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Consistency

Consistency

Thoughts as of 3/19/2024 

The irony of missing two weeks of so-called “weekly” posting and then coming back with a post of this title and theme is not lost on me.


One of the first books in my recent reading journey which was revitalized during the pandemic after lying dormant for almost a decade was Principles by Ray Dalio.


This was my first foray into Dalio and his systems at Bridgewater, and as I entered the workforce for the first time in any serious fashion, it struck me as profound and yet an incredibly sensible set of guidelines in theory - whether or not they worked in practice was to be seen - but inspired hope nonetheless.


A guest speaker during summer football camp in college recommended that we list out our values explicitly and commit to them. This was a shortcut way to make decisions in life in that you could simply look to your values and see if a choice aligns with those values or not.


These two core themes have been percolating in the back of my mind since I first encountered them, and I have not been able to explicitly define my specific principles yet, nor what I find to be most important in the way that I want to live my life.


I started out by simply copy-pasting the principles from Dalio’s book into a tab on my website and then went line by line and removed the ones that I did not think were applicable to my life, or that I did not agree with. I believe this can still be found on that site, or potentially on the posts from the blogspot migration.


While this is likely better than nothing, it was not as meaningful of an exercise given I did not generate them from my own mind or experiences.


The idea itself seems to be sound advice, and yet it is difficult to come up with principles or values that I unambiguously support and would want to build my life around.


That being said, I think I have found my first one.


Excuse my French, but I think one of the first principles in my life is that I do not want to be full of shit.


This is somewhat akin to the post I had on being put on trial, but that post was a bit circuitous at making the same point.


There are so many aspects of my life where I claim a certain thing either to others or in worse cases, to myself, and then act in a way antithetical to those claims.


Do I believe that treating others as they should be treated is an unambiguously sound way to live one’s life? Pretty hard to argue with that, but I can assure you my actions do not always align.


Do I believe that meditation even for a minute a day would be greatly beneficial for my mind and thinking? Yeah, this one pretty much seems like a (pun intended) no-brainer. And yet, I do not give it time.


Do I know how good it feels to consistently get adequate sleep, eat minimally processed whole foods, and get some exercise every day? Yes, obviously, and yet it seems I must fall off the wagon and viscerally feel how bad it actually is when I diverge from these basic principles.


Well, there you have it. The first principle that I do not see myself consciously deciding to deviate from in any circumstance for the rest of my life.


I no longer want to be full of shit.

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