yego.me
💡 Stop wasting time. Read Youtube instead of watch. Download Chrome Extension

Principles for Success: "The Abyss" | Episode 4


2m read
·Nov 10, 2024

Principles for success: an ultra mini-series adventure in 30 minutes and in eight episodes.

Episode four: The Abyss. We progress forward until we encounter setbacks. Whether or not we get out of them and continue forward or spiral downward depends on whether or not we're willing to face the failure objectively and make the right decisions to turn the loop upward again.

Something terrible happened to me in 1982 when I bet everything on a depression that never came. The period between 1979 and 1982 was one of extreme turbulence for the global economy and markets and for me. I believed that the US economy, with the world economy tied to it, was headed toward a catastrophe. This view was extremely controversial. I wanted the great upside and very publicly took a big risk and was wrong.

Dead wall. After a delay, the stock market began a big bull market that lasted 18 years, and the US economy enjoyed the greatest growth period in its history. This experience was like a blow to my head with a baseball bat. I had to cut my losses so that my company, Bridgewater, was left with one employee: me. I was so broke I had to borrow $4,000 from my dad to pay my bills.

But even worse was having to let go of the people I cared so much about. I wondered whether I should give up my dream of working for myself and play it safe by working for someone else in a job that would require me to put on a tie and commute every day. Though I knew that for me, taking less risk would mean having a less great life, being so wrong—and especially being so publicly wrong—was painfully humbling.

I am still shocked and embarrassed by how arrogant I was in being totally confident in a totally incorrect view. Though I'd been right much more than I'd been wrong, I had let one bad bet erase all my good ones. I thought very hard about the relationship between risk and reward and how to manage them, but I couldn't see a path forward that would give me the rewards I wanted without unacceptable risk.

This kind of experience happens to everyone. It will happen to you. You will lose something or someone you think you can't live without, or you will suffer a terrible illness or injury, or your career will fall apart before your eyes. You might think that your life is ruined and that there is no way to go forward, but it will pass. I assure you that there is always a best path forward, and you probably just don't see it yet. You just have to reflect well to find it. You have to embrace your reality.

In Episode five, I'll show you how this realization drove me to wonder how reality works and how to best deal with it.

[Music]

More Articles

View All
Can We Really Touch Anything?
[Applause] Can we, can we really touch something? So, I can touch the camera. The question of, can we really touch something, is a great one. Well, let’s say we have two electrons. I imagine what we mean by touching is that they come in and they actually…
15 Things That Make You WEAKER
Growth begins when we begin to accept our own weakness. Jean Vanier. Do you know there are some things you indulge in that could make you weak? Sometimes those things could be harmful to your health and, of course, lead to unproductivity. Weakness, simpl…
What Is The Speed of Dark?
Hey, Vsauce. Michael here. Nyctophobia is the fear of the dark. But there’s another fear that’s more chilling. It’s the fear that darkness will go away: optophobia, the fear of opening your eyes. Light travels at the fastest speed possible for a physical …
Learn to code in 60 seconds #programming #computerscience #python #khanacademy
Learn to code in 60 seconds. A program is a coded set of instructions for a computer to execute. Programs manipulate data, which come in several data types: integers, that’s whole numbers; floats, have decimal points; booleans, true or false; and strings,…
Sonic Postcards from The Appian Way | Podcast | Overheard at National Geographic
That was our first experience with an unpassable section of the Appian Way. We were with Ricardo at that point. Ricardo told us the path is not clear, so probably we have to cross the river. But let’s see. Writer Nina Strolik and photographer Andrea Fraz…
Filming Extreme Weather (Behind the Scenes) | National Geographic
Really nice right here. Tom, number one just went off. She wants to go, something doesn’t she? This could get exciting. A faction—I’m Sean Casey, a documentary filmmaker. We are currently in Skagway, Alaska, and we’re about to motor 200 miles to the midd…