Ray Dalio is the Founder, Chairman and Co-Chief Investment Officer of Bridgewater Associates. He started Bridgewater out of his two-bedroom apartment in New York in 1975.
The book Principles covers Ray’s various principles to success in business and also in life.
Adopting principles without giving them much thought can expose you to the risk of acting in ways inconsistent with your goals and your nature.
Ray Dalio’s best-selling book Principles is now an animated ultra-mini-series adventure in 30 minutes and 8 episodes.
Episode 1: The call to Adventure
“Whatever success I had in life have more to do with my knowing how to deal with my not knowing than anything I know. I believe that the principles that have made me successful could help other to achieve their goals. I am at the stage in my life in which it is much more important to me to pass along what I have learned about how to be successful than to seek more success from myself. What you choose to do with these principles is up to you. You have to be an independent thinker, because only you can develop your own principles based on your own values.
You need to think for yourself what is true
Early on I discovered I needed principles. Principles are smart ways of handling things that happen over and over again in similar situations. There are principles for everything, skiing, parenting, cooking etc.
I did not start with principles, I inquired them over a life time of experiences, mostly from making mistakes and reflecting on them. My life principles are simple, but they are not complete. I still struggle to make the best decisions. I still make mistakes and learn new principles all the time.
Truth is the essential foundation for producing good outcomes.
Dreams + Reality + Determination = Successful Life
At the beginning I needed to escape the conventions that surrounded me which meant that I needed to think for myself, unless you have a life directed by others.
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- You decide what to do
- Have courage to do it
I did not know that at first, I only learned that from going on my adventure.
Time is like a river that carries us forward into encounters with reality that require us to make decisions. We can’t stop our movement down this river and we can’t avoid those encounters. We can only approach them in the best possible way.
In your lifetime you will face millions of decisions. The quality of your decisions will determine the quality of your life. Over the course of my lifetime the most valuable things I have learned were the results of mistakes. I reflected on them so that I wouldn’t make the same mistakes again.
People often ask me how I did it. I can assure you it wasn’t because of my uniqueness as a person, it was because of my unique approach to life, I believe almost anybody can adopt. It starts with embracing reality and dealing with it.” – More in Episode 2.
Episode 2: Embrace reality and deal with it
Episode 3: The five step process
Episode 4: The Abyss
Episode 5: Everything is a machine
Episode 6: Your Two biggest Barriers
Episode 7: Be Radically Open-Minded
Episode 8: Struggle Well
For more information!
