How To SURVIVE & THRIVE In The Upcoming Financial Crisis! (PREPARE NOW) | Ray Dalio

it's the same for every individual same for every company if you understand this look at your income expenses and your savings and then do a stress test so that you get yourself secure the same things happen over and over again through time for basically the same reasons a lot of these things happen once in a lifetime you know and if you don't go back and see how they worked over time then you're in in trouble so um there's a pattern I could describe the pattern um but there's a pattern that happens over and over again and we're in a particular spot in the pattern and then um to understand it not just because it happened before but to understand mechanistically how it happens and then one has a sense of how to deal with it so speaking of the mechanisms what's influencing this more when you started looking back into history are you looking for this sort of moment in the death cycle are you looking for pandemics a collision of the two what do you think influences us more well um pandemics come along occasionally but anything that's important let me let me say the three most important circumstances that existed before we had the downturn which was caused by a pandemic but any downturn would have produced the same results the three most important things that are happening in the world now are um that we're at the end late in a long-term debt cycle in which central banks cannot control monetary policy the same way they can't lower interest rates they have they can't get money to a lot of people who need the money um in the traditional way so just like in 1929 to 1932 there was a debt crisis that came as a result of an excessive amount of debt in the boom years and then when you have that in 1932 we hit zero interest rates and when they had when they hit zero interest rates in 32 like in 2008 Central Bank Prince money um and buys Financial assets when you talk about financial assets this is one thing that even I found myself a little bit confused by what what is a financial asset well mostly bonds okay Central Bank is allowed to buy bonds and mostly government bonds so if you were going to describe what a bond is like what's the easiest way to think about a bond um when someone borrows for a number of years um and has to pay back that makes a promise to deliver currency that's a bond and so one man's debts are another man's assets which we call a bond and that is a promise to deliver currency and so what happens in these Cycles is that normally uh central banks can stimulate the economy by lowering interest rates but when you hit zero interest rates that doesn't work so the last time it hits zero interest rates was 1932 and what they did in 1932 was the same thing they did in 2008. and that is that the central banks prints a lot of money and buys government bonds and so we're doing that now and just to be clear the reason that they're doing that is so somebody has bought a Government Bond the government is basically saying hey you dear person lend me the money I'm gonna build something roads whatever but I'm going to pay you back in a year two years ten years whatever plus interest I would assume that makes it worthwhile um and the reason that the government is going in and buying those is to get back liquidity to the people that have loaned them that money yes because think of it this way the central government and also companies and individuals don't have the capacity to create money so the central government has the right to determine they can tax people they can get money from people and they can spend money on whatever they want to spend money on but they don't have the right to print money and create money and credit like the Central Bank does central bank is the Federal Reserve similarly the Federal Reserve does not have the right to spend money and determine how it's spent that's for congress all right so so before because this can get so confusing and I'll play the role of the Layman here and just make sure that we walk through things so the Federal Reserve I think most people think is the Department of the government but they're not are they a private bank no they're they're a part of the government that the government that the system has put into place so to get the creation of money out of the political system okay so it sits sort of outside of the political sphere of the government um it is within Congress but it has a set of rules like the Supreme Court has a set of rules that means that the president can't control it the Congress can't control it um that it's operating in a sense a separate way and so the important thing to know about this crisis and that it happened in the 1930s is that in order to get the checks that we're needing you know a lot of people a lot of companies um need checks now where will thou those checks come from so there'll be checks from the government the type of support we're going to receive is two types of support where's this all this money come from so that the government when they say I'm going to pay more for unemployment insurance so I'm going to give you a loan for a small business or so on they where they get the money from well they've either tax it but if they tax it that's bad so the government they can borrow it that's what a deficit is the government runs a deficit and then the question is who's going to borrow it when everybody's financially strapped and the Federal Reserve says they have the power to print money and they will say I will borrow it and I I will lend you the money so the Federal Reserve is lending the money and it is also lending others the money all right when when they print money are they literally sending a Brinks truck with bags full of cash and distributing it through local banks no money is digital okay so they're literally just making Ledger adjustments in a digital file somewhere right the important thing to know is that all that we think about money is not limited in any way like there's a certain amount of money out there it's all Make-Believe It's All Digital so they could change the digits and then they can create money now that's an important consideration because if they can create money so easily how do we know it's going to be a value when they're creating a lot of it that's one of the considerations that are being faced today but the main thing to know about this or stepping back for the big picture is that every individual every company and every government has a certain amount of money that comes in in the form of income a certain amount of expenses that and then a certain amount of savings so you do individually and every all your listeners do and it works the same way for everyone so that if their income Falls and then less to be less than their expenditures they're in trouble unless they have a good savings and then they go to the savings so all around the world there are lots of entities that are in trouble in that way so the government the two parts of the government the U.S government to Parts want to give checks to people now it's difficult to decide who gets it who doesn't get it but if they don't give checks to people or to companies those will go bankrupt because they may not have enough savings so you you saw um J.Crew went bankrupt just went bankrupt and you'll see others go bankrupt because they don't have enough and so when they go bankrupt and that's a whole other process so in order to prevent that they have to give money and so they print money we call it print there's not even paper much it's digitally create money and then that comes in the form of loans okay so basically they're digitally creating money which they're allocating to the government and then the government is deciding how to disburse those funds yeah the Federal Reserve will buy government bonds so it's a transaction of buying it and that the and they will also buy private bonds okay they might pick a company um at many companies and they'll say I will buy your bonds which is the equivalent I will lend to you and that's what happens okay and that's happened through history so what we're going through is the same process has happened in the 1930 to 1945 period so as I was saying there are three important things that is one the second is large wealth Gap third is that um we have a rising power in the form of China uh emerging to compete or challenge the United States leadership so when you have these three things together um it's um it's a challenging mix and it's happened repeatedly less effective monetary and credit system makes it they have to print a lot of money can threaten the value of money second uh when you have a large wealth Gap and you have an economic downturn people are more inclined to have conflict so how that's dealt with we're going to reconsider how we're going to that wealth will be divided and that'll change taxes and relationships and then the third is we're no longer in a world order where the United States is the only dominant power these three things existed in the most important things existed and then we had the downturn terms in terms of the virus so you could think of the virus like being a tsunami that came and if it went and if we had not no more of it it still would have left a lot of economic damage so you in all different ways so the the economic damage has to be understood and dealt with yeah so the understood and dealt with is exactly why I wanted to talk to you so I think that people that are familiar with Finance financial institutions and how the economy works and all that um they'll find their way through this but for the average person who um doesn't understand a lot of this like when you look at this historical perspective I.E find a certain level of comfort in that because of the notion of another one of these right so we've seen this before maybe we haven't In Our Lifetime but historically um people have so what can the average person take away from that they don't have bonds they don't think like that they may not even understand what their 401K is or they may not even have a 401k so how do they navigate this is it just head down do your best to weather the storm or is there actually something that they can learn from the historical perspective and move on now to make this easier for them yeah it's the it's the same for every individual same for every company same and you if you understand this then you understand there well there are three things um the first is look at your income your expenses and your savings and then do a stress test so that you get yourself secure if you were to lose your income or if the income were to fall Beyond a certain level and you play that out maybe that means you go get unemployment insurance but or whatever how long can you live in an acceptable lifestyle and do you have a savings that is adequate for that okay so what you do is you calculate if I lived in a simpler lifestyle and I had this amount of earnings um how many months how many months or years Could I Live acceptably then you look at your what what do you put the money in what do you say then don't you worry though that there's a level of financial literacy so you're you're saying the basics right and there's no question like get your blocking and tackling right before you start trying to get fancy but uh Ray I have legitimately started losing sleep over like how we help the average person through this I'm not a guy I don't lose sleep over much but when I stop and think about most people I think the stat is the average American if they're hit with a surprise 500 Bill they're not able to make it they are living month to month you've got 30 plus million people now um out of work it's you know it trying to figure out like definitely Basics right you've got make sure that you're spending lesson you make austerity first cut cut cut get your expenses down to as low as they can 100 um what what I'm hoping for is that there's [Music] um I don't know there's something that we can see in in this kind of transition where either you've got a new Rising power and there's opportunity with that I I'm trying to find that sort of Ray of Hope for people of what they can do to be proactive either to generate more income if they've lost their income or to be more proactive in their 401K I think about personal finance the way I think about health and right now I worry that people are Outsourcing everything to somebody else to the government they're they have a wait-and-see approach um and what I'm desperately trying to figure out for myself is what level of proactiveness of learning about their health they can do to try to weather this storm because short of just saving um and cutting expenses and maybe that's it maybe there there isn't any more that they can do but I guess that's my direct question is there something more uh I mean you know the parts right it's it's income expenses and savings okay now you can go get the money maybe the gun money comes in and you say okay my unemployment benefits are going to be this or my this is but um those are the parts then the issue is uh how clever are you at uh dealing with those let me ask it another way then who who should they be voting for like when you talk about a beautiful deleveraging which one you should probably um Define that so you've you've looked at this stuff so many times it's really really quite breathtaking um that there are ways to do this well there are ways to do this poorly uh you know we're in an election year I consider myself like the most apolitical human being on the planet but when I stop and think about okay well if I'm an average person and let's say that I'm really doing my best I'm doing the blocking and tackling I'm saving what I can save um I've cut my expenses back I'm I'm earning you know what I can let's hope that they either have kept their job or were able to quickly get another job um how should they be thinking like what are what is the right way to go through this leveraging at a political level maybe politics is the right word but like at a higher level well I I you know I don't know what you want it to say I think that each person should understand there's a certain level of basic understanding first take care of yourself and then you know you hope that you have uh smart people who I think will most important thing is that they're smart in being able to engineer an economy that will increase the size of the pie as well as divide the pie well and then also um that this is done in a non-antagonistic way um smart people working together in a bipartisan way have the capacity of managing this wealth so if I was giving political advice and that's not what I do but if I was giving political advice the most important thing I think is um who can do this who's got the intelligence to do the engineering plus to do it um in a manner that we are not fighting with each other that what history has shown us is that when things get difficult people get stressed and they get they can get angry and they could all fight with each other and that produces the next leg of a terrible economy because the economy won't work efficiently if people are fighting with each other the system doesn't work well so one would have to say uh you know who's going to bring the country together behind sensible I would say bipartisan programs because if you don't have that then you have a form of revolution and you don't have good management and that's the greatest risk I would say politically so looking at the Historical perspective um who has done this well and then what have been mistakes that have led to literal Revolution when you say who has done it well what do you mean um what countries or what periods of time has going through this kind of Crisis been managed well so that we come out the other side with this little sort of pain and suffering as possible well an example of well would be the differences in um the way Roosevelt did it um so again 1929 to 32 interest rates hit zero they print money we had a large wealth Gap and then they sat down and they figured out how do we keep it orderly and how do we change the circumstances with um whether it's taxes or how do you re-organize it so that the system works well there is a risk also at the same time because the world is going through that there's a risk of conflict so in Germany Hitler came in power in 1933 and he came in power nineteen 33 because there was a lot of internal fighting as to to try to bring produce water because that everybody the left and the right you know the Communists and the fascists and they're all fighting about wealth because everybody's fighting them about wealth when you have a downturn and then they need they they were democracies four democracies existed then that chose not to be democracies because they became so disorderly that they wanted some strong leader to take charge and run the country and then of course we had a bunch of straw those types of leaders and then they had a war that's how World War II happened so when you look at that uh you know that's kind of the political landscape but back to the average man in terms of his finances I would say the important thing is those three elements to have a plan and maybe to have a plan with uh both your family you know um how do you get down uh when things got tough and and you know and then you have to look at um you know what happens in policy well policy um is a depends on the person some people would understand more about policy than other people if if you know so it depends on uh what they should do depends on what they're able to do well as we um sort of step back and start taking a longer review of this what's the role that UC education playing in I've sort of when I grew up it was just assumed I was going to go to college um I did go to college and I would have for a very long time told everybody they should be going to college now I've sort of cooled off on that in terms of the debt that people are getting into I know you and your wife are working a lot in the school system there in Connecticut um how do you how do you think about that what's the importance of Education in you know when when we start thinking about protecting successive Generations how much of that comes down to education uh education is is the most important thing um I I was um raised with a very modest economic background my dad was a jazz musician my mom was a stay-at-home mom um and but I was lucky to have uh parents who cared for me and I went to a public school and I got a good education and I came out to a world of equal opportunity and I believe that those are fundamental Necessities that um that you have to know how to have an education of you know facts like um you have to know how to read write and arithmetic but you also um have to know how to behave well with others to be a good citizen is operate in a civil way to be able then to go into jobs and that those ju that education um can be um anything that works I think the big thing is you know three big things on on what I think work should be um um make your work and your passion the same thing and make it economic if if it works that you love your work you'll probably be better at your work um and then you find the um so you you want those things and then the then there's the economics of it and so it could be anything from learning um trades um um whatever it may be education certainly does not have to be College college is uh over emphasized and having a good productive career when I watch the these remarkable people who are on the front lines of dealing with this virus situation and I look at them the great some of the greatest people are the people who have the capabilities of doing certain things that are not have nothing to do with going to college and they're on the front lines and they're contributing a lot and so we uh so in education and civility but that means that there has to be equal opportunity so yes what my wife and I have done um is um we're particularly um heartbroken or disenchanted with um poverty affecting children in and high school students having the Equal Opportunity of Education so our particular focus in Connecticut um we made a a donation a large donation 100 million dollar donation to the state of Connecticut for them to match um and are working to get those um students uh through high school and but it could be trade school um and into jobs and to be able to be uh productive so you look at all societies and these are the things that matter most the society um becomes a fairer society when there's equal opportunity for education and also it becomes a more productive Society because the opportunities when extended throughout the whole population means that you get more people on the basis of Merit right now that system is not operating in a good effective way for example people in the top 40 percent of income will spend about five times as much money on their children's education than those in the bottom sixty percent and that's not that's that's neither Fair nor productive so I think that these types of questions are going to have to be examined by policy makers in a bipartisan way as we go through this but yes in answer to your question you know it really starts with good total education the good raising of children in terms of their actual formal education and their informal education and then going out and having an environment of equal opportunity what is up my friend Tom bilyu here and I have a big question to ask you how would you rate your level of personal discipline on a scale of one to ten if your answer is anything less than a ten I've got something cool for you and let me tell you right now discipline by its very nature means compelling yourself to do difficult things that are stressful boring which is what kills most people or possibly scary or even painful now here is the thing achieving huge goals and stretching to reach your potential requires you to do those challenging stressful things and to stick with them even when it gets boring and it will get boring building your levels of personal discipline is not easy but let me tell you it pays off in fact I will tell you you're never going to achieve anything meaningful unless you develop discipline right I've just released a class from Impact Theory university called how to build Ironclad discipline that teaches you the process of building yourself up in this area so that you can push yourself to do the hard things that greatness is going to require of you right click the link on the screen register for this class right now and let's get to work I will see you inside this Workshop from Impact Theory University until that my friends be legendary peace out so one thing that I know you have leveraged to tremendous effect and this is the very thing I took from principals that changed my life is to stress test your ideas to put them out there to ask how do I know I'm right so like I said I've really been losing sleep over how I can be most helpful in helping people navigate all of what's happening and and I have come to a conclusion that could be pure delusion and I would love to know what you think it's along the lines of Education which is why I was asking about that so my obsession is skill acquisition I think that so the advice that I've been giving to people if you've lost your job or not like we have spent probably the last 10 years maybe more in an employee ease Market they've really had this election they've been able to put a lot of pressure on employers and now you're seeing a flip and you're seeing this is going to be an employer's Market there's going to be a lot of people obviously there's north of 30 million now it's going to be a lot of people looking for work and my thing is if you want to get your ideal job you want to make your passion something that you're able to pursue you've got to be able to outperform other people and I would say the same thing to a kid that's coming up somebody that's about to graduate whatever like you've got to be better than the next person you've got to build a skill set that allows you to excel and my thing is like you you are living proof of one simple thing if you can outperform people there really is no cap to how far you can go you put your money where your mouth is when it comes to an investment strategy obviously with Bridgewater um you guys have just outperformed people it's really been quite extraordinary and yes people need to save yes they need to focus on where uh you know they're getting their income from um they need to practice austerity measures all of that but ultimately people can Propel themselves forward if they're out there learning growing getting better pushing I would go so far as to say even being aggressive to try to continue to move up but it comes down to recognizing that skills have utility to actually let you do something that let you out invest somebody they let you build a better house or a better bridge and so what I want to see people do through this time I just think most people will be obliterated mentally they're going to get scared they're going to panic they're not going to be able to think clearly and they won't put themselves on a path to excel so I wonder what what am I missing there because I know that people don't that is not a popular thing to say right now not something that I get a lot of negative feedback from people it's like basically pull yourself up by your bootstraps so I'd love to understand like where are the flaws in that thinking um where when you talk about the um they're not being equal opportunity one what can people do to write that ship at a personal level I get I get at the higher up systemic the way that we address it through policy and things like that but at a personal level is there is there something people can do well I think you're exactly right I think that uh that uh though is short of specifics and um you know that particular action and the question is um who can help them so yes um if they're Wiley and hard-working and clever enough they still need triangulation and help to find out where is the training program what is that skill they they can't do it alone they have to do it with the health I um and I would recommend you know I did two 30-minute videos one is principles for success at 30 minute YouTube video and it's about an approach to life that a lot of people something like 14 I don't know a lot of people have seen this and I would say um it's worth your 30 minutes I think in terms of approach to life and then there's also if you're interested in the economy I did a 30-minute video how the economic Machine Works in 30 minutes and that had a lot of views more 14 million I think and it was liked so um I can't tell them in this very brief interview how we're going to exactly who will get them that training and that capability but I think you're right skill that you love that sells is what you need now you go to each person has their own particular way of possibly getting that to some case it might be a start low in an organization and work your way up to some cases it may be a government training program to some K in some cases it may be a relative or a friend who can get you going and so on uh as I said one of my main principles is there's always a path out there you just don't happen to see the path now so you have to find the path if you find that path and you can't find it alone the way you find that path is to speak to other people get many ideas by other people and then you know you have to keep yourself trial and error you got to keep at it like when you're getting a job or getting a skill it's a lot of trying and so that requires certain amount of discipline and if you have a discipline problem get help with the discipline problem have somebody kick you out of bed or whatever it is that um you can get there there is a path you just don't see the right path at the moment so many aspects of Life are more actually the opposite conventions like Comfort it's comfortable well look life teaches you over and over again you want to get stronger okay it's not comfortable you want okay so stronger does not go with necessarily comfortable pain okay pain plus reflection equals progress pain is a teacher you want to eliminate pain from your life you're going to have a better life no no no because it's giving you messages okay so so many different things are the opposite of what we're taught and it goes down to even the education system okay you failed hey that's the beginning of a discovery process that's a good thing okay okay now how do I look at failure and learn from failure no you're stupid you failed how do people find out like their nature and do you think of us all as having a sort of true nature and then from that how do people decide on the paths of accomplishment or savoring and what to define those for people yeah there's there's a couple of Concepts in there so I'll uh and they're related and I'll uh but I'll post them um first of all on the nature it's really a self-discovery process discovering what you want um discovering what you're like like you were describing your various cases where you're discovering what you like and that you go through that Discovery and and the best way to do that is to want to do that right it takes an hour and it's a self-discovery thing you created it yourself yeah and we've used others we've used Myers-Briggs team Dimension workplace inventory and so other and then we move beyond that the main thing like is if you want self-discovery you then you then you'll find your ways of getting the self-discovery they'll appear all around you and yes you have your nature the thing that Pope don't be you know around peg in a square hole find your nature what's going to flourish and make your you know that's why I said when you were talking about your development mine too make your passion and your work the same thing know what your nature is yes so I believe in terms of that particular nature then we get to the particular of one of the big choices in life is Savor life or accomplish like we have a lot of choices in our lives and they're almost sort of mutually exclusive sometimes uh you know I just I want to go to the ball game and I want to watch movie and I want to do that and I just want to sit back and on a nice day and smell the roses okay simultaneously I want to change the world okay I want to change the world and I've got this or um the work-life balance question and all of those we face those types of choices right so um it's really important to go above oneself and to reflect on that and also by the way to realize that um the choices are not you're approaching the choice wrong when you often see it as kind of that trade-off because the truth is you can have a lot more life and you can have a lot more if you just know how to get more out of a minute how much do I get per per minute or how much do I get per hour do you have secrets on that because I will there are a number of them in in here but and we could talk about them but the capacity to rather than we do all have to face our choices but to also realize that you can expand how much life you're going to get out of life and how at that range if you really do it well so there are those choices which are those choices and we Face them and then you have to decide how to do them well give me a couple things that I can do to get more out of a minute first of all if you do make your passion and you work the same thing um then you're it's great right because your passion uh whatever it might be you're a painter or you're an entrepreneur or whatever that is and you find that more enjoyable than going to a ball game let's say then that's becomes a passionate thing that's one thing second to know how to work with people who can do things really well to get the most leverage out of people okay third how do you get yourself really what are the right work habits um you know anyway there's a whole bunch of those kinds of things where you how do I just just what you say how do I get it done without me doing it who's the best to do it and how do I get in oh you all of a sudden you open yourself to up to all different possibilities of how you can do that right no time I think Tim Ferriss wrote what the four-minute or the four-hour uh work week work week or something like okay for our work week okay or okay there are approaches uh all those ways of being able to do that so I just gave you uh uh you know a few what are the elements of struggling well what does it mean to struggle well and how do we do it well first that that's why that phrase I use the phrase struggle well or tough love okay I put those words together because that exemplifies the fact that people don't think they go together and so if you start to realize struggling well is what your uh will get you what you want okay rather than avoiding struggle um that's what I'm trying to convey and so um if you realize that then you will go to the struggle you won't be averse to the struggle and you will think and then under that in the book I wrote all these different ways of what it means to struggle well okay how you uh have thoughtful disagreement how you listen to maybe or you're not good at that or not how you learn how you navigate all the ways through that so that you get stronger because if you don't struggle you won't get stronger okay so struggling well go above it you know okay struggling well a big element is to go above your struggle just like you did I you look back and say okay um am I struggling well rather than be in it and doing those things so there are a lot of different ways of how to struggle well but if you know okay that struggling is a good thing okay if you want to be strong it's a good thing I'll give you another example I have a a saying if you worry you don't have to worry and if you don't worry you have to worry okay because what I mean is um if you're worrying about what can go wrong your chances are you will create the protections against that thing going wrong and therefore that's good and if you're not worrying about the things that are going to go wrong then now probably the things you never expect are going to come and hit you okay and so it sounds counter-intuitive if you worry don't have to worry don't worry you better worry but what it means is that process of okay go to the thing go to it and enjoy it view these things as puzzles your personality will change you'll enjoy it okay because life is a puzzle it's it's a going through the jungle okay it's it's like that I'll I'll tell you a story yeah so I um I crash and I figure oh risk and reward go together you want to have a great life okay and you want to be safe at the same time they sound almost like mutually exclusive okay so I so I viewed it as okay I'm like sitting on one side of a jungle and that if I can get to the other side of the Jungle safely I'll have a great life but uh okay but if I cross the jungle all sorts of things going to happen now what am I going to choose am I going to be on this side of the Jungle and uh have just an ordinary life or am I going to have what I think is the best life possible but oh I can get bit and all those things and that's just the nature of life and then I and I said I have to it's my nature I have to have the best life I can have so I've got to go into the jungle now the question is how do I go into that jungle and be successful at that and I could tell you the answer the answer is first by worrying about what I don't see that I might be wrong with and to do it with people who see the things that I might not see and we are all doing and as a mission to get through that jungle well together and when I went through that jungle and we do that together the thing I found out which is so wonderful is I don't want to leave the jungle I don't want to get to the other side because I want to be with those people on that mission and that whole experiences becomes great so I found my way to be successful in the jungle to get to the other side and I found out what really is a great reward and that's extraordinary and and I that resonates with me so hard about really enjoying the struggle and a that's what's making you stronger B there's just something innate certainly with a certain personality type that that is what you're going to love is that fight and reaching your limits and pushing Beyond them now I'm curious is there going to be a struggle for you in the third phase is there a new Jungle that you're going into so you to quickly Define that for people you said uh in Phase One You're dependent on others you're essentially a child and you're learning phase two you go to work other people become dependent on you and then at the end of phase two you pass it off to other people you want them to thrive without you you give them the knowledge and the wherewithal and then in phase three you savior uh um you save your life um what's that going to look like for you it's the freedom to do whatever you want to do without obligations it is the realization that you shouldn't and it's not good to control anybody it's just savoring life that you have you can do anything you want you go from free you go to Freedom um if there's a life Arc yes there's a life Arc and in um I I put together this book is a 600 page book I also then uh was asked by a lot of people to make a simpler version um about principles for success and it's a little book and it'll be out uh or putting it out on the newsstands you actually could be pre-ordered on Amazon um and in that book I show a life Arc and I track through what are the various phases of life and what what is the happiest phase what is the least happy phase and how does it work and I could take you through all that if you're interested I'm very interested oh okay well I don't depends how much time we got but um okay that uh maybe the slightly nutshell okay the nutshell version is you start off and it it is very very um it's a it's a really enjoyable phase in life you start to have uh start to experience responsibilities like junior year okay do I get into the school I want to get into or whatever that's quite common college is great it's exploratory come out of college there's the most amount of Freedom you have so that transition and school come into now the new phase of life is totally different than the first phase of life because what it means is you don't follow any track all all through there you are following track in the definite and the direction of others and now you could live anywhere you want you can pick any job you want you can do anything you want you have total freedom there's no guide you can do anything you want you have that freedom and you move forward with that and then you start to make decisions and you start to um take on obligations you might get married you might have kids you have jobs and you take on that and the least happy period in life by surveys of happiness is um 45 to 55. okay that uh because that then you have the work-life balance and the obligations and too many things to do and uh and then maybe it's not as idealist idyllic as you want you know ah you get into the marriage and whatever it is and then maybe it's not the marriage that you expected or the things that you're having and all of those things that's a difficult phase of life that middle part of that phase in life 45 to 55 and so on um and then people transition it's interesting and opposite than what I would have expected that the happiest phase in life is between 60 and 80. and and the you know the funny thing about it which is really funny um they ask people um um how good do how good do you look um and they rate it the highest at that age now that's not true right but what happens is people at that point feel more comfortable with themselves in various ways when you make that transition you're eliminating all of those obligations you're eliminating all of those things you're giving yourself free I don't have to take care of it I Savor ah my family's well without me or whatever as I've got the free time I could do whatever I want to do that doesn't mean life isn't exciting I find life very exciting I'm very vital I like those types of things but totally free of choice and you also Savor the life Arc you know even as people approach their death they approach the death in a whole different way than what death seems to be for people in their early years right oh you're terrible terrible thing no it's just part of that particular process and how do you do that life Arc and ah the curtain goes down you know and that is a different phase in life so um you know my responsibility now is to pass along what I'm doing like right I got plenty of money so I'm not working for money I'm giving away plenty of money because of because it helps and whatever and I'm just passing along I'll have that up by far and and then I'm going to go quiet and I'm going and I save her life and you go I could just I love nature so I go outside in nature okay that has a big effect on me I love it so that's what the third phase of my life looks like yeah man that the whole notion that you're living an arc that there are phases I think is really important and I I don't think enough people recognize that your frame of reference will change as you move from phase to phase and what was important to you in one phase will not be important to you in the next and to because I was thinking as you were talking I was like I personally don't believe that you can skip a phase I don't think that certainly not with my personality and probably not with yours it's not like you can skip the the accomplishment phase and go straight to the saver phase and I thought about that you know my wife and I have made enough money we could buy an island and retire and and just be done with it and when I really thought about how that would make me feel didn't seem like it would make me feel the way that I want to feel because I still want to be in the jungle but as I hear you describe the savoring it's like yeah I get how my life could get to a point where that's what I would crave yeah you see what I'm hearing you do well is you're looking down on yourself again you're describing I'm looking at how I feel I'm looking at so you're connecting the the feelings with the thinking and I so that's that's true and in terms of no of course there's a sequence to that life what I did in the book which would be fun for people to do is I show all the different markers in in all the different phases and little boxes next to them and so what they can do is they can check where they are they know exactly where they are and then also by showing that I'm showing them what they can expect because if they're if you're here on that Arc you can expect these things probably as you're going check check those are the things now you can start to imagine where do I want to be in 10 years and also where are the people I I love who I care about or what are their relationships where will they be where will my children be in 10 years and what will they go through or what we're not parents where will they be in 10 years and how will that relate to how I want to have my life go because and it's the same thing that you'll see the same things happen over and over again all these lives are basically kind of the same thing so and when you put that in perspective and you step back and you look at it it's really great the notion of it's another one of those like the and I say that in a way designed to remove fear and uncertainty which is something that paralyzes so many people and I think one of the things you've really given certainly me and anybody who's really deeply come in contact with your work is that sense of there is that higher perspective that shows that you're not the first person to have a child you're not the first person to embarrass yourself publicly you're not the first person to go through whatever heartbreak or heartache that you're going through and when you can contextualize it then you get to to another thing you've said which of course Buddhists have been saying for a long time this too shall pass like whatever hardship you're in the middle of or whatever Joy you're in the middle of it's it's all part of a cycle and so all of it will ease in the end and so yeah and your preferences will change realizing how it works is so great because like the thing you love at Penn is different than the thing you love at 20. or 30 we all can think what is the thing you love to 20 or 30. that was fun and then you go to 40. and you go to 50. and they change and to realize how they will change and and you move Beyond it's it's beautiful and it's helpful the most important thing I think is to know your nature what is your nature what is what what are your strengths and weaknesses and your likes and your dislikes and once you know that then you also think what are the fits oh I would like that job and the job could pay me well and then you figure out okay how do you do it how do I get to it but there are different people in different circumstances so I can't answer them all now yeah um I agree with you so I want to go back one thank you for the feedback that I'm I was being super vague I think that's really helpful so let's start getting really specific as much as we can knowing that people are going to be sort of at very different places as they're hearing this but I think this will be helpful so one the video that you're talking about and I'll speak for you and correct me where I go astray but I watched the video multiple times think it's really extraordinary and basically to put it in a really small nutshell it's basically go out try things fail a lot learn and keep progressing and that that's basically if I remember right you have like this sort of circular ascent and it's from the failing and the learning that you ultimately make the progress but if you put your head down you don't want to see your mistakes you don't want to see the flaws in your thinking you're going to trap yourself at a plateau and you're never going to be able to push beyond that so you've got to seek out disconfirming evidence you have to seek out where you're weak and in fact one thing I will I sort of disagree I get what people mean so when you say know your nature I will say by Nature before you get to that second part let me just on the thing yes it's the looping and learning from mistakes but it it another part of it is the realization that you don't have to make your decisions in your own head okay now when you start to realize that you know what you're good at and what you're bad at that a power comes to you when you start to know uh okay who's the best person to give me the advice or who's the best person to lead me through this or when you start to know that you can go beyond what you think and your opinionatedness so that you can triangulate I call it triangulate with others so that you find three people who are really capable of giving you good advice who will argue with each other and argue with you so you can see all sides of it and you work yourself through so it's not just your eyes looking for the path but it's other people's eyes looking with the path with you knowing that you're going to have uh successes and failures but that power of that collective learning and triangulate well with humbleness is a great power as you go through that cycle I love that so I'll push that a step further and I will say this so I'm going to be super blunt to anybody watching right now and Ray if you think that I'm wrong I trust that you will jump in no one is coming to save anybody and that's the hard truth and if I look at history and even if I listen which I've listened to literally every word that you've said on the subject publicly anyway that this is just gonna suck like there is going to be a level of brutality that most of us have not experienced in our lives companies are going to go under people are going to lose their jobs they're going to be people that are going to struggle to find their next meal and what what I want people to understand is just like you just said you can triangulate you can get people to help you think through but I want them to understand that they can do that in a book at a library they can do that online if they still have access to the internet which as of right now even just going to the library you can get access to being online you changed my life before you and I ever met I read your book I had never I didn't even know who you were at that point and somebody just said hey you've got to read this book it's got really powerful ideas on trust and creating these hard principles out of all your mistakes I read it immediately recognize that this aligned with what I call the physics of Being Human it was so in line with removing my blind spots getting people acknowledging that other people are better than me at certain things and so while I take a little bit of an exception because I think that you can't say what you're good and bad at until you've been at this for a long time you've been trying you've been pushing you're learning you're failing because by Nature I'm lazy I I am not very bright I think there are people that can process raw data far faster than I can but I'm willing to admit when I'm wrong I'm willing to admit that I don't know I'm willing to admit when I make a mistake and because of that because I go in that cycle that you talk about making a mistake looking nakedly at it not pretending I didn't screw up asking people to point out my flaws and then going and now I'm gonna have to do what is called deliberate practice to get better at that thing and I don't just ask and I don't think people can afford right now to just say oh what do I want to do work for a lot of people this is going to be Maslow's hierarchy of needs you need safety you need security you need food shelter and I think it's going to come to that and so recognizing there are people out there right now that know more than you you are going to make a mistake but those mistakes are huge learning opportunities you have to admit that you made one you have to seek people that can help you remove those blind spots and then you have to put in the work to get better does any of that sound crazy no doubt that's totally totally right and then um it comes from once you have a fear that you might be wrong but you have still the audaciousness and courage to go forward you're a lot smarter than the person who thinks they know there's a there's a quote that's Jefferson said he who knows he knows not is closer to the truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and and so when you know that and with and then with your character and your determination you go forward the smartest people I know are the most humble it what the more you learn the more you realize oh I'm eager to take in so that's right um but back on your audience I I think your audience ranges from um you know there's a wide range that you have in your audience and I would say that there are many people in your audience who can plan for a simple lifestyle that can be wonderful sometimes we acquire these needs that aren't at anywhere near as big as as we make them out to be and you know um do you have a bed to sleep in do you have food to eat do you have basic health care okay if you start to think okay what are my needs that I really need and I'm okay and how can I make Provisions for those needs then once you've got that in your mind you're you're free okay you you can go beyond that that you may say listen oh I can do that for a year or two years or a month or whatever but you I think we visualize too much the things that we're used to one of the good things about this exercise is that you can bring it brings you back to basics you can be brought to Basics and like I'm saying if you have a bed to sleep in and you've got food and so on and you have those Basics and and good relationships with people who care about you and basic health care so if you budget for that and you figure how do you have it maybe it isn't in the luxurious place you're in maybe it's in the country and so on once you visualize that and you get that down in your head and you say oh I can get that then your stress will disappear because you as you visualize that in many ways that's a happy life it doesn't take a lot to there's stimulation there's nature there's relationships these fundamental wonderful things the most important things can be obtained and so for many of you I think if you look at that and you budget for that I'm seeing a number of people um who are um going broke uh and and I've watched this over many years and really it's just the adjustment process when that once they get to that point where ah you know they have they get settled they're fine it's the ambiguity it's the worry it's the stress so if you do that from the beginning and you have that that played out in your head then you know everything from there you can play with and it's your it's uh icing on the cake so I want to emphasize you can budget for that you can look at that find that scenario find what that looks like so that you know you've got it down then you know you're safe once you've got safe everything beyond that is luxury I forget who the Greek philosopher was maybe you remember that used to go and he would sleep on the street like once a month or something like that in shabby clothing because he wanted to remind himself oh this is what I'm afraid of and this thing isn't that bad I mean I always found that interesting I take a slightly different approach I think that is really powerful and I think that's an important anchor for people so my wife and I always say to each other because look we have been dirt poor um and we have now been very wealthy and All Along The Journey we've always said to each other look man if I have you like everything else I'm good so literally there are only two things I'm legitimately afraid of there are things I don't want but there are two things I am legitimately afraid of brain damage because then I cannot build my way back I can't have the level of fulfillment joy that I want and losing my wife because a life shared to me is like the the highest importance now having said that I'm going to set all that aside and I I hope people heard you and I hope that they take it to heart to paint a lifestyle that they can love and it's beautiful but it's simple um and you know they don't have all this overhead hanging over them but I know thyself as you were saying know what you're good at what you're not I've always told people if you want a calm peaceful life I'm not your guy there there is somebody else for you to go listen to um and follow that Journey if if you want to be aggressive and you want to build something that matters to you I don't need it to be big I don't need it to be a business whatever I just people that want to express themselves that want to get great they want to become extraordinary at something that's what I'm far more interested in and so the way that I look at it is right now it's a time where economically the chessboard has has been flipped over but in in that moment there's going to be opportunity created and for people that and this my central thesis is what I said earlier Panic is the problem people cannot allow themselves to panic which is why I like what you're saying don't don't worry if you're if you lose everything right as long as you have the things that really matter to you and I think that's important so people don't panic so they can be clear-headed so they can figure out where the opportunities are and then they get the skill set that they need to capitalize on that opportunity which for me is like when I and that's why I keep saying I'm losing sleep over like how do we get information out so that I've worked in the inner cities a lot and to get the information to somebody out there that they can triangulate right that that's not a rich upper class exercise that's a the information is out there it's been put in books on a website in a podcast like the the number of the world's greatest thinkers right now that you could be taking this information from but you have to be willing to test it you have to be willing to incorporate it and actually act on it and do something so I'm not clear what's your question about that not so much a question is I I'm I'm presenting what I think are ideas that I want people to run with partly I'm hoping if there is a flaw in my thinking I want you to point it out so going back to the need for a specificity so um we're talking about there isn't equal opportunity because there's not equal access to education which I will take as the core of your thesis for generationally moving forward in a useful way true it's it's a core piece yeah okay so what I'm saying is I really hope that that gets addressed and I will certainly do whatever I can you're obviously uh doing a massive amount there but I also want people to not wait for someone to make that change I want them to realize right now today they can go and learn something they can educate themselves you said that it's not about college it's about getting a skill that lets you live a fulfilling fulfilling meaningful life um with a meaningful career and so I want to see people take action but if there is a flaw in that thinking I want to know no no um I don't of course I think it's totally right I think uh them the issue is going to the next step for the particulars of actually um helping somebody and um and there's a combination of not only what they can do themselves uh but finding others who will help to take them by the hand and help to provide that guidance uh to be able to do that all right so finding a job let's say you know you think okay how do you find a job so it you have to be specific uh so what we could say great find a skill okay great but literally how do you go about finding that skill let's talk about so so one thing you've talked about from an investing standpoint is when this begins to happen and monetary policy begins to break down uh won't spend a lot of time describing a fiat currency but essentially money that isn't Associated to anything like gold so you've broken that so you said it gets reassociated because gold has intrinsic value or rocks because it's used to build things so what is looking at the Historical perspective what are things that are safe bets in terms of this job is going to be here in five years that this is a good place to begin building that skill set you're talking about the skill set not the investment I guess yeah skill set I think that that's maybe more useful for people if they've just lost their job and you know they're sort of just trying to make ends meet at this point well in terms of um I I think in terms of any environment the lessons that we get over and over again is that you can't be sure what the next environment and twists and turns are what you don't know is greater than anything you do know so if if you were in the airline business or you were in the hospitality business um and that was wonderful and you liked it and everything else all of a sudden that changed in important ways so the important thing it more or the more General abilities in terms of investing what that means is you need to know how to diversify well that's the most important thing in terms of any aspect in life to know how to deal with what you don't know is more important than anything you know because the world is so much more surprising than you can really be sure of so in a general sense for skills I mean I think uh and skills are part of you what what are your environment you know find out those things that um are that are self-sufficient and maintain uh flexibility you have to know how to maintain flexibility and change well if your career is in one area um you have to know how this you have to develop the skill for changing a career and that all comes down to knowing how to find the path to know how to triangulate well with others I want to talk about so you've done such an extraordinary job Ray I I truly stand in awe of being able to go and learn a new area a new um element of the world when you announced that you were going to be taking this historical View and that you were going to go backwards I mean something like a thousand years or however far you went back um how do you begin that research process so for somebody that's like I want to invest my time wisely what is sort of a high level way that you approach learning in general well for for me um it's a lot um the alignment of the three things that I said before what is my passion um then you know knowing my nature what is my passion um and can I align my work to my passion and then uh does it pay adequately for me to take care of my needs and for me um I'm I do that because it's my passion um you know and so when you find your passion that's aligned with your work if you can do that but how do you go about learning something new so when you started researching the historical context of what we're going through now is it picking up books is it um well for me you see I have been my nature is I'm extremely curious okay and I love my game my game is to learn about the world interact with the world and Bet On It and I'm very curious so it so it might be whatever your game is like you've got a game okay that's why we're you're interviewing me because that's your passion that's your game and if you can line those three things up but and you know your nature because they're if you know your nature you can find your role you want to find the right role for you right it's not just go get a job and you know it might say I would like to be um an architect well I mean you have to know your nature and then you can find your role and so I'm I'm hesitant to say that what is true for me is true for somebody else so when you ask me what you know like okay those are my big things uh meaningful work and meaningful relationships like relationships matter a huge amount to me so if I can have a work that feeds my curiosity that I'm passionate about and that uh pays me adequately and you know and I do that uh with great people those are the things that feed me and so you have to know those things that feed you like I like the big picture somebody might like uh details you know I I you know you have to pick those things that are for your nature and and align those things I'm talking about and how did you specifically go about starting this big research project did it start with a book did it start with reaching out to historians no no it's I mean in a sense the journey started out when I was 12 years old and I carried and I um and and then I I took my caddying money and I had newspaper out and I did a number of things like that I took my odds and ends and I uh put it in the stock market and you know and um and then I and and I got hooked on the game do you have anything about that nature of questions in that process like that so I think it was Tony Robbins that said if you ask a better question then you're gonna get a better answer and basically questions are going to control the outcome do you focus on what question you're asking and trying to answer or is this something completely different than that questions questions that's right it's the hunger to know you'll you'll notice it different in people there will be people who wow you listen good question good question good question then there will be people who can't ask questions that they're just telling you what they think they almost you think they're acting smart they think they're acting smart and they're the stupid ones the Smart Ones are old question now how do I I have to find the answer to the question next question because the questions and the power and the pull to answer those questions and so on is the thing that drags you forward and it's excitement do you have a pull okay what's your pull you know so um yeah it's all in questions I think it's all in a journey life isn't a journey an adventure that's why I'm trying to say in principles and uh for success or you can get by the way principles um of any of these principles are also principles in action is an app that's available on the I store eyesore and it's free and it has all of these things in it but it and so I don't I you know because we'll we'll separate um I think people might like that but you not have to know your pull and then along the way you're going to have your adventure and you're going to learn and then you go through your phases of life and each phase is different like you talked about your face you're in the middle of your phase in life you talked about your wife and your relationship with her okay that is a phase of life and when you go and by putting it in perspective it's helpful um in the back of that book uh principles for Success there's a life Arc chart and if you know where you are on that life Arc and you know what the next 10 years is typically like and you know what you the people you care about are on their life arcs you can almost know what's coming at you and then you could start to think about it so it's at that level of knowing yourself and knowing how these things happen over and over again that you can achieve your path don't be surprised most life is this is the same things that happen over and over again you're born you probably have parents to take take care of you maybe you have one maybe you have two but somebody does they teach you you have your first phase of your life where you're dependent on them and you're learning then you come out to your second phase of your life and then you're working and others are dependent on you and then you have that so these things happen over and over again and and you just have to know that path and know how to approach it so really fast before I let you go you're working on a new book The New World Order which I find very fascinating and you've been publishing some of the chapters on LinkedIn um what do you think the odds are just to really go back to the finance side of this what do you think the odds are that America Remains The Reserve Bank and the reserve currency um and if it's not us who do you think it will be uh well all currencies eventually die and all Empires eventually diminishing their other Empires and the question is essentially the pace of what how that happens I think that um but for most of your listeners it's most likely going to happen in a way that's tolerable if you can manage it well think about the decline of the British Empire and you see if people are living in London and so on it's not that the world blows up it's that they have to re-adapt and they know how to re-adapt and so I think that um we're going to come through more difficult times I think the next three to five years will be difficult times in ways that haven't existed in their lifetime but has existed in other periods of time like the 1930 to 45 period so to be able to adapt well to invent yourself again to adapt and to navigate that maybe with a perspective of knowing what those other times were like is the best thing to do so the reason I'm doing that series on LinkedIn is to help people understand what those times are like and then help them prepared the reason I wrote the book principles is so that it's it's a particular approach because the same things happen over and over again for basically the same reasons and once you get that and you have the self-discipline to know how to play the game well then you'll be fine so um one where can people connect with you right now and then I have one last question that I want to ask well I'm um as I say I'm on social media and um we um and I'll interact with people on social media on the standards you know LinkedIn Twitter face uh Facebook and Instagram by and large um but the more the most uh valuable stuff is if you go to uh principles.com you can get the whole pile or or I would say that um some of those places you know so as this next three to five year um part of the cycle hits us what is one thing that people can do um that you know from the historical perspective will most insulate them from the the probably emotional um and maybe Financial damage whatever you think is more important well the the uh the things that I thought about some of the things I mentioned earlier the plan for uh the worst case scenario and make it terrific is one of the things um the understanding how to triangulate well to deal with whatever problems that you're going to face and how to work that through to find the PATH and find your nature but also uh one thing that's helped me a lot is meditation that uh um meditation gives you a calmness an equanimity so that you can almost look at your circumstances and you can navigate it with a Clarity of thought without all of that stress it's healthy because it reduces stress and it also makes you smarter to make the decisions well so I would say that that would also be something that I would recommend because if if you have the Equanimity that centeredness that comes centeredness and you have your plan and you triangulate well with others so that you can get all the best advice and don't have to approach it in your own head you know you're a long way there in your mind that we think what do you want and the reality is when you look at the neuroscience and psychology that there are different parts of your brain that want different things and so in the simplest sense there is the logical part of the brain that you're conscious of it's called the conscious and you think you're being logical and you want to make those decisions and then there's the subliminal below the limbic system part of the brain which is the emotional and it's not as conscious to you but it has more of an influence on you than really The Logical one and so they're not aligned and so when you're experiencing that pain or let's say the ego right there were two main things you got an ego barrier and a blind spot barrier if you can get past your ego barrier and you get past your blind spot barrier you can accomplish anything because you also know that you don't have to do everything to you don't have to figure it out yourself you can take in from other people the different ways to approach things in the best possible way and so the realization that we all are really struggling with ourselves and to think which are which is in control meditation helps to deal with the alignment of those two things because both are valuable in other words intuition imagination the things we really love come from our subliminal uses right our needs whatever they may be they come from here that's subliminal they may be valuable they may be scared damaging you don't know the difference and so when they come up and you're looking at those with your logical mind and you can align those things you're probably in good shape if you can do that that alignment between the subliminal and the logical and you can do that with other people so that you can triangulate with other people and say does that make sense and get alignment that alignment is the path to the Future because you only have to know what the best things to do are you don't have to have them all come up from your head and for God's sakes don't be overly opinionated because just because you have that opinion it doesn't mean it's true so that's where the two U's and the alignment really is so important I want to talk about the process of getting those two things aligned tying this into meditation so in my own experience meditation is a a Stillness it's a quiet from the chatter of the mind and more maybe profoundly than that I can feel my brain shifts into a different gear so maybe it's less linear thinking it's more lateral I'm making connections that I might not otherwise make so is it in in that still in that quiet where you're able to look at your what's bubbling up from beneath the limbic system your your emotional life you're able to look at that without judgment and then able to say okay but this is what I'm trying to do sort of consciously these are my plans and all of that and now how do I are you altering either of them or are you beginning to say I need to understand if this is a useful emotional driver or a destructive emotional driver like what is that process I think you describe it very well um and when you go deeper by the way you go literally into your subconscious so you're creating a connection when you transcend I do Transcendental Meditation when you transcend I am not conscious and I'm not unconscious I am in the subconscious I I'm not aware uh but if somebody won't make a little noise like that boom I would I would so it's not like being asleep and that's also by the way where creativity comes from it you know it's like you go take a hot shower and a great idea comes not because you're muscling it so when you're having that then um you're calm and your natural state and then these things Bubble Up and it helps that alignment so you say uh okay let me look go above myself let me let me go above myself and look at myself within the context of my circumstances what is around me how does that work how does reality work okay if I do this what are the consequences and so the the going above it and just saying I'm responsible for my decisions my life and how do I navigate the things the things there that I can pull the levers of to who do I get how do I do how do I deal with those and going above it in that calm way is really what it's about and when you do it well with others so you triangulate that's why I have the radical truthfulness and the radical transparency when you have that radical truthfulness and the radical transparency you're triangulating with others you're going above it with them and you're just looking at that circumstance and you say okay well we're in the same goal or are we and then how do I navigate those so that we get to where we want to go because if you're forming your company you've got your company we're on the same Mission together right so now let's all go above ourselves what are your strengths and weaknesses how do we get it what's true and how do we do that with transparency and that's it yeah oh man so so powerful and putting into action I'm really seeing exactly how it begins to allow and I think truth is probably the what you call hyper realism the getting to such an objective look at what is true and going back to sort of an objective look at that emotional state which I think is where a lot of people struggle one of the biggest and most profound probably the only lightning rod moment in my life where it's like whoa my life can be divided into before that literal like instantaneous recognition and after everything is completely different and that was the first time where I realized that I was being driven by something that I had not yet recognized which was I was telling everybody that I wanted to generate wealth in my life but I was acting like I just wanted people to tell me that I was smart and so the the like friction between those like hit this collision and so at the time I was just a copywriter and the guys who would later become my partners at the time were my employers and we got this huge fight over something stupid and I was arguing an argument arguing for my idea I needed my idea to win because I had they were just so much farther ahead than me they were smarter than me and that they can process data faster and and that that's just true like they could think through things more rapidly than I could so I was like I have an inferiority complex over how fast they think and they're like 15 years ahead of me as entrepreneurs so I just always feel like a buffoon and so I'm starting to really feel badly about myself and so I'm arguing for this dumb idea arguing arguing arguing and then finally I wear them down and they agree and I was like I know it's the wrong idea like there's a voice in my head screaming you know this is a stupid idea stop arguing for it but I needed to win and so when they left I thought okay whoa what what's real I just need to know what's real no judgment on me if what you want is to get rich you have to change the way that you're acting immediately but if what you really want is to just feel smart you need to leave this company because budding heads with them every day and feeling inferior is is never going to get you there and so in that I realized wait there's actually a third option where I could value myself entirely for Learning and if I switched my identity over from being smart being right being good being worthy to just I learned that's what I do then everything will change and it did literally like that like I remember that day so clearly so to me what you're describing is just another one of those right you have to go go deeper on that concept the notion that everything Loops that history repeats because I think people get it from like a U.S history class but they don't necessarily understand it in their own life there's practically nothing that hasn't happened before really if you look at the theme so when I take your your particular case I can digress into it but I I won't I'll come back to that in in a second almost everything that happens has happened many many times before and just like I described there's the hero's journey and there's this and that there's that particular path and the whole thing happens over and over again so my reaction um to what you're saying is um yep that's absolutely right that's a winning strategy so if you step back from that and you write okay what happened to you what would what happened to you is what we're talking about you went above yourself okay my so you exemplify it you okay here are the things you went above yourself now you could have had the ego thing the Big O barrier okay the ego barrier is going to be the thing that's sort of going to kill you then by reconciling what your subliminal desires were okay I want to be the judge this smart and then connecting that with your intellect and saying okay now intellect what is really going on here okay and then to be able to step out of that now you just did it alone but you could do it with others in better and and so you figure out oh okay this is that here's what the choices are here's what how reality works and so I'm just saying you did what we were talking about right and if everybody if everybody gets that and really understands how to go do that the number the two big things is how do you get your alignment of your lower level you with your upper level you how do you get um past your ego and your blind spot and we know what the ego barrier is like I got to be right or whatever it is or I'm not good at this the blind spot barrier is the realization that people actually see things different they see different things like somebody will see the big picture somebody will see the detail they'll focus on different things almost like a color spectrum type of thing and if you realize that you will see a part of that spectrum and other people will see the other part of the spectrum and so that you really need to when you go above yourself you really need to orchestrate all those ways of seeing be because you are not just one of those people that's got to do it yourself your way of being the the success is to go above it and be the orchestrator and know what you're good at and what you're not good at so it's almost like if you want your life to be successful you will not let yourself do certain things because you're just no good at them once you get that picture down then you can find the past wherever the paths are you're open-minded because you now you've given up your ego barrier and your blind spot barrier so your particular case just was another one of those yeah the concept of just another one of those I think is um it's bizarrely easy to miss in your book and so I want to linger on this point for a second and it's funny because people ask you this question all the time and you give the same answer you're so consistent and yet people don't spend the time that you spend so let me encapsulate uh you've done so well as an investor it's kind of crazy and so needless to say people like all right what's the strategy and your answer is actually usually not specific your answer is understand the historical context understand the historical context and get smart people around you so you're not making decisions by yourself so the notion of it's another one of those is looking at investing looking at The Human Condition looking at your own life as this thing that has these repeating elements every dimension of every everything the way is another one of those and so that's how you could if I can get people to think what I want to convey what that means and then I want to then understand how to think at the principal level because then life becomes so much easier because if you have the principle and what I mean about that is um like you could look at all the things that are coming at you and they're just the things coming at you if you instead uh think of each thing as being like a type of species think of that as an like an animal species or something okay what one of those is it and how do I deal with those and you have your principle for dealing with those so you have the species coming in you have a principle that lines up with the species yes so now there's no guesswork or refiguring it out I figure it's like um I don't know it's a type of snake that's coming at you but everything is another one of those so when you start to think about how do I deal with that how does reality work and how do I deal with those so the way it looks to me I'll speak figuratively to help to convey the image of what I mean by that maybe there's something like 50 different personality types I don't know what the exact number is and they are all living out the same scripts hop and maybe they're just 50 different Scripts and then through those you know maybe there's a certain X100 things through time and it seems all confusing because we're looking at them bit bit by bit you know it's like you're in a blizzard a snowstorm and each of these bits come at you and so on if you can kind of step back and just say okay okay what one of those is it and it's happened before and it's happened to different people so let's say for example you have a kid and you think okay now I'm a kid and you could just sort of say okay now you're parenting but whatever it is you can sort of say hey it's happened before a million times and in that particular circumstances so when you realize everything happens over and over again pretty much for the same kind of reasons okay and you understand that and you can almost look at um who who's been through it before who knows how it works how do I best navigate that thing what are my principles for that then it's great the reason I discovered it accidentally I discovered this accidentally is because I got in the habit that I'd suggest you get into and other people get into and that is um whenever you're in a situation where you're making a decision important decision just pause and write down what type of decision was it and why did I make that decision that way that's writing down your principles it's kind of your recipe for success and we could talk about it and then every time I'm in a situation I'll write down why did I make that decision and we could look at those criteria did that make sense to do that decision that way would you have different criteria and so on and you do that over a period of time okay and then you have your principles and then it so they're just your reasons for making your decisions and what matters to you right when you do that so that's why I'm encouraging you because you're going through these and then you have found a path in life I viewed your story what you just told me is just another one of those now you keep doing it it'll become apparent to you how everything's another one of those because what will happen is the next time around you're going to find I don't know let's say you're firing somebody use that as an example you would say okay now I'm firing somebody again okay now let me just kind of reflect would I modify that principle and how would I do that and then okay now maybe you you're firing somebody who's been with you for 10 years and you love and that's not the same as firing the son of a you you want to get rid of so then you refine that how how should I deal with that one and that and why does it make sense because that reflection why does it make sense why does it make sense and really wanting truthfulness you you know not worry about being embarrassed making mistakes we're only on the struggle with all of you together is a good thing yeah so the how do you define a species like how do you begin to codify all this stuff and go because I I think it's all too easy to get lost in the well this isn't another one of those this isn't just firing somebody that's firing somebody that I love and so no there's you know this is so different it's simple because all you have to do really is to sort to say if you start to think everyone's another one and I was when I'm making a decision I just got to write down why I made the decision I don't care how you title it okay just write down okay uh okay what's what what are your criteria make it write it down well you'll see that they're close cousins you know let's say if you're saying is it a different one because it's a close relationship that you've had for a long time or somebody is new okay well you'll see those two things are close together okay but it's another one of those things and it changes your way of seeing things okay it changes your perspective again I want to repeat because then life becomes easier because it's not all these bits and pieces okay it's okay it's another one of those it gives you an Equanimity and like a ninja okay it's another one of these coming up hey okay and how do I approach that and then you can have a conversation it's just reality how should you deal with that reality and if you do that then you think in a whole different way okay you just want to get to the best way to deal with your realities you've talked about how about 30 percent of the people cannot do radical Candor be great for you to I call radical transparency but whatever okay so radical transparency Define what that is exactly and then what is it about that 30 percent like are they they can't get rid of the ego or what what is that it's just what you're talking about this the struggle is between themselves as you go into a conversation and uh and you're looking at that um they find all of them is saying super hard really direct nice and clear they're not good at this yeah while simultaneously saying I don't know if that's true in other words if I say that I don't I don't think you're good at that I'm being honest but also who knows whether you're good at that right so how do we then go from you think you're good at it I don't think you're good at it and how do we go through a process to find out together whether you're good at it or not how do we go okay well one of my key questions okay the best way to do it is you do it in agreed upon way okay the idea is okay we say okay John you're not so good at that I don't think okay and then we go through the how would we judge can we ask other people do we go through this test or that test how do we find out what's true because if you can find out what's true your life will be better like do you want to know what you're not good at if you know what you're not good at it's your life's no problem because it you don't even have to get good at it you just have to work with somebody who's good at what you're not good at right so there's a path forward when you get out of your head that you got to do that so the only basic notion is when we're if we were to have a relationship is if you and by the way it's non-hierarchical you could say hey Ray I don't think you're very good at that and I'm I'm going to be the same way I put it in because I needed it because I I'm worried that I'm going to be wrong so then you come to me and you say I don't think it's very good well how do we find out in a non-ego constrained objective way whether I'm good at that or not do you actually lay out criteria like oh yeah yeah we will do yeah absolutely you know how do you come upon that criteria would you do this as a one-on-one would you do this in a group how do you begin to tease that stuff out um first of all in terms of the group um I like to make everything transparent so everybody could watch the same thing happening with anybody so I thought you would do this in front of a large group of people no no I would say taping we do a lot of that tradical transparency because that way people see is it fair is it a good process right so I like to do that discussion but anybody can do it with anybody right and so but I would like to have that conversation if it's like if if I don't think you are good at something and I am relevant to your life or vice versa we got to work it out we've got to figure that out together do this with your wife in all relationships in one way or another you have to find out how you're going to make decisions there are going to be agreements and disagreements and you have to have the art of thoughtful disagreement now people find their domains differently maybe somebody says okay I'll take care of these things and you take care of that I don't know some people you know the traditional household might say okay I'll take care of making the money out and the man goes out and he makes money in the world and then when women says I'll take care of the kids we're not there anymore but each role I'm trying to say in some way you have to find out how to do the art of thoughtful disagreement it's and it makes sense and then also knowing what's good what you're good at and what you're not good at it's a good thing to know what you're good at and what you're not good at right what do you do though like when you let's say you and your wife realize oh we actually have something that we disagree with how to do with the kids and that's high stakes if you do something wrong you could have a material impact on on their psyche and the way that they approach the world so there's sort of elevated stakes and there's just two of you unless you guys had a way of appealing to other people would it come down because you said don't worry so much about what the person's saying think about the process by which they got there yeah so I'm saying whenever there's a disagreement between two people that they can't get along on that they should pause and they should go above it and they should say um how do we how should we deal with each other when that happens in other words what are our protocols for um working ourselves through that so that we can then move beyond that to make a decision and would a specific protocol in a marriage be something like if it has to do with the kids you have more believability than I do so therefore if we can't come to an agreement we'll go with your decision there are that could be one of the protocols the main thing I'm trying to convey is when people are ordinarily in an argument they just argue and they and and they don't know the ground rules they don't have a process in place so if you look above it and you come up with whatever your rules are it may be you could have domain it may be that you have a mutually agreed party that you would say okay let's plead our cases too and have them mediate it it could be a lot of different paths could exist to say ah I think that's a good path when we have a disagreement on how we plead our cases and then move Beyond it but you need to have the path and that's what I mean by principled level thinking go above it how should it be instead of you know this type of thing right we all need that in order to have successful relationships it's fundamental right when you got this and you're not going above it and saying why do you have this or how should this occur then you've got trouble the key is you want to connect with them you want them to fall in love with you you want them to be inspired you want them to feel better about themselves when they're around you than when they're not and if you can pull that off they will go to war for you

Channel: Tom Bilyeu

Views: 1,378,372

Keywords: Tom Bilyeu, Impact Theory, ImpactTheory, TomBilyeu, Inside Quest, InsideQuest, Tom Bilyou, Theory Impact, motivation, inspiration, talk show, interview, motivational speech, Ray Dalio, Principles, Changing World Order, tombilyeu, Conversations with Tom, Health Theory, mindset, how to be successful, entrepreneur, investing, business, principles for success, decision making, billionaire success, wealth, recession, market crash

Id: UacgowUVr2E

Length: 105min 35sec (6335 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 22 2022