The book <Principals Life and Work> is wrote by the founder of Bridgewater, Ray Dalio. It describes how Ray set up his fundamental life principles and how those got applied to management. I benefit from his perspective as I try to set my own goals for the next quarter both for work and more about life. The following is some quotes from the book that I would like to share:
While most others seem to believe that learning what we are taught is the path to success, I believe that figuring out for yourself what you want and how to get it is a better path.
While most others seem to believe that having answers is better than having questions, I believe that having questions is better than having answers because it leads to more learning.
While most others seem to believe that mistakes are bad things, I believe mistakes are good things because I believe that most learning comes via making mistakes and reflecting on them.
While most others seem to believe that finding out about one’s weaknesses is a bad thing, I believe that it is a good thing because it is the first step toward finding out what to do about them and not letting them stand in your way.
While most others seem to believe that pain is bad, I believe that pain is required to become stronger.
I believe that our society’s “mistakephobia” is crippling, a problem that begins in most elementary schools, where we learn to learn what we are taught rather than to form our own goals and to figure out how to achieve them. We are fed with facts and tested and those who make the fewest mistakes are considered to be the smart ones, so we learn that it is embarrassing to not know and to make mistakes. Our education system spends virtually no time on how to learn from mistakes, yet this is critical to real learning. As a result, school typically doesn’t prepare young people for real life—unless their lives are spent following instructions and pleasing others. In my opinion, that’s why so many students who succeed in school fail in life.
What I wanted was to have an interesting, diverse life filled with lots of learning—and especially meaningful work and meaningful relationships. I feel that I have gotten these in abundance and I am happy by 1) working for what I wanted, not for what others wanted me to do; 2) coming up with the best independent opinions I could muster to move toward my goals; 3) stress-testing my opinions by having the smartest people I could find challenge them so I could find out where I was wrong; 4) being wary about overconfidence, and good at not knowing; and 5) wrestling with reality, experiencing the results of my decisions, and reflecting on what I did to produce them so that I could improve. I believe that by following this approach I moved faster to my goals by learning a lot more than if I hadn’t followed it.
I have become someone who believes that we need to deeply understand, accept, and work with reality in order to get what we want out of life. Whether it is knowing how people really think and behave when dealing with them, or how things really work on a material level—so that if we do X then Y will happen—understanding reality gives us the power to get what we want out of life, or at least to dramatically improve our odds of success. In other words, I have become a “hyperrealist.”
Enjoying your job, a craft, or your favorite sport comes from the innate satisfaction of getting better. the sequence of 1) seeking new things (goals); 2) working and learning in the process of pursuing these goals; 3) obtaining these goals; and 4) then doing this over and over again is the personal evolutionary process that fulfills most of us and moves society forward.
<Making Choices>
Life consists of an enormous number of choices that come at us and that each decision we make has consequences, so the quality of our lives depends on the quality of the decisions we make.
The way we make our dreams into reality is by constantly engaging with reality in pursuit of our dreams and by using these encounters to learn more about reality itself and how to interact with it in order to get what we want.
For most people success is evolving as effectively as possible, i.e., learning about oneself and one’s environment and then changing to improve. Personal evolution is both the greatest accomplishment and the greatest reward.
There are five big types of choices that we continually must make that radically affect the quality of our lives and the rates at which we move toward what we want. People who choose what they really want, and avoid the temptations and get over the pains that drive them away from what they really want, are much more likely to have successful lives.
Those who react well to pain that stands in the way of getting to their goals—those who understand what is causing it and how to deal with it so that it can be disposed of as a barrier—gain strength and satisfaction. This is because most learning comes from making mistakes, reflecting on the causes of the mistakes, and learning what to do differently in the future.
As you design and implement your plan to achieve your goals, you may find it helpful to consider that:
• Life is like a game where you seek to overcome the obstacles that stand in the way of achieving your goals.
• You get better at this game through practice.
• The game consists of a series of choices that have consequences.
• You can’t stop the problems and choices from coming at you, so it’s better to learn how to deal with them.
• You have the freedom to make whatever choices you want, though it’s best to be mindful of their consequences
• The pain of problems is a call to find solutions rather than a reason for unhappiness and inaction, so it’s silly, pointless, and harmful to be upset at the problems and choices that come at you (though it’s understandable).
• We all evolve at different paces, and it’s up to you to decide the pace at which you want to evolve.
• The process goes better if you are as accurate as possible in all respects, including assessing your strengths and weaknesses and adapting to them.
The best advice I can give you is to ask yourself what do you want, then ask ‘what is true’—and then ask yourself ‘what should be done about it.’ I believe that if you do this you will move much faster toward what you want to get out of life than if you don’t!
prettyandnerdy 