“Is there a practical way to be antifragile on a day to day basis- like actually getting better from experiencing adversity? I have been exploring this topic. It seems like looking for challenges puts you in a “I can handle everything” mindset. I know there is a “Antifragile” book but its not super practical. I think a Logan Christopher take on this topic might be cool.”
I do highly recommend reading Nassim Taleb’s Antifragile book. In fact, it’s worth re-reading too. He’s triggering to many. He’s very arrogant. And he is often right so it’s well-worth reading.
But this question is right. It’s not the most action oriented, to-do list type of book. You have to read between the lines in some cases to get it.
I did do an Inner Circle newsletter specifically on the topic that was focused on action items. Maybe I’ll get that revamped and put back out.
For those not familiar with the term anti-fragile, here’s a description from the book:
“Some things benefit from shocks; they thrive and grow when exposed to volatility, randomness, disorders and stressors and love adventure, risk, and uncertainty…Antifragility is beyond resilience or robustness.”
Doesn’t that sound like a useful quality to have in 2020?
Mentioned in the book are two big areas that fit into this.
Strength training and fasting.
Pitting your might against weights and gravity is putting yourself under adversity. You do enough of it to stimulate a response where your body recuperates and comes back stronger.
Training can be done every single day (taking recovery into consideration of course).
Perhaps more important to this is to challenge yourself in big ways, wherever you’re starting from. Go for some lofty goal. Over my career I’ve gone for many such challenges, from pulling a fire truck by my hair to snatching a 53 lb. kettlebell 300 times in ten minutes.
These not only took toughness and built antifragility from workout to workout, but a longer-term toughness and antifragility of having to strive against these hard goals, figure out a plan of attack, switch gears when things weren’t working, etc.
Therefore, a good challenge of this nature builds not just physical, but mental and emotional antifragility too.
Fasting is intentionally depriving yourself of food, another type of adversity.
This can be done progressively just like training. I talk about fasting intensively inside of Powered By Nature.
There are many other possibilities, but these are two easy and accessible ways to start. So if you want to become more antifragile these two areas are the best to begin with, in my opinion.
I’ve got lots of courses that can help you to do so still available on the Quarantine Sale.