Ray Dalio: ON How to Define Success for Yourself and Set Your Goals

On this episode of On Purpose, I sat down with billionaire investor, Ray Dalio. We talk about why pain is necessary in order to make progress and why we shouldn’t focus on being right all the time. Dalio also reveals what he believes is the greatest tragedy of mankind and gives us 5 steps to achieving success. If you’ve ever wanted insight into how billionaires think, this episode is for you! See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Jay Shetty?

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• 0:44Jay Shetty?

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• 1:29Jay Shetty?

  AG1 Next Gen is one of those easy habits to keep. It's the clinically-backed, comprehensive daily health drink that supports your gut health, energy production, and foundational nutrition all in one scoop. AG1's ingredients are sourced from quality partners for absorption, potency, and nutrient density to deliver the foundational nutrition your body needs. And alongside a proper diet, AG1 Next Gen meets 94% of nutrient requirements and it's clinically shown to enrich the gut microbiome. For a limited time, save 20% on your first subscription order of AG1 Next Gen or AG1 Pro at drinkag1.com/onpurpose. That's drinkag1.com/onpurpose.

• 2:16Jay Shetty?

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• 3:00Jay Shetty?

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• 3:09Ray Dalio?

  You have to diagnose those to the root cause. What is producing your problems? And that may be that you, or it may be those around you who are not good at things, or whatever, or you're doing something you need to do better. Or it may be that you're in the wrong place. But you have to get at the root cause to do that diagnosis.

• 3:36Jay Shetty?

  Hello, everyone. Welcome back to On Purpose, the number one health podcast in the world. Thank you so much for being a part of this community. Thank you for committing to your growth, to your self-development, taking out the valuable time of your lives to use it to become better, to grow, and to learn. You could be doing anything in the world right now, whether you're walking your dog, whether you're commuting, or whether you're at work and trying to learn more. Thank you for making this commitment to wisdom and to knowledge. And you know that my commitment to you on this podcast is to introduce you to the people, the ideas, the messages that can transform your work, life, and love. And today's guest is going to do just that. I'm so excited personally.

• 4:19Jay Shetty?

  This has been someone that I've been wanting to bring to you on the podcast for a long time, so I'm gonna have to contain my excitement as well. But he's an American billionaire investor, hedge fund manager, and philanthropist, and the author of this incredible book called Principles. Now, I read this book when it first came out, and there were so many incredible insights of wisdom in there. And today I get to sit down with the one and only Ray Dalio. Ray, thank you so much for being here.

• 4:45Ray Dalio?

  Whoa, like I don't deserve all that, but back at you. Thank you.

• 4:49Jay Shetty?

  No, you're very kind. You're very kind. And I'm so grateful to have this opportunity with you because I truly believe that I'm so grateful. You said on the phone when we were speaking that there are these different stages of life. And I'm so grateful that you're at the stage of your life where you are sharing everything you've learned with all of us, because I think there's such a wealth of knowledge that we all have to gain from. So thank you from me and everyone else who's listening and watching for taking this next stage in your life.

• 5:14Ray Dalio?

  Well, it's a treat and a responsibility, so I'm happy to do it. Thank you for helping me.

• 5:19Jay Shetty?

  Absolutely, absolutely. So today I want to dive into life and work and many different areas that you speak about in your incredible book Principles. And the first thing I want to dive into is these stages of life you speak about, because when you said that to me on the phone the other day, they really resonated. Why don't you guide the audience through those different stages and phases and how you see them changing our life?

• 5:40Ray Dalio?

  Well, I think there are, to simplify, there are three stages in your life. The first stage in your life is when you're learning and you're dependent on others. Go to school, come out, graduate from school. It's very different from the second phase of your life, where you're working, others are dependent on you and you're trying to be successful. And that's what larger your audience is in that early stages.

• 6:06Jay Shetty?

  Absolutely.

• 6:07Ray Dalio?

  So I'm so excited to speak to them. And that whole arc is totally different. Like on the first arc, first part of the life, you know, you pretty much follow a track. You know, what schools, parents taking care of you, whatever it is, and then you, what decisions do you make? You hardly make any decisions. You make, you know, okay, what college do you go to if you go to college? Then you go to the college and you, what major do you have? And then you come out to this world, the second stage, in which really the whole thing is wide open to you, particularly if you don't go stay on a track. And you realize that there's no instruction manual and you can go anywhere and you could do anything. And then it's a very different phase. It's a more difficult phase.

• 6:48Ray Dalio?

  And that second phase then has an arc to it. And then somewhere in the vicinity of your last phase, that's the phase where you're free to live and free to die. And your preferences change. You change. Your relationships with others change. So that's the life arc that I'm referring to. And so I'm in the transition from the end of my second phase to the beginning of my third phase. And at that phase, I just want to pass along what I've learned to help people who are early in their second phase.

• 7:19Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, absolutely. And you're so right. That is the majority of people that are listening and watching right now. And for me, you brought something up really interesting there. One of the biggest things is we become paralyzed by choice and decisions. Because so much of that early phase is where things were decided for us, where choices were made for us. And I often feel we bring that mindset to the second phase, where we're still looking for someone else to help tell us what to do and what decision to make and what's the right thing to do. How have you seen through your experiences, how have you dealt with choice and decision as that phase of life changes?

• 7:56Ray Dalio?

  Well, I think first of all, one has to know their nature. You might have to discover it. But your nature means, do you have a sense of adventure? Do you seek security? Are you an extrovert, an introvert, those types of things? So personal discovery is important. I think that who you're with and where you are is more important than what you do. Because in the early phase of that second phase, it's total discovery. So it's experimentation. You know, you went to India for three years, right?

• 8:33Jay Shetty?

  Yes.

• 8:33Ray Dalio?

  And that, but if you have that sense of adventure, to let go, you can discover, that's your opportunity. But discover yourself as well as to discover what the choices are like. And then as you move later into that, you'll feel the pull. And to feel never trapped. We were talking just before we began that so many people say, you know, I can't be that way because I my job won't allow it, which is a silly concept. Because you have the freedom of those choices, even in when you have constraining situations. So I think that's the life arc.

• 9:14Ray Dalio?

  Enjoy this wide open choice. You can be anywhere in the world. You can do almost anything. Let go, experiment, and then move on.

• 9:25Jay Shetty?

  Absolutely. And did you feel that same freedom when you started as well? Or do you feel it's changed now? Do you think there's?

• 9:31Ray Dalio?

  In my case, in my case, um, okay. In my case, uh, when I was 12, I got hooked on trading markets. So I, I love that game. So I discovered it early. And then I, and then I wanted to, but I had this sense of adventure. I was very, I discovered when I went to work at a company. That I, working at a company was not my thing. I got fired. I punched my boss. I, I mean, I, so, and I really then learned the freedom. Not, I didn't have any idea that I was setting up a company. I just sort of said, I can do these things, probably like you. You discovered, okay, I could do those things.

• 10:14Ray Dalio?

  And then one thing leads to another and then, you know, you build and I always like the variety. So I'm, my nature is macro. So I like going all over the world, all different cultures, understanding how the world works. And so I found something that clicked through that experimentation.

• 10:33Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 10:33Ray Dalio?

  But then there is ups and downs, right? Lots of ups and downs. So we need to talk about failure. You know, how great failure is.

• 10:43Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, let's do that because I think when I'm hearing you say that, it's so refreshing because when I hear you saying, yeah, I had to figure it out and I was experimenting and testing and I didn't even know what I was building. I love hearing that because that's what my experience so far has been too. As opposed to like a very rigid strategic, not that there isn't strategy, of course there is, but something very rigid and planned. There is a lot of experimentation in that growth where failure is natural.

• 11:09Ray Dalio?

  Yeah. My son in 2014 gave me a book, Joseph Campbell, and it was called Hero of Us, A Thousand Faces. And it refers to the hero's journey. And this is like at the end of my experience and I found that that's very, very true. And so there's this cycle.

• 11:35Jay Shetty?

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• 12:18Jay Shetty?

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• 13:01Jay Shetty?

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• 13:35Ray Dalio?

  A certain type of personality wants a taste for adventure. You go out and have the adventure. And then there are the ups and downs, and then you crash. You will have a failure. If you're adventurous and you're pushing the limits, you will have a failure. And that failure is a, can be a transformative experience. I have an expression, that pain plus reflection equals progress. So they call it the abyss. And change, the learning of humility, to maintain your aggressiveness, your audacity, and to simultaneously learn humility. And that happened to me.

• 14:18Ray Dalio?

  I was, so you described it. I was, I graduated from school. I, two years, I worked on Wall Street for two years. I got fired from my job, and two years later, I'm running my little company. Something like seven, eight years after that, I made terrible mistakes in the markets. I crashed and I lost everything. And I was so broke that I had to borrow $4,000 from my dad to help pay for my family expenses. And it was publicly, because I was on Wall Street Week and I made all those mistakes. And that was one of the most painful.

• 15:00Ray Dalio?

  Pain can be great because it changed my whole perspective to decision making. As I'm saying, it gave me the humility I needed to operate with my audacity. In other words, to simultaneously be bold and aggressive and also to know that I could be careful. You know, I learned that if you're doing risky things, anybody who does risky things, tightrope walk across buildings or whatever, it's that they also know how to deal with the risks well. So how to be bold and then to learn from the failures. And it changed my whole approach to failure.

• 15:38Ray Dalio?

  I began to think of failures like puzzles that if I could solve the puzzle, I'd get a gem. And the puzzle was, what would I do differently in the future? And the gem I would get would be a principle of how I would deal with the future differently. So understanding that if you press the limits, you're going to fail and it's okay. And life is a long journey. Failure has a tone to it that it sounds like it's an end. No, it's part of that process of learning and then making that great advance. But the humility combined with the audacity was helpful.

• 16:20Ray Dalio?

  Because then I would go to try to find the smartest people I could find who disagreed with me. That independent thinking. And I would also know how to deal with my risks better. So I kept my upside without losing my downside. So that's failure and pain. If you look at the second order effects, if you make the most of them, they're the most valuable.

• 16:41Jay Shetty?

  Absolutely, and I love that balance that you've just spoke about or that bringing of the two together of humility and audacity. I've never heard it like that before and I really value that because I can see why humility is so powerful. But not that that humility stops you from having that boldness and that courage. And almost like, how have you maintained that? Because I'm guessing that being at rock bottom, like having to borrow $4,000 can be very painful.

• 17:08Jay Shetty?

  And then when you're experimenting again and going on your next adventure, you've got to be okay with the fact that that could happen again? Or was that humility holding that back, having that happen again?

• 17:18Ray Dalio?

  I think the tightrope walker crossing the building is the example, right? You fall and you fall hard. Now, some people won't get on the tightrope again.

• 17:29Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 17:29Ray Dalio?

  Some people will get on the tightrope again.

• 17:32Jay Shetty?

  Yes.

• 17:32Ray Dalio?

  And then they think, how do I do that? So how do I be bold and aggressive? And I pull it off. And it's the same way, right? You start to think, well, maybe I do this or that differently and I practice more. It's that combination of the caution and practice that allows you to take it to the limits that you never would have been able to take it to before. Right? I learned that. Once I learned that, everything changed. Because I also would know how to take the hits. In other words, I don't mind getting banged, but I don't want to get knocked out of the game.

• 18:09Jay Shetty?

  Yes.

• 18:10Ray Dalio?

  So the willingness to get banged but not knocked out of the game is a big part of that.

• 18:14Jay Shetty?

  Absolutely. Yeah, like a good fighter, right? You're just giving that analogy. For me, it's like sometimes a boxer or a fighter needs to know which punches to take in order to be able to drop a bigger punch. That's part of the game. And that's what you were saying about solving a puzzle. I love that analogy. Because I think if we see everything as puzzles, that there's a way of figuring it out. Right? You know there's an answer to a puzzle.

• 18:36Ray Dalio?

  Yes, I think the key is to think of reality as you're given. Reality is reality. And think of it as working like a machine. There are cause-effect relationships that make the realities around you. Okay, now, if you go above yourself and you look at that, how does that machine work? And then, how do I interact with that machine to get what I want? And you do that with an equanimity. Meditation also helped me a lot.

• 19:08Jay Shetty?

  Yes.

• 19:08Ray Dalio?

  I learned to meditate very, many years ago. And if you, if you have equanimity, and you look at it above and you look at it with curiosity, and you say, oh, I must not be interacting well with my reality, and how do I change it, and how does it work? It's a very powerful way of approaching life.

• 19:29Jay Shetty?

  Absolutely, and that definition of equanimity too. Equanimity means to deal with good and bad.

• 19:36Ray Dalio?

  Yeah.

• 19:36Jay Shetty?

  And, and so how have you, I'd love to know, how have you celebrated and embraced successes in your life too? We just spoke about failure. I'm intrigued to know how someone like yourself deals with success.

• 19:47Ray Dalio?

  Well, I think my approach, my thinking about success has evolved over a period of time. I, I thought about success, I today think about success differently. It's like, the way I thought about it originally, when I, you know, you have this failure, I thought that it's like there's a jungle out there. I want to have the great, greatest life possible, but in order to be successful, I can, I have to cross this dangerous jungle. Now, I could stay on the one side of the jungle and have a, a boring, safe life, but unless I deal with the risks, risks and return go together, and it's like going into this jungle. So what would I choose?

• 20:32Ray Dalio?

  Would I choose to go into the jungle and cross the jungle and have the greatest life possible, but I might get, bad things might happen? And then I started to think, when I went into that jungle, I, of course, I had to cross the jungle, but I started to realize how to cross the jungle, most importantly, with people who could see things differently than I could on the mission with me. And so, and we would protect each other in that jungle. And that's what it was like. So life is a lot like that. Who are you in the jungle with? And they might see things differently from you. And then you protect each other and you go. Through and the thing that I discovered was that as I had these successes and failures

• 21:14Ray Dalio?

  and much more successes than failures, I began to realize that I didn't care as much about the success as I cared about the journey. Okay. In other words, I didn't want to get out of the jungle. I didn't want to get to the other side because it might be like, I don't know, climbing mountains or doing whatever you realize. There's a new peak and there's a new level of success and it won't keep you happy. Okay. You don't sit there. You want to go on. And it is the ups and downs of that journey and the striving into becoming better that becomes the new definition of success.

• 21:54Ray Dalio?

  And so I started to see my life in this life arc way with my preferences changing because your preferences naturally change as one has kids and as they start to think, I mean, everybody that you're dealing with is going through in the life arc. If you think about who are the people you love, what is your relationship with your parents? What are your relationships? Do you have children? Who are they? Will have a life arc. And as you go through that life arc and you see those things changing, then you start to realize that operating consistent with that life arc is and on

• 22:31Ray Dalio?

  that journey to evolve well is what success is. It's not the money. It's like money loses its marginal utility very quickly, right? If you studies of happiness, there's a Harvard professor, many professors, I suppose, and they tell you the same thing in terms of studying happiness around the world. There's very little correlation between how much money you have and the level of happiness past the basics of assistance level. The element that there's the highest correlation with is an element of community, who you're with. So it's this meaningful work. Are you on a mission? And meaningful relationships through a life arc that evolves. So that's my definition of

• 23:14Ray Dalio?

  success is more like evolving well and contributing to evolution.

• 23:20Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, absolutely. And I couldn't agree more. And those. Stand so true from my monk training too. So, hearing them from you in a different context is so encouraging to hear. And for anyone who's watching or listening right now, please make sure that as Ray is speaking, you're visualizing his beautiful analogies. Because as I'm sitting here listening to you, I'm visualizing being in the forest. I'm visualizing being around people. I'm looking at the people in my life and seeing them as different aspects. And Ray paints such a beautiful picture as he speaks. If you're listening right now, anytime he shares an analogy or a story, put yourself in that place because it's going to help you go there deeper. And I think you do a brilliant job of that, Ray. In some of your videos I saw as well, the animations really bring that to life. So, I can see them in my mind. Tell us about how you've been so careful about

• 24:05Jay Shetty?

  curating and constructing that community for yourself. You said that you found people in the woods who could see what you couldn't see and you protected each other, which I love.

• 24:15Ray Dalio?

  It was, it was an evolutionary process, you know. So, you're on a mission. You're on a mission.

• 24:21Jay Shetty?

  Yes.

• 24:21Ray Dalio?

  And you have people who are on the mission with you.

• 24:23Jay Shetty?

  Yes.

• 24:24Ray Dalio?

  And then you start to, I started to find, what do I want in those people? And what should the relationship be? And I first just picked people I liked. And I didn't realize how we see things differently, how we process things so differently. Our minds work so differently. And so, when you start to see, let's say, there's a big picture thinker, there's a detail thinker. And we all become frustrated with the other person because they, like the big picture says, why are you so hung up with those details? Let's go to the big picture. And the detail thinker thinks, you've got your head in the clouds. You've got to come down to the nuts and bolts. And they're both right.

• 25:09Ray Dalio?

  And they start to realize that you need each other. You start to need the different ways of thinking. So, I would convey that, that many people see things very differently. And how do you deal with those differences in seeing their disagreements? How do you deal with disagreements? My approach, and I learned, is whenever you're in a disagreement, And you don't know how to deal with it well because it's not going well. Pause and then step above the disagreement together. And then say, uh, what are the protocols for us to disagree well? How should we do this thing? Always go to the higher level and think, how should you do that thing?

• 25:53Ray Dalio?

  And so you get protocols. I've developed these protocols, like a protocol would be like if we're not being able to communicate well together. A standard protocol is let's mutually agree on someone who will help moderate this conversation. And then we'll work things through or talking. Um, how do I repeat what you're saying? So that I'm conveying that I understand. And you start to develop those types of protocols and start to develop the appreciations of people seeing things differently. You discover also differences in values. Differences in the more, the most core principles of how people should be with each other.

• 26:34Ray Dalio?

  In my case, it was so essential that we're going to be completely radically truthful and radically transparent with each other, right? Um, and that was my discovery. Um, and it's difficult, but I've also learned that, uh, many cases, the difficult things are only the first order consequences. They're difficult. The second order consequences is they're rewarding. And so by being able to have that radical truthfulness and that transparency to demonstrate that there's no spin was a discovery. So there's an evolutionary arc.

• 27:15Ray Dalio?

  I would say, um, in my culture, in my building, uh, an organization, a community that was beneficial. I'll describe it in, in one sentence. Yes. Long sentence. It's an idea meritocracy. In other words, it's a place where the best ideas win out regardless of hierarchy. So an idea meritocracy. And with the goal, in which the goals are meaningful work and meaningful relationships. Meaningful work to be on a mission together. And meaningful relationships is an equal importance of that. And that produces this tough love, so I'll, I'll, I'll repeat it. I'm saying it too many words.

• 27:58Ray Dalio?

  So it's an idea meritocracy in which the goals are meaningful work and meaningful relationships through radical truthfulness and radical transparency. Anyway, that was my way. That's what worked for me.

• 28:10Jay Shetty?

  That's incredible. And I guess all of these tools you were mentioning earlier about these protocols had to consistently realign everyone with that. Because as we start wearing away and you start seeing lack of transparency or lack of truthfulness or lack of meaning and mission, you're constantly having to realign everyone.

• 28:26Ray Dalio?

  Right. That, let's talk about that radical truthfulness and radical transparency. If you, if you can achieve it, there's no confusion. Because if we're really truthful, we're taking all those hidden agendas and all those other things and we're not confused, we're putting them on the table.

• 28:50Jay Shetty?

  Yes.

• 28:51Ray Dalio?

  And if you understand the art of thoughtful disagreement, how to disagree well, so that you can then learn from each other or get past your disagreement in an idea meritocratic way. It is incredibly powerful. And the, we're not taught that. We're not taught some of these things. We're not taught the value of failure.

• 29:17Jay Shetty?

  Definitely not.

• 29:18Ray Dalio?

  We're not taught, we're taught to be right, to be attached to our views of being right.

• 29:25Jay Shetty?

  Yep.

• 29:26Ray Dalio?

  You can't learn.

• 29:27Jay Shetty?

  No.

• 29:28Ray Dalio?

  If you're attached to being right, because you think it's embarrassing because you don't know. So that notion of thoughtful disagreement, because if there's disagreement, somebody must be wrong. And how do you know that wrong person isn't you? So these are the things that if you have thoughtful disagreement, radical truthfulness, radical transparency, you build trust and effectiveness.

• 29:50Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, and that really sounds like it requires the pulverizing of the ego. Like that to me sounds like we really have to crush and break down this ego because our ego is what's we're confronted with believing I'm right, I'm gonna win, right? Whenever you're in a disagreement and you handle it badly, it's you think it's win or loss.

• 30:09Ray Dalio?

  That's right. I think the greatest tragedy of mankind, big statement, the greatest tragedy of mankind.

• 30:17Jay Shetty?

  Wait for it.

• 30:18Ray Dalio?

  The greatest tragedy mankind, because it's so much, it stands in the way of so many people making decisions well and operating well with each other, is being, is holding an opinion in your head that's wrong. And it's such a tragedy, meaning it's so easily fixed, that all you have to do is put it out there and stress test it. And say, I might be wrong. And how do I stress test it? And by stress testing it, you raise your probabilities of being right. So I think the education system rewards being right. So many things reward that being right. That stands in the way of taking in all that's out there to really help you be right.

• 31:01Jay Shetty?

  Hmm, I think that's such a powerful point. I'm just nodding away. If you're only listening, then I'm nodding away because when you say that, I think that's so true, that all of our conditioned patterns are about being right. It's never been to understand things from different angles or perspectives, which is what reality is much more of than being right or wrong or black or white. And so much of our patterns in our mind are always win or loss, right or wrong, one or two, there's rarely this cohesive synergy that you're speaking about, that actually takes a lot more work to get to.

• 31:33Ray Dalio?

  The greatest, whatever success I've had in life has had more, much more to do with my knowing how to deal with my not knowing than anything that I know. Because what I don't know is vastly greater. Think about all the experts that you can turn to and all the perspectives that you can get and how much you can learn by what's being out there. And that maximizes, and it's a kick.

• 32:02Jay Shetty?

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• 32:47Jay Shetty?

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• 33:06Speaker 02

  Now, more than ever, we need someone on our side. But Rob Whitman? Whitman's votes drove up costs, cut Medicaid, and risked 350,000 Virginians' healthcare to pay for tax breaks for himself and his donors. He's not on our side. Shannon Taylor will fight corruption, cut taxes, and bring down costs. This November, vote for Shannon Taylor. She's for us. Paid for by HMP, the HouseMajorityPac.com. Not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.

• 33:36Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. One of the things, the other thing which we've already dived into today, you called your book Principles, and I thought that that was quite a... Counterculture way of doing it, in a good way. And the reason I say that is today, so much of the language around business and work, or entrepreneurship is around doing, it's around having, it's around grinding, it's, you know, these are the terms and the language that's used around business, whereas you go back and you talk about principles. And on the phone when we were speaking, you were talking about this differentiation between doing and then living a principled life. Just explain that to us and why you believe we have to start with principles.

• 34:14Ray Dalio?

  I'm going to start by explaining how I learned it.

• 34:19Jay Shetty?

  Yes, please.

• 34:20Ray Dalio?

  And what principled thinking is and how it's different

• 34:23Jay Shetty?

  Amazing.

• 34:24Ray Dalio?

  From other types of normal thinking, what most people do, right?

• 34:28Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 34:29Ray Dalio?

  And this is also a suggestion I'd like to pass along to those who are listening. What I found was that whenever I would make an important decision, I would write down my criteria for making that decision. Because that situation would come along again. So I could be clear, it helped me clarify my thinking. And when the next time it came along, I would start to see how to deal with that, and I could refine my principles. So the book is a compendium of these principles that I wrote over 25 years on that situation. It changed my way of thinking, and it also changed my way of interacting.

• 35:14Ray Dalio?

  Because then I would see everything as another one of those. Rather than be in the blizzard of these bits and pieces of things coming at me, I would start to think, oh, it's one of those.

• 35:26Jay Shetty?

  Yes.

• 35:27Ray Dalio?

  And I would then operate as what was my principle. And those principles became like internalized. So think of it almost like a batter batting against a pitcher who sometimes throws curveballs, sometimes throws fastballs, sometimes throws sliders. And if you do that over a period of time, you begin to learn, oh, that's a fastball. And then you start to think, okay, the fast- Ball, I operate this and you start to internalize. Now you become better and better and life becomes simpler for you. Because you're not seeing those millions of bits and pieces. You're seeing it as another one of those.

• 36:09Ray Dalio?

  And you have that instinctual ability. That allows you to then make that decision and operate that way. And then you can communicate with people on principled levels, thinking. You know, it's particularly important because I would say the decline of religion. The decline, in other words, even your values. You have to think, what is your religion? If you chose a religion and it's not a preconditioned religion. What are your values? What are your principles? How do you think life really works? And you're making choices for yourself. That is the form of those principles. So when you start to think about those and you're clear about those.

• 36:53Ray Dalio?

  And you can communicate with others. You can see whether your principles are aligned with others or not. Because they, if you don't get along with somebody. And those irreconcilable differences are due to the fact that there are deep differences in principles. Not differences in interpretations of things and so on. It's like any great relationship. There'll be arguments along the way. But it is those core beliefs. And by being clear about them, clear to yourself and clear to others, it's very powerful.

• 37:25Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, absolutely. I couldn't agree more. It just makes it so much more simpler to navigate. Because you're so right that when you don't have that clarity. All you're being attacked with is so much noise. And there's just so many millions of different pieces of noise that are coming at you. That you haven't filtered, you haven't clarified, you haven't carefully selected. And that's why we feel so overwhelmed today. We're drowning in all of that noise.

• 37:47Ray Dalio?

  And what for?

• 37:49Jay Shetty?

  Exactly.

• 37:50Ray Dalio?

  Where are you going? What for? What are you seeking to fulfill? What is it in you?

• 37:58Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, and I think that this is where I'd recommend everyone who's listening or watching right now, I'd love for you to take a moment to do that exercise in your own time that Ray's just laid out of really figuring out what are your criteria behind decisions, why you're making those decisions, what's pushing you towards them. For me as well, whenever I have a number of options, what I do is I write down all my options and choices I have, and I write down on top of them why I would take them. And often my why for something would be just pride or ego, and often above one of them, it will be love and depth and values.

• 38:29Ray Dalio?

  Well, here's the exercise. You're talking about the writing down.

• 38:32Jay Shetty?

  Yes.

• 38:33Ray Dalio?

  Okay, I'm saying the writing down. I recommend to your listeners,

• 38:37Jay Shetty?

  Please.

• 38:38Ray Dalio?

  Write them down, okay? Do your reflections, and then you write them down. It helps, it clarifies it. The other thing that happens is, I think of the mind as being, there are almost two you's in you. There is a conscious, logical you, and there's a subliminal, emotional you.

• 39:01Jay Shetty?

  Yes.

• 39:02Ray Dalio?

  That you don't understand. That was Freud's great discovery.

• 39:04Jay Shetty?

  Yes.

• 39:05Ray Dalio?

  That there is a part of your brain that is really controlling you, but because it's not conscious to you, you don't know it's there and it's controlling you. And the key, I think, is to align those things, like there's intuition, or there's those emotions. And when they come up, and you're seeing yourself doing things, if you can reflect on yourself and align your subliminal with your cerebral, it helps you, because you have a double check. That emotional thing, like, maybe it's an intuition. Well, maybe it's right, and maybe it's wrong. So, respect it, it's coming up, but look at it with that logical. And when

• 39:48Ray Dalio?

  you achieve that alignment, writing helps you do that.

• 39:51Jay Shetty?

  Absolutely, absolutely. I couldn't agree more. And if you're sitting there going, "I'm not a writer, first try," and if after trying, if you still feel you're not a writer, voice note yourself, speak it out to yourself and hear yourself back. Because when you hear, because you're used to listening to other people, you'll also be able to start listening to your subconscious self. And that's going to help you really try and bring that alignment and clarity together.

• 40:12Ray Dalio?

  And then you'll start to see that there's a limited number, maybe a few hundred, maybe a couple hundred circumstances or whatever. You're going to start to see everything happens over and over again. You're going to understand each yourself better. Who it's very wonderful.

• 40:27Jay Shetty?

  Absolutely. I love that. In one of these principles, you talk about this scale of savoring the experience, savoring life, then making an impact. And I wanted to know how you reconcile the two and and how you've seen them grow together.

• 40:41Ray Dalio?

  I I think the big choice in life, and a lot of big choices in life, but is accomplishment versus savoring life. Okay, so you know, savoring life is smell the roses. And what a beautiful day or that moment, make sure you time with the people that you love and all of that. And then there's the other, which is accomplishment and impact, right? So there is those kinds of choices. You have to discover yourself. Well, where are you and how do you deal with those types of things?

• 41:24Ray Dalio?

  I think to be most effective is where they align.

• 41:27Jay Shetty?

  Right.

• 41:28Ray Dalio?

  Okay, that's what that's, that's, I think, the key.

• 41:31Jay Shetty?

  Right.

• 41:31Ray Dalio?

  Like to to make your work, your passion, one and the same, right? That kind of thing.

• 41:37Jay Shetty?

  Yes.

• 41:37Ray Dalio?

  So that that's, that's, I think that's the best. Okay, your accomplishment, if you're passionate, and then you can maybe have those things aligned. But that's that's the choice in life, right? And you could see it in different cultures.

• 41:53Jay Shetty?

  Yes. Yeah. And today we see a lot of today with all of the generations that we're in and seeing in work right now, there's a desire to have it all. There's a desire to have great pay, a great job that's meaningful, and have lots of time off to go on holiday and be able to, you know, go out on a Friday night and have a good time. And I feel like this desire to have everything is quite a challenge, because then you trying striving to have all of these different paths.

• 42:23Ray Dalio?

  That's. That's the, what the second phase of the life is like. First phase of the life is, you know, you learn and really it's generally a lot of fun. And also, by the way, you think you can conquer the universe and it's, then you come to this other phase where it's all open and so on. And what you find out is there are too many things to do. You don't have enough time. Okay, you don't have enough time for each one of those things. And so the question is, how do you deal with that? Well, there are two ways you can deal with it. You can, of course, prioritize and you need to do that.

• 43:05Ray Dalio?

  But the real way, most importantly, is to know how to get the most out of an hour. In other words, you can put more life into life if you know how to get leverage and if you know how to be as, as effective. Because if you get more out of each hour, wow, then you, it's like more life within those constrained number of hours.

• 43:32Jay Shetty?

  Absolutely, absolutely. I've, I've always described that for me as time management versus energy management. And for me, if I can bring all my energy into one hour, that's more powerful than me having 10 hours of, of half the energy.

• 43:45Ray Dalio?

  And in, but in addition, there are techniques.

• 43:50Jay Shetty?

  Right.

• 43:50Ray Dalio?

  Right?

• 43:51Jay Shetty?

  Love to hear some.

• 43:53Ray Dalio?

  Well, um, like for example, I learned, um, leverage through other people. Once you learn leverage, in my particular case, of course, I built up to this. I have about 30 direct reports. And what it means is, now this is after years of doing, I, I had nothing, by the way. But what I can do is, and with the good relationships and how that works, basically, they can typically work for about fifty hours on something that I'm trying to accomplish for every hour that I deal with them.

• 44:29Jay Shetty?

  Right.

• 44:29Ray Dalio?

  So I get an enormous amount of leverage.

• 44:32Jay Shetty?

  Mm-hmm.

• 44:32Ray Dalio?

  Or I know how to prioritize.

• 44:35Jay Shetty?

  Mm-hmm.

• 44:35Ray Dalio?

  Or I know how to break my schedule, knowing, I mentioned meditation, or other things to get myself the clarity.

• 44:44Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 44:44Ray Dalio?

  So there are very, many, many techniques. I wrote a bunch of them in the books, and many other people have other techniques too.

• 44:50Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 44:51Ray Dalio?

  But as you start to realize that you can have much more life by knowing these various types of techniques.

• 44:59Jay Shetty?

  I'd love to know some of your tips and techniques around prioritization. I think that's something that people are so challenged with right now. What have been some of your best principles or rules around how to prioritize something?

• 45:10Ray Dalio?

  I don't want, I don't want to give people my priorities, but I do want to give them the notion of to go above it.

• 45:20Jay Shetty?

  Mm-hmm.

• 45:20Ray Dalio?

  Like the same rule, if you're in a disagreement, you go above it. Okay, so many people are in the blizzard of all these things coming at them, and they're in it, and they're trying to deal with every one of those. Okay, so pause and step back and then start to think, what are you really going after? You have to look subliminally. It may be deep-seated in your childhood. It may be, but what is that pull? Okay, and that, that becomes, and then how do you apportion it? You do need a plan. You, you need some sort of self-discipline as you look down. And you say, well, I'm gonna spend dinners with my kids.

• 46:03Ray Dalio?

  Or I'm going to do X, Y, Z, in terms of those to-dos. But at the highest level, you're saying, what do I want? What are my choices? Because you have to realize. And then what I find is, if you pause and you do that slowly over time, don't just try to do it in a minute, you can find that you can have a lot of your cake and eat it too.

• 46:27Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 46:27Ray Dalio?

  Right? I used to take my kids on my business trips.

• 46:33Jay Shetty?

  What a great education. No way.

• 46:34Ray Dalio?

  It's an example that sometimes you discover with time that you can have your cake and eat it too, right?

• 46:44Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 46:45Ray Dalio?

  So, take the time.

• 46:47Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, patience. Patience is...

• 46:50Ray Dalio?

  I think that there's five steps to success. First is you have to know your goals. You have to know what you're going out there. And that does require prioritization. The second is, on your way to your goals, you're going to encounter your problems. Your failures, your problems. So, that's step two. Encounter them, the standing in your way. Number three is you have to diagnose those to the root cause. What is producing your problems?

• 47:21Jay Shetty?

  At the root.

• 47:22Ray Dalio?

  At the root cause. And that may be that you, or it may be those around you who are not good at things, or whatever, or you're doing something you need to do better. Or it may be that you're in the wrong place. But you have to get at the root cause to do that diagnosis. Once you know the specific thing that's standing in your way, that personal discovery process, you have to go to the fourth step. And that fourth step is to design a way to get around them.

• 47:54Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 47:55Ray Dalio?

  It may be, for example, that if you have a particular weakness, work with somebody who is strong where you're weak. Or it may be, change your job, or whatever it is, but you've got to get around that specific thing that you've diagnosed as standing in your way. And then when you have a design, you have to do it. A lot of people come up with designs, but they don't push through and do it. And I think life is just the constant five-step process over and over and over again.

• 48:23Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 48:24Ray Dalio?

  Because if you can do those five things, you will be successful. You'll evolve fairly quickly.

• 48:29Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. And you add two methods or keys to succeeding, which you call flexibility and self-accountability. Because within that, within those five steps, there's going to need to be a bit of flexibility or a lot of flexibility and self-accountability. And I love, you point this out, you said, "Don't blame bad outcomes on anyone but yourself", which is like huge self-accountability.

• 48:53Ray Dalio?

  Yeah. I really do believe, give you a mindset. I do believe that I can do anything. And that it is just a matter of my character and my creativity. So that it is a personal test of me. It may be difficult and I have to be creative enough. And maybe with the help of others, and that is largely true. You really, if you're creative enough with, and you don't have to do it yourself. You can get the ideas from other people. And then you are enough character in it to do it. Wow.

• 49:30Jay Shetty?

  Absolutely, and I think, and I think that's the biggest challenge that we try and do all on our own. We think we have to be everything. We think we have to be the face and the background and the side and, and everything in between. And actually, collaboration coming together with other people is so much more what has brought success in the world.

• 49:46Ray Dalio?

  Yes. When you start to realize that actually you can't see. It's like going from two dimensions to three dimensions or black and white to color. That when you start to see things through others' eyes. You can see the world in a totally different, much richer way. And you know how to navigate it. It's a, it's such a power, such a gift.

• 50:12Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, it's amazing. Thank you so much, Ray. Ray, this has been such an incredible experience diving in with you. Anyone who's listening and watching, I hope you've been taking notes. I hope you stopped and did certain activities when Ray and I spoke about them. And Ray, we finish every interview with a final five, which is our final five quick fire round, rapid fire round. So these are answers that are one word to one sentence maximum. So I'm going to start with the first one. Uh, what's one trait you look for in a potential employee?

• 50:39Ray Dalio?

  Character.

• 50:41Jay Shetty?

  Character. Amazing. Okay, great. Number two. Uh, what is one trait you possess that you believe you got to where you are today? One of your traits.

• 50:51Ray Dalio?

  Fear, humility, fear and acceptance of failing.

• 50:55Jay Shetty?

  Wow, I love that answer. That's awesome. I was not expecting that. It's a great answer. Sorry, I'm going off tangent now. You can explain that. I love that one.

• 51:05Ray Dalio?

  And a taste for adventure because the joy of the adventure makes it all worthwhile. And I've come to appreciate the pain.

• 51:17Jay Shetty?

  Yeah. What's the best thing you've learned from this transition in your life where you're now passing it on? What's something you've learned from the process of passing lessons on?

• 51:27Ray Dalio?

  That it's hard and to let go.

• 51:30Jay Shetty?

  To let go of?

• 51:32Ray Dalio?

  To let go of caring while caring.

• 51:36Jay Shetty?

  Right, yes, yes. That's such an important point. Absolutely. As a teacher, as a guide, as a coach, you can only facilitate growth, but you can't force it.

• 51:44Ray Dalio?

  Just let it, yeah.

• 51:46Jay Shetty?

  Yeah. You've got to give everyone the opportunity to let it out. Okay, number four. What's one thing in stage three you're looking forward to the most, the stage of life that you're in right now?

• 51:56Ray Dalio?

  Well, as Joseph Campbell said, to be free to live and free to die. I think that you're in an arc in which you gain freedom, total freedom, no obligation. The greatest in joy now is no obligation. I'm free.

• 52:16Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, amazing.

• 52:18Ray Dalio?

  And to, and to watch others be successful without me. That is the greatest joy, to watch others to be successful without me. I'm free and they are successful without me.

• 52:33Jay Shetty?

  Wow, amazing. Well, you wrote this book over a number of principles and the fifth and final question is, what's a principle that you've learned this year or that you're currently trying to learn or learning or testing this year?

• 52:45Ray Dalio?

  Well, this is my, this is my transition year. I guess what I've learned, I've been so pleased to have the interactions with people who are learning. I don't know if it's a principle, it's not a principle, but it's an experience that the interactions that I'm having on social media, the conversations, so many nice people and the exchanges have just been so beautiful. I think that was my main discovery as I'm also going through my evolutionary process that I described.

• 53:23Jay Shetty?

  I absolutely love that. That's amazing. Ray, you're absolutely incredible. If anyone loved the conversation today, make sure you go and grab a copy of Principles by Ray Dalio if you haven't already. If you have read the book, which I know many of you are very excited we're gonna have Ray on the podcast, go ahead and follow him on social media and across all the other channels if you don't already. Ray, is there a particular channel that you would prefer everyone to go follow you on? Is there?

• 53:46Ray Dalio?

  Just their favorite channel.

• 53:47Jay Shetty?

  Facebook, there's Instagram, there's YouTube. Go ahead and follow Ray across all the channels. Thank you so much for listening. Make sure you grab a copy of the book. Today we just literally scratched the surface of all the incredible principles that are inside.

• 53:58Ray Dalio?

  I'd like to add one thing.

• 53:59Jay Shetty?

  Sure, please.

• 54:00Ray Dalio?

  I put the book and also video case studies and everything in a free app. So you don't have to buy a book. You can get the book. It's on the iOS Apple Store. It's a free download and it has videos.

• 54:18Jay Shetty?

  I didn't know that. That's cool. I didn't know. Oh, that's awesome.

• 54:20Ray Dalio?

  So the book is great if you like books, but you also have this other video which is a live. You might like that.

• 54:29Jay Shetty?

  That's awesome. And there's so many great episodes that I've been watching on Ray's social channels as well that really break down and visualize these principles for you to check out. Thank you so much for being a subscriber to On Purpose. Rate and review this podcast and most importantly, share what you learned. There were so many great insights from Ray today, so many great moments of wisdom and principles. Extract them, share them on Twitter, on Instagram, on YouTube, on Facebook, and I'll share my favorite ones as well. Make sure you tag Ray and I in those messages and we can't wait to see you again next week. Thank you so much. Thanks, Ray.

• 54:59Ray Dalio?

  Thank you.

• 55:00Jay Shetty?

  Thank you so much. So grateful. Yeah. Thank you. I hope that was good for you. Thank you so much.

• 55:09Jay Shetty?

  Thank you so much for listening through to the end of that episode. I hope you're gonna share this all across social media. Let people know that you're subscribed to On Purpose. Let me know, post it. Tell me what a difference it's making in your life. I would love to see your thoughts. I can't wait for this incredibly conscious community we're creating of purposeful people. You're now a part of the tribe, a part of the squad. Thank you for being here. I can't wait to share the next episode with you.

• 55:54Speaker 02

  Now, more than ever, we need someone on our side. But Rob Whitman? Whitman's votes drove up costs, cut Medicaid, and risked 350,000 Virginians' health care to pay for tax breaks for himself and his donors. He's not on our side. Shannon Taylor will fight corruption, cut taxes, and bring down costs. This November, vote for Shannon Taylor. She's for us. Paid for by HMP, the HouseMajorityPact.com. Not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.