Principles: Life and Work

by Ray Dalio

the happiest people discover their own nature and match their life to it.

Just as long-distance runners push through pain to experience the pleasure of “runner’s high,” I have largely gotten past the pain of my mistake making and instead enjoy the pleasure that comes with learning from it. I believe that with practice you can change your habits and experience the same “mistake learner’s high.”

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

As Carl Jung put it, “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”

Make your passion and your work one and the same and do it with people you want to be with.

Remember that everyone has opinions and they are often bad.

Find the most believable people possible who disagree with you and try to understand their reasoning.

On your way to your goals, you will inevitably encounter problems. To be successful you must perceive and not tolerate them. Problems are like coal thrown into a locomotive engine because burning them up—inventing and implementing solutions for them—propels us forward. Every problem you find is an opportunity to improve your machine.

“Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.”