality.
The whole point of this path is total immersion and undistracted reflection — burning every last drop of your energy in service of one single, positive, pioneering goal.
Master Chi hasn’t read your personal BaZi chart. But I’ll say this: for the vast majority of ordinary people, this is precisely how early financial freedom is achieved.
Because their lives are like a pile of firewood that’s been stored away for a long time — only a fierce, burning flame can truly ignite its energy and sweep away every shadow of gloom.
Read these words again. And again. You will find the meaning you need.