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.

Ray Dalio

Categorized in : Life Games Practice

Unlike in school, in life you don't have to come up with all the right answers. You can ask the people around you for help - or even ask them to do the things you don't do well. In other words, there is almost no reason not to succeed if you take the attitude of 1) total flexibility - good answers can come from anyone or anywhere (and in fact, as I have mentioned, there are far more good answers 'out there' than there are in you) and 2) total accountability: regardless of where the good answers come from, it's your job to find them.

attitude jobs life

More than anything else, what differentiates people who live up to their potential from those who don't is a willingness to look at themselves and others objectively

investing people looks

To make money in the markets, you have to think independently and... by Ray Dalio

To make money in the markets, you have to think independently and be humble.

making-money humble thinking

Be wary of the arrogant intellectual who comments from the stands without having played on the field.

investing intellectual life

The more you think you know, the more closed-minded you'll be. by Ray Dalio

The more you think you know, the more closed-minded you'll be.

closed-minded investing thinking

The biggest mistake investors make is to believe that what happened in the recent past is likely to persist. They assume that something that was a good investment in the recent past is still a good investment. Typically, high past returns simply imply that an asset has become more expensive and is a poorer, not better, investment.

mistake believe past

Distinguish open-minded people from closed-minded people. Open-minded people seek to learn by asking questions; they realize that what they know is little in relation to what there is to know and recognize that they might be wrong. Closed-minded people always tell you what they know, even if they know hardly anything about the subject being discussed. They are typically made uncomfortable by being around those who know a lot more about a subject, unlike open-minded people who are thrilled by such company.

asking-questions littles people

Nature gave us pain as a messaging device to tell us that we are approaching, or that we have exceeded, our limits in some way.

pain limits way

Principles are what allow you to live a life consistent with those values. Principles connect your values to your actions.

consistent principles action

If you don't own Gold, you know neither history nor economics. by Ray Dalio

If you don't own Gold, you know neither history nor economics.

economics gold knows

To be successful, we need everyone to think independently and work through disagreement to decide what's best.

successful needs thinking

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.

real life school

Don't be a perfectionist, because perfectionists often spend too much time on little differences at the margins at the expense of other big, important things. Be an effective imperfectionist. Solutions that broadly work well (e.g., how people should contact each other in the event of crises) are generally better than highly specialized solutions (e.g., how each person should contact each other in the event of every conceivable crisis).

differences life people

It's more important to do big things well than to do small things... by Ray Dalio

It's more important to do big things well than to do small things perfectly.

wells bigs important

Meditation more than anything in my life was the biggest ingredie... by Ray Dalio

Meditation more than anything in my life was the biggest ingredient of whatever success I've had.

ingredients meditation

I believe that our society's "mistake-phobia" 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.

smart mistake life

There is nothing to fear from truth....Being truthful is essential to being an independent thinker and obtaining greater understanding of what is right.

independent essentials understanding

Success is achieved by people who deeply understand reality and know how to use it to get what they want. The converse is also true: idealists who are not well-grounded in reality create problems, not progress.

life reality people

For me, the best things in life - meaningful work, meaningful relationships, interesting experiences, good food, sleep, music, ideas, sex, and other basic needs and pleasures - are not, past a certain point, materially improved upon by having a lot of money.

meaningful life sex

If you have the power to see things through somebody else's eyes, it's like going from black and white to color or two dimensions to three dimensions.

black-and-white eye two