Maximize Potential: Merging Bazi & Checklists For Positive Habits
Learn how I mitigate negative energy interactions from my Bazi chart with simple checklists.
Imagine having a life where everything just falls into place.
All your goals, ambitions, and dreams are achievable, and the hurdles of life feel less like insurmountable mountains and more like friendly molehills you enjoy on the way to a greater destination.
However, along life's path, there are numerous distractions that can potentially lead us astray. These distractions are detours or deadweight, taking us off our main route and delaying our progress towards our ultimate goals.
Distractions come in many forms. They can be external, like social media, news, or even people around us who demand our attention and time. They can also be internal, such as self-doubt, fear, or procrastination. These distractions can easily divert our focus, energy, and time away from what we truly want to achieve.
There's an opportunity cost every time we give in to a distraction, we are choosing to spend our time and energy on that distraction instead of on our main goal. It's not just the time spent on the distraction itself, but also the lost opportunity to make progress towards our goal.
My 3 Step Process For Streamlining Life
My goals usually take months or years manifest into reality, and I too face distractions, discouragement and deadlines that pull me away from what really matters.
I have found a powerful formula that works for me, and there are 3 steps, starting from Chinese Metaphysics and ending with Modern Science to create a path to better harness your unique energy and direct it into goals that maximise your potential.
By harnessing the power of Bazi, creating positive habits, and maintaining unwavering focus, we can indeed pave a clear road to such thriving outcomes in life.
First use Bazi to understand your energy constitution, patterns and motivations.
Set and Refine Goals
Set up Tiny Habits and Checklists to actualise your potential
First, I'll explain why energy management is crucial for achieving our potential.
Life is a game of Energy
If we were to peel back the physical layers that define us, what would we find at our core? The answer lies in the invisible fabric that binds the universe - energy. In its purest form, we are nothing more than a complex web of vibrating frequencies.
This energy determines our entire existence - our personality, how much power, influence we have, how much natural currency we have in material life.
It starts from our thoughts, leading to behaviours, actions, that eventually guide us to our destiny.
In nature, higher energy will always win lower energy. Where your attention goes, that's where your energy goes.
'Where focus goes, energy flows.'
- Tony Robbins
High Energy Matches The Vibration of Success
Among many things to maximise your potential, we require high energy to:
Keep our health and fight off illnesses
Live above the opinions of others for what we truly want
Pursue our goals in career or relationships
Have an aura that matches the higher vibration of success
All of this takes time, and energy. This makes energy collection and management an important resource.
How do we know what energy we have, and what energy patterns dominate our existence?
Bazi to Explore Your Energy Constitution
I've found Bazi the most useful tool I've come across to understand my own energy, here I define as:
My lens which I see the world
My stream of thoughts that affect behaviours
Recurring themes and patterns my mind goes into
Chart Structure
The best visual of this I use comes from TalentHero.
It shows how the Bazi chart can be converted into the 5 structures (五行) and overall dynamic (格局) of a chart, which gives insights on the underlying thought patterns someone born in this timing will receive.
In a normal scenario, we have adequate Support powering a robust Creative Process and achieving a healthy desire for Goals to Obtain.
Under Support for Me, Intellect (Resource) and Body (Companion) gives insight as to where the main energy resource from the chart comes from. Intellect usually refers to knowledge, mentors while Body refers to physicality and peers.
This is your starting point of that tells you what format is the energy given to you, in raw material.
Under Goals to Obtain, Wealth and Power (Influence) gives insight as to whether a person values wealth (e.g. Material possessions, assets) or Power (control over others, influence to shape things).
This is the ending point that should be in your Goals, as that is what your energy wants to achieve.
The Creative Process is known as Output, how you convert raw material into the final goal. The intermediate forging process where we use the energies given to us to get what we ultimately want in life. This is where our checklists section will deal with, the transformation process to keep us focused on our goal.
Just from the proportions of these 5 elements, we can see:
A person's dominant thinking process, what they obsess over
Where to best implement checklists to boost that structure
Where are the imbalances preventing an efficient, productive throughput
Bazi Clashes 冲, Punishments 刑 , Harms 害 and Destruction 破
Clashes, punishments, harms, and destructions are usually regarded the more "negative" interactions in Bazi, based on interactions between animals.
Here, we regard them as the distractions, detours and deadweight that obstruct our output process, preventing us from fully utilising our raw material into our goals.
Here are the 4 key energy patterns to watch out for:
Clashes represents visible forced change, hence seen as more negative as conflict usually makes people uncomfortable.
Punishment is another interpretation for pressure, situations that induce unhappiness, pessimism or lack of satisfaction. Betrayal, self-sabotage, bullying, or disrespect are the common themes.
Harm represents lots of fear-induced illusions, mistrust in relationships around, a lot of projections but many of them do not actually happen in reality. Lots of doubt. Lots of interpretation tend to be skewed to fear, which affects perception and emotional state.
Destruction represents self-inflicted situation due to not being able to let go during a transition of losing something but gaining something. Something needs to end and something needs to start, and people might not adapt well to the change.
These are energy patterns we tend to get stuck in, or areas we lack mental clarity naturally, or in a certain time period (大运). These can sap our energy into unproductive, destructive or conflicting behaviours that impede our progress.
Redirecting Negative Patterns For Good
The secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new.
- Socrates
The good news is that although these are labelled "negative" is with caveats as they also show you exactly, how your energy tends to get stuck.
Once you know them, you build self-awareness to notice when you fall into the same patterns, and learn how to redirect them for better outcomes.
For e.g. There are people with Punishment in their Bazi charts, but they use it to obsesses over a domain and become extremely good at it, as they are constantly not satisfied by their performance.
This intense concentration can lead to a deep understanding and mastery of their field, as they tend to spend a lot of time and energy on it. They often have a strong desire to improve and perfect their skills, which can lead to significant advancements and achievements.
Another way to use Punishment energy is instead of always getting bullied or bullying others unjustly, use it to bully other people for a good cause, like bootcamps.
Bootcamps, specifically those modelled after military training programs, have gained popularity in the fitness industry. These programs are known for their intense, high-energy workouts that push participants to their physical limits. The 'bullying' aspect often refers to the tough, no-nonsense approach taken by the instructors, which can be a motivating factor for some individuals.
For e.g. For people with Harm in their charts, instead of being paranoid, it can be reframed as being detail-orientated, prepared for contingencies and skeptical, which are useful attributes in careers that require compliance, legalities or analytics.
By imagining worst-case scenarios, we can prepare for potential crises and mitigate their impact. This type of thinking allows us to develop comprehensive plans that cover a wide range of possibilities, ensuring that we're not caught off guard when unexpected situations arise. It's a proactive approach that can save time, resources, and stress in the long run.
Another example is to improve personal safety and security. For instance, a healthy level of fear can lead to taking necessary precautions, such as installing a home security system or practicing safe online habits. This can help prevent potential threats and create a safer environment.
The modern world is vast enough for negative energy patterns to also be directed in a positive manner.
The key is having the awareness to maximise the positive and minimise the negative aspects of energy that you are naturally given.
Tiny Habits To Inspire Energy Redirection
After knowing your energy constitution from Bazi, you know the key areas to tackle.
How do you tackle it?
Introducing thoughts that suits your lens of the world
Introducing behaviours that use up the dominant energies from your chart
Introducing actions that match the energy dynamics of your chart
This is where habits come to mitigate the negative impacts of distractions, detours and deadweight.
Our character is basically a composite of our habits. Because they are consistent, often unconscious patterns, they constantly, daily, express our character.
- Stephen Covey
The term for tiny habits is often referred to as 'Microhabits' or 'Atomic Habits'. This concept is based on the idea that small, incremental, everyday routines can lead to significant changes over time. It's about breaking down big goals into manageable tasks that can be easily incorporated into daily life.
James Clear, the author of 'Atomic Habits', explains that if you get 1% better each day for one year, you'll end up thirty-seven times better by the time you’re done. This is the power of microhabits and checklists, and why they are such an effective tool for long-term improvement.
Checklists That Power Tiny Habits
I personally create my checklists based on principles from The Checklist Manifesto by Dr. Atul Gawande.
The Checklist Manifesto, written by Dr. Atul Gawande, is a compelling exploration of how checklists can significantly improve outcomes in various fields.
In the medical field, one of the key statistics Gawande presents is that the implementation of a surgical safety checklist in eight hospitals reduced the rate of major complications from 11% to 7%. This is a 36% reduction, which is a significant improvement in patient safety.
Checklists, are tools used to ensure consistency and completeness in carrying out a task. They are used to break down complex tasks into manageable steps, ensuring that no step is forgotten. They can be used in various aspects of life, including work, personal goals, or daily routines.
Combining microhabits with checklists can create a powerful system for change. The checklist ensures consistency and completeness, while the microhabits ensure that the changes are manageable and sustainable. Over time, these small changes can lead to significant improvements in various aspects of life.
Checklists as "Supplements" For Your Energy Issues
Can be used to do quality assurance, especially areas that our charts are weaker in
Can be used as "medicine" or "supplement" to handle chart imbalances or problems
With better quality assurance, we produce better outputs in our lives
Small disciplines repeated with consistency every day lead to great achievements gained slowly over time.
- John C. Maxwell
Practically, I use this software Questmate to actualise this article into practice. I started with Process Street but it was too "corporate", feature-heavy and career-based to be effective enough for my use case in personal development.
Questmate is simple enough so I don't forget about it, and it has a free version to help you get started quickly. I like their reminder feature so everyday when I open my phone, I just get the scheduled "supplements" as homework to improve my , knowing that I'm fixing the negative issues in my chart and doing more self-actualisation with each Quest I complete.
Quests are essentially checklists in Questmate.
I use chatgpt with [INSERT CHALLENGE] and ask it to return me 5-10 questions a coach or therapist would ask to cultivate a better mindset. Then I pick 3-4 depending on which questions I feel motivated to answer, and useful to help guide my thought process.
These have been particularly useful for me in dealing with Bazi punishments, harms and destructions.
Some quests have a mix of questions to answer, checklists to tick off and physical activities to do. For Quests that are purely mental, I usually keep to 4-7 questions. If a Quest has more than 8 steps, it's a good sign to break it down into separate Quests.
Tips for Great Checklists
Gawande emphasizes that the effectiveness of a checklist is not just in its use, but also in its design. He stresses that a good checklist is precise, efficient, and easy to use even in the most difficult situations.
It should provide reminders of only the most critical steps, rather than trying to spell out everything—after all, a checklist cannot fly a plane or perform a surgery. Its role is to remind us of the minimum necessary steps to ensure consistency and avoid serious mistakes.
If you get lazy and avoid using the checklists you create, it is a sign that your checklists are too long, intellectual or rigid. Shorten and simply them.
I used to have this problem where I added too much theory into the checklists itself, when it should be as little words and steps as possible.
Everything requires energy and we need to design this such that even in the middle of a busy day, we still have enough energy to open the app, click to the right checklist, and complete it.
Boost Your Life Quality: Mix of Bazi, Habits, & Strategies
Ultimately what we are aiming for is not purely career success or material wealth, but a more holistic view of success where energy flows productively within a person, which manifests externally as them being productive and valuable members of society.
Character "flaws" or negative Bazi predictions are reframed as positive forces for good, and people can identify their most frictionless path to success. This process can also heal identity issues or relationships as people understand "why are you like that".
When Bazi dynamics are reflected in a person's external life, the person will find a sense of peace, belonging of their uniqueness and expression of their own energy, independent of societal norms, or the expectations of other people.
I'm not promoting that this process will intentionally break laws or cause significant harm to others, but it's a self-exploration to receive, transmute and manifest energy in the most productive way for each individual's own goal.
Summary
First use Bazi to understand your energy constitution, patterns and motivations.
Set and Refine Goals
Set up Tiny Habits and Checklists to actualise your potential
If you want help in reading your chart or setting goals and checklists, book me for a consultation.