Who to Follow Means Who to Let Go: Following Hexagram Line Six in Third Place — Tied to the Husband, Lose the Boy; Choice Always Has a Price

A reader once asked me a question.

He said he was 35, and had an opportunity to move to another city to work under a highly capable person. His income would double, but he’d have to leave his current team — the team he’d built from the ground up.

He asked: “Am I being too selfish?”

I told him it wasn’t a question of selfishness. It was a question of the Six in the Third Place of the *Following* Hexagram.

The Line Text runs nine characters: “系丈夫，失小子。随有求得，利居贞。” (Xi zhangfu, shi xiaozi. Sui you qiu de, li ju zhen.)

“Xi” means to tie to, to hold fast to. “Zhangfu” (literally “husband” / adult man) here refers to someone worth following. “Xiaozi” (literally “little one” / youth) here refers to those who can’t keep pace, the things you have to let go of.

Hold fast to what you ought to hold, let go of what you ought to release. Follow along, and what you seek you will gain. But the final three characters are a reminder: “利居贞” (li ju zhen) — it furthers one to abide in correctness.

Put plainly, the Six in the Third Place of *Following* teaches this: choice, at its core, is about subtraction. The moment you pick this side, you have to let go of the other.

What the *Following* Hexagram Is About: “Following”

The hexagram is 泽雷随 (Zei Lei Sui) — *Following*, with Dui / The Joyous above and Zhen / The Arousing below. Thunder rumbles beneath the marsh, and the marsh moves in response to the thunder.

This entire hexagram is about following: who to follow, how to follow, and how far to follow.

Its most counterintuitive point is this: it frames “following” as nothing to be ashamed of.

In our culture, there’s always this obsession with “doing it on my own.” But the *Following* hexagram makes it clear: no one can be in the lead forever. Following the right person, the right trend, sometimes matters more than anything else.

But following doesn’t mean blind obedience. The Six in the Third Place is all about the choice of who to follow.

Why “Zhangfu” and “Xiaozi”?

This metaphor is quite interesting.

“Zhangfu” doesn’t mean a man, and “xiaozi” doesn’t mean a child. The ancients used these two terms to talk about weight and substance.

A “zhangfu” is someone with responsibility, substance, someone who can carry you forward. A “xiaozi” is someone who still needs your care, someone you still have to worry about.

In the *Following* hexagram, the Six in the Third Place is a Yin Line in a Yang position — soft in nature, yet restless for movement. Right above it sits the Nine in the Fourth Place, a Yang Line; below it, separated by the Six in the Second Place.

It is the nature of a Yin Line to seek support nearby. It looks up and sees the Nine in the Fourth Place — strong, a pathfinder. It looks down and sees the Six in the Second Place — also Yin, neither able to carry the other forward.

So it chooses to go up.

And with that choice, it has to let go of what’s below.

The Line Text doesn’t judge right or wrong. It simply states the cost: “系丈夫，失小子” — hold fast to the grown person, lose the little one.

Why This Cost Hurts So Much

Because it’s not trading something bad for something good — it’s trading something good for something good.

The team you’re leaving isn’t a terrible team. These are people who pulled all-nighters with you. The relationship you’re letting go of isn’t a bad one. These are people who were truly good to you once.

That’s why the hardest part of this kind of choice isn’t other people not understanding — it’s not being able to make peace with it yourself.

The attitude of the Six in the Third Place of *Following* is clear-eyed: the hurt is to be expected, but hurt can’t be your reason for staying put.

It adds the line “利居贞” — meaning you can move forward, but you must not stray from the right path.

What counts as straying? Stepping on the people you used to work with just to get ahead; spilling your old company’s secrets to prove your loyalty; welching on favors you owe just to move faster.

Those aren’t “choices” — those are betrayals. A choice can hurt, but it must not be dirty.

In Real Life, How Do You Judge Who to Follow?

Wen Laoshi gives three criteria.

First, check whether the person themselves is moving forward.

If someone’s just treading water, no matter how closely you follow them, you’ll just be treading water too. The test is simple: what new things have they learned this year, compared to last?

Second, look at how they treat people who used to follow them.

Some people are only polite to those who are useful to them. Look at how they treat people who’ve already left — that’s how they’ll treat you one day.

Third, check whether their direction is upright.

If the only way forward on this path is by stepping on other people, then following them means you’ll be standing on other people too. It’s easy to climb up that way — it’s much harder to stay steady.

If all three criteria check out, you can follow them. If two check out, be cautious. If none check out, don’t follow — you’ll just be running alongside them for nothing.

How to Make Things Right With the People You Leave Behind

This part matters more than the choice itself.

First, don’t ghost people.

A lot of people, when they switch paths, first thing they do is cut off all old ties. That’s not being clean — that’s being cowardly. Saying it out loud, openly and honestly, is far more dignified than saying nothing at all.

Second, don’t put them down.

To prove you made the right choice, you turn around and say your old place was good for nothing. People who say that might feel good in the moment, but the people who hear it will remember it forever.

Third, leave a door open to come back.

The world is smaller than you think. The people you let go of today might be your clients, your partners, your next employer tomorrow. Leaving a door open isn’t scheming — it’s leaving yourself room to maneuver.

If You’re the One Being Left Behind

A quick word on this too.

Being left behind hurts. But the Six in the Third Place of *Following* is about the logic of following, not the logic of character.

Someone moving forward doesn’t mean you’re not good enough. It just means you’re not on the same path right now.

What you can do isn’t to stop them — it’s to become the kind of person worth following.

One day, when you become the “zhangfu” yourself, people will naturally come to follow you.

Final Thoughts

The Six in the Third Place of *Following* is one of the most unpretentious lines among the 64 Hexagrams.

It doesn’t offer you a have-it-all solution. It tells you straight: if you choose, you will lose something.

Our era loves to talk about “having it all” — career and family, ideal and stability, moving forward and staying true to your roots. But in reality, most of the time you can only pick one.

Once you’ve chosen, don’t regret it, and don’t romanticize it.

Acknowledge what you’ve let go of, then keep walking with that acknowledgment.

Wen Laoshi says: maturity isn’t learning how to choose — it’s learning to bear the empty space left behind by your choice.

That empty space will always be there. Carry it with you, and you’ll walk steady.