Principles: Life and Work

by Ray Dalio

Reality

is optimizing for the whole—not for you.

Realize that you are simultaneously everything and nothing—

Where you go in life will depend on how you see things and who and what you feel connected to (your family, your community, your country, mankind, the whole ecosystem, everything).

While such decisions might seem too erudite for your taste, you will make them either consciously or subliminally, and they will be very important.

beautiful—though emotionally I find the separation from those I care about difficult to appreciate.

constant drive toward learning and improvement makes getting better innately enjoyable and getting better fast exhilarating.

Chasing after them forces us to evolve, and it is the evolution and not the rewards themselves that matters to us and to those around us.

As Freud put it, “Love and work are the cornerstones of our humanness.”

It can be any kind of long-term challenge that leads to personal improvement.

Remember “no pain, no gain.”

As Carl Jung put it, “Man needs difficulties. They are necessary for health.”

Pain + Reflection = Progress.

Most people have a tough time reflecting when they are in pain and they pay attention to other things when the pain passes, so they miss out on the reflections that provide the lessons.

But if you can remember to reflect after it passes, that’s valuable too.

If you’re

not failing, you’re not pushing your limits, and if you’re not pushing your limits, you’re not maximizing your potential.

is not for everyone, if it is for you,

The irony is that if you choose the healthy route, the pain will soon turn into pleasure. The pain is the signal!

Bringing them to the surface will help you break your bad habits and develop good ones, and you will acquire real strengths and justifiable optimism.

At some point in your life you will crash in a big way. You might fail at your job or with your family, lose a loved one, suffer a serious accident or illness, or discover the life you imagined is out of reach forever.

No matter what you want out of life, your ability to adapt and move quickly and efficiently through the process of personal evolution will determine your success and your happiness.

By contrast, people who choose what they really want, and avoid the temptations and

over the pains that drive them away from what they really want, are much more likely to have successful lives.

Life doesn’t give a damn about what you like.

They can take in the perspectives of others instead of being trapped in their own heads with their own biases. They are able to look objectively at what they are like—their strengths and weaknesses—and what others are like to put the right people in the right roles to achieve their goals.

You need to get over all that and stop seeing struggling as something negative. Most of life’s greatest opportunities come out of moments of struggle; it’s up to you to make the most of these

The best single clue as to whether you should go down this path is whether the thing you are trying to do is consistent with your nature (i.e., your natural abilities). The third path—accepting your weaknesses while trying to find ways around them—is the easiest and typically the most viable path, yet it is the one least followed. The fourth path, changing what you are going after, is also a great path, though it requires flexibility on your part to get past your preconceptions and enjoy the good fit when you find it.

All successful people are good at this.

For as long as I have been practicing this, I still know I can’t see myself objectively, which is why I continue to rely so much on the input of others.

h. If you are open-minded enough and determined, you can get virtually anything you want.

4.

Don’t let pain stand in the way of progress.

5. Don’t blame bad outcomes on anyone...

If you can reflect deeply about your problems, they almost always shrink or disappear, because you almost always find a better way of dealing with them than if you don’t face them head-on.

2. Identify and don’t tolerate the problems that stand in the way of your achieving those goals.

you. If you want to reach your goals, you must be calm and analytical so that you can accurately diagnose your problems, design a plan that will get you around them, and do what’s necessary to push through to results.

setting your goals successively higher.

you must do them one at a time and in order. For

With practice, you will eventually play this game with a calm unstoppable centeredness in the face of adversity. Your ability to get what you want will thrill you.

Have clear goals.

Prioritize: While you can have virtually anything you want, you can’t have everything you want.

Desires are things that you want that can prevent you from reaching your goals.

c. Decide what you really want in life by reconciling your goals and your desires.

Never rule out a goal because you think it’s unattainable.

Be audacious.

Identify and don’t tolerate problems.

If a problem stems from someone else’s weaknesses, replace them with someone who is strong where it’s needed. That’s just the way it is.

Once you identify a problem, don’t tolerate it.

if you don’t have the will to succeed, then your situation is hopeless. You need to develop a fierce intolerance of badness of any kind, regardless of its severity.