Too busy to read?

Remember, it is not an argument; it is an open exploration of what's true.

Remember that you're looking for the best answer, not simply the best answer that you can come up with yourself. The answer doesn't have to be in your head; you can look outside yourself. If you're truly looking at things objectively, you must recognize that the probability of you always having the best answer is small and that, even if you have it, you can't be confident that you do before others test you. So it is invaluable to know what you don't know.

Recognize that conflicts are essential for great relationships . . . . . . because they are how people determine whether their principles are aligned and resolve their differences. Everyone has his or her own principles and values, so all relationships entail a certain amount of negotiation or debate over how people should be with each other. What you learn about each other will either draw you together or drive you apart. If your principles are aligned and you can work out your differences via a process of give-and-take, you will draw closer together. If not, you will move apart. Open discussion of differences ensures that there are no misunderstandings. If that doesn't happen on an ongoing basis, gaps in perspective will widen until inevitably there is a major clash.

Everyone should be up-front in expressing how confident they are in their thoughts. A suggestion should be called a suggestion; a firmly held conviction should be presented as such--particularly if it's coming from someone with a strong track record in the area in question.

It's more important to do big things well than to do the small things perfectly.

As Harvard developmental psychologist Bob Kegan, who has studied Bridgewater, likes to say, in most companies people are doing two jobs: their actual job and the job of managing others' impressions of how they're doing their job.

at Bridgewater the key shared values that maintain our culture are meaningful work and meaningful relationships, radical truth and radical transparency, an open-minded willingness to explore harsh realities including one's own weaknesses, a sense of ownership, a drive for excellence, and the willingness to do the good but difficult things, we look for highly capable people who deeply want all of those things.

Remember that every story has another side. Wisdom is the ability to see both sides and weigh them appropriately.

Embrace Reality and Deal with It 1.1 Be a hyperrealist. a. Dreams + Reality + Determination = A Successful Life. 1.2 Truth--or, more precisely, an accurate understanding of reality--is the essential foundation for any good outcome. 1.3 Be radically open-minded and radically transparent. a. Radical open-mindedness and radical transparency are invaluable for rapid learning and effective change. b. Don't let fears of what others think of you stand in your way. c. Embracing radical truth and radical transparency will bring more meaningful work and more meaningful relationships. 1.4 Look to nature to learn how reality works. a. Don't get hung up on your views of how things "should" be because you will miss out on learning how they really are. b. To be "good," something must operate consistently with the laws of reality and contribute to the evolution of the whole; that is what is most rewarded. c. Evolution is the single greatest force in the universe; it is the only thing that is permanent and it drives everything. d. Evolve or die. 1.5 Evolving is life's greatest accomplishment and its greatest reward. a. The individual's incentives must be aligned with the group's goals. b. Reality is optimizing for the whole--not for you. c. Adaptation through rapid trial and error is invaluable. d. Realize that you are simultaneously everything and nothing--and decide what you want to be. e. What you will be will depend on the perspective you have. 1.6 Understand nature's practical lessons. a. Maximize your evolution. b. Remember "no pain, no gain." c. It is a fundamental law of nature that in order to gain strength one has to push one's limits, which is painful. 1.7 Pain + Reflection = Progress. a. Go to the pain rather than avoid it. b. Embrace tough love. 1.8 Weigh second- and third-order consequences. 1.9 Own your outcomes. 1.10 Look at the machine from the higher level. a. Think of yourself as a machine operating within a machine and know that you have the ability to alter your machines to produce better outcomes. b. By comparing your outcomes with your goals, you can determine how to modify your machine. c. Distinguish between you as the designer of your machine and you as a worker with your machine. d. The biggest mistake most people make is to not see themselves and others objectively, which leads them to bump into their own and others' weaknesses again and again. e. Successful people are those who can go above themselves to see things objectively and manage those things to shape change. f. Asking others who are strong in areas where you are weak to help you is a great skill that you should develop no matter what, as it will help you develop guardrails that will prevent you from doing what you shouldn't be doing. g. Because it is difficult to see oneself objectively, you need to rely on the input of others and the whole body of evidence. h. If you are open-minded enough and determined, you can get virtually anything you want.

Radical open-mindedness and radical transparency are invaluable for rapid learning and effective change. Learning is the product of a continuous real-time feedback loop in which we make decisions, see their outcomes, and improve our understanding of reality as a result. Being radically open-minded enhances the efficiency of those feedback loops, because it makes what you are doing, and why, so clear to yourself and others that there can't be any misunderstandings.

If you are disappointed because you can't be the best person to do everything yourself, you are terribly naive. Nobody can do everything well. Would you want to have Einstein on your basketball team?

radical open-mindedness, which is motivated by the genuine worry that one might not be seeing one's choices optimally. It is the ability to effectively explore different points of view and different possibilities without letting your ego or your blind spots get in your way.

Open-minded people seek to learn by asking questions; they realize how little they know in relation to what there is to know and recognize that they might be wrong; they are thrilled to be around people who know more than they do because it represents an opportunity to learn something.

Remember that almost everything will take more time and cost more money than you expect. Virtually nothing goes according to plan because one doesn't plan for the things that go wrong. I personally assume things will take about one and a half times as long and cost about one and a half times as much because that's what I've typically experienced.

Don't let the little things divide you when your agreement on the big things should bind you. Almost every group that agrees on the big things ends up fighting about less important things and becoming enemies even though they should be bound by the big things.

good exercise to make sure that you are doing this well is to describe back to the person you are disagreeing with their own perspective.

Having open-minded conversations with believable people who disagree with you is the quickest way to get an education and to increase your probability of being right.

When two people believe opposite things, chances are that one of them is wrong. It pays to find out if that someone is you. That's why I believe you must appreciate and develop the art of thoughtful disagreement. In thoughtful disagreement, your goal is not to convince the other party that you are right--it is to find out which view is true and decide what to do about it. In thoughtful disagreement, both parties are motivated by the genuine fear of missing important perspectives.

I have found it helpful to think of my life as if it were a game in which each problem I face is a puzzle I need to solve. By solving the puzzle, I get a gem in the form of a principle that helps me avoid the same sort of problem in the future. Collecting these gems continually improves my decision making, so I am able to ascend to higher and higher levels of play in which the game gets harder and the stakes become ever greater.

by knowing what someone is like we can have a pretty good idea of what we can expect from them.

pain as nature's reminder that there is something important for me to learn. Encountering pains and figuring out the lessons they were trying to give me became sort of a game to me. The more I played it, the better I got at it, the less painful those situations became, and the more rewarding the process of reflecting, developing principles, and then getting rewards for using those principles became. I learned to love my struggles, which I suppose is a healthy perspective to have, like learning to love exercising (which I haven't managed to do yet).

treasured thoughtful disagreement with them as a way of learning and raising our odds of making good decisions,

I learned a great fear of being wrong that shifted my mind-set from thinking "I'm right" to asking myself "How do I know I'm right?" And I saw clearly that the best way to answer this question is by finding other independent thinkers who are on the same mission as me and who see things differently from me. By engaging them in thoughtful disagreement, I'd be able to understand their reasoning and have them stress-test mine. That way, we can all raise our probability of being right.

radically open-minded requires you to have an accurate self-assessment of your own and others' strengths and weaknesses. This is where understanding something about how the brain works and the different psychometric assessments that can help you discover what your own brain is like comes in. To get the best results out of yourself and others, you must understand that people are wired very differently.

Understand the power of the "cleansing storm." In nature, cleansing storms are big infrequent events that clear out all the overgrowth that's accumulated during good times. Forests need these storms to be healthy--without them, there would be more weak trees and a buildup of overgrowth that stifles other growth. The same is true for companies. Bad times that force cutbacks so only the strongest and most essential employees (or companies) survive are inevitable and can be great, even though they seem terrible at the time.

Some decisions are best made after acquiring more information; some are best made immediately. Just as you need to constantly sort the big from the small when you are synthesizing what's going on, you need to constantly evaluate the marginal benefit of gathering more information against the marginal cost of waiting to decide.

bad times coupled with good reflections provide some of the best lessons, and not just about business but also about relationships. One has many more supposed friends when one is up than when one is down, because most people like to be with winners and shun losers. True friends are the opposite.

Open-minded people are more curious about why there is disagreement. They are not angry when someone disagrees. They understand that there is always the possibility that they might be wrong and that it's worth the little bit of time it takes to consider the other person's views in order to be sure they aren't missing something or making a mistake.

When encountering your weaknesses you have four choices: 1. You can deny them (which is what most people do). 2. You can accept them and work at them in order to try to convert them into strengths (which might or might not work depending on your ability to change). 3. You can accept your weaknesses and find ways around them. 4. Or, you can change what you are going after.

Our overriding objective is excellence, or more precisely, constant improvement, a superb and constantly improving company in all respects. Conflict in the pursuit of excellence is a terrific thing. There should be no hierarchy based on age or seniority. Power should lie in the reasoning, not the position, of the individual. The best ideas win no matter who they come from.

Develop a full profile of each person's values, abilities, and skills. These qualities are the real drivers of behavior, so knowing them in detail will tell you which jobs a person can and cannot do well, which ones they should avoid, and how the person should be trained. These profiles should change as the people change.

The challenges you face will test and strengthen you. If you're not failing, you're not pushing your limits, and if you're not pushing your limits, you're not maximizing your potential. Though this process of pushing your limits, of sometimes failing and sometimes breaking through--and deriving benefits from both your failures and your successes--is not for everyone, if it is for you, it can be so thrilling that it becomes addictive.

Whatever success I've had in life has had more to do with my knowing how to deal with my not knowing than anything I know. The most important thing I learned is an approach to life based on principles that helps me find out what's true and what to do about it.

they are immune to the biases and consensus-driven thinking of crowds; they don't care if what they see is unpopular, and they never panic.

This initial failure to perceive and not tolerate problems did not happen for lack of caring; it happened because most of the people in the process paid more attention to getting the tasks done than assessing whether the goals were being achieved. They had become more like rubber stampers than craftsmen, while the top people who were supposed to "taste the soup" to make sure it was excellent were focused on other things.

You should be able to delegate the details. If you keep getting bogged down in details, you either have a problem with managing or training, or you have the wrong people doing the job. The real sign of a master manager is that he doesn't have to do practically anything. Managers should view the need to get involved in the nitty-gritty as a bad sign.

I learned that if you work hard and creatively, you can have just about anything you want, but not everything you want. Maturity is the ability to reject good alternatives in order to pursue even better ones.

Closed-minded people don't want their ideas challenged. They are typically frustrated that they can't get the other person to agree with them instead of curious as to why the other person disagrees.

Recognize that decision making is a two-step process: First take in all the relevant information, then decide. Most people are reluctant to take in information that is inconsistent with what they have already concluded.

People who change their minds because they learned something are the winners, whereas those who stubbornly refuse to learn are the losers.

No matter what you want out of life, your ability to adapt and move quickly and efficiently through the process of personal evolution will determine your success and your happiness.

Remember that the only purpose of money is to get you what you want, so think hard about what you value and put it above money.

Regularly take the temperature of each person who is important to you and to the organization. Probe your key people and urge them to bring up anything that might be bothering them. These problems might be ones you are unaware of, or they may be misunderstood by the person raising them. Whatever the case, it is essential that they be brought out into the open.

Long before I had a lot of money, I had determined that I wanted my sons to have only enough to afford excellent health care, excellent education, and an initial boost to help their careers get started. My perspective was influenced by my own journey through life, which took me from having nothing to having a lot. That taught me to struggle well and made me strong. I wanted the same for the people I loved. So, when I had earned a lot of money, I felt I had plenty of money to give away to others.

Ask yourself what you want, seek out examples of other people who got what they wanted, and try to discern the cause-and-effect patterns behind their achievements so you can apply them to help you achieve your own goals.

Watch out for the "Frog in the Boiling Water Syndrome." Apparently, if you throw a frog into a pot of boiling water it will jump out immediately, but if you put it in room-temperature water and gradually bring it to a boil, it will stay in the pot until it dies. Whether or not that's true of frogs, I see something similar happen to managers all the time. People have a strong tendency to slowly get used to unacceptable things that would shock them if they saw them with fresh eyes.

almost all "cases at hand" are just "another one of those," identifying which "one of those" it is, and then applying well-thought-out principles for dealing with it.

"Sorry for being stupid, but I'm going to need to slow you down so I can make sense of what you're saying."

The ego barrier is our innate desire to be capable and have others recognize us as such. The blind spot barrier is the result of our seeing things through our own subjective lenses; both barriers can prevent us from seeing how things really are.

Our upbringings and our experiences in the world have conditioned us to be embarrassed by our weaknesses and hide them. But people are happiest when they can be themselves. If you can be open with your weaknesses it will make you freer and will help you deal with them better. I urge you to not be embarrassed about your problems, recognizing that everyone has them. Bringing them to the surface will help you break your bad habits and develop good ones, and you will acquire real strengths and justifiable optimism.

"Taste the soup." Think of yourself as a chef and taste the soup before it goes out to the customers. Is it too salty or too bland? Managers need to do that too, or have someone in their machine do it for them, for every outcome they're responsible for. People who are delegated this task are called "taste testers."

Great managers orchestrate rather than do. Like the conductor of an orchestra, they do not play an instrument, but direct their people so that they play beautifully together. Micromanaging, in contrast, is telling the people who work for you exactly what tasks to do or doing their tasks for them. Not managing is having them do their jobs without your oversight and involvement. To be successful, you need to understand these differences and manage at the right level.

5 Learn How to Make Decisions Effectively 5.1 Recognize that 1) the biggest threat to good decision making is harmful emotions, and 2) decision making is a two-step process (first learning and then deciding). 5.2 Synthesize the situation at hand. a. One of the most important decisions you can make is who you ask questions of. b. Don't believe everything you hear. c. Everything looks bigger up close. d. New is overvalued relative to great. e. Don't oversqueeze dots. 5.3 Synthesize the situation through time. a. Keep in mind both the rates of change and the levels of things, and the relationships between them. b. Be imprecise. c. Remember the 80/20 Rule and know what the key 20 percent is. d. Be an imperfectionist. 5.4 Navigate levels effectively. a. Use the terms "above the line" and "below the line" to establish which level a conversation is on. b. Remember that decisions need to be made at the appropriate level, but they should also be consistent across levels. 5.5 Logic, reason, and common sense are your best tools for synthesizing reality and understanding what to do about it. 5.6 Make your decisions as expected value calculations. a. Raising the probability of being right is valuable no matter what your probability of being right already is. b. Knowing when not to bet is as important as knowing what bets are probably worth making. c. The best choices are the ones that have more pros than cons, not those that don't have any cons at all. 5.7 Prioritize by weighing the value of additional information against the cost of not deciding. a. All of your "must-dos" must be above the bar before you do your "like-to-dos." b. Chances are you won't...

Open-minded people are always more interested in listening than in speaking; they encourage others to voice their views.

you can think for yourself while being open-minded in a clearheaded way to find out what is best for you to do, and if you can summon up the courage to do it, you will make the most of your life.

Remember, you are not arguing; you are openly exploring what's true.

Thoreau: "If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away."

It's senseless to have making money as your goal as money has no intrinsic value--its value comes from what it can buy, and it can't buy everything. It's smarter to start with what you really want, which are your real goals, and then work back to what you need to attain them. Money will be one of the things you need, but it's not the only one and certainly not the most important one once you get past having the amount you need to get what you really want.

An idea meritocracy requires people to do three things: 1) Put their honest thoughts on the table for everyone to see, 2) Have thoughtful disagreements where there are quality back-and-forths in which people evolve their thinking to come up with the best collective answers possible, and 3) Abide by idea-meritocratic ways of getting past the remaining disagreements (such as believability-weighted decision making).

if you can recognize that you have blind spots and open-mindedly consider the possibility that others might see something better than you--and that the threats and opportunities they are trying to point out really exist--you are more likely to make good decisions.

I believe that the key to success lies in knowing how to both strive for a lot and fail well. By failing well, I mean being able to experience painful failures that provide big learnings without failing badly enough to get knocked out of the game.

Idea Meritocracy = Radical Truth + Radical Transparency + Believability-Weighted Decision Making.

That's because an idea meritocracy--i.e., a system that brings together smart, independent thinkers and has them productively disagree to come up with the best possible collective thinking and resolve their disagreements in a believability-weighted way--will outperform any other decision-making system.

Idea meritocracies carefully weigh the merits of its members' opinions. Since many opinions are bad and virtually everyone is confident that theirs are good, the process of being able to sort through them well is important to understand.

Baseball Cards, which I mentioned in the first part of this book. Just as a baseball card compiles the relevant data on a baseball player, helping fans know what that player is good and bad at, I decided that it would be similarly helpful for us to have cards for all of our players at Bridgewater.

Make it clear who is directing the meeting and whom it is meant to serve. Every meeting should be aimed at achieving someone's goals; that person is the one responsible for the meeting and decides what they want to get out of it and how they will do so. Meetings without someone clearly responsible run a high risk of being directionless and unproductive.

Be Radically Open-Minded 3.1 Recognize your two barriers. a. Understand your ego barrier. b. Your two "yous" fight to control you. c. Understand your blind spot barrier. 3.2 Practice radical open-mindedness. a. Sincerely believe that you might not know the best possible path and recognize that your ability to deal well with "not knowing" is more important than whatever it is you do know. b. Recognize that decision making is a two-step process: First take in all the relevant information, then decide. c. Don't worry about looking good; worry about achieving your goal. d. Realize that you can't put out without taking in. e. Recognize that to gain the perspective that comes from seeing things through another's eyes, you must suspend judgment for a time--only by empathizing can you properly evaluate another point of view. f. Remember that you're looking for the best answer, not simply the best answer that you can come up with yourself. g. Be clear on whether you are arguing or seeking to understand, and think about which is most appropriate based on your and others' believability. 3.3 Appreciate the art of thoughtful disagreement. 3.4 Triangulate your view with believable people who are willing to disagree. a. Plan for the worst-case scenario to make it as good as possible. 3.5 Recognize the signs of closed-mindedness and open-mindedness that you should watch out for. 3.6 Understand how you can become radically open-minded. a. Regularly use pain as your guide toward quality reflection. b. Make being open-minded a habit. c. Get to know your blind spots. d. If a number of different...

It is a fundamental law of nature that in order to gain strength one has to push one's limits, which is painful. As Carl Jung put it, "Man needs difficulties. They are necessary for health." Yet most people instinctually avoid pain. This is true whether we are talking about building the body (e.g., weight lifting) or the mind (e.g., frustration, mental struggle, embarrassment, shame)--and especially true when people confront the harsh reality of their own imperfections.

Understand That People Are Wired Very Differently 4.1 Understand the power that comes from knowing how you and others are wired. a. We are born with attributes that can both help us and hurt us, depending on their application. 4.2 Meaningful work and meaningful relationships aren't just nice things we chose for ourselves--they are genetically programmed into us. 4.3 Understand the great brain battles and how to control them to get what "you" want. a. Realize that the conscious mind is in a battle with the subconscious mind. b. Know that the most constant struggle is between feeling and thinking. c. Reconcile your feelings and your thinking. d. Choose your habits well. e. Train your "lower-level you" with kindness and persistence to build the right habits. f. Understand the differences between right-brained and left-brained thinking. g. Understand how much the brain can and cannot change. 4.4 Find out what you and others are like. a. Introversion vs. extroversion. b. Intuiting vs. sensing. c. Thinking vs. feeling. d. Planning vs. perceiving. e. Creators vs. refiners vs. advancers vs. executors vs. flexors. f. Focusing on tasks vs. focusing on goals. g. ...

Use the 5-Step Process to Get What You Want Out of Life 2.1 Have clear goals. a. Prioritize: While you can have virtually anything you want, you can't have everything you want. b. Don't confuse goals with desires. c. Decide what you really want in life by reconciling your goals and your desires. d. Don't mistake the trappings of success for success itself. e. Never rule out a goal because you think it's unattainable. f. Remember that great expectations create great capabilities. g. Almost nothing can stop you from succeeding if you have a) flexibility and b) self-accountability. h. Knowing how to deal well with your setbacks is as important as knowing how to move forward. 2.2 Identify and don't tolerate problems. a. View painful problems as potential improvements that are screaming at you. b. Don't avoid confronting problems because they are rooted in harsh realities that are unpleasant to look at. c. Be specific in identifying your problems. d. Don't mistake a cause of a problem with the real problem. e. Distinguish big problems from small ones. f. Once you identify a problem, don't tolerate it. 2.3 Diagnose problems to get at their root causes. a. Focus on the "what is" before deciding "what to do about it." b. Distinguish proximate causes from root causes. c. Recognize that knowing what someone (including you) is like will tell you what you can expect from them. 2.4 Design a plan. a. Go back before you go forward. b. Think about your problem as a set of outcomes produced by a machine. c. Remember that there are typically many paths to achieving your goals. d. Think of your plan as being like a movie script in that you visualize who will do what through time. e. Write down your plan for everyone to see and to measure your progress against. f. Recognize that it doesn't take a lot of time to design a good plan. 2.5 Push through to completion. a. Great planners who don't execute their plans go nowhere. b. Good work habits are vastly underrated. c. Establish clear metrics to make certain that you are following your plan. 2.6 Remember that weaknesses don't matter if you find solutions. a. Look at the patterns of your mistakes and identify at which step in the 5-Step Process you typically fail. b. Everyone has at least one big thing that stands in the way of their success; find yours and deal with it. 2.7 Understand your own and others' mental maps and humility.

Seek out the smartest people who disagreed with me so I could try to understand their reasoning. 2. Know when not to have an opinion. 3. Develop, test, and systemize timeless and universal principles. 4. Balance risks in ways that keep the big upside while reducing the downside.

view. To be radically open-minded you must: a. Sincerely believe that you might not know the best possible path and recognize that your ability to deal well with "not knowing" is more important than whatever it is you do know.

View painful problems as potential improvements that are screaming at you. Though it won't feel that way at first, each and every problem you encounter is an opportunity; for that reason, it is essential that you bring them to the surface. Most people don't like to do this, especially if it exposes their own weaknesses or the weaknesses of someone they care about, but successful people know they have to.

Most of life's greatest opportunities come out of moments of struggle; it's up to you to make the most of these tests of creativity and character.

Prioritize: While you can have virtually anything you want, you can't have everything you want.

Pain + Reflection = Progress.

classify these situations into types and have good principles for dealing with them, we will make better decisions more quickly and have better lives as a result. Having a good set of principles is like having a good collection of recipes for success.

"You better make sense of what happened to other people in other times and other places because if you don't you won't know if these things can happen to you and, if they do, you won't know how to deal with them."

A believability-weighted idea meritocracy is the best system for making effective decisions.

learning how to make decisions in the best possible way and learning to have the courage to make them comes from a) going after what you want, b) failing and reflecting well through radical open-mindedness, and c) changing/evolving to become ever more capable and less fearful.

Making a handful of good uncorrelated bets that are balanced and leveraged well is the surest way of having a lot of upside without being exposed to unacceptable downside.

Duhigg's core idea is the role of the three-step "habit loop." The first step is a cue--some "trigger that tells your brain to go into automatic mode and which habit to use," according to Duhigg. Step two is the routine, "which can be physical or mental or emotional." Finally, there is a reward, which helps your brain figure out if this particular loop is "worth remembering for the future." Repetition reinforces this loop until over time it becomes automatic.

Keep in mind that managers usually fail or fall short of their goals for one (or more) of five reasons. 1. They are too distant. 2. They have problems perceiving bad quality. 3. They have lost sight of how bad things have become because they have gotten used to it. 4. They have such high pride in their work (or such large egos) that they can't bear to admit they are unable to solve their own problems. 5. They fear adverse consequences from admitting failure.

if you look back on yourself a year ago and aren't shocked by how stupid you were, you haven't learned much.

The people I respect most are those who fail well. I respect them even more than those who succeed. That is because failing is a painful experience while succeeding is a joyous one, so it requires much more character to fail, change, and then succeed than to just succeed. People who are just succeeding must not be pushing their limits. Of course the worst are those who fail and don't recognize it and don't change.

for most people success is struggling and evolving as effectively as possible, i.e., learning rapidly about oneself and one's environment, and then changing to improve.

Dreams + Reality + Determination = A Successful Life.

How the Economic Machine Works,

At a high level, we look for people who think independently, argue open-mindedly and assertively, and above all else value the intense pursuit of truth and excellence, and through it, the rapid improvement of themselves and the organization. Because we treat work as more than just what we do to make a living, we look at every potential hire not just as an employee but as someone we'd want share our lives with. We insist that the people we work with are considerate and have a high sense of personal accountability to do the difficult, right things. We look for people with generous natures and high standards of fairness. Most important, they must be able to put their egos aside and assess themselves candidly.

Bridgewater's values and strategic goals have been the same since the beginning (to produce excellent results, meaningful work, and meaningful relationships through radical truth and transparency)

Charles Duhigg's best-selling book The Power of Habit,

Remember this: The pain is all in your head. If you want to evolve, you need to go where the problems and the pain are. By confronting the pain, you will see more clearly the paradoxes and problems you face. Reflecting on them and resolving them will give you wisdom. The harder the pain and the challenge, the better.

Use tools to collect data and process it into conclusions and actions.

Understand your ego barrier. When I refer to your "ego barrier," I'm referring to your subliminal defense mechanisms that make it hard for you to accept your mistakes and weaknesses. Your deepest-seated needs and fears--such as the need to be loved and the fear of losing love, the need to survive and the fear of not surviving, the need to be important and the fear of not mattering--reside in primitive parts of your brain such as the amygdala, which are structures in your temporal lobe that process emotions. Because these areas of your brain are not accessible to your conscious awareness, it is virtually impossible for you to understand what they want and how they control you. They oversimplify things and react instinctively. They crave praise and respond to criticism as an attack, even when the higher-level parts of the brain understand that constructive criticism is good for you. They make you defensive, especially when it comes to the subject of how good you are.