Page 159 - Ray Dalio - Principles

you’re not pushing your limits, you’re not maximizing your
potential. Though this process of pushing your limits, of
sometimes failing and sometimes breaking through—and

deriving benefits from both your failures and your successes—
is not for everyone, if it is for you, it can be so thrilling that it
becomes addictive. Life will inevitably bring you such
moments, and it’ll be up to you to decide whether you want to
go back for more.

If you choose to push through this often painful process of
personal evolution, you will naturally “ascend” to higher and

higher levels. As you climb above the blizzard of things that
surrounds you, you will realize that they seem bigger than they
really are when you are seeing them up close; that most things
in life are just “another one of those.” The higher you ascend,
the more effective you become at working with reality to
shape outcomes toward your goals. What once seemed
impossibly complex becomes simple.

a. Go to the pain rather than avoid it. If you don’t let up on yourself
and instead become comfortable always operating with some
level of pain, you will evolve at a faster pace. That’s just the
way it is.

Every time you confront something painful, you are at a
potentially important juncture in your life—you have the

opportunity to choose healthy and painful truth or unhealthy
but comfortable delusion. The irony is that if you choose the
healthy route, the pain will soon turn into pleasure. The pain is
the signal! Like switching from not exercising to exercising,
developing the habit of embracing the pain and learning from
it will “get you to the other side.”

By “getting to the other side,” I mean that you will become

hooked on:

• Identifying, accepting, and learning how to deal with your
weaknesses,

• Preferring that the people around you be honest with you
rather than keep their negative thoughts about you to
themselves, and