Ray Dalio is an amazing human being. The first time that i heard about him was when i was browsing for self-improvement books on amazon a few years ago, when i came across a black and white book cover with the word ‘Principles’ written on it. I immediately thought, wow, is it really possible to write a book about THE principles of life? An instruction manual for life? Something that you can read and compare your life to and work out what you’ve got to what could be missing? Well the answer was thankfully, yes, and I read the book at a time when i was in the middle of an existential crisis at university as many of us are these days. Not just university students, all of us. Why are we here? What should we do to with our lives? These are questions that if left to their own devices can lead to anxiety or even depression. I started to realize the meta game, how certain patterns in life occur repeatedly and not just to ourselves. We don’t have to be trapped in our own reality, and as the book points out, there IS a way out of hard times, out of purposelessness and hopelessness. Some people are lucky enough to find the road to self-actualization by themselves, and develop the archetypal principles of success which apply to us all. But we don’t have to find it ourselves, as luckily, people like Ray Dalio and Tom Bilyeu are out there writing books and making videos so that we can get inspired and start taking the steps towards our own paths to success. I guess what i am trying to say is, we are all human, and though we may be individually different, we all go through similar life experiences and so have the opportunity to learn from each other. A quote I heard recently from one of Tom’s videos which comes to mind is ‘A fool never learns, a smart man learns from his own mistakes, and a wise man learns from others mistakes’. Basically, you don’t need to suffer, just be observant of your surroundings, use your analytical mind to extract lessons from the daily activities around you so that hopefully you don’t have to suffer from the same mistakes yourself. Principles are really just a way to avoid wasting time, which is after all, the most precious commodity. Let me elaborate.
Ray breaks down how we all have 2 versions of ourselves, the Ego-self and the emotional or subconscious self. They both influence each other to varying degrees, but true happiness comes from overcoming the two barriers that we all face: the blind spot barrier and the Ego barrier. If we can do this, we can do anything, says Dalio, and i truly believe this to be true. You can be the orchestrator of your success, don’t let yourself do the things you know will stand in the way of you and your success. These cycles may happen over and over again before you actually start applying the lessons you could have learned the first time around. We all go through phases in life, and in retrospect we can see how certain patterns occur again and again, sometimes to our own detriment. Having the knowledge that at any present moment, you have the power to alter the course of your life, is indeed, a very powerful realization. Oneway to escape detrimental cycles is to practice meditation. During the interview Ray talks about how he practices Trancendental meditation as a tool that helps him dissolve the ego-self which can often stand in the way of constructive self-analysis. By stepping out of the Ego-self, and reconnecting to the subconscious mind through the breath as an anchor, we can train ourselves to relax and step back into the frame of mind of infinite potential, which is only ever a few deep breaths away.
Principles are basically lessons learned from patterns. When things happen you can learn to deal with and categorize them using the principles that you have stored in your principle ‘book’. Throughout life you can adapt these, add some more, or remove them. In practical terms, a principle is just an idea, but once associated with real-life events, one can extract meaningful lessons that can be downloaded into their ‘book of lessons’ a.k.a principles. Is important to understand that this is an ongoing and flexible process, albeit one wherein certain principles are more concrete than others depending on subjective experiences which can be learned, or reinforced by the time-tested principles which are objectively always true, and which books like Ray Dalio’s will point towards. The more you can ‘zoom out’ and understand the objective reality that you are dealing with through your everyday challenges, the more you can forge your own path and be certain of the direction you are heading in. For example, a snake in a bush falls under the principle of a threat, and you can act accordingly depending on your goals, which for most people is staying alive and safe, away from snake bites, ergo action=reaction (run away). However in daily life when we cant always see the snakes and so out of we often end up getting bitten without the knowledge of the action to take to protect from dangers, as we have don’t yet have the basis (principles) from which to know the correct response, which in most cases is instinctive. With our criteria or principles, we can analyze situations which occur in our lives over a period of time and create a recipe book for success. We can LEARN to change our behaviors, based on past events. The more objectively you can do this the better, as this will allow you to be more confident in your decisions based on how correct you think you are, based on your principles which have been time-tested depending on how long you’ve been applying them to your own life or comparing them to others. There is a certain aspect of trust that comes in to play here if you apply principles other people have come up with, but if it comes from a reliable source like Ray Dalio, you can be sure that it is a shortcut to success.
Radical transparency, what an important topic. We are creatures of masks; a person, is derived from the latin word ‘Persona’ referring to the masks people put on during plays. In modern times, we all have a closet full of masks we can put on in different situations. When we remove the masks, we can have much more efficient conversations, create better relationships, and foster an authentic reputation that others will be positively influenced by and be attracted to. After all, the truth always comes out on top! Anyways, back to transparency, it helps and is more efficient. Ray talks about how in his company he always find a way for group decisions to be transparent, either by having meetings available online, but most importantly by establishing ground rules. This is extremely important. We all know how it feels to get lost in an argument with someone because there haven’t been mutually-agreed-upon rules which, had they been in place, would have avoided the clash in the first place. It is important to be able to recognize unnecessary friction in conversations, and be able to say wait a minute, lets press pause, zoom out a bit, identify the structural error, zoom back in and proceed to smoothly make everyone happy by making them feel heard, appreciated and accounted for. Ofcourse this is a two-way street, and all parties must feel heard and respected in order for the best case scenario to take place. We all feel this innate need to have our voice heard, so generally speaking, the old adage ‘treat others the way you would like to be treated’ is a principle we should all apply to our lives. imagine if it were true, nobody would get angry because they haven’t had their voice heard, and everyone would be a whole lot happier. Rather than crash and burn, we should all flow together in order to have successful relationships, which is something we could all benefit from in our own lives. This kind of radical openness creates a positive culture in which people can thrive. This is something we can all work towards to avoid wasted potential, be it in the form of an unheard great idea, or the perspective from an other that we haven’t yet considered.
Life works almost the opposite than the way you believe it works. The things that you think are good, are often bad for you. Take smoking, drinking, any bad habit which ‘feels good’, but damages your health in the long run. This is a trick that we all must face, are we going to face the first order consequences of our actions ‘smoke=short term-pleasure’, or the second order consequences ‘smoke=bad health’ which may not be obvious at first glance. The funny almost comic aspect of this is that the first order consequences create the second order ones which are often the opposite intention we had by doing the action; the food that tastes good/doughnuts, will make you feel bad later. It’s actually an ego trip, we create the opposite results through the conventions we engage in through the lens of our ego. Life shows us this in many ways; pain in the short term will create strength in the long term as in the gym. Pain+reflection = progress. Pain is a teacher, if you eliminate pain you won’t have the teachings that come with it. We need to be willing to sacrifice the pleasures of life for the pains that will teach us how to be better versions of ourselves. Choose your sacrifice, and discover who you are and what you actually like. Ray says self discovery is an eye-opening experience that we can all realize by being aware of our own nature, our savoring of life and the accomplishments we create through the lenses of Love or Fear, that govern each of our decisions. it is important to be able to go above that and get a birds eye view of your current situation, see the trade-offs that you are making on a constant basis, make our choices on the better foundations that we have consciously chosen to create rather than have created FOR us had we not chosen to live by certain principles. The exciting thing is if you learn to do it really well you can exponentially increase the amount of life you get to enjoy in your life.
In conclusion, be present, be honest with yourself about who you are, what you believe in and why you are who you are. Learn to calibrate your feelings with your thoughts, how you conceptualize reactive thinking or rather thoughtful actions. Surround yourself with people who well-intentionally see your faults so that you can improve, be humble about your nature and be willing to think about the things that you might not have thought about so that you can create the protective practices that will defend your mental fortress from the stray bullets of chaos that we are all trying to avoid, sadly often blindfolded which makes it much harder. Create your principles, turn the lights on and take the blindfold off, you are not the victim of time, time is your best friend so learn to live well with it and be who you want to be. Peace and love!
Dizzy Bee
If you would like to buy a copy of the Principles book on Amazon follow this link.
Or check out Ray Dalio’s latest book on the Principles for Success.
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