One of the things meditation gives you is creativity because creativity really comes from the subconscious brain - intuition, imagination - so it's not like you can go there and say, I'm going to go be creative now. Maybe you can, but the real way you get creativity is, you know, you're taking a hot shower and great ideas come to you from the subconscious. Essentially, meditation opens a pipeline between the conscious and the subconscious.
Ray DalioPrinciples are what allow you to live a life consistent with those values. Principles connect your values to your actions.
Ray DalioLife is like a game where you seek to overcome the obstacles that stand in the way of achieving your goals. You get better at this game through practice. The game consists of a series of choices that have consequences. You can't stop the problems and choices from coming at you, so it's better to learn how to deal with them.
Ray DalioSome people seek to understand, and some people seek to portray what they want to portray.
Ray DalioFor every mistake that you learn from you will save thousands of similar mistakes in the future, so if you treat mistakes as learning opportunities that yield rapid improvements you should be excited by them. But if you treat them as bad things, you will make yourself and others miserable, and you won't grow.
Ray DalioMeditation gives you two things: equanimity and creativity. And it does that by taking one from their conscious mind, where there's all that noise and chaos and so on, into the subconscious mind where there's quiet and where creativity emanates from. You have a mantra, and when you repeat it over and over again, all those thoughts go away because you shift them to that mantra. And then eventually that sound disappears, and then you're left not conscious or unconscious - you're left in this subconscious state, and by opening that up, first of all you get control of it.
Ray Dalio