Principles are ways of successfully dealing with reality to get what you want out of life.
Ray Dalio, one of the world’s most successful investors and entrepreneurs, cites principles as his key to success.
In 1975, Ray Dalio founded Bridgewater Associates, out of his two-bedroom apartment in New York City. Over forty years later, Bridgewater has grown into the largest hedge fund in the world and the fifth most important private company in the United States (according to Fortune magazine), and Dalio himself has been named to TIME’s list of the 100 most influential people in the world. Along the way Dalio discovered unique principles that have led to his and Bridgewater’s unique success. It is these principles, and not anything special about Dalio, that he believes are the reason behind whatever success he has had. He is now at a stage in his life that he wants to pass these principles along to others for them to judge for themselves and to do whatever they want with them.
Life Principle
Look at the machine from the higher level.
Our uniquely human ability to look down from a higher level doesn't apply just to understanding reality and the cause-effect relationships underlying it; it also applies to looking down on yourself and those around you. I call this ability to rise above your own and others' circumstances and objectively look down on them "higher-level thinking." Higher-level thinking gives you the ability to study and influence the cause-effect relationships at play in your life and use them to get the outcomes you want.
Life Principle
- Embrace Reality and Deal with It
Look at the machine from the higher level.
- Think of yourself as a machine operating within a machine and know that you have the ability to alter your machines to produce better outcomes.
- By comparing your outcomes with your goals, you can determine how to modify your machine.
- Distinguish between you as the designer of your machine and you as a worker with your machine.
- The biggest mistake most people make is to not see themselves and others objectively, which leads them to bump into their own and others' weaknesses again and again.
- Successful people are those who can go above themselves to see things objectively and manage those things to shape change.
- Asking others who are strong in areas where you are weak to help you is a great skill that you should develop no matter what, as it will help you develop guardrails that will prevent you from doing what you shouldn't be doing.
- Because it is difficult to see oneself objectively, you need to rely on the input of others and the whole body of evidence.
- If you are open-minded enough and determined, you can get virtually anything you want.
Any person or organization can adopt Principles to better achieve their goals.
Learn what Principles are and how they are applied at Principles.com
