Perhaps, some of us have specific values that we deliberately live by. It is obvious that a vast majority of us do not really have specific values that we operate our lives by. What exactly would a life without specific values or principles be like? That seems quite crucial, indeed.
As I pored over Ray Dalio’s “Principles”, a flurry of thoughts sweep through my thought horizon. Some of them took me to my past; some of them x-rayed my present; and some more drew me into an analytical mode, reminding me of what values I had shared in my half a century in this space.
This brings to mind an earlier fact I learned: Great content makes you think. If it doesn’t resonate with you, it doesn’t provoke real value. It is true therefore that we think with words. Human experiences are similar, but it seems very true for the observant who keeps track of the events of their life as it unfolds.
What Dalio put together in one book he calls Principles are life lessons learned through mistakes, curiosity, painful experiences, losses and giving everything to living life in a particular space while collaborating with others. Making many mistakes over a lifetime may mean little or nothing if we do not reflect on them.
From engaging with Ray Dalio’s content, I came up with the following thoughts and have decided to share them with you.
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Each of us who desires to live a life of enduring impact should subscribe to standard principles for doing almost everything we do in life, so that we don’t act this way to one person, and then another way to some other, especially when the turf requires level playing rules.
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You may need to have a routine lifestyle and standard operating principles in order to live a structured, organised and truly invaluable life. Premium persons imbibe premium values.
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Learning about the principles of great men is one huge or great way to be great yourself. Imagine a great understanding of the principles of Jesus Christ because you accept and live same as he revealed them to you. That should earn you access into the Divine Hall of Fame.
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It has become a principle for living and operational procedure never to bother myself or lose sleep over anything that I cannot change. Those things are teachers because they have their lessons to teach us. It’s how we learn from life’s experiences.
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Principles are values. They are the beliefs that guide us personally in our dealings with people. If I know the principles that the other person operates by, it would help me know beforehand whether to have anything to do with them or not. This, to me, is living specifically and deliberately. You are your own architect.
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The principles we adopt must be in synchrony with our nature. Where these don’t align, our life will be a story mixed with inconsistencies. Then we are as good as not being authentic. This is a very difficult place to be.
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When you start to live right and do the right things, you must be ready to go the whole length with yourself. Half measures will rob you of the true rewards of any great endeavour. You must live it to the end based on the original script you envisioned.
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Do understand that if you must do the right and proper thing, you must be prepared to discard your ego. While throwing your ego away would truly represent you, it would task your authenticity drive, if you struggle still with the question of being genuine or true.
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I think that the very fact that the majority of us are embroiled in debate or confusion around the subject of thinking, and not knowing exactly how to go about it, is enough conviction about the efficacy or need to think right if we must be truly accomplished.
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If I pick up a book and as I read, if I cannot find resonance between its content and my essence, something that’s yearning to be fed within me, for which reason I want to read and engage with the content, I may not find the passion to continue reading it. It means that the views in the book do not share my values.
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Because each person must have their own definition, description and conviction of what success is, we need to work hard at our persuasion based on what calls us from within and see how it aligns with the experiences that we have had working with others in the quest for same (success).
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While in paid employment, things turned out more and more difficult for me each day because it was obvious that I was merely following other men’s scripts and visions, which really were no visions because they had no clear place they were headed besides generating inflow at whatever costs and consuming it on satisfying personal needs. Leaving the certainty of paid employment for the uncertainty of self-employment by continuously connecting with what called me from within, though at the painful cost of comfort, gave me an uncanny satisfaction to keep digging and seeking.
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When we strive for excellence, it is in a specific area and a journey that truly keeps us unsettled much of the time. An idea of what we seek which settles deep within us is the only thing that assures us in moments of deep scepticism that we have something that we are truly holding on to, though yet and often in the abstract.
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Having to go through many tough experiences, chained together over a long period, taught me how to contend with the lack of basic needs of life. The lesson from this is that I had to learn to depend on the Infinite Intelligence through living each day at a time. The best of it is that it contributed in no little way to my personal development and effectiveness. It reminds me of the school of Hard Knocks. I got toughened up.
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You get to a point in life where you know that you have clearly moved away from dependence to independence and then you have to operate at the level of interdependence. Collaboration is where enduring growth happens. It is where we must learn to work together with others through shared values, for the purpose of making value available to others. This is where I am. It has taken time.
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Working with others comes with lots of acceptance of and tolerance of the views of others, humility, the understanding that different people come from different backgrounds, that people have their own uniqueness and the patience to learn from and about them enough to be able to operate a mind chemistry and mastermind. The good success in this arrangement is that greed and other mean traits are stifled and relegated to the background. We learn to focus on the strengths of each person.
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Advised by intuition and lived through experience earned by the endurance that sacrifice bequeaths, I have arrived at the point where I must not strive with other men over the things that other men have created for present comfort, regardless of how seemingly important it is. So long as it does not transcend beyond time in positive gain, it is worthless.
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Seek joy rather than happiness. The former transcends space and time, but the latter, belongs in the ephemeral. With joy, you possess nature divine and are quartered with rest. Do not seek self-inflicted injury by being consumed of those things that hold value in time and for a time. With what would you partner: the transient or the eternal? The choice belongs to you, exclusively.
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I account of those things that I failed to do my failures and take the responsibility for them. They haunt me as they were impressed upon my essence in the template that dwells within. As often as they surface within my consciousness and as I engage with others, their validity remain outside the limits of expiration. They can be done yet since there is energy and the nudge to do them because men do thirst and await their manifestation.
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Business is good. Gain is good, but the respect for the tenets of the business of life and living must guide and inspire every activity that we engage in. Through much patience and waiting on our toes, we endure affliction in service. This strength is the wisdom that is built in us as we navigate the space that we occupy for value.
To this end, we must understand and live in the realisation that everything that we have does not truly belong to us. We are indebted because we did borrow them for a season and shall account for them to the owner of all things.
However, we are recompensed for everything that we do. We are paid. We profit from our trade, regardless of what sort that it is. These things, no man can escape whether they are agnostics, sceptics or believers. They are principles of life, and the very life in them do testify to that effect.
