. . . and do that with humility and open-mindedness so that you consider the best thinking available to you. Being clear on your principles is important because they will affect all aspects of your life, many times a day. For example, when you enter into relationships with others, your principles and their principles will determine how you interact. People who have shared values and principles get along. People who don’t will suffer through constant misunderstandings and conflicts. Think about the people you are closest to: Are their values aligned with yours? Do you even know what their values or principles are? Too often in relationships, people’s principles aren’t clear. This is especially problematic in organizations where people need to have shared principles to be successful. Being crystal clear about my principles is why I labored so much over every sentence in this book.
……并以谦虚和开放的态度做到这一点，以便你考虑可用的最佳想法。明确你的原则很重要，因为它们每天都会多次影响你生活的各个方面。例如，当你与他人建立关系时，你的原则和他们的原则将决定你如何互动。具有共同价值观和原则的人能够相处融洽。相反，其他情况，人将会遭受持续的误解和冲突。想想你最亲近的人：他们的价值观与你的价值观一致吗？你甚至知道他们的价值观或原则是什么吗？在人际关系中，人们的原则常常不明确。在人们需要拥有共同原则才能成功的组织中，这尤其成问题。我对自己的原则非常清楚，这就是为什么我在本书的每句话上都费尽心思。

The principles you choose can be anything you want them to be as long as they are authentic–i.e., as long as they reflect your true character and values. You will be faced with millions of choices in life, and the way you make them will reflect the principles you have–so it won’t be long before the people around you will be able to tell the principles you are really operating by. The worst thing you can be is a phony, because if you’re a phony you will lose people’s trust and your own self-respect. So you must be clear about your principles and then you must “walk the talk.” If inconsistencies seem to exist, you should explain them. It’s best to do that in writing because by doing so, you will refine your written principles.
你选择的原则可以是任何你想要的，只要它们是真实的——即，只要它们反映了你的真实性格和价值观。你在生活中将面临数以百万计的选择，而你做出这些选择的方式将反映你所拥有的原则——所以不久之后，你周围的人就会能够告诉你你真正遵循的原则。最糟糕的是你是一个虚伪的人，因为如果你是一个虚伪的人，你就会失去人们的信任和你自己的自尊。所以你必须明确自己的原则，然后才能“说到做到”。如果似乎存在不一致之处，你应该对其进行解释。最好以书面形式进行，因为通过这样做，你将完善你的书面原则。

While I will be sharing my own principles, I want to make clear to you that I don’t expect you to follow them blindly. On the contrary, I want you to question every word and pick and choose among these principles so you come away with a mix that suits you.
虽然我将分享我自己的原则，但我想向你明确表示，我不希望你盲目遵循它们。相反，我希望你质疑每一个字，并在这些原则中进行挑选，这样你就能得到适合你的组合。

MY PRINCIPLES AND HOW I LEARNED THEM
我的原则以及我是如何学习它们的

I learned my principles over a lifetime of making a lot of mistakes and spending a lot of time reflecting on them. Since I was a kid, I’ve been a curious, independent thinker who ran after audacious goals. I got excited about visualizing things to go after, had some painful failures going after them, learned principles that would prevent me from making the same sort of mistakes again, and changed and improved, which allowed me to imagine and go after even more audacious goals and do that rapidly and repeatedly for a long time. So to me life looks like the sequence you see here.
我在一生中犯了很多错误并花了很多时间反思这些错误，从而学到了我的原则。从孩提时代起，我就是一个充满好奇心、独立思考的人，追求大胆的目标。我对想象要追求的东西感到兴奋，在追求它们的过程中经历了一些痛苦的失败，学到了防止我再次犯同样错误的原则，并且改变和改进，这让我能够想象和追求更大胆的目标并在很长一段时间内快速、重复地这样做。所以对我来说，生活就像你在这里看到的顺序。

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.
我相信成功的关键在于知道如何既努力奋斗又成功失败。我所说的“好的失败”是指能够经历痛苦的​​失败，从中学到很多东西，而不会因为失败而被淘汰出局。

This way of learning and improving has been best for me because of what I’m like and because of what I do. I’ve always had a bad rote memory and didn’t like following other people’s instructions, but I loved figuring out how things work for myself. I hated school because of my bad memory but when I was twelve I fell in love with trading the markets. To make money in the markets, one needs to be an independent thinker who bets against the consensus and is right. That’s because the consensus view is baked into the price. One is inevitably going to be painfully wrong a lot, so knowing how to do that well is critical to one’s success. To be a successful entrepreneur, the same is true: One also has to be an independent thinker who correctly bets against the consensus, which means being painfully wrong a fair amount. Since I was both an investor and an entrepreneur, I developed a healthy fear of being wrong and figured out an approach to decision making that would maximize my odds of being right.
这种学习和进步的方式对我来说是最好的，因为我喜欢什么，也因为我所做的事情。我的死记硬背一直很差，不喜欢听从别人的指示，但我喜欢弄清楚事情是如何为自己运作的。由于记性不好，我讨厌上学，但当我十二岁时，我爱上了市场交易。为了在市场上赚钱，一个人需要成为一名独立思考者，敢于反对共识并且是正确的。这是因为共识观点已融入价格中。一个人不可避免地会犯很多令人痛苦的错误，所以知道如何做好这一点对于一个人的成功至关重要。要成为一名成功的企业家，同样的道理：一个人还必须是一名独立思考者，能够正确地反对共识，这意味着犯了相当大的痛苦错误。由于我既是投资者又是企业家，我对犯错产生了一种健康的恐惧，并找到了一种决策方法，可以最大限度地提高我正确的可能性。

source:https://www.principles.com/principles/418eaeca-564f-41e8-bd90-8e0d042f28d5/