All success due to Transcendental Meditation: Ray Dalio

Billionaire hedge fund founder, Ray Dalio, says Transcendental Meditation® (TM) has been an “enormously significant” influence on his success and helped him deal with the “worst possible thing” – death of his son.

Speaking on Diary of a CEO (DOAC) podcast, Mr Dalio, 76, opened up about how Transcendental Meditation helped him deal with life’s challenges including the sudden passing of his son.

“I’ve dealt with the worst possible thing. I lost a son,” Mr Dalio told Steven Bartlet, host of DOAC.

“I would have rather died. I would have rather lost everything [than] to lose my son,” he said.

“It’s the worst possible thing, and then to see what it did, the damage and the harm and fear from the family, [it was] terrible.”

Mr Dalio’s son, Davon Dalio, died in a horrific car crash at the age of 42 in December of 2020.

Mr Dalio dealt with the loss of his son by continuing to practice the Transcendental Meditation technique, which he credits for all of his success.

“Then to go through that with meditation, with reflection and so on, was invaluable,” said Mr Dalio, who has been practicing TM since he was in his early 20s.

Mr Dalio also shared tips on how to be successful and shared how a mistake in judgment led him to become a billionaire.

Mr Dalio divulged the point in his career that changed everything. He said a miscalculation, that American banks would have a debt crisis, in 1970-80, cost him all his investments.

“I lost money for me. I lost money for the clients. I was so broke that I had to borrow $4000 from my dad to help pay for family bills,” he said.

He said with this experience two things changed his approach.

“First of all, I learned humility and fear of being wrong and open mindedness. So I wanted the smartest people who I could find to stress test my opinions, because I always realized I could be wrong,” Mr Dalio said.

“And then I learned how to diversify my bets so that I could dramatically reduce my risk without reducing my returns,” he said.

“Following those principles took me to the biggest hedge fund in the world, the most successful and so on.”

Mr Dalio said Transcendental Meditation gave him the ability to be more “open-minded” and “reflect”.

“You recognize that the biggest threat to good decision making is harmful emotions, and that two step process is first learn and then make the decision,” Mr Dalio said.

“Transcendental Meditation has been enormously significant. In other words, that way of seeing things. And I would say the serenity prayer,” he said.

“The serenity prayer is: God, give me the serenity to accept that which I can’t control, and give me the power to control that which I can and the wisdom to tell the difference.”

Mr Dalio explained that during Transcendental Meditation the mind gains access to its inner dynamics of creativity and calm.

“This process [of Transcendental Meditation] helps to bring your conscious state and your subconscious state into alignment,” Mr Dalio said.

“In other words, you recognise both, and it calms you down. It’s like the ninja in movies, they’re fighting, but it seems in slow motion. The camera shows them in slow motion,” he said.

He said Transcendental Meditation provides this state of calm where the individual sees the “world as though it’s in slow motion” allowing them to “deal with what’s coming”.

“And how you deal with those things is really important to the quality of your decision.”

There are more than 700 research studies validating the effects of Transcendental Meditation to reduce stress, anxiety, depression, insomnia and dramatically increase energy, clarity and positive outlook.

Transcendental Meditation is not a mass meditation and therefore taught individually. The certified teachers give personalised instruction to ensure the best experience.

You can learn TM by getting in touch with your local certified teacher only via tm.org.au.