0 Antifragile

-10.6.2021- "Antifragility basically means that instead of being resilient or adaptive you actually get stronger in the face of extreme stressors, chaos, and disorder. Rather than just dealing with it you actually use the experience to improve. An antifragile mindset goes far beyond practicing resilience." Antifragile is the term to describe a condition where one gets benefit from chaos. This can be pictured by Hydra. When his head is cut, it will grow two heads from the cut. One must aim to get this power in order to survive better. With this power, all difficulties and setbacks can't stop you, it even makes you better and stronger. The question is, how to get it? If I can formulate how to get it, it means I understood well this concept and I can apply it myself in my life and becomes one. I don't have any idea how to be one but I assume that to be antifragile, I should practice it every day, every moment and remember that it's the purpose of my life. Let start with antifragile habits. There must be some habits that can be developed to strenghten this power. Here I would suggest some habits that can strenghten this power. Habit one, exercise. Physical exercise is a habit when we get used to it, we'll get a power from it. More exercise and the harder the difficulties, more power we gain from this habit. Anti fragile has no limit and so do exercise. We can always improve bit by bit without the particular finish line. Physical bodyis fragile while mental taughness is antifragile. It means that one must weapon himself with mental taughness and always push his limit. Antifragile is beyond strong. When one is strong, he doesn't change with difficulties and obstacles, when one is antifragile, he gets better with difficulties and obstacles. It's unbreakable. Actually this concept is very hard to be applied in real life. Most people and system are fragile, when bad things happen, they collapse, few are robust, when bad things happen, they remain the same, very rare are antifragile, when bad things happen, they get benefit from them and become better. This mindset is popular among stoic philosophers. They aim at antifragile. They are immune to misfortune because virtue is sufficient for happiness. For them there is no reason to be unhappy, they get benefit from all kinds of difficulties and problems of life. Back to exercise, exercise is not only benefit the body but even more to the mind. When one run 10 km every single day, or even 30 km every day, The struggle is to beat his own mind rather than body. The mindset to keep going albeit the pain and doubt is only possible with practice a lot. Habit two, meditation. Meditation is the art of doing nothing. Doing nothing is arguably the most difficult thing to do in life. It's easier to do something, even the hard one than to do nothing. The problems of men are often rooted in their inability to sit down alone and do nothing. They get bored and start doing stupid things. They waste time and energy doing things that destoy themselves in the future. What people want is basically pleasure. If one can handle this with meditation, nothing can disturb his and cause unhappiness in his mind. Modern people suffer and depress from their own imaginations, people's opinions, unrealistic expectations, and so on. All of these can be alleviated by meditation. So meditation can calm the monster in the mind who often cause a lot of troubles in life. All problems are internal and personal. The world is merely the representation of the mind, the mirror and the shadow. Habit three, reading. Reading is powerful because it gives us understanding and knowledge about all kind of things. There are many things to gain knowledge and understanding, reading is one of the fastest and most effective. One can not communicate to Socrates or Epicurus, but by reading their ideas, one can understand about them, sometimes better than having real conversation face to face with them. So it's the most practical way to gain true power of understanding. Smart people love reading and those who love reading become even starter. It's the superpower everyone must have. In real life, I know very few people really read. People do not like reading because it's difficult, wasting time, no immediate rewards. In my opinion they miss the greatest thing in this life, to gain more knowledge. In Socrates words, "There is only one good, knowledge, there is only one evil, ignorance". To close this article, antifragile is a mindset that we can try to apply in life. It's very difficult but possible to get. Most people are afraid of rejection and avoid risks, people with antifragile mindset will seek for them. The best athletes likely adopt this mindset. They won't give up because of difficulties, they seek for them in order to train themselves to be stronger and better.