The cause of the matter is this: I observed that whether on the domestic Douyin platform or on the foreign X, topics related to Brother Sun have a lot of traffic.
There is even a sister on Douyin who successfully started her account by shouting, 'Sun Yuchen, I want to have your baby' right from the beginning.
Moreover, as a fan of Brother Sun, he was able to go from Qinghai all the way to Peking University, then to the United States, and ultimately reach the corporate level and even outer space.
I regard Brother Sun as a role model in my life, so I plan to start a new series.
I will do a complete follow-up on Brother Sun's early podcast program (Sun Yuchen: The Path to Financial Freedom Revolution), listening to 1-2 episodes daily, and extracting thoughts and viewpoints worth pondering and recording, while also adding my own opinions.
Recently, there have also been episodes featuring Xiao Xiong, totaling 145 videos. I listen to some daily, learn from Brother Sun, and use them as material for my social media posts.
Each post takes the form of a question Q + Brother Sun's opinion S, followed by my personal opinion or discussion.
Before starting, it should be noted that the podcast was recorded in 2016, ten years ago.
So the social environment at that time was completely different from ours now, and the judgment environment Brother Sun was in then was different from ours.
We cannot view the environment at that time from our current perspective; we need to place ourselves in the same social environment to think.
Let’s get started, go go go!
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001-005 are recommendations for podcast episodes featuring Ma Dong, Wu Xiaobo, Feng Lun, Lu Yu, and Tongdao Dashi.
They are all familiar teachers, so I won't elaborate further.
006——(Why do most people work hard but are not wealthy)
Q1: How great is financial freedom? You can retire soon and travel, right?
S1: Financial freedom is fundamentally a kind of spiritual freedom. It does not mean having so much money that it can never be spent.
On the level of spiritual freedom, the core is finding a home, knowing what kind of person you are, what kind of career you are willing to fight for, and what you are willing to contribute to that career, possessing a sense of identity that combines career and spirit.
Q2: Why are the vast majority of people hardworking yet not wealthy? What is the core reason?
S2: The core reason why the vast majority of people are hardworking but not wealthy can be answered in the simplest way: they have not made a strategy.
Many people think strategy is a big word, but in fact, it is those without money who should make strategies; this is the only factor that determines success.
A saying that is quite popular in the entrepreneurial circle is: using tactical diligence to cover up strategic laziness.
Q3: What do you think is the biggest strategic mistake young people (especially Chinese) make?
S3: The biggest mistake is that many people have never figured out their lives; they do not treat their lives as a strategy.
They treat parents, wives, children, and buying houses as strategies. Many people seem to have been programmed, rushing towards the ‘three steps’ of buying a car, buying a house, and getting married as soon as they graduate from university, without reflecting on why they marry or why they buy houses.
From this perspective, waking up from the established program is the primary condition for being wealthy.
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The topic of financial freedom does not need to be elaborated on; different cities and different needs have different requirements for the magnitude of financial freedom.
Moreover, I believe the greatest significance of wealth lies in buying options—the option to work when you want to and to rest whenever you wish.
The game has become so much that it can lead to electronic impotence, so compared to financial freedom, spiritual freedom is more important. Finding a career you love and fighting for it is more meaningful.
As for Q2, I can really get this point. The Confucian culture of hard work being rewarded is not entirely correct; what is promoted more is the beautiful lie fabricated by the upper class for the lower class.
Every graduation season, many people choose to pursue further studies. There are always a few individuals in the class who leave early and return late, studying diligently and seemingly putting in much more effort than others.
However, the final result may not be satisfactory; it may just lead to a kind of self-satisfied effort.
It seems that among young people, those who can set a strategy for themselves are the ones who have found their life direction early on.
Or perhaps finding a life direction has also been integrated into their life strategies.
Brother Sun is right; strategy is not a privilege of the wealthy. The poorer people should make strategies for themselves even more.
Refine short-term plans, set mid-term goal nodes, and plan long-term future directions while continuously iterating.
In fact, with AI now, these tasks can fully be entrusted to AI.
Input your current stage into the AI, express your confusion, chat with it continuously to have it develop a strategy for you. This is something AI is particularly good at, especially the domestic DeepSeek, where you can see its logical thinking process.
Q3 is a point I feel most strongly about in the first half of 006. My hometown is in the north, where traditional clan concepts are prevalent.
A saying my mom often repeats is—what age you are is what you should be doing at that age.
It seems that as soon as you graduate, you should immediately enter the workforce, and when the age is right, you should get married and have children.
But when I think of graduates abroad taking a gap year to travel, while we seem to be looked down upon for having a gap after graduation, it feels very uncomfortable.
Especially regarding marriage, having children, and buying a house—each of these decisions affects one’s entire life, yet it seems like sometimes one is just forced into these situations.
Originally, dating was just about having a romantic relationship, but after a long time, it seems one should meet the parents, and after a few meetings, discussions about marriage begin, and then comes the need to buy a house, and after buying a house and getting married, it's time to have children.
Although I am still single, some friends around me feel that, even though I am not prepared for marriage and have been dating my girlfriend for quite a while, when the time comes, I can't just break up because I don't want to get married.
Alright, I don’t want to discuss this sharp social issue too much; this phenomenon of ‘not being sure’ is not just experienced by boys; sometimes girls are also pushed into this situation.
So here, it encourages more thinking—thinking about why to get married, why to have children, and why to buy a house.
This includes not only emotional issues but is also related to the life strategies mentioned earlier.
If one is indeed pushed into marriage, the various emotional and practical problems after marriage still need to be borne by oneself; those who pushed you into this situation won't take responsibility.
Similar issues can also be included in conversations with AI; don’t forget that the theme of 006 is—why are people hardworking but not wealthy.
Setting a strategy for oneself is key, and those three steps are important projects within that strategy.