Everything in this world revolves around the idea of fate and connection — people, events, and principles alike.
Some of life’s deepest truths may have passed through your ears without leaving a mark — not because they were wrong, but because you hadn’t yet lived enough to feel their weight. Only after walking through enough of life do they suddenly hit you with full force.
So for this article, Master Chi asks very little of you — just let your eyes pass over it once, and let it pass through your heart once. That is enough.
As the year draws to a close, Master Chi wants to revisit the six major principles we’ve explored together this year. Think of it as the final summary of a semester — not for any other reason than to make sure you, in this moment, don’t miss out on knowledge that could genuinely elevate you. As for what comes next, we’ll joyfully turn our attention to next year’s strategies and the future ahead.
Accepting Heaven’s Will#
Every person I deeply admire shares one remarkable quality: the ability to accept Heaven’s will and understand their destiny.
Time has worn away their rough edges. Life’s relentless tides have taught them that life has its peaks and its valleys, its rises and its falls. So these people move with ease through both the best and worst of circumstances.
They don’t grow arrogant during good times, nor do they wear a face of misery during bad ones. Fortune shifts every five years — each period is a hand of cards. When Heaven deals them a winning hand, they play it brilliantly. When they’re dealt a bad hand, they play it to the absolute best of their ability.
Don’t underestimate how rare this is. How many people have been driven to the edge of despair over nothing more than a small financial setback or a brief love affair? These are, frankly, minor players who haven’t earned a seat at the table.
What they don’t realize is that if they had simply climbed one level higher, everything they agonize over today would be nothing more than a light smile — a trivial anecdote.
Just as a billionaire who recalls once being swindled out of a million yuan can only chuckle at the memory — an amusing footnote in a larger story.
Life is vast and uncertain. The greatest virtue is accepting Heaven’s will — don’t fear hardship, don’t resist joy or sorrow. Once you’re seated at fate’s table, play the game for everything it’s worth.
Discerning True Value#
Seeing through things clearly is a supremely refined art, just like reading people, as I’ve said before.
Every married person who has come to me about their relationship has lamented the same thing: “I was blind — what was I thinking?” Why? Because they lacked the ability to truly see through another person.
A woman’s mistake is to confuse romance, sweet talk, and attentiveness for a man’s true worth. The man truly worthy of a lifetime commitment is resilient, magnanimous, and dependable — he gives you not flashy roses, warm baths, and designer bags, but a responsible worldview, a valuable network, and the deed to a home.
A man’s mistake is to confuse beauty, wit, and charm for a woman’s true worth. The woman truly worthy of his trust is warm, understated, and genuinely kind — she gives you not entertainment, style, and excitement, but devoted support, care, and thoughtfulness.
Apply this same principle across all areas of life — investing, speculation, buying property, choosing a home. What is truly important? What is truly necessary? That discernment rests entirely on your own wisdom.
Master Skills#
Most people’s formal education, from childhood onward, is entirely “waste education” — its real purpose is to get through exams, consume energy in classrooms, and keep young people too occupied to cause trouble in society.
The vast majority of life’s most valuable knowledge is acquired after you become an adult.
Take reading people, for instance. That single skill alone is enough to occupy your study and reflection for an entire lifetime. Remember: people are the resource you encounter most frequently as you navigate this world.
A fool sees every person he meets as a stranger with no relevance to him. The elite find ways to turn people into resources. The true master goes further — turning others into instruments to orchestrate.
Likewise: understanding how cities develop, reading where capital is concentrating, or even mastering the specifics of deal negotiation — all of these are priceless assets in life.
In short: any skill that can be converted into wealth — the more you master, and the deeper your mastery, the better. These are the real hard skills.
Breaking the Illusion#
The era we live in is growing crueler and more brazen by the day. The most telling sign is that it is now telling you plainly: in this age, living as a laborer is a last-resort life.
A laborer’s life peaks at age 35 — after that, it’s a relentless downward slope with almost no chance of reversal. Then come the costs: raising children, supporting aging parents, medical expenses, daily spending — all piling on at once, leaving you without even the energy to attempt a turnaround.
What does it mean to be a “laborer”? It means you must exchange physical effort for wages — every single yuan earned requires your energy and exertion, with no other income streams beyond that. If that describes you, you are essentially a laborer.
The most common example: the office worker strolling in and out of sleek office towers with a perfectly content attitude, who in reality is nothing more than a white-collar laborer.
The danger is fooling yourself into thinking you’re wealthy just because your surroundings look nice. Don’t lie to yourself — many people are penniless individuals dressed in gold and living in respectable-looking circumstances. Don’t count yourself among them.
Escaping the Pit#
Poverty is not a social class — poverty is a pit. Inside this pit, everyone is clawing upward with everything they have, trying to get out. And to gain just one step higher, they will step on your face without a moment’s hesitation.
If you were born there, or have lived there, you must find every possible way to climb out. Otherwise, you will come to see many vices as normal and inevitable — pettiness, street-level scheming, hysteria, and self-destruction.
And so, like ink staining cloth, you darken steadily — until it can no longer be washed away, until it becomes your nature.
Every person I’ve encountered who rose from poverty without exception shared one thing in common: a part of them had never been contaminated by the pit. Whether through personal integrity, loyalty to others, a drive to push forward, or genuine humility in seeking guidance — they all carried a clean, pure upward desire as their spark.
I once said something quite ruthless: “Escaping the pit is like cutting out cancer — you must do it swiftly, severing the roots of poverty without hesitation.”
And it’s true. Everything in that pit is unusable — the sooner you discard it, the cleaner you become.
The Review#
Though I rarely see it in my immediate circle, I often read comments from readers saying they suffer not just from hardship, but from the feeling that there is no way out — no path forward.
If that is you, you must honestly review your life and ask yourself: how did you manage to play such a good hand so badly?
Because you are not without assets. You have two: your body and your mind. And you have three forms of capital: your time, your energy, and your physical strength.
If you have lived for decades but have never once thought to sharpen these two assets — your body and your mind — and have never properly allocated your three forms of capital — your time, energy, and physical strength — then you deserve to be poor. Truly.
Just as you never see a beggar out asking for alms at the crack of dawn, you will never see a disciplined and rigorous person who is also broke.
Don’t come to me with complaints. When you have a quiet moment, think back over the past month — where did your energy, time, and physical strength actually go? If the answer is idle nonsense and trivial distractions, take my advice: let it all go.