Successful people don’t rely on chance… Instead, they operate much like master architects, who carefully design and construct buildings based on fundamental core engineering principles and learn from the failures of the past.

Have you ever wondered what underlying blueprints guide those who consistently achieve their goals, weathering setbacks and building lasting success?

In Ray Dalio’s Principles (Life & Work) he shares a comprehensive set of these foundational truths, gained from a lifetime of navigating the complex landscapes of investment and management, with insights for you to become the architect of your own success. He showcases the timeless cause-and-effect relationships that govern reality and how having a set of guiding principles can set you up for success in life and in a professional capacity.

In a world filled with constant decisions and challenges, having a reliable framework to guide our actions can be invaluable. These frameworks, which can be thought of as fundamental truths or guidelines for behaviour are what forms the principles. Whether navigating personal relationships, professional careers, or even the complexities of the global economy, principles act as recipes for success, offering a consistent approach to recurring situations.

Dalio, through a lifetime of learning from his own mistakes and reflecting on them, sets out core principles that have underpinned his success. These guiding principles demonstrate the power of having a well-defined and consistently applied personal philosophy. Ultimately, understanding and developing one’s own principles can empower individuals to navigate life with greater clarity and purpose.

Dalio outlines the following five step process for getting what you want out of life:

1. Have clear goals. This involves deciding what you are going after, as your choice of goals will determine your direction. It’s important to prioritise your goals. “What do you want? What is true? What are you going to do about it?” as the foundation of principled thinking.
    
2. Identify and don’t tolerate the problems that stand in the way of your achieving those goals. As you move towards your goals, you will encounter problems, and it’s crucial not to tolerate them. Be perceptive and maintain high standards.
    
3. Accurately diagnose the problems to get at their root causes. This step requires you to be calm and analytical to understand the fundamental reasons behind the problems. A good diagnosis involves speaking with relevant people (getting a diverse view) and looking at evidence to determine these root causes.  Effective Decision Making as a Two-Step Process: Decision making is framed as first learning and then deciding, with harmful emotions being the biggest threat to good decisions.
    
4. Design plans that will get you around them. Once you understand the problems, you need to create a strategy to overcome them. This involves visualising what you and others must do in the future to reach your goals and thinking about your problem as a set of outcomes produced by a machine. Write down your plan for everyone to see. Remembering that designing precedes doing.
    
5. Do what’s necessary to push these designs through to results. This final step requires self-discipline to follow your plan and remember the connections between your tasks and your goals.

A central theme is the importance of reflecting on mistakes as critical learning opportunities. Dalio emphasises that his significant errors shifted his perspective from certainty to curiosity; “My painful mistakes shifted me from having a perspective of “I know I’m right” to having one of “How do I know I’m right?”. These experiences instilled humility and the desire to understand different viewpoints. 

It’s also important to note that these five steps form a loop, and to evolve quickly, you need to do this process fast and continuously, setting your goals successively higher. You must also do all five steps well, in order, without blurring them. The process proceeds from your values and is iterative. No one can do all the steps perfectly, so relying on others for help is often necessary.

Dreams + Reality + Determination = A Successful Life.

You must be willing to do things in the unique ways you think are best and to open mindedly reflect on the feedback that comes inevitably as a result of being that way.

Ray Dalio – Principles