Page 156 - Ray Dalio - Principles

do so for. That’s because you will regularly encounter
situations that will force you to make such choices.

While such decisions might seem too erudite for your taste,
you will make them either consciously or subliminally, and

they will be very important.

For me personally, I now find it thrilling to embrace reality,
to look down on myself through nature’s perspective, and to be
an infinitesimally small part of the whole. My instinctual and
intellectual goal is simply to evolve and contribute to
evolution in some tiny way while I’m here and while I am
what I am. At the same time, the things I love most—my work

and my relationships—are what motivate me. So, I find how
reality and nature work, including how I and everything will
decompose and recompose, beautiful—though emotionally I
find the separation from those I care about difficult to
appreciate.

1.6 Understand nature’s practical

lessons.

I have found understanding how nature and evolution work

helpful in a number of ways. Most importantly, it has helped
me deal with my realities more effectively and make difficult
choices. When I began to look at reality through the
perspective of figuring out how it really works, instead of
thinking things should be different, I realized that most
everything that at first seemed “bad” to me—like rainy days,
weaknesses, and even death—was because I held

preconceived notions of what I personally wanted. With time,
I learned that my initial reaction was because I hadn’t put
whatever I was reacting to in the context of the fact that reality
is built to optimize for the whole rather than for me.

a. Maximize your evolution. Earlier, I mentioned that the unique
abilities of thinking logically, abstractly, and from a higher
level are carried out in structures located in the neocortex.

These parts of the brain are more developed in humans and
allow us to reflect on ourselves and direct our own evolution.