Albert Einstein And Ray Dalio — The Journey To Become Intelligent
“Truth — more precisely, an accurate understanding of reality — is the essential foundation for producing good outcomes.” Ray Dalio
It can be hard to face your fears head on, and critically facing the hard truth that bring up those fears in the first place is even harder.
How come it’s hard for us to face something as simple as the truth? Especially knowing we’ll be empowered and in a better position to improve ourselves after we know more — even if it’s a weakness.
Feelings aren’t always rational, and as we all know through experience, fear dissolves instantly the moment we face them.
The public speaker who’s nervous at the beginning until s/he get’s on a roll and becomes confident.
Or facing a procrastination head on and feeling good about yourself because you overcame it.
Fear runs so much of our existence, so much more than we know, making it incredibly hard to overcome, and even harder to channel effectively for positive growth and development.
Masters of fear, conscious to it’s power, are able to override it for themselves, and read between the lines of a situation, person or experience.
This is the foundation required for unconditional passion. It took extreme fearlessness for a human being in the more primitive times of Christ to come up with:
“Forgive them father, for they know not what they do.”
It takes even more for a Halocaust survivor to watch his family be desecrated, and years later, upon catching an employee stealing from him even whilst being a generous employer to still declare:
“The human being is inherently good.”
If they can do it, we certainly can in today’s luxurious environment.
The stress we feel may arouse the same emotions as it did for those in the past, so I get it, but let’s be aware that they don’t compare in magnitude. The world is relative and our perception of it is based on the time we live in.
We’re all very lucky today.
Let’s acknowledge that if we aren’t having suffering directly inflicted upon us, and are safe from outside forces — and aren’t starving, we have luxurious lives.
You may be wondering why up till now I’ve been talking about fear and feelings in an article on intelligence. It’s because the most practical way to define intelligence for the context of the individual life, according to Dr. Max Tegmark of MIT is to accomplish complex goals over a long period of time.
Goals that require day to day decisions in our every day lives that transition from situation to situation and person to person.
And what drives most of our decisions? Fear.
I believe Ray Dalio, the self-made billionaire and #1 top performing hedge fund manager of all time would have agreed with this definition given a principle in his book is:
“Truth — more precisely, an accurate understanding of reality — is the essential foundation for producing good outcomes.”
Absolute truth and achieving goals can therefore be established as a correlation.
The more you seek hard and painful truth, the more intelligent you’ll become. The more you avoid painful truths, or worse yet, deny them, the less intelligent you’ll be.
Today, the will to win is often more important than looking at data objectively.
That will leaves us too unintelligent to have the critical discussions on topics like #MeToo vs. #HimToo or racism as it relates to police brutality, and what people can do to breakout of poverty and live well — which is the most important thing.
You’re either with a side or against it, to the point of being unable to even have the conversation.
This must stop and the way we’ll get there is becoming more intelligent, and to become more intelligent, we need to tell the truth no matter how much it may hurt our feelings.
Education And Intelligence — What’s The Difference And Why Does It Matter?
“Education is the most powerful weapon you can use to change the world.” Nelson Mandela
In 1983, developmental psychologist Howard Gardner described 9 types of intelligence:
- Naturalist (nature smart)
- Musical (sound smart)
- Logical-mathematical (number/reasoning smart)
- Existential (life smart)
- Interpersonal (people smart)
- Bodily-kinesthetic (body smart)
- Linguistic (word smart)
As they relate to our definition of intelligence, we’ll focus on existential (life smart), interpersonal (people smart) and a bit of bodily and linguistic.
Because ultimately complex goals are achieved when cooperating best with people and rising in social status, optimally because of a skill you possess.
Therefore, knowledge is power but if we don’t have the life and interpersonal skills to apply that knowledge, we can’t effectively use it over long periods of time in complex games, environments or political arenas.
The teacher who’s an alcoholic because they lack existential intelligence, or the professor who can only teach because they can’t overcome the fear of failure that often comes when competing in the competitive market.
The engineer who’s brilliant at code, but doesn’t have the interpersonal intelligence to be empathetic toward his team members so they can’t
They are still considered “educated”, but they lack the intelligence required to accomplish complex goals that
The difference in outcome will be mega entrepreneur vs. long term employee. The mega entrepreneur must possess this intelligence but the long term employee can get away without it. This becomes more prevalent at higher levels as the stakes increase.
So how can some elevate so high with intelligence while others don’t?
Is it competence? Caring? IQ? Genes?
We all come into this world with the same potential, though of course don’t share the same environment and conditioning once we actually enter it.
Yet, case by case of beating the odds, overcoming, turning obstacle into meaning, and meaning into a life well-lived is recurring and everywhere.
I believe it’s often too hard for most, and most unfortunately don’t have the tools required to begin the journey of exploration of the complex. Life is chaotic.
What possesses some to take on massive challenges, embracing problems for growth while others get daunted and decay?
This is the question I’ve been fiercely grappling with, and it’s led me to this controversial topic of intelligence.
The Clean Slate Of Mind — The Minimal Pre-Requisite For Intelligence
Truth is sometimes traumatic.
As legendary trauma/addiction pioneer Dr. Gabor Mate said:
“The attempt to escape from pain, creates more pain.”
However the more painful the truth we face, the more fear we eradicate from our minds and the more problems we dissolve.
Not doing so is why most of us live our lives in denial, a defense mechanism for fear and trauma. What makes this dangerous is that until we face our fear head on, we can’t even begin to stop them from holding us back — creating destructive forces that over take our constructive action. This is all of course unconscious so must be consciously practiced as a way of life to override.
Until we “clean up our acts” and take responsibility for our actions, we can’t even survive, much less thrive.
This is the problem with most people who repeatedly fail, don’t believe in themselves, and sabotage their complex goals. Am speaking from experience of course, as someone who’s experienced both massive failure and success — and who’s ‘rock bottom’ moment manifested as a realization of denial, a long list of 50 or so things I needed to clean up and face head on, so my mind could operate in peace, having my subconscious allow me the success my conscious mind dreamed about.
You won’t deserve what you want until you stop living in denial.
This is why one of the first steps in the most successful self-improvement institution of all time, alcoholic’s anonymous, is to go to everyone you’ve done wrong to and clear the air, apologize to them or forgive those who have wronged you.
So your mind can breathe, and you aren’t ridden with guilt and self-hate. I now chip away at a list like this each week, to the point of being forensic about it, cutting any and all downsides that even have a chance of manifesting into hidden sabotage.
This is the secret of the ultra successful and happy.
They live in peace, with no darkness that holds them back. From love and relationships to success at work, this is the first step, having a clean slate — the clean slate that’s necessary for intelligence.
In his final book Out Of My Later Years, a collection of essays on everything from intelligence to ethics, Albert Einstein, (March 14, 1879-April 18, 1955) with as much sensitivity and goodness points to a hard and painful truth for anyone to hear about humanity:
“People living in different countries kill each other at irregular time intervals, so that also for this reason one who thinks about the future must live in fear and terror. This is due to the fact that the intelligence and the character of the masses are incomparably lower than the intelligence and character of the few who produce something valuable for the community.”
Do you possess the clean slate required to be intelligent?
I’ve only begun living intelligently the last few years, after a lot of soul searching and self-work — and fear many of our fellow man aren’t conscious to the deep inquiry required to live the intelligent life our beloved Einstein refers to.
Intelligence
How does one become intelligent in the way Einstein prescribes? Where if everyone was intelligent, the world wouldn’t be so chaotic.
First off, the world wouldn’t be perceived as so chaotic, it would simply be as a place where things are perfectly imperfect.
Yes, there are wars as we’ve been a violent species, but violent war is becoming an obsolete strategy for diplomacy and is in massive decline.
Yes, there are racist mad men but it’s taboo in the mainstream and the norm only on the fringe. Mind you, only a few millennia ago (from billions of years of evolution), seeing another human outside of your tribe, especially one that was a different color from you actually meant to kill or be kill.
Yes, there’s subconscious biases and prejudice that have resulted from that, and people have historically enslaved others for money, so we’ll have to wait a few generations to die off. However the coming generations won’t even recognize race as an issue because that too is becoming obsolete and they’ll have access to so much information so will be able to think for themselves.
So what prevents us from accomplishing complex goals (being intelligent)?
Being unaware of how your fear drives you, making you easily susceptible to manipulation and fear mongering.
What’s not intelligent is living an unexamined life in the first place, not questioning how you live and constantly striving for improvement.
What’s not intelligent is thinking it’s okay to not be conscious, and keeping your standards low.
What’s not intelligent is thinking you know everything, and not living in a heightened state of hunger (no matter how full you are).
There are reasons that billionaire genius Steve Jobs said to always “stay hungry and stay foolish”. There are reasons one of the greatest thinkers of humanity, Socrates, said “an unexamined life is not worth living.”
Perhaps the fiercest seeker of truth at an individual level and proponent to self-development is Bridgewater Associates founder and Chairman Ray Dalio. Bridgewater is the most successful hedge fund in the world and Dalio is a billionaire. It’s even notorious for it’s culture of ‘radical transparency’, with jokes about the firm saying that you do everything at Bridgewater except invest money. That’s how important these principles are to Dalio. They’re the religion at Bridgewater.
At the foundation of Dalio’s principles is the habit of consciously seeking painful truths in an effort to grow. As he puts it in his chapter: “embrace reality and deal with it”.
“The most valuable habit I’ve acquired is using pain to trigger quality reflections. If you can acquire this habit yourself, you will learn what causes your pain and what you can do about it, and it will have an enormous impact on your effectiveness.”
In regards to ‘knowing’, Dalio works very hard to remain a student, knowing how hard it is to be right, and doesn’t claim to know much of anything. The more he learns and experiences, the more he realizes he doesn’t know anything.
Here’s one of the top 100 wealthiest people on the planet, who’s played one of the most complex games, the stock market, and won, saying he knows not to actually believe he knows everything and that he is wrong more than he is right.
Here are 8 things to work on to become intelligent.
1. Make Forensic Life Cleansing A Weekly Part Of Your Life
“You never rise to the level of your goals, you fall to the level of your systems.” James Clear
Life cleansing is not an event or a new year resolution, it’s recurring work that never ends. I spend every Monday focused on this exclusively. Look for things that trip you up. Are you spending too much money here? Are you letting your health slip up there? Make a list of all the areas of your life you want to monitor and go over them weekly. Set the absolute minimum standard you strive for.
2. Become Extremely Self Aware
Develop self awareness as though your life depended on it.
What do you actually want?
Why do you want it?
What will you want after you attain what you want?
What’s causing you to suffer?
Why does it cause you to suffer?
Where did your motives and desires come from?
These are all questions that self-aware people contemplate regularly. In answering these questions for myself, I’ve realized one thing:
- Every goal or milestone achieved simply leads you to a new one. Every. Single. Time. Whether it’s your first $1000 earned or billion, the subjective reality of the individual will simply tell a story leading to a requirement of more novelty. People who are self-aware know this fact and are able to handle success, and as a result, often aim for higher purpose goals or choose to take on less responsibility the ‘higher’ they rise.
3. Know You’ll Never Know Much — But Make It Your Mission To Know Everything
“It’s like the more you know, the more you don’t know and shit.” Dave Chappelle
The less-aware we are, the more we think we know. The most entitled people know the world is beyond complex and chaotic.
That’s why Dr. Jordan Peterson called his most recent best-selling book, 12 Rules For Life: An Anecdote To Chaos. Because life is about managing chaos. Not in the experiential way of physical chaos, but as a series of complex games. There are many variables at play. That’s why Dr. Peterson regularly says in his talks that life is a series of games. And what’s most important is how you play the game with others, so you’re continually invited back to play more games.
4. Seek Suffering And Embrace It For Meaning
“It is not what happens to us but how we react to it that defines who we are.” Epictetus
This is the secret of the masters of living.
They love hard problems, and embrace pain and are addicted to transcending it for more meaning and personal development. This can be applied to both innovation in business or personal life. My coach and one of the fastest growing writers of all time told me the reason he adopted three foster kids (mind you, he’s about to have twins as well) was that he thought it was simply a hard challenge he’d learn from and that he’d have a ton of fun trying to overcome it. How about them apples.
Or in a different context, in his interview with Tim Ferris, Nick Kokonas, co-founder of what’s often considered the best restaurant in the world, Alinea, said a philosophy he lives by is going after the hardest problems that seem impossible to solve. Pointing to that it isn’t crowded when you’re going after the impossible problems, and it’s actually fun solving the problem itself. With Alinea, he re-invented the restaurant experience completely, with his own software, to pricing (it’s often $400 a person, at least), to not having menus and re-inventing the genre of food regularly.
5. Do What You’re Naturally Good At
Whether you’re above average IQ or below, are street wise or book smart, in the context of open market competition, in which all of us play at work, it never hurts to take advantage of what you’re good at. As habit guru James Clear states in his dedicated book on Habits, Clear states:
“In theory, you can enjoy almost anything. In practice, you are more likely to enjoy the things that come easily to you. People who are talented in a particular area tend to be more competent at that task and are then prasied for doinga good job. They stay energized because they are making progress where others have failed, and because they get rewarded with better pay and bigger opportunities, which not only makes them happier but also propels them to produce even higher-quality work. It’s a virtuous cycle. Pick the right habit and progress is easy. Pick the wrong habit and life is a struggle.”
What comes easily to you or what’s something you can’t live without doing? For me, it’s writing. It’s something I can’t not do. It’s something I’ve done all throughout my career whether it was at a start up, a job or making a movie. I am always writing and will forever have to write. Naturally, I doubled down to become a full time writer.
Conclusion
Seeking painful truths is the unintuitive path to more intelligence. The pattern is clear: embracing hardship for positive growth and meaning is the mindset required to live with extreme happiness and overall success.
The monkey mind of the human being will hold you back unless you take control of it for yourself, always responsible for your state of mind and results.
That is a major (of several) difference in people who are able to rise from nothing to a lot to those who fall off the path to satisfying their desires and fulfillments in life.
Legendary psychiatrist and Halocaust survivor Viktor Frankl said:
“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of human freedoms — to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”
Choose the attitude that leads you to feel your best, always. Be critical but not cynical. One is reasonable, the other is a bad habit.
The human being and it’s systems are miraculous. The complexity of our drive leads some to live selfless lives of service and energy and happiness for some, yet miserable lives of shame for others.
It’s our capacity for change that makes us miraculous, and our agency that gives us the power to control our fates.
Our capacity for compassion, even in the midst of atrocity makes us miraculous.
Some of us get lost a long the way, more often than we’d like.
We must forgive them, not because they shouldn’t be stopped, but because not forgiving doesn’t allow us the emotional freedom to let go and continuing our journey of self improvement and maximizing our potential.
Forgive them father, for they know not what they do.
This strategy is not to suppress or repress, it’s a strategy that helps us manage the chaos of the human existence. The strategy that leads to the resilience required to survive the long game of living.
Life is not short anymore, it’s rather long, and becoming intelligent is a life-long journey that’s required more than ever.
All our fates depend on it.
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