Ray Dalio is a wealthy american billionaire investor, hedge fund manager, and philanthropist. He has this YouTube video on principles for success (click the name above to see the video). He speaks on alot of things like learning patience and not allowing fear to stop you.
- Know your goals and run after them
- Encounter the problems that stand in the way of getting to your goals
- Diagnose these problems to get at their root causes
- Design a plan to eliminate the problems
- Execute those designs
This is basically what success looks like to him, we set a goal and immediately we encounter problems, stumble and fall. But we cannot stay fallen, we cannot use it as an excuse, we cannot give in to fear, pain and doubt.
Fear, pain, doubt, they are all natural in occurrence throughout our lives. We must however learn to view them for what they are and work to build an accurate diagnosis and design our way out of the fall and into the doing aspect.
I used Ray Dalio because this is more logic driven than my own thoughts, however with this logic in mind how easy is the thought of taking that first step with which you know you must if you are to truly be who you have always been.
Trust the process, something a lot of us say but what is the trust and where do we find it? I like to think myself a Christian, I’m not baptized nor have I particularly been to church in a while, but regardless, a Christian I consider myself.
So my trust is in God, but I hadn’t been living as if I trusted him. I just constantly spoke about it, convincing myself that saying it was the action. But when the time to act on the trust came calling I’d find myself acting against the trust I claimed to believe in.
I’m not anywhere near the close of this journey, if there is a close, but just like Ray Dalio’s poster, I needed to take steps regardless of what that would look like. For a while I couldn’t take any forward steps because deep down I had no clue or idea who I was. I left myself masked by the opinions I’d carried from childhood. But now that I feel as figured out for this season of my life as I can possibly be.
I find myself at the edge of the ledge, the game hasn’t ended but it seems to successfully have opened to the next stage, where I must jump to begin the level. I don’t see too far off because a mist is blocking my view. I turn around to look at how much of the game I’ve played.
I know what’s back there, I know what I have to do to remain alive and pick up cool collectables on the path, but I’ve already beat that level. I lay on the ground searching for a ladder from the ledge of this mountain. But there is only one option, the game asks me to jump, with no parachute or idea of the landscape once I jump, but I must jump.
The story of Job is one I’ve been reading, this man suffered altogether but through it all he trusted and praised God. Now praised, doesn’t mean he didn’t complain when the pain was too much for him to bear, no it just meant he trusted that Gods love had not forsaken him and most importantly that God should be praised both in Good and bad season.
To take the step when you can’t see the next stair is a difficult one, because our fear of tumbling down over powers our hope in healing from the fall and being in a better situation.
Said differently, the pain that will be felt today is a much more powerful fear than the fear of holding on and the pain that tomorrow brings. Life is a collection of ups and downs and these have occurred while we have been without trust.
While we had given up on ourselves. While we had been without hope, life happened and we survived even while through it all we were unhappy, unsatisfied. Jump with a sort of plan mapped in your head, when you jump, what next?
I don’t have the answers to some of the questions but I know jumping and our truth are constants. I just know I’m not alone on this ledge wondering if it’s time for a new level or do we step back and unconsciously go through the old levels.
Trust that it gets better, trust that we are not alone and a little bravery and boldness on our part can shape the rest of our lives forever. This is what I tell myself constantly, I hope you find it as useful.
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