Antifragility & why stress is a good thing

The definition of antifragility, according to Nassim Tale, is things that gain from disorder.

Normally we think in terms of fragile or robust. Something fragile is weakened by disorder. Robustness, on the other hand, can withstand disorder, i.e. remains the same. The third option, antifragile is the best variant; something that gains from disorder.

A good example of antifragility can be a collective of restaurants. They are antifragile because “individual restaurants are fragile; they compete with each other, but the collective of local restaurants is anti-fragile for that very reason. Had restaurants been individually robust, hence immortal, the overall business would be either stagnant or weak, and would deliver nothing better than cafeteria food.”

More interestingly, people can be antifragile. In psychology, there is a term for this, called post-traumatic growth. This means sometimes when people encounter high stress or disorder in their lives — they tend to overreact and overcompensate after that, to make sure whatever caused the stress doesn’t happen again. This excess energy released from overreaction to setbacks is what innovates and causes personal growth.

Instead of seeing stress, setbacks, and disorder as negative things in your life — try to see them long-term as positive things if you can react and learn accordingly. As Friedrich Nietzsche first stated, “Out of life’s school of war — what doesn’t kill me, makes me stronger”.

Allow stress & setbacks to motivate you to grow & learn — and most importantly see the good in the setbacks and adversity that life offers you.

If this topic is interesting to you, I recommend Nassim Taleb's book Antifragile, which goes further in depth.

Thanks for reading.