Are You Anti-fragile?
How the fear of failure is wrecking our most efficient path to self-growth
How many times have you heard about growing from mistakes?
How many times have you read about how getting wrong can be important for our self-improvement?
Or, better, how many times have you listened to people that advise making stress your best friend?
Well, tons of times, I think. Numberless.
I am not here to deny this kind of mentality because I am a stalwart supporter of it. I truly think that most of our learning comes from discomfort, the famous Go out of your comfort zone!
However, some articles I read online truly bother me because of their extreme shallowness. Some people watch videos on YouTube and become fervent advocates of this idea without catching it in depth.
Personally, this argument has been a great deal for me, and I ended reading and watching a lot of stuff on it. In this article, I wanted to share how this whole concept changed my mindset and my approach to real situations.
But, before getting into practice, a bit of theory…
What is antifragility?
The idea of antifragile comes from one of the most influential books of the last decade, written by the Lebanese mathematician and philosopher Nassim Taleb.
Taleb’s ideas impacted society’s views fiercely. They are still discussed today for their unbiased originality and radicalism, which is why this book has been either adored or vigorously hated.
Yet this is not a trial, and I’m not here to discuss whether Taleb is a total genius or a teenage rebel, but I want to use the central idea of his philosophy to extract a concept that could represent a game-changer for your life.
Ok, then, what is it?
Well, it is not easy to explain straightforwardly; antifragility surrounds us, still, we did not have a word for describing it until Taleb decided to give it a name.
Think about fragility first. What would you define fragile? Which object comes to your mind?
Take a plate, for instance. We all agree that the plate is fragile. Grab a plate and drop it to the floor. We know for sure that the plate will break, and your mom will not be happy about it.
Therefore, fragile is something that needs care and attention, something that suffers from stress conditions.
Now take a moment to think about its contrary. What could be opposed to the plate?
Well, stone, steel, something steady, you may think. Something that does not break. You can throw or kick a stone as long as you want, nothing will happen to the stone (maybe you will be the one hurt depending on the kick’s intensity, so be careful).
But this is not exactly the contrary. If fragile is something that does not tolerate stress, the opposite is something that embraces it. The more the tension, the more the improvement.
The stone does not improve any time you kick it. It stays the same.
So, here’s the fundamental distinction. Thinking that the stone is the opposite of the plate is like saying that neutral is the opposite of negative. But it’s not true, because we all know that the opposite of negative is positive.
Taleb defines the behavior of the stone as robust. It neither breaks nor improves. It is passive.
So here comes antifragility, a concept that the human being never named but shapes our lives at the same time.
Antifragility is everywhere
Do you remember the Hydra?
Yes, that awful ugly monster in Hercules’ story. Two new heads spawned for each cut. It seemed peerless.
Well, that’s antifragility. The more you damaged it, the stronger it came back.
We do not need, though, to brush up Greek mythology to observe antifragility in action.
Your body is antifragile. When you go to the gym to sweat and repeating time after time your boring push-ups, you are breaking your muscle fibers. Then, during rest, your body replaces them with new fibers, which are fresher and more robust. This is the process of muscle growth.
The same applies to the bones. Have you ever heard about Wolff’s law? It is a scientific statement that shows how the bones of a healthy person or animal react and adapt to the loads under which they are placed. This means that your skeleton becomes stronger if undergone to stress.
Another example is your brain. The concept of neuroplasticity is famous by now. It refers to the magical ability of our brain to develop and adapt to external stimuli and stress.
Well, I can go on forever: vaccines — good timing, isn’t it? — , hormesis, and so on.
It is clear by now that antifragility is near us, more than we thought.
But let’s take a step further. I do not want you to believe that antifragility is present in our lives merely as scientific mechanisms.
Trust me, it’s much more than that.
Antifragility in action
In his book, Taleb uses antifragility as the basis to harshly criticize society’s approach to several fields: economics, finance, education, politics, medical science, et cetera.
I will not discuss each of his opinions for two simple reasons:
- This article is not a review of his book, nor a debate about Taleb’s philosophy.
- I’m writing an article, not a book.
Actually, I want to create something different here. Indeed, I was really impressed by this concept’s power when applied to how we learn things and, more importantly, how we are sabotaging ourselves.
Since we are kids, we are taught to seek perfection, to do always the good things in the right way. Our parents try to educate us on how to avoid errors and pull out of undesirable situations.
They want the best from us, and that is the best way for them to accomplish this desire. This way, they help us somehow, as much as possible, to avoid failure.
Yep, failure, that bad word. That burden we carry around for our entire life. That sword of Damocles which stops us in the thick whenever we are trying to step out of the comfort zone.
This is an issue, a serious issue. This mindset is murdering the most efficient learning system we have at hand, not saying that it is oppressing the most natural and engaging way to live life.
And here comes antifragility.
This is not about philosophy. It’s about facts.
Antifragility shapes our mind, our body, our behavior, we have seen that. Thanks to science, we also know that making mistakes is one of the greatest tools we possess to hack learning.
Indeed, learning by information and notions is ridiculously less fruitful rather than learning by attempts. This is entirely in compliance with how our brain works.
Making errors and understanding them requires stress, therefore a bigger mental activity.
Hence, we need stress and damage — metaphorically speaking — to create a lasting improvement. Does it ring a bell?
“An expert is a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field”.
(Niels Bohr)
It is curious how failure and success must stay together, even if they are contraries. After all, as they say, you can’t see the light without darkness.
So this is what we are doing. We are suppressing success because of the frightening fear of errors.
Actually, ‘error’ comes from the Latin word errare, which means to wander, to go astray.
An error is considered a wander from the right, the normal. Although, I like to see it more as a wander for seeking what’s right and normal to us.
Negative results are just what I want. They’re just as valuable to me as positive results. I can never find the thing that does the job best until I find the ones that don’t. (Thomas Edison)
I want to share the last example, which is highly significant in my opinion: game.
A kid that is playing is learning. He will get to face injustice, uncertainty, failure. He is building a mindset that will help him to confront the world as a grown-up.
The child is antifragile, and the parent that interfere to avoid the injustice is somehow hurting him, even though he thinks to do the right thing.
You may agree or not agree with Taleb’s ideas, but it’s undeniable that antifragility is a big deal. Stress makes us appreciate more the stuff we consider ordinary. Think of that glass of water after a long run, or at that good grade after countless hours of study.
Think of seeing your family or friends again after quarantine or hugging them after this whole nightmare is gone.
Our life is a giant jigsaw puzzle, and our experience is a set of endless pieces of every imaginable shape. The only way to act is to try all of them until we find the right ones.
Conclusion
If you never heard of it before, I hope that you have discovered a new idea that could turn your life. Instead, for the ones who have already read Taleb’s books, I wish you take with you new insights and perspectives.
To sum-up:
- Antifragility is the ability to improve after being stressed or damaged, and it is the ground of several mechanisms in nature.
- Our learning process is antifragile. The most efficient way to learn new things, indeed, is given by the trial and error mentality, namely making mistakes, generating stress for our brain, and then learning from them. Experience is the simplest yet the strongest path to education; as the popular Chinese proverb goes: I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.
- Antifragility is the essence of our life, what allows us to appreciate it. Indeed, we give more value to something when we have been longly deprived of it.
Whether you like it or not, antifragility does not run from you. Your only move is to consider adding it to your life instead of trying to kill it.
