A highly insightful understanding of life is to calculate the overall account

A friend of mine who is in cross-border foreign trade, involved in gray industries, chose this path because of the huge profits. 100 RMB can sell for 600 USD, with a 50% gross profit.

He even showed me his backend system, and I was stunned.

Then I asked him, how do you handle customs clearance? Can it pass?

He said, his business logic isn't based on that. Even if caught, it's not like he's caught every time. As long as he passes customs, it's a profit.

Although his example is very extreme, I don't endorse this approach.

But I agree with the principle: 【Life is about calculating the overall account】

You don't need to win every time, but overall, it's okay. Focusing too much on calculating every single transaction makes you lose sight of the bigger picture and broader perspective.

Moreover, it is precisely a higher-level vision and thinking that can bring you greater certainty and more lasting returns.

Warren Buffett once said: Life is like rolling snowballs; the important thing is to find very wet snow and a very long slope.

He doesn't care about the ups and downs of a single year; he cares about the overall account over decades.

The mindset of calculating the overall account is fundamentally a combination of probabilistic thinking and compound interest over time:

The first layer is accepting volatility. No business, investment, or even human relationships can earn every single time. Losing a few times doesn't matter; what's important is earning enough when you win, and limiting losses when you lose.

The second layer is viewing the long cycle. Many people obsess over gains or losses in the short term, neglecting the significance of this particular deal to the overall strategic layout. Sometimes, short-term losses are just paving the way for long-term gains—like spending money to buy knowledge or time to build trust.

The third layer is being willing to bet big. When you think in terms of the overall account, you are willing to invest more resources in things with a high probability of success, rather than spreading your energy across numerous small opportunities.

True high-level accounting is about using this mindset within a compliant framework to do positive, accumulative work.

Similar ideas are always shared on my thinking channel.