How an Antifragile Mindset Can Make You Stronger (and Happier)

A person with an “antifragile mindset” describes someone who gets stronger and better when faced with adversity, which can lead to higher levels of resiliency, gratitude, and well-being. Here’s what you need to know.

What is Antifragility?

The concept of Antifragility was first introduced by best-selling author and professor Nassim Nicholas Taleb in his book Antifragile: Things That Gain From Disorder, to describe a set of systems that would thrive when confronted with stressors, mistakes, or failures.

Taleb explained that antifragility differed from systems that were resilient or robust. Where resilient and robust systems had the ability to simply resist failure, antifragile systems would get better.

“Some things benefit from shocks; they thrive and grow when exposed to volatility, randomness, disorder, and stressors and love adventure, risk, and uncertainty. Yet, in spite of the ubiquity of the phenomenon, there is no word for the exact opposite of fragile. Let us call it antifragile. Antifragility is beyond resilience or robustness. The resilient resists shocks and stays the same; the antifragile gets better.” — Nassim Nicholas Taleb.

Therefore, an individual who is antifragile is someone who grows stronger as a result of confronting stress and adversity.

The Benefits of Having an Antifragile Mindset

One of the phenomena often associated with having an antifragile mindset is something known as post-traumatic growth (PTG).

Post-traumatic growth is a theory developed in the 1990s by psychologists Richard Tedeschi, Ph.D., and Lawrence Calhoun, Ph.D., that describes a positive psychological shift that some individuals experience after enduring a form of adversity, such as a life crisis or traumatic event.

To determine whether people experienced post-traumatic growth, Tedeschi and Calhoun developed what they called the Post-Traumatic Growth Inventory (PTGI), which looked for five positive factors following trauma:

• Appreciation for life.
• Relationships with others.
• New possibilities in life.
• Personal strength.
• Spiritual change.

Cultivating an anti-fragile mindset is essential in order to experience post-traumatic growth. Interestingly, Tedeschi posited that people who are less resilient are actually more likely to experience post-traumatic growth than those that are more resilient because resilient people typically remain the same following trauma, while less resilient people are often forced to question their beliefs in order to grow stronger in response to the trauma.

How to Cultivate an Antifragile Mindset

Tal Ben-Shahar, positive psychologist and co-founder of the Happiness Studies Academy describes three conditions that arise when we are faced with hardship:

1. We can crack under pressure (be fragile)
2. We can resist the pressure and bounce back to our original state (be resilient)
3. Or we can use the experience to grow even stronger than we were before (be anti-fragile).

Sounds easy enough, right? But what steps can we take to apply an antifragile mindset to our own daily lives? Some of the answers might surprise you.

Don’t Pursue Happiness

According to Ben-Shahar, directly pursuing happiness can have the opposite effect. If all we seek are states of pleasure and bliss, then when we experience painful emotions like sadness (which we inevitably will), we’ll feel like we’ve failed at being happy.

“Learning to accept and even embrace painful emotions is an important part of a happy life.” — Ben-Shahar.

Forget what Thomas Jefferson said. Don’t pursue happiness, pursue what’s meaningful, embracing the good, the bad, and everything in between.

Be In(SPIRE)d

Happiness is best pursued indirectly. To that end, Ben-Shahar created the acronym SPIRE to describe five areas of well-being to pursue:

1. Spiritual Well-Being: discovering a sense of meaning and purpose.
2. Physical Well-Being: minimizing stress and maximizing recovery from its effects.
3. Intellectual Well-Being: asking questions and learning new things.
4. Relational Well-Being: spending quality time with people we care about and who care about us.
5. Emotional Well-Being: embracing painful emotions and cultivating a sense of gratitude.

Key Takeaways

Let’s sum this up with three key takeaways.

1. What is Antifragility?

Antifragility is a term used to describe someone or something that gets better as a result of failure and adversity.

2. What are the Benefits of Having an Antifragile Mindset?

Instead of cracking under hardship, or simply resisting it, an antifragile mindset can allow you to grow stronger from struggle and challenge.

3. How Can You Cultivate an Antifragile Mindset?

Don’t pursue happiness, allow it to come to you indirectly as a result of fostering well-being in each area of your life (SPIRE). Find your purpose, mitigate stress, learn new things, spend time with loved ones, and embrace everything that life throws at you with gratitude.

I hope you found this helpful. Follow The Inner Observer for more insights to improve health and well-being.

Thank you for reading.

Sincerely,

Michael G. Jasper, The Inner Observer

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