Defeated again and again, fighting again and again
The Xiang Army lost repeatedly in its early days, and after the defeat at Jinggang Zeng Guofan threw himself into the water and was saved by his staff. Legend has it a memorial draft held the four characters "fought repeatedly and lost repeatedly," which a staff member changed to "lost repeatedly and fought repeatedly" — swap the two words, and a beaten commander becomes an unyielding subject (the story comes from an anecdote, given as legend). The real turning point was that he stopped fighting rashly: camps always dug deep with high ramparts, sieges often lasting years, "build solid camps, fight dull battles," winning the war by the least brilliant of methods.
The twelve daily disciplines
Zeng Guofan was of middling gifts (a folk joke has a thief on the beam giving up because Zeng could not memorize a passage), and after thirty he set daily disciplines of self-cultivation: reverence, quiet sitting, early rising, reading one book at a time, guarded speech, care of the body, learning something new each day… writing a diary of self-criticism daily, recording even his base and vulgar thoughts, kept up for thirty years until death. His more than a thousand family letters — on self-cultivation, study, and managing a household — have been printed without cease since the late Qing: a "dull man" who reached the summit of ministerial rank by replicable self-management, which is why he is still consumed again and again by best-sellers today.