When You’re Young

Don't think when you're young that you'll achieve something once you have money. Unless you're an Olympic champion, a movie star, or someone who's made it big early on, by the time you have money, you won't be able to do it anymore.

The reason life has a rhythm like the four seasons is precisely because in some areas, you're declining. The physical energy (time) that heaven gives you is fixed—you use it or not, after age 30, it will drop rapidly.

So smart people must have exchanged it for something. Whether you traded it for happiness or accumulated something in other areas is up to you, but either way, you can't save it.

When someone is in their twenties, they lack experience but can work overtime—that's the peak of their physical energy.

When someone is in their thirties, their physical energy declines but their experience increases—they can become executives and fly around for the boss. When someone is in their forties, the places where they can actually still contribute are relationships and connections. Because some department managers might have been trained by them, and they can direct them effortlessly, or they may have relationships with certain people who matter in the industry. Getting even older, if you still want to stay on stage and get things done, then you can only become that mastermind.

You only make decisions. This you can do until 90, because although decision-making is very important, the workload is small, and your body can handle it. But usually, the boss won't hand over this mastermind role to anyone else, so you can only become the boss yourself.

You can see this logic chain is very clear, and it has nothing to do with personal will.