A few days ago, a reader sent me a question through my backend:
“Master Chi, I’m a completely ordinary urban office worker. I spend my days buried in mundane, unremarkable tasks — a textbook example of what you often call the blood-and-sweat working class. But after reading your articles, I simply cannot bear to keep wasting my life this way. I want to give my parents filial devotion and security. I want to give my wife and children material comfort and a good life. But your consultations and community membership represent a significant financial burden for someone like me. Could you write an article for us blood-and-sweat workers — offer some guidance to those of us who have been forgotten by the world, on how to move up?”
Response:
Hello, forgotten worker.
My answer to your question is not some worldly cunning, no get-rich-quick secret, no clever investment strategy. It is simply a handful of life lessons distilled through years of lived experience.
But understand this: the decisions that truly change a life are easy to know and hard to do. And the “blood-and-sweat working class” is precisely the result of making the wrong choices — or failing to make the right ones — again and again.
So I sincerely hope this article is not something you skim through once and immediately forget. You should save it, read it regularly, and follow its guidance for three years.
Trust me. Three years from now, you will feel deep gratitude for the decision you made today — because you will suddenly realize that, quietly and steadily, you have been steering your own destiny toward a higher place.
I. Do Some Things, and Refrain from Others
In this world, “matters” — like people — come in higher and lower grades. Some are worth your money, your energy, your investment and care. Others should be kept at arm’s length, lest they cost you dearly.
Most of what keeps the blood-and-sweat worker busy is, frankly, trivial nonsense — social obligations with fair-weather friends, the endless friction of daily life’s petty annoyances.
More importantly, you need to ask yourself honestly: is much of what you do at work actually worth your devotion and effort?
This is not a call to become lazy or slippery. It is a recognition that many things — a career, a job, a path — were never meant to be the ceiling of your potential. Pouring too much into them is simply foolish and short-sighted.
“Whatever brings no lasting benefit to yourself — eliminate it if you can, avoid it if you can, refuse it if you can.”
Read that line carefully.
What I want for you is not a life that grows busier and busier, but one that grows leaner and more focused. Less leads to concentration. Concentration leads to mastery. Mastery leads to achievement. Achievement is the only goal that matters.
The deeper truth: complete a hundred minor tasks flawlessly and you will still be anonymous. Complete one significant thing, and you rise above the crowd.
II. Understand Fortune and Misfortune — Know the Benefits and the Traps
Throughout life, countless temptations parade before you — glittering little advantages in money and desire. The danger is that these traps never announce themselves as traps. They disguise themselves as the right choice.
Someone promises you a ten-to-one return if you throw everything into some outlandishly risky venture.
Ten times your money — isn’t that incredible? Isn’t that beautiful? Isn’t that irresistible?
Fall for it and you are a fool. Because nearly every “ten-to-one” scheme ends with you having nothing at all.
Never be deceived. The truly great fortunes in life are built through consistent, incremental returns — gains made patiently, over time, again and again.
Or say someone offers you a night of pleasure with no one watching, no consequences.
Delicious enough? Tempting enough?
Fall for it and you are a fool again. Because every betrayal eventually proves itself. Your body and your spirit do not lie. A truly beautiful marriage is built through mutual sincerity, through trust earned across countless honest moments.
III. Forget Grievances, Remember Kindness
In society and in the world at large, there are certain people who naturally become hubs — every resource flows through them, every network connects to them, and everyone calls them “a good person” and “genuinely decent.”
Your first instinct might be to think: this person must be socially gifted, exceptionally skilled at relating to others. And yes, that is something Master Chi has long advised you to learn.
But those who have truly mastered this — who have taken it to its absolute limit — are the ones who have lived out these six words completely: forget grievances, remember kindness.
This is not naïve goodness, nor is it foolishness. It is the great wisdom of refusing to quarrel with the hardships written into your destiny, and choosing instead to grow alongside fortune and wisdom. What you preserve and gain in return: your mental clarity, your energy, your time, your reputation.
Without exaggeration: the highest art of human conduct is to repay a single drop of kindness with a full spring of gratitude. Regrettably, most people do the opposite — they obsessively catalogue every slight and injustice, while treating the people who helped them as though it were simply their due.
Do you know what kind of person has truly arrived at mastery? It is the one who, five years after you helped them with something small, still tells everyone they meet about the kindness you once showed them.
Why? Think about it yourself.
IV. Prioritize Benefit — Temper Your Pride
There is a certain kind of person in this world who is destined for wealth: the one who keeps benefit foremost in mind at all times, and who is willing — for the sake of that benefit — to rein in their own arrogance and embrace the humility needed to keep learning.
This does not mean selling yourself without limit, debasing yourself endlessly in pursuit of money and material things. That is unnecessary.
But look around: how many people, the moment they achieve even the slightest success, immediately become insufferably arrogant and self-important? Everywhere you look, they are there.
That kind of person will only ever earn what heaven casually tosses their way — they have no destiny for real wealth.
In particular, someone worth a mere few tens of millions who believes himself to be above everyone else — that is a level of narrow-mindedness and pettiness that is truly pitiful.
The ones who can play with great wealth are, without exception, people who stand amid their own abundance and still maintain the posture of a student — still learning, still growing. And crucially, they also deeply respect others who have built wealth or earned a name through entirely different paths.
The small business owner, the landlord, the speculator, the merchant — each has their own genius, their own way across the sea. Not like certain people who have accomplished nothing themselves yet look down on everyone. That particular disease runs rampant in certain corners of the internet.
A graduate of an elite university will almost certainly get outsmarted by a small renovation contractor when it comes to home renovations — and yet that graduate will be absolutely certain of his own superiority.
Book knowledge cannot defeat the cunning of society. And those who are intoxicated by book knowledge, without exception, feel great about themselves while being utterly helpless in the real world.
Poor — that is the brand they will carry for life.
V. Grow Toward the Light — Shine with the Sun
Human beings are deeply sensitive creatures. Those who habitually sink into darkness will either be kept at a distance by others, or find themselves drawn toward people who are even darker.
This type is extremely common among the blood-and-sweat working class — men and women alike. They love nothing more than to toss out a few cynical remarks, declare that they have seen through the nature of the world, and then descend into endless apathy, listlessness, and defeat.
Their default vocabulary: “They’re harvesting us.” “They’re exploiting us.” “We’re victims.” And they take pride in getting validation and solidarity from others through this kind of talk.
I have never understood their worldview. Does being a willing cabbage — never wanting to rise — actually feel good?
I don’t care, and I have no interest in knowing. I have no plan to keep company with such people.
So for you: learn to grow toward the light. In all things, look for the good, set your sights higher.
The world loves rewarding people with exactly this mentality — for one simple reason: when deserters fill the field and rats crowd every corner, the opportunities for achievement naturally fall only to those with an unbreakable will.
Haven’t you noticed? Countless workers curse their bosses, resent their bosses — yet not one of them can become a boss themselves. Not for lack of money. Not for lack of technical skill.
The one core ability of any boss is simply this: “Follow me — charge!”
Most workers are only fit to be followers, to be foot soldiers, to be underlings — because they simply do not have that boldness and that optimism.
VI. Read to Cultivate Your Mind — Train to Cultivate Your Body
The greatest baseline investment you can make in life is reading and exercise. The blood-and-sweat working class is generally unfamiliar with a certain concept: your mind and your body are two entirely separate assets.
The best way to continuously upgrade both assets: one hour of reading every day, and one hour of exercise every day.
This single habit alone, maintained for three years, will transform you completely.
You don’t have to look hard to notice that the blood-and-sweat working class tends to hit their expiration date very early — around thirty. After that age, people plateau completely, with little meaningful progress or improvement left in them.
Unless you are a rare genius, starting to coast at thirty means this is likely as far as you go.
But those who maintain reading and exercise are different. Physical decline arrives much later. Mental and spiritual elevation continues every single day.
Cultivate this habit and leaving ordinary people behind becomes completely natural.
Personally, I have never subscribed to the idea that “humans slide down more easily than they climb.” It is like having eaten a grand imperial feast — you simply cannot go back to eating plain gruel.
So I am not asking or expecting you to build this habit overnight. But you must force yourself to completely abandon those mind-numbing mobile games and short-video feeds for one week. Just one week.
Once you have experienced that, going back to wasting your life will feel nearly impossible.
Closing
Just six small points. Quick to write, quick to read — and you almost certainly found reading them quite satisfying. Why? Because you know this material is genuinely good for you: something that builds your inner strength and sharpens your thinking.
But reading it once is not enough. Reading it a hundred times is still not enough — it could even be said to be completely meaningless.
Because knowing and doing have always been two different things. Two things separated by a world of difference.
If Master Chi had any ulterior motive in laboring over this article, it is only this: that you save it, make it your guiding creed for the next two or three years, refer to it daily, model yourself after it — and correct every habit that runs counter to it.
Do this, and the foundation of someone who rises above the crowd is already yours. Unquestionably.
After that, it is up to fate and destiny.
But take comfort: heaven has never shortchanged those who build this kind of foundation. It too is waiting for your transformation — so that it may finally deliver to you everything that was always meant to be yours.