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- [Narrator] Principles For Success.
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An ultra mini-series adventure
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in 30 minutes, and in eight episodes.
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Episode one, The Call to Adventure.
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Before we begin, let me
just establish the fact
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that I don't know much relative
to what I need to know.
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Whatever success I've had in life
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has had more to do with my knowing
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how to deal with my not
knowing than anything I know.
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That I should be telling
other people what to do
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sounds kind of presumptuous to me,
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but I'm going to do it,
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because I believe that the principles
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that have made me successful
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could help others achieve their own goals.
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I'm now at a stage in my own life
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in which it is much more important to me
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to pass along what I've learned
about how to be successful
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than to seek more success for myself.
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What you choose to do with
these principles is up to you.
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You have to be an independent thinker,
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because only you can
develop your own principles
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based on your own values.
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This brings me to my first and
most fundamental principle,
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which is that you need
to think for yourself
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about what is true.
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So let's get started.
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Early on, I discovered
I needed principles.
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Principles are smart
ways for handling things
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that happen over and over
again in similar situations.
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There are principles for everything,
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from skiing to parenting
to cooking, and so on.
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I'm going to share some
of my most important,
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overarching, life
principles that influence
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how we approach everything that we do.
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I didn't start out with principles.
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I acquired them over a
lifetime of experiences.
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Mostly, from making mistakes
and reflecting on them.
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My life principles are simple,
but they're not complete.
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I still struggle to
make the best decisions,
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and I still make mistakes
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and learn new principles all the time.
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This is the reality.
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At the beginning, I needed to escape
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the conventions that surrounded me,
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which meant that I needed
to think for myself.
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Unless you want to have a life
that is directed by others,
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you need to decide for
yourself what to do,
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and you need to have the courage to do it.
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But I didn't know that at first.
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I only learned that from
going on my adventure.
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Looking back on my own journey,
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I now see that time is like a river
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that carries us forward
into encounters with reality
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that require us to make decisions.
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We can't stop our
movement down this river,
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and we can't avoid the encounters.
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We can only approach them
in the best possible way.
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In your lifetime, you will
face millions of decisions.
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The quality of your
decisions will determine
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the quality of your life.
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Over the course of my lifetime,
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the most valuable things I've learned
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were the results of
mistakes I reflected on
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to help form principles
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so I wouldn't make the
same mistakes again.
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These principles took me
from being a very ordinary
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middle class kid from Long Island
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to becoming very successful
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as judged by conventional measures.
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They also gave me the meaningful work
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and meaningful relationships that I value
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even more than these
conventional successes.
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People often ask me how I did it.
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I can assure you it wasn't because
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of my uniqueness as a person.
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It was the result of a
unique approach to life
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I believe almost anybody can adopt.
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It starts with embracing
reality and dealing with it.
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The path you take in life is
your most important decision.
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In my case, I wanted my life to be great,
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and I feared boredom and mediocrity
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more than I feared failure.
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Since I didn't start out with money,
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and I didn't need much
more than a bed to sleep in
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and food to eat,
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I could skew my decisions
to pursue my adventures.
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So ever since I was a kid,
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I ran after the things I wanted, crashed,
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got up and ran again, and crashed again,
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and each time I crashed,
I learned something,
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got better, and crashed less.
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By doing that over and over again,
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I learned to love this process,
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even the crashing part of it.
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Through it, I encountered reality,
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and I learned how to deal with it,
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which inspired another one of
my most fundamental principles
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which is that truth is
the essential foundation
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for producing good outcomes.
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By truth, I don't mean anything more
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than the way the world works.
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I believe that we were given
the laws of reality by nature.
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Humans didn't create
them, but we can use them
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to foster our own evolution
and achieve our goals.
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Realizing that made me a hyper-realist,
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by which I mean I became someone
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who has discovered the great rewards
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of deeply understanding, accepting,
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and working with reality as it is,
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and not as I wish it would be.
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When I say I'm a hyper-realist,
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people sometimes think I'm saying
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that dreams can't come true.
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That's absolutely not true.
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Without pursuing dreams, life is mundane.
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What I mean is that, to me,
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hyper-realism is the best
way to choose one's dreams
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and then achieve them.
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Having big dreams, plus embracing reality,
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plus having lots of determination
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will bring you a successful life.
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I believe this formula
is true for everyone.
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But what does a successful life look like?
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We each have to decide for
ourselves what success is.
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I don't care whether you want
to be a master of the universe
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or to live under a palm
tree, or anything else.
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I really don't.
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Each of us chooses goals
based on our values
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and decides on the best
path to achieve them.
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But we all need approaches
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to making decisions that work well,
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especially when facing problems,
mistakes, and weaknesses
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that stand in our way.
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To succeed, we must
embrace all our realities,
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especially the harsh realities
that we wish weren't true.
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At first, looking at these harsh realities
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caused me a lot of pain.
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But I learned that this
pain was just psychological,
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and that my seeing things differently
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made all the difference.
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I came to view problems like puzzles
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that would reward me
if I could solve them.
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They would help me deal
with the problem at hand,
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and they would give me principles
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for dealing with similar
problems in the future.
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I learned to treat pain as a cue
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that a great learning
opportunity is at hand,
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which led me to realize that pain
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plus reflection equals progress.
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Meditation has been invaluable
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in helping me see things that way.
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I found that when I calmed myself down
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and embraced my realities,
and dealt with them,
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the rewards brought me
pleasure, and the pain faded.
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Each of us has the unique
capability to think logically,
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to reflect on ourselves,
and our circumstances,
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and to direct our own personal evolution.
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Doing this well is just
a matter of following
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a simple five-step process.
(warm music)
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We've discussed how important it is
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to reflect carefully
after experiencing pain.
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When I did this, I was usually
able to discover principles
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that would prevent me from repeating
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the same mistakes in the future.
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And I could see that being successful
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simply consisted of five steps.
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Step one is to know your
goals and run after them.
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What is best for you
depends on your nature,
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so you need to really understand yourself
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and know what you want to achieve in life.
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Step two is to encounter the
problems that stand in the way
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of getting to your goals.
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These problems are typically painful.
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If handled badly, some of
them can lead to your ruin.
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But to evolve, you need
to identify those problems
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and not tolerate them.
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Step three is to diagnose these problems
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to get at their root causes.
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Don't jump too quickly to solutions.
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Take a step back and reflect
in order to really distinguish
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the symptoms from the disease.
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Step four is to design a plan
to eliminate the problems.
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This is where you will determine
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what you need to do to get around them.
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And step five is to execute those designs,
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pushing yourself to do what's needed
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to progress toward your goal.
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A successful life essentially consists
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of doing these five steps
over and over again.
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This is your personal evolution,
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and you see this process everywhere.
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It's just a law of nature.
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Think of any product, any organization,
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or any person you know,
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and you will see that
this is true for them.
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Evolution is simply a process
of either adapting, or dying.
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Conceptually, it looks just like
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the five-step process I've described.
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As you push through this
often painful process,
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you'll naturally ascend
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to higher and higher levels of success.
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I found that when I did it better,
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my struggling never became easier,
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because the more capable I became,
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the greater the challenges
I would take on.
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Because different people
are strong and weak
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at different things,
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most people can't do all five steps well.
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Not facing this reality
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means you could stretch
further than you should.
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And as the heights get greater,
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your falls could also be greater.
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(wind howling)
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Sometimes terrible things
happen to all of us in life.
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They can ruin us, or they
can profoundly improve us
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depending on how we handle them.
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Something like this
happened to me in 1982.
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We progress forward until
we encounter setbacks.
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Whether or not we get out
of them and continue forward
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or spiral downward
depends on whether or not
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we're willing to face
the failure objectively,
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and make the right decisions
to turn the loop upward again.
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Something terrible happened to me in 1982,
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when I bet everything on a
depression that never came.
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(crashing)
(birds chirping)
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The period between 1979 and 1982
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was one of extreme turbulence,
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for the global economy,
the markets, and for me.
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And I believed that the US economy,
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with the world economy tied to it,
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was headed toward a catastrophe.
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This view was extremely controversial.
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I wanted the great upside,
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and very publicly took a big risk
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and was wrong, dead wrong.
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After a delay, the stock
market began a big bull market
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that lasted 18 years,
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and the US economy enjoyed
the greatest growth period
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in its history.
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This experience was like a blow to my head
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with a baseball bat.
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I had to cut my losses so
that my company, Bridgewater,
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was left with one employee, me.
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(door slams)
(paper shuffles)
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I was so broke, I had to
borrow $4,000 from my dad
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to pay my bills.
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But even worse was having
to let go the people
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I cared so much about.
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I wondered whether I
should give up my dream
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of working for myself and play it safe
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by working for someone else in a job
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that would require me to put
on a tie and commute everyday.
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Though I knew that for
me, taking less risk
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would mean having a less great life.
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Being so wrong, and especially
being so publicly wrong,
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was painfully humbling.
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I am still shocked and
embarrassed by how arrogant I was
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in being totally confident
in a totally incorrect view.
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Though I had been right much
more than I had been wrong,
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I let one bad bet erase all my good ones.
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(dramatic orchestral music)
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I thought very hard about the relationship
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between risk and reward,
and how to manage them.
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But I couldn't see a path forward
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that would give me the rewards I wanted
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without unacceptable risk.
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This kind of experience
happens to everyone.
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It will happen to you.
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You will lose something, or someone
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you think you can't live without.
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Or you will suffer a
terrible illness or injury,
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or your career will fall
apart before your eyes.
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You might think that your life is ruined,
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and there's no way to go forward.
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But it will pass.
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I assure you that there is
always a best path forward,
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and you probably just don't see it yet.
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You just have to reflect well to find it.
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You have to embrace your reality.
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Sometimes things happen
that are hard to understand.
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Life often feels so
difficult and complicated,
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it's too much to take in all at once.
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My deep pain led me to reflect
deeply on my circumstances.
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It also led me to reflect on nature,
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because it provides a
guide for what's true.
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So I thought a lot about how things work,
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which helped to put me,
and my own circumstances,
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in perspective.
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I saw that at the big bang,
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all the laws and forces of the universe
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were created and propelled forward,
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interacting with each other
as a perpetual motion machine,
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in which all the bits and
pieces coalesce into machines
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that work for a while, fall apart,
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and then coalesce into new machines.
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This goes on into eternity.
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I saw that everything is a machine.
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The structure and evolution of galaxies,
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the formation of our own solar system,
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the make-up of earth's
geography and ecosystems,
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our economies and markets, and each of us.
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We individually are machines,
made up of different machines.
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Our circulatory system,
our nervous system,
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that produce our thoughts,
our dreams, our emotions,
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and all the other aspects
of our distinct characters.
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All of these different machines
evolve together through time
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to produce the realities
we encounter every day.
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And I realized that I
was just one tiny bit
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in one nanosecond,
deciding what I should do.
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While that perspective might
sound very philosophical,
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I found that it was very practical,
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because it showed me how I
could deal with my own realities
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in a better way.
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For example, I observed
that most everything
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happens over and over again
in slightly different ways.
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Some in obvious short-term cycles
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that are easy to recognize,
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so we know how to deal with
them, like the 24-hour day.
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Some so infrequently that
they haven't occurred
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in our lifetimes, and
we're shocked when they do,
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like the once in a 100 year storm.
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And some we know exist,
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but are encountering for the first time,
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like the birth of our first child.
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Most people mistakenly
treat these situations
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as being unique, and deal with them
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without having proper
perspective or principles
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to help them get through them.
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I found that if instead of
dealing with these events
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as one-offs, I could see each
as just another one of those,
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and approach them in the same way
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a biologist might approach an animal.
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First, identifying its species,
then drawing on principles
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for dealing with it appropriately.
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Because I could see these events transpire
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in pretty much the same
ways over and over,
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I could more clearly see the
cause-effect relationships
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that govern their behaviors,
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which allowed me to
develop better principles
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that I could express in
both words and algorithms.
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I learned that while most
everyone expects the future
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to be a slightly modified
version of the present,
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it is typically very different.
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That's because people are
biased by recent history,
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and overlook events that
haven't happened in a long time,
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perhaps not even in their lifetime.
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But they will happen again.
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With that perspective, I
realized that what I missed
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when I mistakenly called
for a great depression
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was hidden in the patterns of history,
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and I could use my newfound
knowledge of these patterns
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to make better decisions in the future.
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And when I thought about my challenge,
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balancing risk and reward,
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I realized that risk and
reward naturally go together.
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I could see that to get
the most out of life,
00:16:52
one has to take more risk,
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and that knowing how to
appropriately balance
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risk and reward is essential
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to having the best life possible.
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Imagine you were faced with the choice
00:17:04
of having a safe, boring life
if you stay where you are,
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or having a fabulous
one if you take the risk
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of successfully crossing
a dangerous jungle.
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That is essentially
the choice we all face.
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For me, the choice was clear,
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but that doesn't mean the path forward
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was without challenges.
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I still needed to face two big barriers
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that we all must face.
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(peaceful music)
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I can't tell you which path
in life is best for you,
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because I don't know how important it is
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for you to achieve big goals
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relative to how important it is for you
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to avoid the pains required to get them.
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This is the courage I spoke of earlier,
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and we each have to feel these
things out for ourselves.
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After my big mistake in
calling for a depression,
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I had come to one of life's
forks in the road, as we all do.
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If I made the choice to take
a normal job and play it safe,
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I would have ended up
with a very different life
00:18:02
than the one I had.
00:18:04
(door slams)
(paper shuffles)
00:18:05
But as long as I could pay the rent,
00:18:07
put food on the table,
and educate my kids,
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the only choice for me was
to risk crossing the jungle
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in pursuit of the best life possible.
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My big mistake in betting on a depression
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gave me a healthy fear of being wrong.
00:18:22
In other words, it gave me deep humility,
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which was exactly what I needed.
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At the same time, it didn't stop me
00:18:30
from aggressively going
after the things I wanted.
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To succeed, I needed to see
more than I alone could see.
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(strikes match)
(flame hisses)
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But standing in my way of doing that
00:18:40
were the two biggest
barriers everyone faces.
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Our ego and blind spot barriers.
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These barriers exist because
of how our brains work.
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First, let's explore the ego barrier.
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When I refer to your ego barrier,
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I'm talking about the parts
of your brain that prevent you
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from acknowledging your
weaknesses objectively,
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so that you can figure
out how to deal with them.
00:19:05
Your deepest seated needs and fears
00:19:07
reside in areas of your brain
that control your emotions
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and are not accessible
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to your higher-level conscious awareness.
00:19:16
And because our need to be
right can be more important
00:19:19
than our need to find out what's true,
00:19:21
we like to believe our own opinions
00:19:24
without properly stress-testing them.
00:19:26
We especially don't like to look
00:19:28
at our mistakes and weaknesses.
00:19:30
We are instinctively prone to
react to explorations of them
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as though they're attacks.
00:19:36
We get angry, even though
it would be more logical
00:19:40
for us to be open to feedback from others.
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This leads to our making inferior
decisions, learning less,
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and falling short of our potentials.
00:19:49
The second is the blind spot barrier.
00:19:52
Everyone has blind spots.
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The blind spot barrier
is when a person believes
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he or she can see everything.
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But it's a simple fact that no one alone
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can see a complete picture of reality.
00:20:04
Naturally, people can't
appreciate what they can't see,
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just as we all have different ranges
00:20:10
for singing, hearing
pitch, and seeing colors,
00:20:13
we have different ranges
00:20:14
for seeing and understanding things.
00:20:17
For example, while some people are better
00:20:20
at seeing the big picture,
others excel at seeing details.
00:20:26
Some are linear thinkers,
and others are more lateral.
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While some are creative but not reliable,
00:20:33
others are reliable but
not creative, and so on.
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Because of how are brains
are wired differently,
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everyone perceives the world
around them differently.
00:20:43
By doing what comes naturally to us,
00:20:46
we fail to account for our
weaknesses and we crash.
00:20:50
Either we keep doing that, or we change.
00:20:53
Aristotle defined tragedy
as a terrible outcome
00:20:57
arising from a person's fatal flaw.
00:20:59
A flaw, that had it been fixed,
00:21:02
would have instead led
to a wonderful outcome.
00:21:06
In my opinion, these two
barriers are the main impediments
00:21:09
that get in the way of
good decision-making.
00:21:13
(noble orchestral music)
00:21:16
Taking risks and occasionally
being ruined wasn't acceptable
00:21:21
and neither was not taking risks
00:21:23
and not having exceptional results.
00:21:26
I needed an approach that would give me
00:21:27
the exceptional upside
without also giving me
00:21:30
the exceptional downside.
00:21:33
When I discovered it, it
turned out to be my holy grail.
00:21:37
To get it, I needed to replace
the joy of being proven right
00:21:41
with the joy of learning what's true.
00:21:46
This need prompted me to seek out
00:21:48
the most thoughtful people I could find
00:21:50
who disagreed with me.
00:21:52
I didn't care about their conclusions,
00:21:54
I just wanted to see
things through their eyes,
00:21:57
and to have them see
things through my eyes,
00:22:00
so that together we could hash things out
00:22:02
to discover what's true.
00:22:05
In other words, what I
wanted most from them
00:22:08
was thoughtful disagreement.
00:22:11
Going from seeing things
through just my eyes,
00:22:14
to seeing things through the
eyes of these thoughtful people
00:22:18
was like going from seeing
things in black and white
00:22:20
to seeing them in color.
00:22:22
(birds chirping)
00:22:24
The world lit up.
00:22:26
(growling)
00:22:28
(wings flapping)
00:22:29
That's when I realized that the best way
00:22:31
to go through the jungle of
life is with insightful people
00:22:35
who see things differently from me.
00:22:38
Think about the five-step
process I described earlier.
00:22:41
As I said, because we
are wired so differently,
00:22:44
not everyone can do all
the five steps well.
00:22:47
But you don't have to do them all alone.
00:22:50
You can get help from others
00:22:52
who are good at what you're not,
00:22:54
who are wired to perceive
things you can't.
00:22:58
All you need to do is
let go of your attachment
00:23:00
to having the right answers yourself,
00:23:03
and use your fear of being wrong
00:23:04
to become open-minded
to these other views.
00:23:10
In this way, you could point
out the risks and opportunities
00:23:13
that you would individually miss.
00:23:16
I found that taking this
radically open-minded approach
00:23:19
and believability-weighting
people's thinking
00:23:22
significantly increased my probabilities
00:23:25
of making the best decisions possible.
00:23:27
This enabled me to ascend
00:23:29
to greater heights and greater challenges.
00:23:32
In the past, I would have always wanted
00:23:34
to do what I, myself, thought was best.
00:23:37
But now I sought out
00:23:39
the strongest independent
thinkers I could find.
00:23:41
I still do.
00:23:43
There is nothing better
to be on a shared mission
00:23:46
with extraordinary people
who can be radically truthful
00:23:50
and radically transparent with each other.
00:23:53
This approach led me to create a company
00:23:55
with the unique idea meritocracy,
00:23:57
operating in a unique way,
that produced unique successes.
00:24:02
In an idea meritocracy, you
get the best of everybody.
00:24:06
Everyone thinks independently,
00:24:09
then we work through our disagreements
00:24:11
to get at what's best.
00:24:13
However, not every opinion
is equally valuable.
00:24:16
And we had to learn to distinguish
00:24:18
between good ideas and bad
ones to get the best decisions.
00:24:22
In other words, we needed
to believability-weight
00:24:25
people's thinking.
00:24:27
But that's another story I will explain
00:24:29
in my work principles.
00:24:31
Right now, there are many
wonderful opportunities
00:24:34
and dangerous risks surrounding
you that you don't see.
00:24:39
If you saw them free of the distortions
00:24:42
produced by your ego or your blind spots,
00:24:45
you would be able to deal
with them more effectively.
00:24:48
If you could acquire this ability,
00:24:50
and with practice you can,
00:24:52
you will radically improve your life.
00:24:57
So far I described
00:24:58
how I learned to confront
my own realities,
00:25:01
my problems, my mistakes, and weaknesses.
00:25:04
And how I surrounded myself with others
00:25:07
who could do things better than I could.
00:25:09
This was the most
effective way I discovered
00:25:12
for making great decisions.
00:25:15
This is not the normal way of being,
00:25:17
but through this approach,
I became very successful.
00:25:20
And being successful enabled me to meet
00:25:23
extraordinarily successful
people and see how they think.
00:25:28
I've discovered that their
journeys were similar to mine.
00:25:31
You might not know it,
but they all struggled,
00:25:35
and they all have weaknesses
00:25:37
that they all get around
by working with people
00:25:40
who see risks and opportunities
that they would miss.
00:25:43
Over time, I leaned that by nature,
00:25:45
most people's greatest strengths
00:25:47
are also connected to their
most significant weaknesses.
00:25:51
And striving hard for big things
00:25:53
is bound to lead you to painful falls.
00:25:56
It's just part of the process.
00:25:59
Such setbacks will test you.
00:26:01
They sort people.
00:26:03
Some think hard about what
caused their setbacks,
00:26:07
learn lessons, and continue
progressing toward their goals,
00:26:11
while others decide that
this game is not for them,
00:26:14
and get off the field.
00:26:16
I've come to realize that success
00:26:18
is not a matter of attaining one's goals.
00:26:22
I've found that when I reached
00:26:23
each new higher level of success,
00:26:26
I rarely remained satisfied.
00:26:28
The things we are striving
for are just the bait.
00:26:32
Struggling to get them
forces us to evolve,
00:26:35
and it is this struggle
00:26:37
toward personal evolution with
others that is the reward.
00:26:41
I no longer wanted to
get across the jungle,
00:26:44
but instead wanted to find
greater and greater challenges
00:26:47
to go after, surrounded by
great people working together
00:26:52
on a shared journey.
00:26:54
Eventually the success of the mission
00:26:56
and the well-being of
the people alongside me
00:26:59
became more important than my own success.
00:27:03
I also started to see beyond myself,
00:27:05
and wanted others to be successful
when I'm no longer here.
00:27:10
I realized that if I fail to
do that, I will be a failure.
00:27:15
I struggle with this now.
00:27:18
We all struggle with different
things at different times,
00:27:21
until we either choose to
give up, or until we die
00:27:24
and become part of the
larger evolutionary story.
00:27:28
This is how all machines work,
00:27:30
and are recycled through time.
00:27:32
When a machine breaks down,
00:27:34
its parts go back into the system
00:27:36
to become parts of new machines
00:27:38
that also evolve through time.
00:27:41
Sometimes this makes us sad,
00:27:43
because we become very
attached to our machines.
00:27:46
But if you look at it
from the higher level,
00:27:48
it's really beautiful to observe
00:27:50
how the machine of evolution works.
00:27:53
Now you must decide for
yourself how you will evolve.
00:27:58
Forget about where these
principles came from.
00:28:01
Just assess whether or not
they are useful to you,
00:28:04
and evolve them to suit your own needs.
00:28:07
As with all of life's decisions,
00:28:09
what you do with them
is ultimately up to you.
00:28:13
My only hope for you is
that you have the courage
00:28:16
to struggle and evolve well
00:28:18
to make your life as great as it can be.
00:28:22
Thank you, and goodbye.
00:28:24
(warm orchestral music)
