In the story of Meng-Da Wu, I have shared about the biggest setback in his life: he had gambled too much and built a very bad reputation as well as deep in debts. Some of his old friends thought that he was totally hopeless and didn’t offer any help, except a few, including Yun-Fat Chow who is well known in Western World today. However, Yun-fat didn’t simply give Meng-Da money to pay off his debt. He bluntly turned down Meng-Da’s request for money, instead, he offered acting opportunities for Meng-Da to earn the money by himself. 

Meng-Da has reflected on Yun-Fat’s seeming cold-blooded behavior and said that he actually appreciates Yun-Fat’s way of help better. Because it indeed helped him back to the ground faster. Offering money is not necessarily helpful. Meng-Da was rich before he fell into that awful position, the money he earned was relatively easy because he became a superstar so quickly.  That’s why he didn’t know how hard money earning is and tend to spend them in a less smart way. Helping him to find the working opportunities make him aware of how hard it could be and he values the opportunities much better and has been working hard ever since. 

There are similar phenomenons everywhere, studies show most of the lottery winners don’t manage their wealth well and return to poverty; many NBA superstar players lose most of their money only a few years after retirement with poor decisions. 

In conclusion, people all need the tough and hard time experience to really become strong. Life will throw all kinds of challenges to all of us, keep pushing it through is very similar to a strength training program, it’s tough but your muscle grow fast during the time. Trying to help people too much and take away their necessary hard-working opportunity actually very unhelpful, since they started dependant on “your help” and will be harder to gain the skillset that could provide long-lasting support of themselves. 

In China, there is a saying: “

Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day;

Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime. ”