Valuable Mistakes

Ray Dalio is one of the most successful business men on the planet, if you count how much money you make as an indicator. His company has created $45 billion income since 1975. He currently has $14 billion personal net worth.

He says that PAIN + REFLECTION = PROGRESS.

It means something like: if you just study your successes (which we like to do), you are not really preparing for the future. You are already likely to do the same good stuff again and have the same successes again.

The valuable study to perform is, instead, lengthy, in-depth study of your failures (which we hate to do). You are likely to repeat them again with little or no preparation, too!

SO, if you want to change the future of your mistake-likeliness, study the failures to find out how you got fooled. Find out why you believed the lie. Dig until you discover what looked good that turned out to be poison. Who did you believe when you shouldn’t have? What do the teeth of the rake look like, barely hidden in the leaves, just before you step on them and break your nose with the rake handle as it flies up?

Israel had an astonishing success at Jericho. Then, they had an astonishing failure at Ai. When they found out what went wrong, they should have had an unending flow of success by always acting in light of the information they received from Yahweh about their failure.