This is my favorite book so far. If you decide to buy one I recommend you to buy it here. By doing that you support my work to keep sharing my experiences. Thank you!

3️⃣ The Book in 3 Sentences

1. Explains how to take the best from life with decisions and choices.
2. Creates a new way of seeing life and the processes we face. Makes pain the regular (and mandatory) process for growth.
3. Humble and honest vision from the author about what's true in life and work.

🎨 Impressions

I never heard about Ray Dalio before, I loved the book from the first chapters. The humble approach on how he wants to share his knowledge and experiences is remarkable.

His approach to principles (decisions for life) is amazing, and I felt honored for learning principles from a wise guy like him.

As I progressed my reading it made me admire him even more.

🍀 How the Book Changed Me

It modified me DEEPLY on how I approach mistakes, ego, and growth, and finally changed my way of living.

Mistakes

I started observing my own mistakes, which often caused me pain, as a decisive point in my life with the potential to make me a lot better.

When attempting to become a leader for the first time (I never led before, if you're curious about what I learned take a look here) I felt the biggest pain ever in my whole life. I made mistakes constantly when making decisions, managing people, and reporting status to my superiors.

When working at Mimic, after my first biggest failure in front of some C-levels, I wrote a document taking full responsibility for the huge failure and stress I caused to the whole company. Documenting it and exposing myself to everybody was terrible and hurt me deeply.

Documenting it and exposing myself to everybody was terrible and hurt me deeply.

The Ego Barrier

I understood that every human is susceptible to be blind because of its ego, thus we can't trust ourselves ever. Once you open your eyes to see that, in my humble opinion, you just become a better human already.

Today when I'm sure of something, I automatically know it might not be true. My beliefs need to be validated outside my head otherwise my ego can be fooling me!! That's when I learned to appreciate good conflicts and fair discussions.

You can't win (or lose) a discussion, you can only find out what's true. I learned to appreciate having people who disagree with me because:

• They possibly spotted a mistake in my reasoning, and instead of ignoring it, they cared enough to share their point of view;
• They used their own time to disagree and argue with me, trying to make me see what's true;

Today I see discussions as the required process to find out what's the truth and the test required to validate my own ideas.

Pain (or failures) and Growth

Finally, it made me enjoy pain. It made me see intellectual pain as the required process for (or the signal of imminent) growth.

As a workout, I'm not sorry for having sore arms. Also, I don't try to escape from its pain. Actually, I actively look for it, like someone trying to increase the weights during a bench press session, I understand that looking for it can provide me exponential growth and that hiding myself from it will not make any good (except a temporary emotional relief).

I understand and know that pain is good and that having it brings me closer to what I want to take from life. Now looking for pain became my way of living:

Finally, I don't admire a lot of people. But especially because of this book, I would be honored to meet Ray (as the author of Principles) and have him sign my book (which is my favorite so far).

⚡ My Top 3 Quotes

Everyone makes mistakes. The main difference is that successful people learn from them and unsuccessful people don’t. Mistakes will cause you pain, but you shouldn’t try to shield yourself or others from it. Pain is a message that something is wrong and it’s an effective teacher that one shouldn’t do that wrong thing again. It seems to me that if you look back on yourself a year ago and aren’t shocked by how stupid you were, you haven’t learned much.

All parties should remember that the purpose of debate is to get at truth, not to prove that someone is right or wrong, and that each party should be willing to change their mind based on the logic and evidence

It is more practical to be honest about one’s uncertainties, mistakes, and weaknesses than to pretend they don’t exist. It is also more important to have good challengers than good followers. Thoughtful discussion and disagreement is practical because it stress-tests leaders and brings what they are missing to their attention.

✍️ My Top 3 Notes

As I read the book, it incentivized me to create my principles. They're not as relevant or amazing as Dalio's, but I still want to share them:

After a tough day, rest

I learned from observing my mistakes and bad behaviors that they often happen when I'm (mentally) tired. I make bad decisions, I'm not open to discussions as wish to be, and I eat junk food.

By sleeping and resting, I refrain from making bad calls and I'm fresh the next morning to take on from where I stopped.

Make hard times into opportunities

COVID stopped the economy and the time, for many it's a good excuse to stop their pursuit of goals. I need to see it as an opportunity to read more, learn more, and prepare myself more for new challenges.

Again, if you enjoyed it and are curious to read it yourself, I'd like to share an affiliate link so you can buy it. Buying through this link supports my work and costs you nothing 🤗.