Principles: Your Guided Journal (Create Your Own Principles to Get the Work and Life You Want)

From Ray Dalio, the legendary investor and #1 New York Times bestselling author of Principles—whose books have sold more than five million copies worldwide—comes a guided reflection journal that empowers readers everywhere to develop their own principles for success in work and life.

“Principles are fundamental truths that serve as the foundations for behavior that gets you what you want out of life.” —Ray Dalio

In his #1 New York Times bestseller Principles, legendary investor Ray Dalio introduced millions of readers around the world to the unconventional approach he developed as the founder and builder of Bridgewater Associates, the largest and most successful hedge fund in the world. Dalio attributes his unique success to his process of recording, refining, and acting on a set of well-defined principles, which are effectively decision-rules for getting what you want out of life and work. His goal in publishing the book was to show readers the value of principle-based thinking so that they could develop their own principles, aligned with their own values, for getting whatever they wanted out of life.

With this new journal, Dalio takes his goal one step further to help readers reflect on and record their own principles. He does that by providing a series of guided exercises and questions for reflecting on what you’re like, what you value, and what principles will best help you achieve your goals. These exercises draw from key concepts in the original Principles book, including:

1. How to identify your strengths, weaknesses, motivations, and preferences
2. How to use the “five-step process” to achieve your goals
3. How to become both “assertive and open-minded at the same time”
4. How to maximize your learning from your mistakes (which are inevitable)

All of these exercises can optionally be enhanced using the free Principles in Action iOS and Android app (currently available in the United States, UK, Germany, Spain, and India with more countries to come), which provides an even more interactive, multimedia experience, and they are followed by a number of blank journal pages containing thought-provoking and unconventional prompts from Principles aimed at helping you formulate your own principles. The experience concludes with a structured reflection on where you and your loved ones are along life’s journey, leaving you with a highly personalized, practical playbook for achieving success in the years ahead.

A global macro investor for more than 50 years, Ray Dalio founded Bridgewater Associates out of his two-bedroom apartment in NYC and ran it for most of its 50 years, building it into the largest hedge fund in the world under his leadership. He is now in a stage of life in which he wants to pass along and help people learn about principles that have helped him, especially in markets and the economy. He is a long-running New York Times bestselling author of Principles: Life and Work, Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order, and Principles for Navigating Big Debt Crises. He graduated with a B.S. in Finance from C.W. Post College in 1971 and received an MBA degree from Harvard Business School in 1973. He has been married to his wife, Barbara, for 46 years and has three grown sons and seven grandchildren. He is an active philanthropist.