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The 5-Step Process to Get What You Want Out of Life
Recently, I finished reading Ray Dalio’s “Principles” — one of the most recommended business books of 2017. One of the world’s most successful investors and entrepreneurs, Ray shares the unconventional principles that he’s developed, refined, and used over the past 40 years to create unique results in both life and business — and which any person or organization can adopt to help achieve their goals.
In 1975, Ray Dalio founded an investment firm, Bridgewater Associates, out of his two-bedroom apartment in New York City. 40 years later, Bridgewater has made more money for its clients than any other hedge fund in history and grown into the fifth most important private company in the United States, according to Fortune magazine. Ray himself has been named to Time magazine’s list of the 100 most influential people in the world. Along the way, he discovered a set of unique principles that have led to Bridgewater’s exceptionally effective culture, which he describes as “an idea meritocracy that strives to achieve meaningful work and meaningful relationships through radical transparency.” It is these principles, and not anything special about him — who grew up an ordinary kid in a middle-class Long Island neighborhood — that he believes are the reason behind his success.
In Principles, he shares what he’s learned over the course of his remarkable career. He argues that life, management, economics, and investing can all be systemized into rules and understood like machines. In particular, there is one life principle that really caught my attention. Ray believes that the personal evolutionary process takes place in 5 distinct steps. If you can do those 5 things well, you will almost certainly be successful. I want to share them here as I believe anyone of us can benefit from this systematic process.
The 5-Step Process
First you have to pick what you are going after — your goals. Your choice of goals will determine your direction. As you move toward them, you will encounter problems. Some of those problems will bring you up against your own weaknesses. How you react to the pain that causes is up to you. If you want to reach your goals, you must be calm and analytical so that you can accurately diagnose your problems, design a plan that will get you around…
