Ray Dalio ON: How To Discover Your Key Strengths & Make Better Decisions About Your Career
On Purpose with Jay Shetty- 2,189 views
- 18 Jan 2021
On this episode of On Purpose with Jay Shetty, Jay speaks with businessman extraordinaire Ray Dalio about how understanding your unique strengths is vital to succeeding in your career. Take Ray's incredible quiz for yourself to see just what natural strengths you possess and how they can lead to your very own business success: assessments.principles.com/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Everyone, welcome back to you on purpose. The number one health and well-being podcast in the world, thanks to each and every single one of you that come back every week to listen, learn and grow. And I'm so grateful today because we don't do this often. But now and again, every few years we end up having a guest that comes on twice. And this is one that I'm really, really excited about. Now, this guest who came on last year completely blew our minds.
It was one of our most popular podcasts downloaded last year. So you're in for a real treat. And today's is even more practical, tactical and useful for you. So I know that you're going to get a lot of value from it. So I want to get your pens out your pads. I want you to be taking notes and ready to learn from none other than Ray D'Alessio. Now, Ray Dalio, I need to share about him if you don't already know.
In nineteen seventy five, Ray Dalio founded an investment firm, Bridgewater Associates, out of his two bedroom apartment in New York City. 40 years later, Bridgewater has made more money for its clients than any other hedge fund in history and grown into the fifth most important private company in the United States, according to Fortune magazine. Ray himself has been named to Time magazine's list of the 100 most influential people in the world. He's the number one New York Times best selling author of one of my favorite books, Principles.
And today we'll be talking about his new personal discovery tool Principles You, which I cannot wait for you to try out. And we'll be putting the link for you to try it out in the caption. And it's built with the insights from his unbelievable career. And we'll also be talking about a new book, The Changing World Order Why Nations Succeed and Fail. Thank you so much for doing this. I'm so happy to be speaking with you again. I'm excited to be back there.
Always good conversations, so let's do it. Yeah.
Last time we were together in New York City and it's a different set up this time. I'm over in L.A. I'm guessing you are in New York still. Is that right? I'm in Connecticut. Oh, you're in Connecticut. OK, well, I'm in Connecticut. Absolutely beautiful. And today we're diving into this fascinating conversation that I'm really excited to have with you, because when you first brought this to my attention and your team brought it to my attention and I remember emailing back and forth with your team and I was just elated because I have found a personal discovery, tools and personality test to be so foundational in so much of my career.
And at times some of the ones that I've done have been groundbreaking for me, which just helped me focus in on my true strengths and talents and skills. And now as I go on to the next stage in my career and entrepreneurship journey of hiring people and building my team were about 50 people across the world right now. And as that continues to develop, I'm so excited to use this tool for that reason. But I want to start off by asking you, what was the first tool you ever did and what did it teach you about yourself or what did you learn about yourself?
Well, I'd say it was I don't know, twenty, twenty five years ago, I was running the company and I understood that people were different. And I got exposure at that time to Myers Briggs. And I gave it to the top one hundred and fifty managers. And I, I so we got the test right back. I read the results and in many cases I couldn't believe that people actually thought the way that they were described that they think.
And yet the they were asked to rate the the quality of the rating of them from one to five and eighty five percent rated at four or five. That said that that is me so low and that prompted conversations. What are you like. What at what. And that changed everything and have big impact. The reason was up until that point, people who thought differently than each other often got frustrated with each other. You know, the big picture thinker would dealing with the person who paid attention to details would get frustrated.
They'd say, you know, what are you got up in the details and the detail person speaking with the big picture thinker would say, your head's in the clouds, you know, and what we began to realize when we started to correlate that data with job performance is that people excelled and in different types of jobs, depending on what they need, what they're like. And also we were able to put them together to work well together. They began to appreciate the differences, understand the differences and build from there.
So that got me hooked. It was much more valuable than resumes. I'm not saying. Resumes are, but it was helpful for their development and for us for placing them, and I'd say that was about 20 or 25 years ago.
Yeah, that's that's incredible. And I love hearing that. It's it's been the same for me. I found that, you know, as you dive into these understandings, you realize people communicate differently. People deal with conflict differently. People connect and create rapport differently. And that's what these tools are so great at, showing us that actually ideal teams and good teams have people of all different types of thinking. Isn't that correct? Isn't that what you've seen over time?
Absolutely. And then beyond that, well, like you took the test, other people took the test, and they understand now where they are in the population distribution because they even when they understand what they how they think, often they don't fully understand it. But even when they do, they don't know where that they are in the population. They don't know the weaknesses and how to deal with the weaknesses, and they don't know how to deal with each other.
So what we found is when we we we can take a picture, we have diagrams that represent how somebody is in different dimensions. And when we overlay that on top of another diagram of another person, we know how they're going to interact. We know what the issues will be and we can then build on that. So, yeah, I mean, it's like I don't know how long it took you to take it, maybe 40 minutes or something.
I don't know. That's what most people take and then boom, they get it. So, yeah, it's invaluable. Yeah, absolutely. And you've already shared with everyone. I wanted to tell everyone I have done the test so I will be sharing my results. So I want you to keep listening to this podcast. If you're listening or watching right now, I will be sharing a few insights from the test, from my own reflection and reflecting on it with Ray.
So that's going to be really fascinating to stick around for that. But, Ray, I wanted to ask you, how do you start building a tool like this? Because it's it's very difficult. And as you've seen over the last twenty five years, since you've been exposed to this learning building, you've been hiring building teams. How do you go about actually building a tool like this to make it as accurate as possible in a way that you're really proud of taking out to the world right now?
Well, we we started then I wanted some other tests, so I went to other tests, workplace inventory, and anyway, a number of them, and they would give me different dimensions of about a person. So I wanted those different dimensions. And then we would use that data to compare with how they were performing in different types of jobs. And we're going to get into the collector later, but that'll be an example. And so we were we found it very valuable.
And then naturally, I was working with psychometricians about this, partially to understand it and then partially to build it. And what I decided to do was to build one test that would have all that the other tests had, plus some some some more. And so I brought on these three psychometricians who were fabulous and we discussed just built the test. And I'm now at a stage of my life that I'm passing along the things that have been valuable. So I'm passing it along to people for free so that they could take it and benefit from it.
Before we share my results and get into my insights, I'd love to hear your advice on how you recommend people approach the questions in this test, because what I find is that a lot of people, when they're faced with questionnaires like this, they either overthink it, they answer too quickly. Sometimes they aren't self-aware enough to really put the best answer out there. How do you answer this in the most authentic, accurate way so that it actually helps you with self-awareness and understanding?
Well, pretty much just relax and do it naturally, whatever feels right. We haven't had much of a problem with people getting to getting either anxious or even trying to manipulate it or anything. But if you just answer the questions in the best possible way, don't worry about perfectionism. There are a number of questions that get at the same basic idea. And so there's some triangulation, you know, just go with it and have a good time with it.
Most people have a good time with it.
That's great. Yeah, no, I've found that sometimes some of these tests people are writing down what they think they are versus what they do in reality. And there's that discrepancy of like how we think, we think or how we think we behave. But actually when we look at our actions, they suggest otherwise. So I think you're just going to like it.
I'll ask you the equivalent of do you like chocolate ice cream or vanilla ice cream or just don't think about it too much. Just, you know, what do you like. Yeah, that's that's pretty much it. That's that's a good analogy. I like that one. And what's your hope for people like you said earlier and we're going to talk about this later about how you are at a stage in your career where you're passing things on that you've learned.
What is your biggest intention and hope that when someone uses this, what are you wanting them to get out of it?
Well. First of all, discovering of themselves. And then the discovery of the difference in people and the relationships they have with other people. To make those relationships better, work better, so personal discovery will help them, they'll know what they have and what they're missing, and by knowing what they're missing, they'll be able to supplement it and be more successful. And then in the relationships with others, those things that might be confusing or frustrating can be turned into being efficient.
So it's great. That's what I hope to give people.
That's a great hope. You said to me earlier, I think before we started recording, that you had your wife do it. Does it help in marriage, in relationships, too? Is it something we can apply to dating and should be people using in those relationships?
Absolutely. Absolutely. I absolutely. And it also helps you you don't know how to talk about it. There was a test out there after we did this that one of my daughter in laws had us do over a holiday. And we don't use it some part of this test. But it was example. It was the five types of love. Yes. OK, you know, the test. And that was a good example. You know, how you speak and interact and what the other's looking for is very, very helpful.
Very valuable. Right. So though, what the hell. I mean, just. You know, it's 40 minutes, this isn't like a big commitment, so so people have also had a lot of fun with it because when they take theirs and they overlap the others on it and the group, this is what I gave you and what your listeners are going to be able to take is a beta version of it, which doesn't yet have all of the interactions with others you have built out.
We'll have that. And if they leave their names when we have that other feature, we'll get it to them. But we're we're operating that way. And it's fun. And people laugh because we had a group session with family. And, you know, I have four sons, four daughter in laws and and so on. And everybody it was funny because it said, oh, that's right. That's how it works. And that's why it works in that relationship.
So they could be fun as well as insightful.
You mentioned to me last week when we were catching up about this, that you even sent it to Elon Musk and Bill Gates. Tell us tell us about some of the things that surprised them or something that you want to share about those reflections that were useful and impactful for you? Well, I wanted to get the profiles of a certain type of person, the shaper, in other words, someone who was great at visualization and then built it out to actualisation.
So like Elon Musk has done or Bill Gates has done or, you know, many people I can rattle off, but very, very the most successful. And I wanted to get that because I wanted to hire one of those. And but so what is the pattern of the preferences shapers I call them? What is the pattern of those types of people? I wanted that DNA basically, and that's what that's what I got. So there they're all these different personality types.
But that shaper has distinctive qualities that only a small percentage of the population has it. But almost everyone who is doing that kind of thing, you know, visualizing a business or and I did it also for Muhammad Yunus, who won the Nobel Peace Prize for microfinance. I did it for Geoffrey Canada, who is Harlem Children's Zone, built this fabulous institution for dealing with poverty.
So anyway, the patterns, the patterns are clear. Yeah, there's a lot of there's a lot of different personality archetypes in your world. So you have creators, enthusiasts, influences, givers, organizers, leaders, fighters, growth seekers, thinkers. So anyone who does this test, you're going to find that. And what I found most fascinating was when you start going inside of your what you call the cognitive orientation. So if you don't mind, let's take a deep dive in some of my results that came out from the test.
If that sounds like a good idea for you right now and you can guide me through this, and this is I consider myself very fortunate, first of all, to be doing this with you personally. So I don't take this for granted. This is like, you know, sitting down with the sage and the guru and the mentor and to be guided personally through this as to when I look at my interpersonal orientation. So this is my story. This is my cognitive orientation.
How you prefer to think so my creative is ninety nine percent. It's very high. I'm guessing that's a good thing for what I do. Well, you've you've pursued what you're like, right? And a creator is not better than anything else other than creating, you know, so it may be the opposite of somebody who wants to be really reliable, meticulous and is really rule following, which can be fabulous for certain jobs. You want those people in certain jobs.
So, yes, that's your inclination. You like to let your mind go wild and you you want to have great imagination and you like creating, OK, the act of creating. And that feels true to you. So think of it almost like the food you like to eat. It's not that if you eat Italian food or Chinese food or Indian food or something, it's not better. It just is a strong preference. Yeah, absolutely.
And I would have to fully agree with that assessment. I definitely. I consider myself someone who deeply is an artist and a creative at heart, but has had to develop entrepreneurial skills to be able to spread that message, if that makes sense, that comes across in the other dimensions of your test, because in many cases there are these creators who don't accomplish anything and sometimes they just don't have a sense of the practicality of all that's necessary to be as creative as they can or to accomplish as much as they can.
So it's in the mix. Yeah, absolutely.
And that's why I found when I look at analytical here, it says you tend to be methodical and process oriented with a tendency to rely on personal instinct when reaching decisions and making choices. My analytical is 60 percent, which I love, that it was able to be so specific because I really do trust my intuition and in decision making and I and I consider myself to be an insight, intuition person. So I like to look at the data, but I like to make a decision based on my intuition, not based on the data alone.
Well, you can hear how that sentence that I gave you is so clear because and that your rating is at 60 percent is so clear, because what it's describing is that you are an analytical person. Right. You like to do that. But unlike a person who is totally analytical, who may not then deal with that other dimension, that is part of you. That is that of the 40 percent you have that other 40 percent, if you were to see that go all the way over to that scale and you wouldn't have that other 40 percent, it's a different type of analytical.
You know, you understand what I mean? Yeah, I mean, I wouldn't have that intuition, you wouldn't have that subliminal God intuition element as much, you would be just purely calculating.
And how much do you think, Ray, look at this. I'd love to hear your perspective on this, having had, you know, such an incredible career and having seen this over and over again, how much do you think some of these things do need to be developed or don't? So, for example, let's say my score was like a 10 percent on analytical. Would you be encouraging me to raise my analytical to be more successful or let's say it was one hundred percent analytical?
Would you be encouraging someone to develop intuition or is that not how this works? Explain to us how you see that's worked successfully.
There are there are two ways to be successful to acquire all of the skills and abilities to be successful. That's the tough way. Or to work with people who have those things that you are missing and work with them. Well, and that's the easy, most effective way. So, yes, we could try to change you. The difference is you can move in by the equivalent if you work hard at it by about one standard deviation of the population.
In other words, yes, if you work hard at it, you can become more and more analytical. You practice, you exercise it and so on. Your to use that example that you're using, but you have to work on it. You'll change some and so on and and generally just realize, like, you need to have it. All right. And if you have a complementary relationship, you're helping somebody who needs you. And that's usually the best way to do it.
Another one that I'm looking at here is I'm just picking out some fun ones that I like so conceptual says you have a preference to think abstractly and philosophically using theories and models to solve problems. That is very me. And it says ninety three percent, very high. I couldn't agree with that more. I love philosophise. My my greatest joy in life comes from two statements. So the first statement is by even Pavlov. And he said, if you want a new idea, read an old book.
So I really believe that I love going into timeless texts and unearthing truths. And then the second statement that kind of defines my work is by Einstein, where he said that if you can't explain something simply, you don't understand it well enough. And so for me, I like to try and find something that is really complex or intricate and detailed from the past and try and really extrapolate the essence from it so that I can share with people. That's kind of where I get my joy and buzz in life.
Well, I can hear that. I can hear that in you. I can empathize with you, by the way, because my mind is quite similar. My testing and my inclinations are quite different, quite similar to that. And then and you could hear the passion and we could feel the passion. And then we have so as to understand that there are other people who are exactly the opposite and get their passion from something different. And and, yeah, so that's good to know.
Yeah, no, absolutely. And and there's yeah, I've also met people who are right. Completely opposite, who actually love making things more complicated and intricate and mystical. Yes. You can see where people go in a conversation. You will see they go down to the detail and can they separate the detail? Do they want the detail when they want the big picture? Psychologists also call that helicoptering. You know, their everything has different levels, like Google Maps.
It's equivalent conceptually of Google Maps. So if you go up and you're looking down the pictures totally different from that level and then you go down into it. So people are either inclined to be in one level or another or some can navigate from the detail to the big picture to the detail, like when Elon Musk gave me he gave me his car to drive this one. This was way back when it sort of first came out and he was able to navigate it, showed it up in his testing and everything.
So he would pay tremendous attention to detail. He showed me then the car and how the button and you push this and the trunk opens and this does this. And and so he was like a jeweller with a piece of jewelry in terms of that design, the detail. And then he goes back to the big picture. And we were talking about like going to Mars and humanity over a period of time. He was able to navigate both of those.
That's a rare occasion, by the way, because people don't always but there are those different levels. And you can see in the conversation where people tend to gravitate to. Absolutely. And what you're saying is if someone is actually using this tool in their company or in their family or in their teams, then actually they don't just have to rely on reading people and what they're saying and hearing, they can actually have a framework that supports that, where they can find the parallels.
Yeah. So we connected to the data collector, for example. You put those profiles on and then they when they're interacting, then they're aware of those profiles and that helps. Yeah.
I saw that great video you made on YouTube about the collector, which I highly recommend. Everyone goes and watches as well if it's available to the public. But that video really explained it well. And what I found fascinating about the collector, let's talk about it. Seeing as you mentioned it, there is we are spending all of our days on Zoom right now, every single one of us, even us doing this interview right now. And you were talking about just how there's so many people who have so much to say who are not necessarily even the people speaking at that moment in time.
There are so many notes being missed, this spumoni in between the line messages that are lost in communication. And you've created this software to be able to actually capture all of that and then share that data in a way that's practical and applicable and actionable. Yeah, I'll give you a little bit of background. Yeah, I, I created it in Bridgewater's. So what people will see it to take a it allows people to express what they're thinking about people, about what they're thinking on an ongoing basis and then it allows questions and answers to go back.
Because what bothered me was only the people who could talk could I get the ideas from. And so there's a big bottleneck. And also I wanted an idea, meritocracy, everybody to be able to speak up. And I wanted everybody's thoughts. So that was that. And I also like the test. I wanted to collect the data so that with that data, they could on a day to day basis, see how they're what they're thinking. The data is collected so they know how they think again.
And also, it's been fantastic for daily three sixty reviews because everybody is working with their with others and they're getting essentially a 360 review simultaneously. So you don't wait to the end of the year for the feedback. You're getting that on an ongoing basis. Now, at this stage of my life, one of the things I'm doing is trying to help others who are running companies and so on. So, Eric, you want to run Zoom and his team runs Zoome.
He started it. He's running it. He asked me to give my commitment. There's this principles, which is this group that's taking a long passing these things along, asked us all to help. And because it had such a big effect on them, he. Having it integrated into Zoom, so we expect in January, when you go on a zoom call like this, they'll be attached to it, this dot collector, and it'll allow people to do what I've just described.
In every person, there were two youths, right? There's the upper level you, which is conscious, the conscious you, that is, and you could be logical, you could reason. Then there's the subliminal you would you actually don't get to see it's it's not conscious to you and it has its own inclinations and it's emotional or may be inspiration, things that come from the subconscious and all of those things are operating to determine your behavior. And so by being able to take your analytical you and to then collect the data and use that.
So sometimes people have emotional barriers. Not not that it's logical. Almost everybody who looks at this, these things find some very logical, but it might get a little bit of used to. OK, can you be can you give somebody critical feedback? How do you react to critical feedback? Do you want facts? This is another dimension. We were talking about this the last time we talked. Do you want to know what's true? Can you talk about what's true, these are other dimensions to it, so the potential we're living in a world now in which there's an up an opportunity to know what's true evidence based through data.
OK, do you want to know what's true? If you know what's true, it's a foundation for making great improvements. But some people do. You want to know what your weaknesses are? There's a power from knowing what your weaknesses are. Of course you want to, but you have to get yourself into also that psychological state, too. So they work together like I found the reason my company went from nothing to quite something. As you point out, the Fortune said the fifth most important private company in the country was that, in other words, to get at truth and meaningful work and meaningful relationships, being on a mission together to achieve something great and then the relationships, but to do that through radical truthfulness and radical transparency so we can take people's strengths and weaknesses and work with them to achieve that much higher level of performance.
Yeah, no, I'm totally with you. I think having data to measure the subconscious reactions and actions responses is phenomenal because that's far more interesting. And actually that conscious version of ourselves has been so conditioned and has become so default that it can often actually hold us back from a completely collaborative team or a completely high performing team, because that's just been the way we've worked for so long. And so all of it is lost in not noticing the subconscious so that the fact that that's being measured is is brilliant.
It's really useful.
It's so powerful. Otherwise it's all buried in subliminal things that people don't talk about. Yeah, not not good. Yeah. And I love what you say about wanting to know the truth, because there there has to be some courage to face our weaknesses and truly honor our strengths. I find that we've grown up in a society of I've talked about this before everywhere. I went to a high school, a very competitive, good high school back in England.
And that school would rank us in order of number one to number number one hundred and eighty of all the students in every subject every year against our peers. And so you would get to see that. And that was useful. But what was missed there was what you're talking about, the subconscious potential of this hidden potential.
What what what what what people don't understand is that they think how good they are is in that. No. Yes, OK. And what they lose is the power of mistakes and weaknesses. That's why one of the reasons why academic success is very poorly correlated with subsequent success in life. And so people become attached to what they know, the one I think the greatest duty of mankind. It's a big statement. The greatest tragedy of mankind is that people hold opinions in their heads which are wrong, that they could so easily stress test, but they're so attached to those opinions that might be wrong.
If there's a disagreement of them, somebody must be wrong. How do you know it's not you? And to be able to learn if you're attached to knowing, you don't have a capacity to learn. If you're curious and you focus in on what you don't know and you're excited about not knowing and learning, then you have you will learn more and you will raise your chances of coming up with a good answer. So that whole dynamic as you're dealing with it is am I worthy?
Am I good now? I don't want to look at my mistakes. I don't want to look at my weaknesses is one of the great tragedies of our time.
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And I want to move back to some parts of my test, because I still want to get your insight on this one is this section on interpersonal orientations, how I engage with others? Right. And my extrovert ness is ninety seven percent. And the definition is you tend to be engaging and outgoing. You thrive at the epicenter of social activities and are socially bold and adventurous. So I'll share something that's interesting about this. I agree with that highly, very much agree with that.
At the same time, I love being alone more than being around lots of people. So I get a lot of energy from seclusion and solitude and being in silence. And I crave that almost. And I try and construct my days in such a way that I can have more of that. So how does that how is your I would love to hear your understanding of extroversion and introversion and how what I just shared with you fits together in a very natural way.
Your natural inclination is to do those things that were mentioned and it described you very well. And then you like you're like me also meditate or understand the power of the rejuvenative nature of that experience. And also while we both meditate. And so we understand that what it's like to go into the subconscious and to refresh ourselves and how that balance then gives us the energy and the equanimity to come back and to do the other. So that's how it works. You've experienced it, you describe it, and that's basically what it's picking up in you in terms of the the the excitement.
There will be people who will be very different from that. Meditation is something, for example, or going within is something that is beneficial to everyone. But at the same time, when you there are many people who wouldn't want to do the things that they just described you wanting to do. In other words, you want to you will go into a group, you get your energy with that, you will naturally be there. There are people who are introverted who would say that's the last thing in the world that I want.
So you're naturally as described and then also using that in the way that I use that I'm tested and I'm very much exactly like you and and I experience that. Yeah.
And that's I love hearing that. It's very reassuring hearing that from you. And and I know that meditation has been a huge part of your practice. And we'll come back to that towards the end of the interview. I want to dive more into that. This was fun how I engage with others. It says that I am at one percent caring. So you have a strong desire to prioritize and support others. Needs are fascinated by their behaviors and tendencies.
Those tend to be less sensitive to and caught up in their emotions and feelings. So that was that that was interesting to me. I was like, yeah, I consider myself to be an empathetic, caring individual at the same time. And to compare that to I'm also sixty eight percent on the tough scale. So you tend to be willing to debate your and others ideas and perspectives, share criticism openly when warranted, but tend to be more diplomatic and nuanced than blunt and direct in your style.
And that I fully agree with you that I don't I've never believed that being rude or being angry without control or to just be aggressive is ever useful. But to really share things in an open way without beating around the bush is really my very much needed. So I like that comparison between tough and caring.
Well, do you see how it really picked up the subtlety of that? Those sentences were written specifically for that mix of attributes and tailored that way because it's saying that you are this way, but you're not this way. And so that sentence was very apt, very sophisticated or subtle, finessed kind of description of what that means for you. And there's a continuum there. You say that somebody might they might be, you know, just one way or another.
Right. But so, yes, you are direct. You are strong. You you want those things. And while you want those things and you're deeply caring. OK, that caring this does not mean that you're going to shy away from talking about difficult things to talk about because you feel that you need to well, you can hear that's captured you and that's a very important difference than somebody who might be also not a caring but cannot talk about the difficult things because that makes it very difficult for them to do.
And there are many people who are like that. And so they in the test would have a description that would say and you find it difficult to talk to people about such things and resolve them. That's the power of the test.
What I what I found so unique and powerful about this test, especially at this point that you've just, again, reemphasized to me and highlighted to me is that that subtle nuance plays so deeply into my self-awareness because I believe I'm someone who likes to embrace polarities. So I believe that being spiritual and being strategic need to work together. I don't believe it's either or. I don't I don't think you can say I'm I'm just spiritual. I'm just strategic for me as to work together or when I hear people say, like, oh, you have to be affectionate or assertive.
And I'm like, no, no. I'm both of those things. Like, I want to be affectionately assertive. And so to me, I've always wanted to. Articulate and share more that I believe in embracing polarities and this picked up on that which I found fascinating because it's such a key, integral part of how I see myself and the fact that it could get right in there is really, truly powerful. And think about that. One means for the people that you have relationships with, then when you give it to them and they say this is a description because you could just go check, I believe it.
It's powerful here. You understand they're understanding you. They're understanding what you're doing, where you're coming from. And you could understand when they give you theirs. You can understand that and all make sense. Yeah, absolutely.
If everyone is listening and watching right now, if you're ever speaking to your partner, you're speaking to a colleague and you're wondering why they don't tell you how it is, because that's how you respond. If you do this activity with them, you will be able to see how they deal with difficult conversations, how they're caring and how they're carrying style comes across. And this one for everyone's listening and watching, I want you to tell me if you agree or disagree to my my humor score came back and my humor score is sixty three percent.
It says you tend to be more joyful and lighthearted than serious and intense. Sixty three percent is pretty accurate. I'd say I, I like to be quite sober to my wife has been pushing me in the more lighthearted and joyful because that's what she is. And I'm pretty sure if we do all this up for her, it would be like ninety nine percent. I go, I designed it but. But anyone is listening or watching right now. You can tell me if you think I'm funny or not.
You can tag me and Ray on Instagram as well at Jerry at Ray Dalio. Tell them whether you think it should be more than sixty three percent or less than sixty three percent. But that was a fun one to see in there again. Right. The next part is called Motivational Orientation, which just for everyone he knows, describes how you manage and apply yourself as challenges of face. I'm interested in this, Composed said. Ninety nine percent, very high.
You tend to remain calm, confident and controlled under stress or pressure. I feel very grateful to have been trained in that ability, thanks to meditation, thanks to my time as a monk. And it felt very it felt very reassuring to see that on paper.
Well, yes. And and it's you. And you see how this composite adds up to you. All right, so you're creative, you have the caring, but you're strong, you'll talk about those issues and then, you know, you're in a position where you're under stress, you'll be calm and so on. Wow. This is painting a very rich picture because there are some people who, you know, stress is not good for you and you wouldn't want them to be in that particular situation.
You might on it. They need help. And so there you go.
Yeah, absolutely. And this one really resonates. So it's really it's I'll share this with you. So the composed aspect is what I gained from being a monk. But the next thing I'm going to share with you is what stopped me from remaining a monk. So my autonomous is 99 percent. So you're an independent, self-motivated and hold yourself accountable for outcomes you experience. But that independence is what broke me out of living as a monk because I could no longer adhere to the rules and practices and feel that that's how I wanted to share the wisdom.
And so it's interesting how experiences in my life help us Gain said in skills like that composure, but then also a natural inclination of autonomy, which is very high in me. I know that for a fact pushes you out of it too. And then and this is great. Flexible. Ninety nine percent, which I found this one was really fascinating. So status seeking. You have a moderate preference to please and keep up appearances, be liked, admired and respected.
So I was 50 percent moderate, which I was actually really happy that that was actually measurable. So I always said to people, I believe it's really important to show up be that the president be relevant. But at the same time, you're not that's not your governing factor. That's not your anchor. That's not why I do what I do. But I realize the value of it. And the fact that he was able to hit it 50 percent, that was that was mind blowing to see that that level of that level of accuracy.
So these these sentences literally feel like they were written directly for me. And by the way, just everyone knows I really do believe in the horoscope effect where if you think something's written for you, it is you. But having done a lot of these exercises and having spent a lot of time doing self awareness, I can promise you that this is not the horoscope of fact. I'm reading these statements and feeling very well understood and deeply understood. So I just want to throw that out there because the horoscope effect is real.
But this is not that.
And the way that we test it is we go back you we sometimes we blind test it and we say, who is this person? And they get, oh, that's that person. And and you get the triangulation knowledge. Yeah, it's the real deal.
So, yeah, no, I absolutely love the test, I highly recommend it to everyone, I think it's a great conversation starter with your partner. I think it's incredible to do with your teams. I think it's phenomenal to do in your companies. I was saying to Ray when we spoke about this last week that my hope is that my Jedi certification school can adopt this and use this in our coaching school as one of the tools that we recommend to people because we want people to gain this self-awareness.
And what better way than to have a really accurate, like you said, forty five minutes. One hundred and twenty questions. It did not feel like that at all. It was really I love doing these things and I love reading the results even more. And I couldn't recommend it more to each of you for your relationships, your families, your teams, your companies, depending on what level you're at in the company. But I'll definitely be recommending this to the to the CEOs, the executives that I work with in my work and coaching work.
And we're going to put the link for all of you to try out. So this is a beta version, I believe, that Ray is giving us access to. And so we're very grateful to Ray and the team at Principles for doing that for us. And so I want each and every single one of you that are listening to this. If you've been fascinated by learning about my answers and seeing how me and Ray have been reflecting, I want to see your head on to Instagram, share your archetype, share your insights of what you learned, and tag me and Ray on Instagram because we want to be able to see what is it that you learned about yourself.
And then I want to keep you monitoring and I want you to come back and tell me some stories about how this has impacted your relationships and your companies. And if you record it and send it into us, we will put it on a future episode as well. So I want to gather some qualitative responses from you as well as quantitative. So I want to throw that out there for everyone is watching. Well, then let me say thank you very much, because, you know, my goal is to pass it along and make it as good as possible to people.
And if you all give that kind of feedback in this beta test, it'll all make it better and better and it's better for everyone. So while that would be just great, awesome.
Thanks so very I have to ask you before we move on to the next part of the interview, I have to ask you, so if you were hiring me for a role in one of your companies, what would be my role? Where would you put me based on what you've learned?
I'd have you as my strategic partner, in other words. OK, big picture, where are we going? How do we get there? And then I think you'd be extremely effective in dealing with people. Because, OK, you understand all of those things that that mix that you have between, on the one hand, being able to deal truthfully with those issues and not shying away from that, but to be able to do that well and to keep their well-being as paramount importance in their development and so on are qualities that you have that would be your inclination.
But I'd also need to supplement you, you know, as everybody else, and that would mean the people that would work with you to help on the implementation. I wouldn't want you to get caught up in the details. I wouldn't want you to necessarily rely on all the precision and the accuracy and all of those types of things. Yeah.
Thank you very much. I appreciate that. That's that's great to hear. I know I have a job lined up if I need it. And we know that's that's awesome. It's really great to hear that. I agree. I was going to be my second question. Who do you think I should be surrounding myself by to be more effective and productive when you answered it just there and then that having people around me that are highly detailed oriented, implementation oriented people who can bring that vision to life and I can agree with you more.
I know I'm on the search for them in my company right now. So very much aligned with that. And and I want people to know I really felt a great degree of accuracy doing this.
Now, we've talked about this before.
You're at a stage in your life. And and you said it very wonderfully to me the other day. You said, you know, I'm at a stage in my life. I'm trying to share what I've learned. We see you doing that with principles now, with principles you with Dr. Blacktail, with your new book that's coming out called The Changing World Order Why Nations Succeed and Fail and What I Love about the Way You Do It, and you beautifully said this, you were like, when when you get this, you're saying that we share it, but you said when you get to seventy one, you want to do it faster.
And I thought, what a what a what a beautiful way to live that you're living with such purpose in service and you always have. But you're continuing to do that today and we're benefiting from it. But what I love that you have the ability to do based on your experience and background, is you're able to go from these micro, individual, deep personal topics to then scale. And like you said, the helicopter kind of method of then talk about these really macro global national issues and challenges.
And and you have not just the authority and experience, but you have the insight to be able to speak about these things. And so your new book, The Changing World Order Why Nations Succeed and Fail, which you can preorder right now if you're listening to this episode, the book is not out yet, but it will be out soon. So you can preorder on Amazon. You talk about these three really fascinating concepts we talk about a lot. But I want to dive into these three important concepts.
And the first one is something that rings really true for people right now. And we'll see the crescendo. But we talk about the financial challenges and the financial issues that is currently facing, only amplified by the pandemic and the craziness of twenty twenty. And and I was I was intrigued to hear what you felt is what's going to make nations financially succeed and fail as the future unfolds. Where does our financial power, history and legacy lie and how our nation is going to fail or succeed at this very important metric?
Well, I'm happy to answer it. I just wanted to clarify that I'm writing the book and I'm putting in my drafts of all the chapters. They're available on LinkedIn. So if you really want to read the book as it's being written, you go to LinkedIn and you can get it as it's happening and it doesn't cost you anything. So that's a possibility. If you like to do that, you can understand it.
There are there are three big things that are happening in our lifetimes or right now that didn't happen in my lifetime before, didn't happen in our lifetimes before, but happened in history. And it was interesting to me over my years that that that my surprises often came from things that didn't happen in my lifetime but happened before in history. And those three things that are referring to and by the way, all happened in the thirties were first with financial and and debt.
And that means when. There was a lot of debt and interest rates were pushed down to zero percent, and in order to stimulate the economy, the government had to produce a lot more debt, that the central banks had to print money to buy that debt. That coming to the end of a long term debt cycle is happening now. We're in that era. It has big implications for the value of money and who gets money and so on. And the last time that happened was the 1930s.
So I'll explain that those implications in a minute. But I want to get to the second of those influences. The second of those big influences is large gaps in wealth, values and politics. I can measure the wealth gap, the income gap, the political gap. Statistically, I show it, I know it. And we have not had such large gaps. You have to go back again to the 1930s to have those types of gaps. And we see it every day.
And that has real implications. It has economic implications such as what will tax policy be, what will spending be, what will we put as our prioritization? So it affects us every day, but it even affects how are we dealing with each other. We have gotten almost to the point of having irreconcilable differences and being in a position where there's winning at all cost. And history has shown that that is a very threatening type of situation, that it's the brink of civil war and revolution when there's not enough respect for the system or enough interaction.
So it's a risky, really risky point that we see every day. What how should we be what are our values, all of what does that mean for taxes? You see it red states and blue states and the differences. And that has implications, financial, economic and so on. And the third factor is the rise of a great power to challenge the United States as a great power. And that, again, in the 30s, for example, there was the British Empire and then Germany and Japan grows and were able to challenge and and that led to conflicts and eventually led to war.
We now have for the first time in this order, this world order, which began in nineteen forty five when the end of World War One, we began a new system was the American system. Put the dollar at the center of that system in America and the American world order rules were American. And that is now there's the emergence of China. And so we're having conflicts of China. There are five types of major conflicts that always happen over and over again.
And we're experiencing that. They call them wars. There's a trade war. There's a technology war, there's a geopolitical war. There is a capital war and there is a military buildup and so on. And so how a lot of things are going to happen, how technology will unfold, how capital and trade will be, which will affect us all, is influenced by that. So those three things happened over and over again. So I study the last five hundred years of history to see the patterns.
And I learned a lot about those three things and how they relate to each other, tells us where we are and gives us some good ideas of the risks and opportunities of what might come. Yeah, no, those three are so interesting when, like you just said, are being faced at the same time, which makes it such a unprecedented time as we hear over and over again. What is the route of solving or finding a solution within all of those three?
Because it's almost like all roads point to like a bad space or like a negative outcome. When you hear those three things, the financial problems, we're at each other's throats, as you've said, the opposition power rising. What is the solution and what are what are the ways or alternative paths that we can take as a nation, as countries across the world to create more harmony? Well, that's the great thing about the lessons of history is it's not unprecedented.
It's only unprecedented in our lifetimes. Yeah. We can look back over there and you see these things happen. Over and over again, and so there are lessons, for example, on the war issue. There were 12 there were 16 times where there were rising powers that challenge the existing powers. In 12 of those times, they had wars. In four of those times, they didn't have wars that they worked it out. And and so you could see societies that came close to civil war or wars internationally.
The big things are two big things. How the people deal with each other, recognizing whether this is a common challenge and they recognize the need to find the common solutions through working together to find those common solutions with the recognition and the horror of knowing what the the these wars are like. So fear of those wars, understanding those wars, anybody who went through those wars and saw those things up close knows that they never want to have anything like that again.
But unfortunately, they've let those people have passed away. And so the that that notion of fear, that the necessity of working it together in a non conflicting way is very important. And the second of those things are skills, skills that so that you can engineer the increasing the size of the pie and dividing it. Well, what what history has shown is that some people are focused in on increasing the size of the pie, but not dividing it well.
And so that's a problem. And some people are so focused on dividing it that they don't know how to increase the size of the pie. At the end of the day, you have to raise productivity, whatever you get to consume, whatever you get to eat, somebody's got to produce. And so productivity has got to be important. While there's also a recognition that that has to encompass most people so that those most people can be productive and share in that productivity.
If you don't have that, you'll have that out of balance and you'll have a problem. So those are the two things skills and the need to do it together are the two most important that history gives us as a guide. You know, where you are every day is not a new day, right. In other words, we're not in a position where our debts were the same as when we 30 years ago. And we're not in a position that monetary policy can be there.
And we're not in a position that like at the end of the war where we're most people, there's a big middle class and the differences between them were great. You have to recognize those differences and be able to skillfully and together deal with those differences. Yeah, that is that's such great analysis and I'm so glad that you went and picked those lessons out from hindsight, because I think that's a beautiful statement by Mark Twain where he said similar to what you're saying.
He said history never repeats itself, but it always rhymes. And we're in that situation right now where you're saying it's not exactly the same. But there are a lot of the same factors that are that are involved. And by recognizing the differences, but still applying the knowledge of the past that we missed out on, I think I'm really hoping that you're speaking to and guiding some of our world leaders in that direction, because it's I think there's a lot of people who feel, at least from my conversations on the ground, at least feel very helpless and don't know how they can be a part of that macro change.
And so I am speaking to world leaders, and I also know how challenging it is to be in their position, because they also report to a population that could be quite emotional and quite demanding. And so the idea of doing it rationally is is important, but that's policy for the whole. But individuals need to start with taking care of themselves. So don't worry if you're not changing the world, OK, and fixing the world, but worry about how you're handling that yourself.
Right. And that means how you how you save your money, how you prepare that your cook, you know, your financial cushion, how you invest your money, how you. Treat yourself that that may be your meditation or your understanding of such times, these are all things that you could do to help you and your family and the people that you care about. That's important. You may not solve the problems of the world, but you can know how to deal with the world.
Well. Yeah, that's great advice, Ray. That's awesome. Thank you so much. Everyone who hasn't like Ray said, you can get the free chapters on LinkedIn or if you like me and love having real books in your house, then you can order the changing world order for when it's out. Ray makes Ray your teammates beautiful book principles. It's a beautiful book. It feels good. It looks great. It reads even better inside. And so if anyone does want the physical copy, you can preorder it.
But Ray said he's being very kind and generous and you can find the draft chapters as the books being written on linked in as well to download. It's been wonderful speaking to you again and you've been so generous with your time. And I wanted to thank you again for your beautiful testimonial that you gave to my book, Think Like a Monk, which was very, very gracious of you, very kind. I was very honored to receive that. It meant a lot.
And even reconnecting with you today and learning from you and getting the fortune and the joy of being able to go through my principles, you in Personal Discovery tour with us was really my pleasure. So thank you so much. Well, we're very aligned. I have a great deal of respect for you. And I think that your listeners are very lucky to have your input on a regular basis. So, you know, thank you for allowing me to share these things.
I hope they're of use to them. Absolutely.
I think I think this this stage of your life is going to serve people in an incredible, incredible way with all this work you're doing. And it's what I love about it so much is that it's it's building tools. It's building frameworks, everything you've done for so many years, but for individuals. And I think that's going to be so powerful. So thank you for doing what you're doing and thank you for allowing me to be a part of it.
And a big thank you to your incredible team for always encouraging our collaboration. So thank you to them all. Everyone is listening and watching. Make sure you follow Ray on Instagram and across social media. Please, please, please go ahead and click on the link. Do the beta version of principles. You I promise you, you won't regret it. And of course, you can preorder the book, The New World Order and look out for Collector on Zoome as well.
Ray, thank you so much for being here. And we're so grateful to have you as a regular probably the third guest only to have ever done two episodes and on purpose so far. One of those three is my wife. So this has been absolutely awesome. Right.
Thank you so much, Mörner. Thank you. So thank you.
Hey, guys, this is Jay again, just a few more quick things before you leave. I know we try to focus on the good every day, and I want to make that easier for you. Would you like to get a short email from me every week that gives you an extra dose of positivity? Weekly Wisdom is my newsletter. Write down whatever's on my mind that I think may uplift your week. Basically little bits of goodness that are going to improve your well-being.
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This podcast was produced by Dust Light Productions, our executive producer from Dust Light is Michelle Yousef. Our senior producer is Juleanna Bradley. Our associate producer is Jacqueline Castillo. Valentino Rivera is our engineer. Our music is from Blue Dot Sessions and special thanks to Rachel Garcia, the dust like development and operations coordinator.