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1-Page Summary of Principles

Overview

The author, Ray Dalio, believes that by following his principles in life and work, people can improve their relationships with others. They can also make better decisions as a group and better deal with change.

Dalio divides his principles into two categories: life and work. Life principles aid in making logical decisions while maintaining an open-minded attitude with respect to feedback. Open-mindedness means being receptive to other points of view without letting ego interfere. This allows you to adjust your habits when necessary, based on new information.

Evolution is the most important driving force in nature. In the span of a human life, evolution means learning from mistakes and facing them head on. This can be painful at times, but it’s necessary to achieve personal goals and progress as an individual.

In order to be successful, you must identify your goals and figure out what’s holding you back from achieving them. You need to know the root cause of those obstacles in order to overcome them. Then, create a plan with specific steps that will help you achieve your goal. Once you have a plan, commit yourself to it and complete it successfully.

In order to overcome the ego barrier and blind spot, you need to be open-minded. The ego barrier is a person’s tendency to avoid facing their own weaknesses or mistakes. The blind spot refers to the habit of clinging on familiar ways of thinking that fail to account for certain details or perspectives.

The way to make good decisions is to seek out others who have the most experience with the matter in question, especially those who have worked through similar circumstances in the past. They can explain clearly how certain problems and situations are caused by other factors.

According to the author, by adhering to these four principles of radical open-mindedness, anyone can be successful in life and work.

Key Point 1: On a planetary and historical scale, individual actors seldom affect larger processes. Through continual adaption and improvement, natural evolution benefits the whole, rather than one individual.

Seeing hyenas kill a wildebeest may be horrifying, but it is part of nature. Hyenas and wildebeests benefit from this natural process. Likewise, being open to different points of view will help you understand the health of an entire company.

A useful metaphor for business is natural evolution. Viruses are constantly adapting and trying to find a way around the body’s defenses, but the body always adapts by changing its own genetic makeup. In 2016, Stanford University researchers published research showing that 30 percent of all adaptive mutations in proteins are actually mutations that help fight viruses. This shows how effective adaptation can be at protecting an organism from danger or stressors in its environment.

Key Point 2: The struggle between emotional reactions and logical reasoning affects decision making.

The conscious mind is managed by the prefrontal cortex and is in constant struggle with the subconscious mind, which is controlled by the amygdala. The subconscious can lead to actions that are often at odds with logical thinking. Mindfulness meditation may be useful in managing emotion because it allows people to control their emotional responses. A study conducted in Italy and Denmark showed that those who practice mindfulness have less activity in their amygdalas than those who do not practice mindfulness meditation. This suggests that mindfulness helps you manage your emotions better so you can focus on logic rather than feelings when making decisions