On a rare quiet occasion, a question surfaced unbidden in my mind: if you — my reader — were somehow a close friend or family member in my life, what would I want to say to you? What would I want to give you?
That question held me for a long time. Many things drifted through my mind — worldviews, perspectives on wealth, strategies for navigating life, sharp and penetrating insights. But when I thought it through carefully, none of them felt quite right.
Because after so many years in this work of destiny reading (命理), I’ve encountered far too many successful people — entrepreneurs, business titans, men and women of great fortune. And the vast majority of them, despite their remarkable achievements in career and wealth, are not happy.
This isn’t some absurd, out-of-touch remark. Every time I sit across from them reading their destiny chart (命盘), I can read the infinite weariness in their eyes — fatigue, exhaustion, anxiety, a burning restlessness. You can see the commanding power of someone who rules an empire, and you can also see the blood and soul they’ve spent to hold it all together. They have abundance in wealth; happiness is another matter entirely.
More striking still is the profound sense of depletion you feel coming off them — a draining of life force, of karmic merit (福报). And this isn’t some distant abstraction. Just yesterday, a remarkably successful entrepreneur left this world at the strikingly young age of fifty. You could say it was fated — that one’s lifespan is written in the heavens. But looking at the entrepreneurial class, or the wealthy as a whole, their age at death tends to run noticeably lower than that of ordinary people.
This is because the pressure and anxiety that cannot be shaken loose work like a hidden poison inside the body — always ready to invade the vital organs, battering your innate Chi (气) with turbid, corrupted energy.
This is something almost anyone who has truly fought hard for a career can feel in their bones: those who pursue great ambitions must carry the toxin of wealth. Pressure and anxiety are the greatest poisons — I say this without a hint of exaggeration.
So over the past two years, when I conduct fortune readings, I’ve been paying much more attention to a person’s karmic merit and blessings. It isn’t that wealth and status don’t matter — it’s simply that compared to a lifetime of genuine happiness and ease, wealth is not worth the price of burning yourself out.
Does a person, from the moment they arrive in this world, have to charge headlong after wealth and gain at all costs — sacrificing their own happiness, peace, and ease? Are they supposed to burn themselves completely to nothing, leaving behind a fortune and a reputation for hard work for their family, while they themselves never get to enjoy any of it?
This is not a way of life I would advocate. And it is certainly not the way of life I hope for you. I would rather you live with ease and balance — working hard when needed, resting when it’s time. I would rather you not exhaust yourself so completely. That is my genuine care for you.
So, after witnessing so many different lives and paths, here are two pieces of wisdom rich in good fortune that I hope you can carry with you.
The First: Let Go#
One of the key reasons so many people today live with such exhausting weight is that the obsessive attachments in their hearts run far too deep. For instance — someone still quite young, perhaps around forty, who has convinced themselves that without a net worth in the hundreds of millions, without reaching the absolute pinnacle, they are a failure. Or a family that is by any reasonable measure comfortably middle class, yet the parents torment themselves because their intensive tutoring hasn’t produced a child prodigy.
This kind of thinking is truly unnecessary. You are gripping your own heart far too tightly.
You must learn to let go — to release those fixed convictions about what you must achieve — and learn to flow with the current of your fortune as your life naturally unfolds.
I’ve written this in earlier pieces, and I’ll say it again: the world contains only three kinds of matters — your own affairs, other people’s affairs, and the affairs of heaven.
If every day you simply attend with care to your own affairs, without obsessing over success or failure, you will not only live happily — that happiness itself becomes a powerful force. It draws you into a good rhythm in life, and within that rhythm, your rationality and optimism will fully express themselves. You will naturally grow more and more abundant.
From a life pattern (格局) perspective, a growing body of real-world cases has deeply impressed upon me the truth of this saying: small wealth is built by effort; great wealth is governed by fate.
So I genuinely hope that in your younger years, you cherish those small opportunities to earn and grow. It’s fine to push a little harder, to take on a bit more struggle when you’re young — burning bright for a season is perfectly fine. But as you step into middle age, you must allow yourself to settle into a state of stability, harmony, and tranquility. Because at that stage, what you’re drawing on is no longer raw physical endurance — it’s the wisdom of your orientation and mindset. So you must absolutely expand your life pattern.
And what is the secret? Completely release the obsessive drive to chase gain, and make your decisions purely from the standpoint of what aligns with your current fortune cycle (运势). At that point, you’ll find you can allow yourself to miss many things — and redirect your energy instead toward what truly matters.
This is how you naturally come to live with more ease and flow.
The Second: Cherish Your Blessings#
Life has an end, and fortune has its limits. You cannot ride good luck forever — this is something I often say to friends around me, and to those who come to me for life pattern and fortune readings.
Take a moment to look back and reflect. Every superstar, every titan of industry, every figure of great power — each has had their moment when their Chi fortune (气运) blazed at its peak. For some it was a decade-long major life cycle (大运) of unbroken success; for others it came in recurring waves of good fortune throughout their years. But there is not a single person — not one — who has sailed through this entire life smooth and easy and free of any valley.
So when heaven gives you wealth and opportunity in a particular season of your life — first, hold onto it firmly. Do not let those fleeting moments of fortune slip through your fingers. And second, keep your perspective level. Do not treat exceptional luck as your permanent baseline. Learn to cherish it while it’s here, and learn to release it when it goes.
Do not think to yourself: “Three years ago everything went so smoothly for me — so this is simply how things should always be.” That reasoning holds no water.
Good fortune is like a passing wind. It may blow your way — but it will also blow on. Be grateful it came. Hope it will come again. But do not demand it stay.
And the deeper meaning of cherishing your blessings — what Master Chi truly hopes for you — is that you learn to genuinely treasure everything in your life as it stands right now. Your career, your family, your friendships, all of it. Never take any of it for granted as something simply owed to you, even if none of it is perfect.
We human beings — we always fail to appreciate what we have while we have it, and mourn bitterly what we’ve lost or let slip away. Don’t be that way. Try to feel gratitude for a career that may not pay extravagantly but at least sustains you. Try to feel genuine appreciation for a family that may be perfectly ordinary but still offers you love and warmth.
These past years I’ve been working at this myself — learning to notice and savor those quiet, unremarkable little moments in life that are actually quite worth enjoying. A family member doing something small for you: you can meet that with a smile and a word of thanks. That alone is more than enough.
The reason I press myself in this direction is that after spending time with so many genuinely blessed people, I’ve truly felt the extraordinary radiance that shines from them. Even the most ordinary thing seems to fill them with positive energy and vitality. So tell me — how could someone with that orientation toward life not be happy?
In Closing#
If this were Master Chi ten years ago, laying out a life fortune plan for you, probably ninety percent of my energy and words would have gone to the accumulation of wealth and the capture of advantage.
But now, as I’ve gradually come to understand what life is really made of, Master Chi only hopes that everything you pursue centers on two words: blessings and happiness. Because once you make blessings and happiness the true theme of your life, you will naturally find that each step you take begins to feel a little lighter and more graceful — until you gradually release your grip on material desires, and begin at last to truly live for yourself.
In the realm of human wisdom, this too is a profound form of great wisdom. After all — whether you are forging your own path, or Master Chi is helping you analyze and guide your life pattern — our shared goal, always, is for you to have a happy, abundant, and settled life. Is it not?