Big Idea Daily | Principles
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Life and Workby Ray Dalio |
“Principles are fundamental truths that serve as the foundations for behavior that get you what you want in your life. They can be applied again and again in similar situations to help you achieve your goals.”RAY DALIO |
BIG IDEA
What’s Most Important?
FROM THE BOOK“While making money was good, having meaningful work and meaningful relationships was far better.
To me, meaningful work is being on a mission I become engrossed in, and meaningful relationships are those I have with people I care deeply about and who care deeply about me.
Think about it: It’s senseless to have making money as your goal as money has no intrinsic value—its value comes from what it can buy, and it can’t buy everything. It’s smarter to start with what you really want, which are your real goals, and then work back to what you need to attain them. Money will be one of the things you need, but it’s not the only one and certainly not the most important one once you get past having the amount you need to get what you really want.
When thinking about the things you really want, it pays to think of their relative values so you weigh them properly. In my case, I wanted meaningful work and meaningful relationships equally, and I valued money less—as long as I had enough to take care of my basic needs. In thinking about the relative importance of great relationships and money, it was clear that relationships were more important because there is no amount of money I would take in exchange for a meaningful relationship, because there is nothing I could buy with that money that would be more valuable. So, for me, meaningful work and meaningful relationships were and still are my primary goals and everything I did was for them. Making money was an incidental consequence of that.”
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Brian's Notes
Recall that Ray Dalio is one of the 100 wealthiest people on the planet.
Was making money his primary goal? No. It was not. It was an “incidental consequence” to his “real goals” of creating meaningful work and meaningful relationships.
In Abundance 101, we talk about the fact that, as we think about creating material wealth in our lives, we want to make sure we do so with an eye on the ultimate currency—the reason we do anything. You know what that is?
HAPPINESS! The only reason we do *anything* is because we think it will make us happy. Of course, it’s wise to step back and make sure we define what happiness means to us and then choose the most efficient means to attain it, eh?
I suggest we pursue a deep, eudaimonic sense of happiness that comes from a sense of flourishing. As Martin Seligman tells us in Flourish via his PERMA model, that includes Positive emotion (aka, we’re enjoying ourselves!), Engagement (in what? meaningful work!), Relationships (!), Meaning, and Achievement.
Guess what? You can boil all that down into two simple things: Meaningful work and meaningful relationships. So… Let’s make those our REAL goals as we remember our ultimate currency and pursue our happiness wisely.
P.S. In Abundance 101 I share Dalio’s story and Stephen King’s. King has the same attitude. In On Writing, he tells us that he “never set a single word down on paper with the thought of being paid for it… I have written because it fulfilled me. Maybe it paid off the mortgage on the house and got the kids through college, but those things were on the side—I did it for the buzz. I did it for the pure joy of the thing. And if you can do it for the joy, you can do it forever.”
Big Ideas
01: EVOLVE
02: WHAT’S MOST IMPORTANT?
03: SHAPERS
04: PRINCIPLE #1
05: PRINCIPLE #2
“Go to the pain rather than avoid it. If you don’t let up on yourself and instead become comfortable always operating with some level of pain, you will evolve at a faster pace. That’s just the way it is.”RAY DALIO |
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