How To Become Antifragile And Gain From Disorder

[Siim Land]

For those of you who don't know. 

Antifragile is the term coined by Nassim Nicholaus Taleb in his bestselling book by the same name. 
Basically, it's the opposite to fragile, which breaks under stress. The resilient simply endures and is robust. The antifragile is beyond resilience and actually benefits from chaos, uncertainty and disorder.

His previous book the Black Swan, he sets the background for Antifragile. A Black Swan is an unexpected, extreme event with a huge impact and is often rationalized after the fact with hindsight. Examples: World War I, 9/11, the mortgage crisis of 2008.

The idea behind being antifragile isn’t about merely expecting sh*t to happen and then accepting it as it is. Instead, it’s about not only surviving but also thriving in the adversity – survthriving.

Taleb uses the illustration of the Hydra to describe an antifragile object. You cut off its head and 2 new ones grow back.

Strategies for the antifragile body
 

• Resistance training - Lifting weights and doing heavy resistance training in any shape or form requires you to contract your muscle fibers at an immense rate. As a result, the body recognizes the necessity of increasing their size and efficiency, thus you get stronger and increase your bone density as well. The key notion lies in doing it HEAVY. A 400 pound deadlift is a much greater stimulus than lifting a pillow millions of times.
• High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) – By the same token, doing HIIT causes similar adaptations as resistance training. You’ll hit your cardiovascular system with a sledgehammer and thus create a much greater response than doing slow jogging for hours upon end.
• Intermittent fasting – The eating patterns of our ancestors were Black Swan events – feasts and famine. Absence of food is actually very beneficial for us. The body perceives that small stress response as a signal to maximize nutrient partitioning and speed up protein synthesis. You trigger immense growth and augmenting processes that clear your system and make you sharper. By the same token, if coupled with feasting, it can yield extremely anabolic effects.
• Cold/Heat exposure – Temperature is an external stimulus that causes us to regulate our core temperature. In the modern world we’re experiencing less fluctuations in this regard. We have central heating and can wear fluffy clothes to keep ourselves warm. 
• Fermented foods – Eating food with live bacteria in them is incredibly good for the gut. This keeps the microbiome healthy and supports the immune system as well as your cognitive functioning. Eat sauerkraut, kimchi, raw unpasteurized milk, kefir, yogurt, pickles etc.

Strategies for the antifragile mind

• Stoicism – An ancient school of philosophy, which basically teaches the person to be less dependent of external material objects, such as wealth, family and people. Instead, one should seek happiness in virtue and in oneself. Any negative event that happens to you is an opportunity to practice some type of virtuous behavior e. forgiveness, antifragility, adaptability, concentration etc.
• Practice via negativa – It’s the act of first removing the downside before you add more things to your life to make it better. You substract afflictive habits, activities, objects and people who make you weaker. Stop eating unhealthy food before you start taking supplements.
• Seek out novelty – Deliberately make yourself face new and uncertain situations. This forces you to adapt to the stress and conditions you to handling random events. Whatever happens to you, you’ll be able to benefit from it because of having the reference experience of over-arching adeptness.
• The Barbell Strategy – Taleb describe this method as a “dual attitude of playing it safe in some areas and taking a lot of small risks in others, hence achieving antifragility.” Small risks expose you to the potential gain you get from adversity, whereas playing it safe prevents you from completely being wiped out. For instance, keep your day job, but at night also take massive action on your side hustle. Slowly progress towards becoming completely independent.
• Get comfortable being uncomfortable – Getting too comfortable is the worst thing you could do to your antifragility. Constantly being on the positive side of life will condition you to become lazy and slow. You’ll “lose your gains” without constantly facing stimulus that forces you to adapt. The Hydra won’t grow a new head unless one of them gets cut off. You have to cultivate the skill of moving inside the eye of the storm and dwell in it. Once you get used to being uncomfortable, you could walk through hell and back without giving a damn. Examples: cold showers, walk in the rain, talk to strangers, do public speaking, do the things you’re afraid of.
• Maintain your mobility – Don’t grow too large and accumulate a lot of baggage, thus become fragile, if you know what I mean. Maintain your flexibility in everything you do. Don’t become too rigid with your activities. Always have a back-up plan and add redundancies e. 2 lungs, a savings account etc. Definitely don’t sell your second kidney. Also, don’t get too attached to anything in life, whether that be people, locations or events. Be willing to embrace Black Swan events at an instance. When it’s go time, you’ll know it and are ready. 

What separates us from the mythical Hydra is that we can choose to be antifragile. It was the nature of the serpent to have a self-growing physiology. We as humans have something similar but we also possess higher levels of consciousness. We’re meta-aware about Black Swans and antifragility, thus we can deliberately create environments of controlled randomness.

I'm 100% sure you understand the benefits and importance of practicing antifragility in everything you do. Here's to becoming beyond resilience. You can read my blog post about this, in which I talk about some more examples about being antifragile and using Black Swan events to your advantage.

Thanks

 

Edited September 24, 2016 by Siim Land

[Raquel]

Interesting!

This strokes my silly ego a little bit haha. I ticked all the boxes, expect the intermittent fasting.. which makes sense, have to search more about it. 

When you say "always have a backup plan" ... Also not good at those,  at least not consciously. 

[Siim Land]

@Raquel Definitely check out intermittent fasting. There are just so many benefits to this, such as increased longevity, improved biomarkers and better mental functioning. 

@John Flores One thing is yielding to the ups and downs of life and another is simply giving up. Being antifragile isn't an attempt to circumvent pain or avoid it. Pain and discomfort is what an antifragile thing yearns for because it gains from it. By the same token, it's not done for egotistic gratification or to simply get some benefits. It's a much more appalling outlook on life, because you won’t be fearful nor lack enthusiasm or involvement. Instead, you approach each situation as an opportunity to learn and emerge as an advanced YOU+ version of yourself.

[Siim Land]

 

[Alex K]

All examples are building resistance to some stuff like adversity or using body mechanics effectively.

If you starve when/and feel good there is nothing chaotic about it, all as planned.

If you have a stable job and do art project on side there is nothing chaotic.

If you remove dirt from your mind it's just sweeping, nothing black swany about it.

Antifragilty idea seems to me to be breaking laws of entropy.

Planned calculated chaos is not chaos.

Real life hydra would crumble under excessive heads weight.

Leo style Nothingness hydra would be everything and not giving a flying f about fragility.

Only some people are truly in their comfort zone - we call it enlightenment. For other souls, tormented as they are, its immoral to call them being comfortable. Imho.

Edited March 11, 2017 by Alex K