Have a View That's VERY DIFFERENT! Ray Dalio RayDalio Top 10 Rules

Can you go to what you're like? Can you go to your mistakes? Can you go to your weaknesses? I think it's very important to know what people are like. I think the greatest tragedy of mankind is people holding on to wrong opinions.

Hello, Believe Nation. I'm Evan Carmichael. My one word is believe. And I believe that entrepreneurs are going to solve all of the world's major problems. So today we're going to learn from investor and philanthropist Ray Dalio. And my take on his top 10 rules for success, volume two, rule number two is my personal favorite. And I'd love to know which one you guys like the best. And as always, as you're listening, if something really resonates with you, if there's a message that really holds true to you, please leave it down in the comments below and put it in quotes so that other people can be inspired. And when you write it down, it's much more likely to stick with yourself as well. Enjoy.

That's that. Oh, the people who feel like they're, I'm good, I've got it. Won't learn. If you've got it, you won't learn. Right. So you have to get rid of this ego barrier, I've got it thing. Firstly, can you tell us, are you authentically satisfied and fulfilled? Do you have an experience in life of being successful? I don't think that success is like a lot of people believe it is for any really successful person. I think that everybody's always struggling and what happens is, you know, you just struggle at a higher level. It's like learning how to ski or play some sport and you're just kind of doing this higher thing. But it doesn't feel like that. It just feels like I'm struggling. And I think it's.

And it's a good feeling. The way I think of it is I've always thought that it's like in order to be successful in life, you have to cross a jungle. Or you could stay on the other side of the jungle and not cross the jungle. But if you choose to cross the jungle, the jungle has all sorts of things that can do you harm and bite you and everything along those lines. And so the best way to do that is to go into that with people who can see things differently and, and watch themselves and struggle to make it to the other side. And then what I've discovered along the way is that it's always a struggle. And I enjoy being in the jungle. I don't want to get to the underside. I don't want to get out. So that's what it feels like to me. Every time I made a mistake, they became painful mistakes. But with time, I realized that reflecting on those mistakes would give me gems.

What I would do is I'd say, why did I make that mistake? And I would learn from that mistake and I'd write down a rule. So what was helpful for me is I put that rule. Principles, these principles. I wrote these principles down. Those principles that I wrote down, I then put into algorithms, in other words, equations. And what I learned by being able to do that is if I took my decision criteria, those principles, and then I tested them back through time, I gained a perspective that was fantastic. I could test them.

Back 100 years, I could test them in different countries and I would learn how those rules work. And by putting all those rules together and then having these algorithms, the computer could replicate my thinking. But it could actually think better than I could. Because what it would do is it would take. It could process more information, it could process it faster and it could process it less emotionally. So. So it was like having a GPS that was next to me while I was also making my decisions. Like you're driving in a car and you have both operating. And to have that next to me was invaluable. It would learn, I would learn, and together we built that. I think every place has to have a culture, and culture is the values, what values are living out. And so, for example, the number one value is it has to make sense to you. We have to talk about it, we have to work it through in a non egotistical kind of way. And so it's an unusual place and it's an unusual culture. Are you offended when people sometimes label it a cult? I think that, I think a cult. When I think of a cult, it means believe this. And it's the opposite. You take it from on high. In other words, occult means. Yeah, somebody's telling you believe this because I said so and follow it because I have a superior wisdom. It's exactly the opposite of that. Right. The number one principle is don't believe anything. Think for yourself. And now let's go through a process of what is true together. But we can't stop that with ego. We can't let that barrier stand in our way. So we're going to live in a culture in which we can do that. Okay, now that's the opposite of okay. It's a belief system. In other words, I will ask you, do you believe that we should operate this way with each other? Okay. If you want to call that a cult, I think it's the opposite of a cult. It means think right, speak up, don't hide it, don't talk behind people's backs. It's talking behind people's. And you always make a point that you know what you don't know and that's equally valuable. More valuable. I want to say that.

So this is the whole philosophy.

I so know that I can be wrong. Look, we all should recognize that we can be wrong. And if we recognize that we're wrong and we worry about being wrong, then what we should do is have a thoughtful dialogue. It's the mixture of the elements that matter, right? If you have a tremendous tenacity, but you're studying, you're learning, you're trying to memorize and remember everything that you're being taught, and you're really trying hard, you could have great tenacity. You need the making sense of something. You need to embrace reality, you need these other dimensions, right? So I think the things that we started to talk about just before, the things that these people have a need.

For.

Is first they need to most fundamentally make sense of things, which is a very different kind of learning process. It's a very internalized learning process. It's not a memory based process. So none of these people, unlike the population, a whole, none of these people have a desire to follow instructions. For most people, you go to school, they tell you what class to go to.

What classes to take. This goes all the way through university. They do this, do this, do this, and then you go into the class and they say, learn this. And this is the information. And it's largely a memory based, instructional based process. This is not what these people do, right? This is not so the path, what they have is a strong, strong desire to understand and make sense of reality. How does reality work? Your company anticipated the financial crisis, managed your clients funds through that period.

Make the argument that your culture actually has something to do with that result. Well, first of all, I think that.

Well, I'll tell you what the moment was like. You do our calculations and we have a view that's very different than the rest of the world's view at that time.

So the independent thinking we had among ourselves different people who had different views and the ability to work ourselves through those.

Was essential for us to being able to stand upside from the crowd. So I needed to have the independent thinking and we needed to work it through. And then even at that time, we had to have the fear of being wrong. Because you can never be confident that you're right in the markets. And so to place the bet, but to place the bet in a defensive way and to work out together the engineering. What I believe is that everything happens over and over again.

Through history. World operates like a machine. It happens over and over again. And that if you can sort of go above yourself and your circumstances and look down at yourself within your circumstances, within a historical perspective, and then have agreed upon principles. You know, principles are how to handle things that happen over and over again by having that it's helpful. And ours are just oriented around this idea of meritocracy. So it allowed us to have an independent point of view while being not 100% certain and, you know, to be defensive, and it allowed us to play that well. So the big shift in terms of going to the notion of what do I do with my money? Let's say you have a lot of liquidity and the world has lots of liquidity. Today, the world has lots of liquidity. The question is, what are its choices and what do those choices look like? And then you put your money so you produce a lot of money around a lot of liquidity and then say, do you stop buying U.S. bonds when you have or do you stop buying Japanese bonds when you have.

No interest rate and a currency risk? And so when do you stop buying? Well, it's when you have confidence. And so ultimately, when it's driven to something else, at some point you get a move toward inflation. If there's a move toward, like I want to hold inflation assets, then you come into problems until you don't have that move to move toward inflation assets. You have a capacity for a lot of the buying there. And so the timing. Can you go to what you're like, can you go to your mistakes? Can you go to your weaknesses? Right. Can you go to other people's mistakes and weaknesses? Some people, because of an ego barrier, can't do that. And so if they don't recognize their own mistakes, their own weaknesses or others mistakes and weaknesses, what the root cause being what they're like because of ego barriers, if they can't go there, they're going to repeat those mistakes. They're going to have them over and over again. So it's the process essentially of saying at that stage, what am I like? Everybody has strengths and everybody has weaknesses. The weaknesses are the other side of the strengths. So let's say if you're a right brain, creative person, you may not be reliable because just the way you think necessitates you to think a certain way. That means you can't think in another way. That means you're going to keep bumping into that thing that's standing in your way. But unless you can embrace I'm not reliable and deal with it, you won't get around it. It's still going to continue to be a barrier. Right? So the diagnosis to the root cause is important. So then if you diagnose it, then you have to design what are you going to do about it that works. So let's say you are very creative, but not reliable. Okay? You have to find a means of first of all embracing that and, and then saying, if I'm not reliable, what do I do? Do I work with a reliable person? Do I learn reliability? Do I have some compensating mechanism? Because I can't let that lack of reliability stand in the way of my goal. As long as I keep doing that, I'm gonna keep running into problems. So you have to design what you do about the problems. And then when you're designing what you do about the problems, then you have to follow it through. So you have to follow through or do the thing you designed. And the doing the thing you designed requires self discipline and so on. So people have to do those things in order to be successful, right? They have to know what their goals are, they will encounter their problems. They have to diagnose those problems down to the root cause, the real root cause. They have to design ways to get around them. And then they have to have the self discipline to follow that. And it's a continuous iterative process. So that that's what we keep doing. Right? So you're going in that direction. I would say that all of the shapers are doing that. They're doing that, they're doing that well. Right. So they don't mind the problems. They don't mind that. I think it's very important to know what people are like. Yet most organizations don't want to go there. By knowing what people are like and having them part of the process of knowing what they're like. There's better understanding, better communication, and also, of course, you can make better teams because nobody has all that's needed to be successful. You know, we need each other to play different roles. And the ability to do that by knowing what people alike is enhanced. You have no idea how you all see things differently, that there's a thinking spectrum. Some people are creative and not reliable, some people are reliable and not creative. And as you start to give people personality tests Like Myers Briggs or the big five or different personality tests, you start to learn how people see things differently. And then when you see them differently and you and, and that screen pops up where rather than just seeing how you see it, you go above that and you're seeing that everybody is seeing things differently. It changes how you see things because it starts to make you think, how do I know I'm not the wrong one? In other words, as you go above it and you look down on all those different ways of seeing, you start to think, how do I know I'm not the wrong one? And how do I collectively see. And you see in a color range, it's like seeing in a different color range or going from two dimensions to three dimensions. All of a sudden you see the full spectrum of seeing things and then you go to the higher level and we have systems that go through the computers that go the higher level that say, then how do we weigh all those ways of seeing to make the best decisions so you don't get so attached to your opinions? I think the greatest tragedy of mankind is people holding on to wrong opinions that could so easily be rectified and that's doing them hard because they're making wrong decisions. So how do you collectively do that? Well, the answer is by everybody seeing everything and seeing how others see, they begin to gain those perspectives. They also get to get an appreciation for the other way of seeing. It used to be that everybody would drive each other crazy. Your brain works in one way, my brain works in the another. Maybe I see big picture, you see detail. Maybe I'm creative, maybe you're reliable. We drive each other crazy. When you start to realize that people are actually seeing in those ways and that's a valid way of seeing and that I need you and you need me and how to put together the team as you're asking about it gives you the evidence base. It's okay to be different.

Thank you guys so much for watching. I made this video because Hynan Vora asked me to. If there's someone you'd like me to profile in the next top, check out the link in the description and go and cast your vote. I'd also love to know what was your favorite message from this video? What did you learn from this video that you're going to immediately apply somehow in your life or in your business? Please leave it down in the comments below. I'm really curious to find out. So thank you guys again for watching. I believe in you. I hope you continue to believe in yourself. And whatever your one word is. Much love. I'll see you soon.

There's productivity which produces income. You can spend at the end of the day what you earn and what you earn is a function of your productivity. And for a country it's the same as for individuals. You work hard, are you well educated, you know you can be more productive if you work harder or you can learn more productive if you're more creative. Productivity is going to be be the single biggest factor. How do you make people productive? Self sufficiency. You know that the single biggest factor for a number of countries is do people feel the consequences of their earning or their not working. In countries where there's self sufficiency then they feel those consequences. Rather than greater social net, they will have higher levels of productivity. So at the end of the day it's really the things that you, when you look at your neighbors and you say if they can get an income and they're not going to be penalized much, they're going to be less motivated. There's a series of those and what I'm trying to.

Direct the attention to is what those specific factors are so that it's like a health index. So I'd like to draw people to, you know, the productivity. We did this productivity study and you could see then what those correlations are because for all nations, same formula and because it's like a health report. If you can look at what is your cholesterol level, what is your, do you smoke, do you exercise?

You don't want to know. You can know.

Your tom doesn't want to find out. You can know your 10 year prognosis. And if you could look at that on emotionally with that benchmark, you can see what productivity is.