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“Antifragility is beyond resilience or robustness. The resilient resists shocks and stays the same; the antifragile gets better.” as per Nicholas Nassim Taleb
I learned from one of the corporate trainings that there are three types of responses to any stressful situation to
which an individual can respond to called 3Fs.
Fight
Flight, or
Freeze
Individuals who fight or freeze are fragile and a person who fights is usually known as robust.
But when I read the book Antifragility. I immediately started looking into the skills that can make me antifragile because this book created a spark in my thinking.
Especially when facing stress, the antifragile mindset becomes stronger.
In the book three examples are mentioned from which I derived three myself:
Fragile (Harmed by Tension) = Sword of Damocles (Mythical Hero Weapon) OR WINE GLASS
Robust (Harmed by Tension) = Phoenix Bird (Mythical Creature) OR VAULT
Antifragile (Harmed by Tension) = Hydra (Mythical Creature) OR DNA
So the motto of Antifragile is.
“That which does not kill us makes us stronger.” — Friedrich Nietzsche
Only adaptive species can have this mentality which is well described by Darwin.
“It is not the strongest species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the ones most responsive to change.” — Charles Darwin
5 WAYS TO ACHIEVE ANTIFRAGILE MINDSET
Here are the 5 key life-changing insights to achieve Antifragile status:
1. Actions speak louder than words.
Suckers try to win arguments, and non-suckers try to win. Be in the group of doers rather than speakers or critics.
“Action reduces Fear and Increase courage.” — John C. Maxwell
“The price of greatness is responsibility.” — Winston Churchill
2. Assign ownership to the decision provider.
The psychologist Gerd Gigerenzer has a simple heuristic. Never ask the doctor what you should do.
Ask him what he would do if he were in your place. You would be surprised at the difference.
“It is the mark of a charlatan to explain a simple concept in a complex way.” — Naval Ravikant
3. Specialized learning.
Some can be more intelligent than others in a structured environment.
The school has a selection bias as it favors those quicker in such an environment at the expense of performance outside it.
I thought it was the same with people who were selected to try to get high grades in a small number of subjects rather than follow their curiosity.
Try taking them slightly away from what they studied and watch their decomposition, loss of confidence, and denial.
“Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty.” — Henry Ford
4. Trial and error
The minute I was bored with a book or a subject I moved to another one, instead of giving up on reading altogether.
When you are limited to the school material and you get bored, you tend to give up and do nothing.
The trick is to be bored with a specific book, rather than with the act of reading.
Trial and error are freedom.
“Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.” — Albert Einstein
5. Negativa
It means “through negation”, the idea of giving up the excess.
Complex systems, such as a person, business, or society, are non-linear.
In their case, the principle “the more effort you put in, the better the result” or “the larger the organization, the more effective it is” does not work. The increase is useful to some extent and then begins to harm.
When we lack knowledge of a subject, it will be much easier to explain what it is not, and not what it is.
Knowledge “through negation” is important for our picture of the world.
When the Pope asked Michelangelo how he managed to create a beautiful statue of David, the sculptor replied: “I just cut off everything that is not David.”
Excessive amounts of information prevent us from separating important news from the noise and adequately responding to them.
“Ninety percent of everything is crap.” — Theodore Sturgeon
Conclusion
Anti-fragility, the ability to get better due to difficulties, is necessary to survive.
To develop antifragility in oneself, one must fall into situations of not critical risk.
Protect yourself first and only then embark on an adventure.
“The best way to make sure you’re alive is to check if you like change.” — Nicholas Nassim Taleb
Theories are not as important as practical skills.
Develop your skills by trial and error.
In terms of efficiency, “less is more.”
Refuse excessive.
“Taleb turned my worldview around. I looked at the world with different eyes” — Daniel Kahneman
Thanks for reading and before you go...