Our job as a human being is to adapt and evolve our current capabilities and capacities. Of all the things I believe to be true this is the most set in stone. If you disagree, prove me wrong, please.
If this is the case, then everything we do (or don’t do) should be geared towards transcending our current self, to do so, we must be antifragile. In mind, body and spirit.
To understand antifragility, we must understand the differences between Fragile, Resilient and Antifragile.
If an object or individual is Fragile, it is easily broken or damaged. It is vulnerable to a change in the environment
For example: If you were to knock a glass off a table by accident, a fragile glass would shatter when it hits the ground, ceasing to exist in its current state.
Resilience is the ability to recover or withstand difficult conditions or a change in environment without breaking. We can use the synonyms of strong, robust and tough when we are discussing resilience.
For example: If you were to knock that same glass off a table by accident, a resilient glass would not break, it would bounce, and land on the ground in the same condition it was prior to being knocked off the table.
A resilient object or individual can return to its baseline when stressed, an antifragile one improves on that baseline.
An antifragile organism is able to thrive and evolve when exposed to randomness, volatility, disorder, love, adventure, risk and uncertainty. This is the exact opposite of fragility.
The human organism is antifragile.
You are antifragile.
The problem I see, is that we don’t treat ourselves as such.
We shy away from disorder, and chaos. Yet as an antifragile organism, we have the ability to grow from these experiences. To make the most of this, we need to shift our mindset. We must understand that in the right dose, discomfort is the best possible thing for us.
Stress – adaptation – response (repeat) We understand this in a gym/performance training sense. But what we forget is that it is true for all areas of our life. Our career, relationships, problem solving and decision making abilities all thrive off the right amount of stress.
The only two certainties in this world are change and uncertainty. The only remedy is an awareness and introspection in regards to our ability to be antifragile.
“ The biggest problem we run into is going ‘This is who I am, this is what I’m like, this is how I function’ while failing to notice that you don’t do that anymore’ // Neil Gaiman
Embrace the suck, work through the chaos, you’ll come out the other side a higher functioning, more capable version of yourself.
As always be amazing, and if you think I’m full of shit, tell me why 🙂
Lachie
