Xiao Chu Hexagram 92: Why You Feel Harder Despite Climbing Up — I Ching Insight

Have you ever had this feeling?

When you first start something, progress comes really fast. Picking up a new skill, you make leaps and bounds in the first month; launching a new project, results shoot up in the first three months; building a client base, customer numbers grow rapidly at the very beginning.

But the further you go, the harder it gets.

The same amount of effort yields less and less result. Before, a little extra push would get you to the next level; now, even pushing yourself to the limit barely moves you forward. You start to feel anxious — have I hit my ceiling? Is this as far as this thing can go?

Don’t panic.

It’s not that you’re not good enough. It’s that you’ve reached the second line of Hexagram 9: The Taming Power of the Small — when you can no longer build momentum on your own, it’s time to find people to grow with.

This line is called: "牵复，吉。" (Qian Fu, ji / Leading back to the path, good fortune.)

Qian Fu — One person walks fast, a group walks far

What does "qian fu" mean? "Qian" means to pull, to lead, to be connected to one another. "Fu" means to return to the right track and keep moving forward.

Put together, it means — pull each other along, carry each other forward, and move ahead together. That’s how you get good results.

At the Nine at the Beginning (初九) stage, it’s fine to go it alone. When you’re just starting out, things are simple and the difficulty is low — you can get ahead with your own effort. But when you reach Nine in the Second Place (九二), the situation changes. You’ve built up some progress, but you’ve also hit a bottleneck. At this point, trying to push forward on your own becomes a real struggle.

Why? Because the higher you climb, the more diverse the skills you need.

When you first start a self-media business, you can handle writing copy, shooting videos, editing, and posting to platforms all by yourself — no problem. But once you reach a certain scale, you can’t do it all anymore. You might be great at writing copy, but you might struggle with operations; you might be great at shooting videos, but you might not know how to monetize.

What do you do then? Tough it out? You can’t. Give up? You don’t want to.

Nine in the Second Place tells you — "qian fu". Stop forcing it alone. Find someone to walk this path with you. Do what you’re good at, and let them do what they’re good at. Two people working together is way better than one person grinding through it alone.

Wen Laoshi often says: If you try to do everything yourself, you’ll never build anything big. A person’s ability, time, and energy are all limited — you can’t be good at everything. Learning to collaborate, learning to leverage others’ strengths, and learning to "lead" others forward with you is the key to growing something big.

Why it gets harder the higher you climb

A lot of people don’t get this. They think — I got to where I am today on my own ability, so I can go even further on my own ability later.

That’s not right.

Getting to where you are today depends on your ability; whether you can get to tomorrow depends on whether you can use other people’s abilities.

I’ve seen so many examples of this. Someone who’s amazing at sales gets promoted to supervisor, and then they struggle. Why? Because sales relies on your own ability, but being a supervisor relies on using other people’s abilities. They only know how to do the work themselves, not how to lead a team — so after getting promoted, they’re exhausted and the results aren’t even good.

Then there are entrepreneurs who run their company perfectly when it’s just them, but as soon as they start hiring and scaling up, things go wrong. Why? Because they’re used to doing everything themselves and don’t trust others to do it. What happens? They’re worked half to death, their employees are bored out of their minds, and the company’s efficiency is terrible.

This is what happens when you don’t have the wisdom of "qian fu". You’re already at the Nine in the Second Place stage, but you’re still doing things the Nine at the Beginning way — grinding away alone. The Nine at the Beginning method gets you started, but it won’t take you far.

When you reach Nine in the Second Place, you have to shift your mindset — from "I’ll do it myself" to "we’ll do it together".

"Qian fu" isn’t about just pulling anyone along

"Qian fu" sounds simple, but you can’t just grab any random person and make it work. Pull the right person, and you get twice the result with half the effort. Pull the wrong person, and you get half the result with twice the effort — or even get dragged down.

So what kind of person is worth "pulling" along?

First, shared values. You both have to believe in the same thing and be heading in the same direction. Otherwise, if you want to go east and they want to go west, being tied together just means you’re pulling against each other, and neither of you will get far.

Second, complementary skills. They have skills you don’t, and you have skills they don’t — that’s what makes collaboration valuable. If your skills are exactly the same, then 1+1 still equals 1, and there’s no point. The best partners are those whose strengths fill in your gaps.

Third, reliable character. This is the most important one. If their skills are a little weak, they can learn. If their character is bad, that’s a ticking time bomb. If you pull someone with bad character along, you might not even realize when they’ve sold you out in the end.

I know a pair of co-founders: one has a tech background, the other a sales background. The tech one isn’t great with words, but is super solid at getting work done. The sales one can’t write code, but is amazing with people. When they teamed up, the tech side handled the product, the sales side handled the market, and they worked together perfectly — the company took off.

See, that’s the classic example of "qian fu" — you pull me along, I pull you along, and we move forward together. What one person can’t do alone, two people can accomplish.

Three reminders from Nine in the Second Place of The Taming Power of the Small

After all this, what exactly does this Nine in the Second Place line tell us?

First, when you can’t move forward alone, don’t force it. Finding people to walk with you isn’t embarrassing. It’s not a sign of weakness — it’s a sign of wisdom. Your own strength is limited; only by learning to leverage others’ strength can you go further.

Second, find the right people. Not just anyone is worth "pulling" along. Stay away from people with mismatched values; there’s no point in partnering with people whose skills overlap with yours; keep your distance from people with bad character. Quality over quantity — partnering with the wrong person is worse than going it alone.

Third, "pulling" is mutual, not one-sided. If you want others to help you, you have to be able to help them too. The essence of collaboration is value exchange — people will only want to partner with you if you have value to offer. So before you go looking for partners, polish your own value first.

When you reach Nine in the Second Place of The Taming Power of the Small, you shift from "accumulating on your own" to "accumulating together".

At the Nine at the Beginning stage, you grind away alone with no distractions, making fast progress — that’s your starting phase. At the Nine in the Second Place stage, you hit a bottleneck and can’t carry it alone anymore, so you have to learn to find partners, leverage others’ strengths, and stick together for support.

This isn’t a step backward — it’s progress. Because you’ve realized — you’re not all-powerful, and you need other people.

Admitting you can’t do everything, then finding people who can and working with them — that’s true capability.

Just like what Nine in the Second Place says — "牵复，吉。" (Qian Fu, ji / Leading back to the path, good fortune.)

One person walks fast, but a group walks far.