Page 87 - Ray Dalio - Principles

time, everyone’s attitudes toward this approach of openly
exploring what people are like shifted 180 degrees. Most
people found that having this information out in the open for

everyone to see was more liberating than constraining because
when it became the norm, people gained the sort of comfort
that comes with just being themselves at work that family
members have with each other at home.

Because this way of operating was so unusual, a number of
behavioral psychologists came to Bridgewater to evaluate it. I
urge you to read their assessments, which were

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overwhelmingly favorable. The Harvard psychologist Bob
Kegan called Bridgewater “a form of proof that the quest for
business excellence and the search for personal realization
need not be mutually exclusive—and can, in fact, be essential
to each other.”

I should also explain that my personal circumstances at the
time also drew me to psychology and neurology. While for the

most part I am keeping my family members’ lives out of this
book to protect their privacy, I will tell you this one story
about my son Paul as it is relevant and he is open about it.

After graduating from NYU’s Tisch film school, Paul
headed out to Los Angeles to take a job. One day he went to
the front desk of the hotel where he was staying while he

looked for an apartment and smashed their computer. He was
arrested and thrown in jail, where he was beaten up by guards.
Ultimately, he was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, released
into my custody, and admitted to the psychiatric ward of a
hospital.

That was the beginning of a three-year roller-coaster ride
that took Paul, Barbara, and me to the peaks of his manias and

the depths of his depressions, through the twists and turns of
the health care system, and into discussions with some of the
most brilliant and caring psychologists, psychiatrists, and
neuroscientists at work today. There is nothing to prompt
learning like pain and necessity, and this gave me plenty of
both. At times I felt as though I was holding Paul by the hand
as he was dangling over a cliff—from one day to the next, I

never knew whether I could hold on or if he would slip from