As the first proper article of the new year, today’s content will be a bit lighter — after all, the holiday isn’t over yet and everyone is still in rest mode.
Besides, I had originally planned to walk through all the reasoning and cause-and-effect logic behind these ideas in proper detail. But then something occurred to me: I, Master Chi, have been writing articles for so many years now, and almost every single one has been aimed at awakening your awareness and expanding your thinking.
After all this time, your understanding has become genuinely sharp.
So what’s the point of me rambling on?
Therefore, I’ll present directly what Master Chi distilled as the most essential wisdom during this Spring Festival period.
Read as far as you feel like reading — with your level of insight, you’re bound to take something away.
1 — In the Year of Yi Si (the Wood Snake year), the focus is on transformation. The essence of transformation is this: cut away what is bad, absorb what is good, and keep evolving yourself.
So be a little ruthless with yourself. Bravely cut away the negative emotions, bad habits, and toxic desires — swift and clean, no loose ends, no lingering remnants. Take the mental energy you’ve freed up and pour it into genuine growth: reading, execution, and deliberate practice.
2 — Stop fantasizing about getting rich out of nowhere. Anyone who thinks this way is not only foolish but greedy — and if they don’t wake up soon, they’re destined to make serious mistakes down the road.
The path to legitimate wealth has always been crystal clear: continuously deepen your capabilities, solve meaningful problems for people who value your work, keep showcasing your results, stay away from gambling, drugs, and destructive habits, and let it accumulate day after day.
3 — Every truly formidable hard skill, at its core, is a dumb skill — a foolish skill. It’s built through immeasurable effort, sweat, and blood, ground out bit by bit.
Take me, Master Chi — every single capability I possess is the result of five, eight, or ten years of sustained investment before it finally showed itself.
4 — Measuring an ordinary person’s true worth is actually very simple: look at how many skills they have that require five to ten years to truly master.
If you carry more than three such hard-earned skills, you will never know poverty no matter where in the world you go.
4 — Observe the world carefully. Think deeply. Trace the origins and the underlying interests behind every situation — don’t just glance at the surface and rush to a verdict.
Every single thing in this world looks completely different depending on whether you’re seeing the surface or seeing the core. Only those who can see through to the core deserve the right to seize opportunities and build wealth.
5 — And 99.9999% of low-level people in this world share one thing in common: they always think they’re smart. No matter how big the issue, they think they’ve already figured it out.
But the moment you actually ask them for a concrete, clear, actionable solution — they immediately go silent, start contradicting themselves, and their logic collapses into chaos. Much like their lives.
6 — The worse someone is doing in life, the more they care about face and appearances. They’re obsessed with what others say about them. And it’s exactly these people who will exhaust enormous energy and pay enormous costs just to earn the cheap approval of fair-weather friends.
Remember this: truly valuable connections never need to be chased. When your capabilities are real, the right people will naturally seek you out. Your job is simply to receive them — no fawning, no groveling required.
7 — Over the years, the one type of person Master Chi has been most wary of is the so-called “smart person” who comes to me for a destiny reading. These people are often like embroidered pillows stuffed with straw — their thinking looks sharp and flexible on the surface, but the moment they face a real challenge, all they want to do is retreat, dodge, find a detour, and give up.
The ones who actually achieve great things have always been the steady, earnest types. Precisely because they’re solid and grounded, they can lock onto a single target and pursue it with total focus until it’s done. Do that a few times with the big things, and your life will naturally yield remarkable results.
8 — Poverty is just a temporary label. Being poor for a period of your life is no big deal — think of it as rich experience, an education in itself.
But laziness, sustained over time, will seep through your skin and carve itself into your bones, into your soul — and leave you unable to rise again.
9 — You’re not stupid. You’ve always known what the right thing to do is, what efforts will move you forward. Deep down, you know perfectly well.
So let me remind you one more time: when you know what’s right, go do it — go execute it. Don’t procrastinate. Don’t make excuses about starting tomorrow, after the holiday, when things warm up.
The greatest difference between humans and animals is that we have self-control — we know when it’s time to do what matters, rather than simply drifting wherever desire pulls us.
10 — When things go wrong, stop complaining, stop caving, stop quitting. There’s always a way — as long as you’re willing to look for one.
Everyone around me who has achieved financial freedom and abundance — myself included — never once treats giving up as an option when facing a problem. We immediately get to work finding solutions, without pause.
Why do so many people go nowhere in life? Because they can’t withstand more than one failure, five difficulties, ten setbacks, or twenty doubts. They surrender the moment things get hard.
11 — Where is this supposedly effortless, breezy way to make money?
Even if it exists, it’s not for you. That kind of path is reserved for people with bloodline advantages and extraordinary resource backgrounds.
For ordinary people, making money has always been about bleeding and sweating, getting your hands dirty, gasping for breath from exhaustion, and going half-mad with frustration. Only through that can you pull the first real gold out of the ground.
12 — Don’t get too close to those small office workers and salaried employees whose entire income depends on a monthly paycheck their whole lives. They’re not bad people — respect them and maintain a polite distance.
If you want to climb, the sequence is always: first change your circle, then expand your perspective, and finally change your destiny. You need to surround yourself with people who are perpetually driven, relentlessly creating wealth, climbing higher, and pushing forward.
At first it’ll feel exhausting — you’ll wonder why life has to be this hard. But once you adapt, you’ll find you can handle this level of effort just fine. And as wealth gradually builds, it will give you a more comfortable life and a stronger safety net.
13 — Life inevitably passes through treacherous lows and desperate valleys. Think of anyone you can name — no matter their birth, gender, background, personality, or field.
They went through suffering and relentless hardship that you can’t even imagine — and they got through it anyway.
So failure isn’t frightening. What’s frightening is not doing the post-mortem. Fail, then review. Fail again, then review again. Keep the cycle going until you finally succeed.
14 — I, Master Chi, am extremely selective when it comes to friendships. I only befriend people of strong character, positive values, strict self-discipline, stable careers, and harmonious family lives. As for everyone else? I respect them — but I’ll only engage with them in a limited way, and they won’t become true friends.
My time and energy are finite. I spend them only with people I can grow alongside. It’s that simple.
15 — At the end of this piece, I sincerely hope you understand this:
The reason this world is harsh is that if you’re not putting your effort onto the right path, then no matter how great the cost, it means absolutely nothing.
Why do so many people labor their whole lives and end up with nothing?
And why is it that I, Master Chi, rarely feel sympathy for people who complain endlessly that they’ve worked so hard and still have nothing to show for it?
Their root illness is the same: they can’t see through the patterns of the world, and they can’t clearly see their own life pattern (格局).
Let me remind you one final time: for an ordinary person, the single most essential goal is not self-congratulatory sacrifice and burning yourself out. The first priority is to see clearly what path destiny has given you — and where the momentum of the era and the times is actually pushing.
This is precisely why, for the many brothers and sisters who have sought me out by reputation, simply tracing out their path forward based on their destiny framework has quickly led to results they’re proud of.
The Year of Yi Si is here. All things are awakening. I don’t want to see you remain stuck any longer. Gaining clarity on your path forward is absolutely essential to your life.
But prepare yourself mentally — because Master Chi’s readings have always been sharp as a blade’s edge, and much of what I say will cut straight to the heart.
There’s no way around it. What I want is to walk you through your next stretch of life step by step, so it unfolds smoothly and flourishes in every way.
I hope you’ll keep that in mind.