. . . that are so clearly laid out that their logic can easily be assessed and you and others can see if you walk the talk. Experience taught me how invaluable it is to reflect on and write down my decision-making criteria whenever I made a decision, so I got in the habit of doing that. With time, my collection of principles became like a collection of recipes for decision making. By sharing them with the people at my company, Bridgewater Associates, and inviting them to help me test my principles in action, I continually refined and evolved them. In fact, I was able to refine them to the point that I could see how important it is to:
……它们的逻辑非常清晰，可以很容易地评估它们的逻辑，并且你和其他人可以看到你是否言出必行。经验告诉我，每当我做出决定时，反思并写下我的决策标准是多么宝贵，所以我养成了这样做的习惯。随着时间的推移，我的原则集变得像决策秘诀集。通过与我公司 Bridgewater Associates 的员工分享这些原则，并邀请他们帮助我在行动中测试我的原则，我不断完善和发展它们。事实上，我能够将它们改进到我可以看到以下几点的重要性：

My painful mistakes shifted me from having a perspective of “I know I’m right” to having one of “How do I know I’m right?” They gave me the humility I needed to balance my audacity. Knowing that I could be painfully wrong and curiosity about why other smart people saw things differently prompted me to look at things through the eyes of others as well as my own. That allowed me to see many more dimensions than if I saw things just through my own eyes. Learning how to weigh people’s inputs so that I chose the best ones–in other words, so that I believability weighted my decision making–increased my chances of being right and was thrilling. At the same time, I learned to:
我痛苦的错误使我从“我知道我是对的”的观点转变为“我怎么知道我是对的？”的观点。他们给了我平衡我的大胆所需的谦逊。知道自己可能会犯下令人痛苦的错误，并且好奇为什么其他聪明人对事物的看法不同，这促使我通过别人和自己的眼睛来看待事物。这让我能够看到比通过自己的眼睛看到的事物更多的维度。学习如何权衡人们的意见，以便我选择最好的意见——换句话说，让我的决策更加可信——增加了我做出正确决定的机会，这让我很兴奋。同时，我学会了：

. . . 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。