Even if you don’t fully subscribe to traditional Chinese medicine theory, there is one core insight Master Chi hopes you will carry with you: When righteous Chi (vital energy) resides within, evil cannot intrude; where evil gathers, the Chi must first be depleted. In other words, if your body is consistently governed by healthy, harmonious righteous Chi, then all manner of harmful forces will find it difficult to take hold. Conversely, if murky, corrupted energy has long held the upper hand within you, decline and deterioration are only a matter of time.
This is precisely why Master Chi continually urges you — beyond simply working hard — to exercise regularly, nourish yourself, and tend to your body’s wellbeing. You must learn to use self-discipline and self-restraint to build a solid fortress around your health. Only when this most fundamental foundation is secure can everything else be hoped for and pursued. After all, a career requires mental and emotional investment to cultivate; a relationship requires passion to seek out; a family requires energy to sustain — and none of these are possible without a healthy body.
Yet the same principle applies to the inner life. Within the human heart, too, there exists “evil” energy — and it takes three particular forms: despondency (丧), hostility (戾), and envy (嫉). Master Chi frequently encounters these three in people who feel stuck, unfulfilled, or trapped at a plateau in life.
Are they dangerous? Yes. Each of these three energies can become a roadblock on your life’s path, generating complications and adversity at every turn. Are they incurable? No. Just like physical illness, once you clearly identify where the affliction lies and treat it early, a complete and lasting recovery is entirely possible.
Let Master Chi walk you through each one.
Despondency
Despondency is what happens when, faced with certain pressures or challenges, you find yourself involuntarily losing heart — seized by a nameless conviction that you simply can’t do it.
This often takes root because you’ve rarely, if ever, truly seen something through to completion in your life. And because you lack that experience, it’s only natural that you feel anxious and afraid when things get hard.
Master Chi frequently encounters this pattern when reading destiny charts (命盘): someone with a genuinely strong life pattern (格局), a sharp and capable mind — yet somehow stuck far below where they belong. Dig a little deeper, and the answer is almost always the same: a lack of real-world tempering in their younger years, so that when their moment of fortune finally arrived, they couldn’t bring themselves to take the decisive steps that were rightfully theirs to take.
How do you cure despondency? It’s actually quite simple.
Set yourself one small, concrete life goal. It can be a business venture, an investment, a promotion — anything. Once you’ve chosen it, tell yourself: This is it. I will not quit until it’s done. Then pursue it relentlessly, through every attempt and setback.
Trust me, it’s that simple. Because in the process, you’ll discover a truth that no amount of being told will ever impart — one that only a single lived experience can burn into your bones: every problem in this world has a solution and room to maneuver. The only reason you ever felt helpless before was that you hadn’t yet gotten your hands on it. Once you do, you’ll find that most seemingly impossible obstacles are paper tigers.
From there, you’ll also come to understand this: yes, you are still small, and there are things you cannot yet handle. But there are many goals you can slowly work toward. And those problems that feel unsolvable right now? One day, when your hand of cards has grown stronger, they will resolve themselves naturally.
Hostility
Of the three evil energies, hostility is the most “lowly” — without exception.
Think back through your life. Isn’t it true that the more desperate, impoverished, and diminished a person or circle is, the heavier the hostility they carry? The explanation is simple enough: with nothing to fall back on, people resort to frenzy. And so those with deep-seated hostility always carry an air of “do whatever you want — I can be nastier than you.” In any conflict, the hostile person will never handle it with grace or composure. Instead, they will escalate whatever you did and return it twice as hard — a recklessness that says: I’d rather smash the whole pot than let you get the better of me.
Seen from another angle, hostility is also the single greatest barrier that those who grew up with little must cross in this lifetime — and cross it they must, no matter how steep the climb. Without shedding hostility, nobility of spirit cannot take hold. No network, no capital, no resources will willingly bet on someone whose judgment is perpetually hijacked by rage.
Now, the deep root of hostility, when you trace it back, almost always comes down to one belief: “Someone out there is deliberately trying to get me.” But if you’ve walked the world long enough, you’ll realize — there really aren’t that many people scheming against you. Master Chi often tells the people around him: don’t take yourself so seriously. To this world and to others, you are simply not that important. Most people are not targeting you with malicious intent. Stop adding drama to your own story.
How do you cure hostility? By cultivating what might be called noble bearing — because nobility suppresses hostility, without fail.
Noble bearing means developing the ability to observe and understand every person’s motivations and characteristics from a place of rational clarity. Once you operate from that height, everything comes into sharp focus. People and situations become pieces on your board, cards in your hand. You come to understand: to employ this person, you accept their tendency toward subtlety; to trust that person, you carry the weight of their suspicion. At that level of perspective — how could you possibly feel hostility or rage toward the pieces you’re playing?
Envy
Master Chi once shared this observation with a friend: why does the Chinese cultural atmosphere seem so dominated by internal competition and internal erosion?
It’s because for many of us, happiness is not defined by simply having a good life of one’s own. A peaceful home, healthy children — that’s not enough for most people. For the vast majority, happiness is built on comparison. Either others are doing worse than them — and that makes them feel good. Or they are doing better than others — and that too makes them feel good. The center of gravity is not within oneself, but in the gap.
Master Chi also frequently encounters a scenario that is almost absurd: people whose lives are already quite good — not extravagant, but solid and comfortable — who, the moment they see someone nearby doing slightly better, are immediately overtaken by anxiety and resentment. Their issue isn’t that they’ve failed to receive what they’re due. It’s that they demand everything, all at once. Which puts Master Chi in an impossible position — I am not a deity; I cannot divine a destiny chart of flawless perfection on every dimension.
What I’ve come to understand is that the energy at work in these people is envy. It is envy that makes them feel what they have is never quite good enough, never quite enough. It is envy that prevents them from ever truly cherishing what they have and savoring it.
So whenever someone weighed down by envy comes to me in distress, I share this small piece of wisdom:
The more you’ve seen of life, the more people you’ve encountered — the more firmly you come to believe that no one is without flaws, and that karma (因果) holds its balance.
Many of the people who appear to have impressive status and achievements will never show you the true pressure and private wreckage they carry. Those who hold the position must bear its burden; those who wear the crown must carry its weight. And it is already written in the destiny framework: those with great material wealth will tend to carry thinner karmic merit (福报).
Many who appear romantically blessed — surrounded by admiration and flirtation — will never tell you about the manipulation and betrayal they’ve actually endured. Those who play with others’ emotions will themselves become objects of resentment; those who rely on their looks will find love fade as their beauty does. And it is also written: those who live deep in romantic entanglement will find lasting union difficult to secure.
Everything you see, everything you envy, everything you covet — it was obtained and fought for at enormous cost. And many of the blessings you eye with longing are, for those who possess them, the very curses they most wish to escape.
Given all this — why give rise to envy?
Savor what is yours. Love what you have. Enjoy what delights you. Live the life you’ve chosen.
Take nothing without warrant. Give nothing without warrant. Fantasize nothing without warrant. Demand nothing without warrant. Be generous with others. Flow with whatever comes.
That — is your own version of a divine life.
Closing Thoughts
As the saying goes: medicine and metaphysics share the same root. The principles governing human beings and those governing health truly illuminate each other across many domains.
Master Chi did not write this article to expound on lofty wisdom. The purpose is simple and direct: to help you draw out those energies that, while not immediately fatal, leave a lingering and corrosive poison within you.
Think about it — even setting aside becoming remarkable or extraordinary, simply curing yourself of these three demons — despondency, hostility, and envy — would already place your character in an exceptionally strong state.
A person with a strong body can weather any hardship. A person with a cultivated heart can endure any adversity.
It is the same when Master Chi reads someone’s destiny chart. The first thing I look for is not the highest peak they can reach, but the lowest valley they might fall into. Because as long as that low point can be navigated and overcome, a life of genuine happiness and fulfillment is all but certain.