Long Island University Commencement Speech

For me, who graduated from LIU 55 years ago, to pass along what I’ve learned over those 55 years to the graduating class of 2026 was a déjà vu joy. If you want to learn in 15 minutes the most important things I’ve learned in the last 55 years, you can read or watch my commencement speech below.

Thank you, President Cline, Dean Bates, and Dean Pullaro. Congratulations to the class of 2026 and congratulations also to all the parents, the grandparents, the brothers, the sisters, and all the family and friends who have been with the graduates on their journeys. There is nothing more valuable than meaningful relationships. Please give each other an enthusiastic round of applause.

I am thrilled to be your commencement speaker because it is an opportunity for me to tell you—who I view as myself 55 years ago —what I have learned in the 55 years since I graduated from LIU that might be helpful to you.'

While I remember being where you are when I was 21 years old, graduating in 1971 from what was then called CW Post College, I don’t remember who the commencement speaker was or what he or she said, and I suspect that will be true for you in your future. All I remember was nursing a hangover from celebrating too hard the night before, being elated at graduating, and reflecting on how hugely LIU suited my nature and improved my life.

You see, I got into LIU on probation because I was a lousy high school student with a rebellious nature. I remember hating high school because it seemed to me that most of my education consisted of teachers forcing me to memorize what they wanted me to remember, which included a lot of useless stuff, and it didn’t help that I had a bad rote memory.

At the same time, I loved playing the markets, which is where my attentions went. I got hooked on playing the markets when I was 12 while working as a caddy at the Links Golf Club, which was not far from here. The stock market was hot, and the people I caddied for would talk with me about stocks, so I took the money I earned and put it in the stock market. The first stock I bought was the only stock I heard that was selling for less than $5 a share. I thought I could buy more shares, so that if they went up, I’d make more money. That was, of course, a dumb strategy. The company was about to go bankrupt. But I got lucky. Another company acquired it, so it tripled in value. I thought “This game is easy” and became hooked on playing the investing game.

So I hated school and loved playing the markets, until I got into Post. I loved being here because I could take classes that interested me and engaged me in quality thinking. I did well, and so I went on to Harvard Business School, which was another eye-opening learning experience.

When I was 19 and a sophomore here, I learned something that I found even more powerful than my formal education. The Beatles went to India to learn to meditate, and they raved about it, so I learned to meditate, which has been invaluable for me. Meditation gives you equanimity, aligns your subconscious mind with your conscious mind, and is restful and healthy. It also gives you a sense of spirituality, by which I mean a sense of connection to the whole and an ability to see yourself within the context of the whole. As a graduation gift to those who want it, I am going to give you lessons on transcendental meditation. It is the most valuable gift I can give anyone.

Over my 55 years since graduating, I have learned a lot about how life works and how to deal with it well to be successful, including what being successful really is. I learned that life is a journey of discovery in which the goal is to understand your nature and find the right path to suit it —and that there is nothing more important than having good principles to guide you. By principles, I mean ways of handling certain situations. Over my lifetime, I’ve accumulated hundreds of principles, which is far too many to cover in the 15 minutes I have with you, so I am giving you my book Principles: Life and Work, which I hope will help you find the right principles for you to get what you want out of life. You can find it below your seat along with a card to sign up for the mediation course.

It seems to me that you are about to travel along a similar life arc to the one I traveled on, and most people travel on, experiencing the same phases and having many of the same encounters I had, so I want to tell you what to expect and give you some tips.

Looking back on my and others’ lives, I came to see that life unfolds in three big phases that are very different from each other. In the first phase, you are learning and dependent on others. In the second, you are working and others are dependent on you. And in the third, which is where I am, you are free from obligations and able to pass along what you’ve learned.

The second phase, which you are about to enter, is more opposite than similar to the first. Rather than being in an education program and having instructors, you will guide yourself to achieve your goals and will encounter thrilling opportunities and painful setbacks, which if you reflect well on, will teach you what you want, what you’re like, and how to be successful. You will learn that thinking for yourself, making painful mistakes and learning from them, and knowing how to deal with what you don’t know, will be most valuable. In the early part of this second phase of your life, which will be your next 10 years or so, the most important thing for you to do is experiment and reflect well to help you discover your nature and what the best path is for you is.

When entering phase two, you are almost certainly making the mistake of thinking that you know more than you actually know, especially if you got good grades in school. You don’t yet have a clue about what life is really like, and you don’t yet know what being successful will mean for you, let alone what to go after, and how to get it. You couldn’t possibly know those things because you haven’t yet experienced or thought about what you will encounter. In the first phase, your teachers and parents typically led you to believe that success is a matter of learning what you are taught and not making mistakes—and you were taught to take pride in what you know. That has probably made you a bit arrogant, like it made me arrogant. But it is living life and encountering your realities that will teach you. The big question is: will you learn?

My nature and my encounters with my realities led me to become a professional investor, which led me to start an investment firm out of my two-bedroom apartment. While I ran it for 50 years, built it into the largest hedge fund in the world, and then passed it along to the next generation, which is considered a great success story, I know that it was learning from my painful mistakes that made me successful.

For example, when I was 34 years old and had run Bridgewater for eight years, I had calculated that American banks had lent much more money to emerging countries than those countries were going to be able to pay back and that would lead to the greatest debt crisis since the Great Depression.

It was a very controversial view at the time. But in August 1982, Mexico defaulted on its debt. A number of other countries followed, and we did have the greatest debt crisis since the Great Depression. Because I had anticipated that, I was asked to testify to Congress and appear on “Wall Street Week,” which was the show at the time.

I thought the stock market was going to fall a lot, but I was very wrong. The stock market and the economy went up rather than down, and I lost so much money for myself and for my clients that I had to let almost everybody go. I was so broke that I had to borrow 4,000 dollars from my dad to help to pay my family bills.

It was one of the most painful experiences of my life ... but it turned out to be one of the most valuable experiences because it gave me the humility I needed to balance my audacity. Rather than thinking, “I’m right,” I asked myself, “How do I know I’m right?”

That led me to find the smartest people who would disagree with me to understand their perspectives and have them stress-test mine. It also led me to discover how diversification could greatly reduce my risks without reducing my returns. From that point on, my company, Bridgewater, did well because I learned what I never would have learned without that painful experience.

My life journey also led me to meet and marry a wonderful woman, who I have been married to for 48 years, which led me to have 4 children, which led me to have eight grandchildren, who are the joys of my life. I believe the most important decision in your life is who you choose as your life partner. For me, and for everyone, and will be true for you, there are lots of ups and downs along the way, some unimaginably great and some unimaginably terrible. For example, I lost a son, which for me was worse than losing everything, including my life.

What helped me through these challenges were two things: my meditation and my calmly reflecting on how reality works to get, and write down, the best principles for dealing with my realities.

This habit changed my whole perspective on life. I began to see almost everything as another “one of those,” which had happened to many people before. I studied how they worked and figured out how to best deal with them.

One of my favorite principles that I learned through these sorts of experiences is: Pain + Reflection = Progress.

I got in the habit of viewing pain as a signal that I have a problem, which I view as a puzzle to solve that will give me a gem in the form of a great principle. I learned to value my painful experiences because they became my best learning experiences and led me to make great advances.

I found this approach of learning from my encounters with reality to be much better than remembering what others were trying to teach me.

Remember that you were born with a certain nature, and you are on a journey to understand it and find out what suits you. Knowing your nature is also critically important to helping you understand what success is for you. People have different goals in life, so I can’t literally tell you what is best for you. But I can tell you that success is not having a lot more money or status than you need, though most people think that’s what it is. In fact, that has become an unhealthy obsession for a lot of people.

Logically, having a lot more money than you need couldn’t possibly be a source of great happiness compared with the alternatives. For example, it isn’t more important than having the time and freedom to do what you most want to do.

So what do I believe success is for most people? I believe that it is a matter of having meaningful work and meaningful relationships—in other words, work and relationships that you are thrilled by. If you can make your work and your passion one and the same, and do it with people you care about, you will have a happy, successful life.

As you travel along on life’s journey, you have a choice of your approach. When life doesn’t give you what you want, you can be angry or sad for yourself, or you can learn about how reality works and develop principles that work well to get what you want. I urge you to own your life and take responsibility for making it great. Think about how reality works, be radically open-minded to hear how you can be better, and plan the moves to make to improve your life. And if you want to be really successful, recognize that you have to work damned hard at doing those things well. Excellence is worth it. That’s just how life works.

So, the message I want to leave you with today is that the most valuable thing you can have in your next phase of life is not your diploma or even what you have learned thus far—it is your approach to life. If you take advantage of your experiences, good or painful, as opportunities to learn, you will find great principles that will help you deal with your realities well. In the process, you will discover your nature and find excellent work and excellent relationships that will suit you, which will give you the best possible life.

So, Class of 2026, congratulations! Now get out there and encounter your new realities with excitement and a sense of adventure.