Learning the art and science of adding adversity.

Ever think twice about the feel good advice you get served by well-meaning loved ones when you feel like things have been too hard for too long?

“Just follow the good energy!” – “Do what feels right.” – “Pay attention to what your body wants.” – “It’s not aligned if it hurts.” – “You deserve a break!”

They’re not wrong – but the advice is too binary. If we only condition ourselves to follow what feels good, we develop an avoidance to what feels “bad”, never challenging our baseline and caught in the fret of comparison. Much of what we want out of life requires going through what doesn’t feel so great. Payoff can also take a while. And this isn’t my opinion – the science-backed ingredients of flourishing are saying the same.

So, how are you priming to move through the muck? How are you training your body and mind daily to deal with adversity? And more so: how can this fortify you rather than beat you down?

Take a 5 minute break….

INSIGHT
(what we need)

Our education doesn’t give us a roadmap to fortify against hard times.

Traditional schooling doesn’t really provide the training ground for adversity. That’s what the “school of hard knocks” is for. Completely random, blindsiding, and intense for the most part — those who survive have scars. But what if there were a way to avoid total wipe out? For the fans of Nassim Taleb’s theory of anti fragility, there exists a set of principles to design a life that thrives from disorder, unpredictability and adversity.

Antifragility was derived from Taleb’s astute outlier lens to witness the positive outcomes of certain asymmetries in nature. His work illustrates how systems, individuals, or entities can grow stronger by leveraging chaotic or stressful situations in a way where the outcomes significantly outweigh any potential harms. When you have uneven distribution on purpose, you can secure more potential benefits from the outcome. One of approaches to illustrate this is known as “the barbell strategy” – where you combine safety and risk to mitigate risk (like placing 90% of resources/attention on extremely safe investments or actions and 10% on highly left-field speculative ones). This kind of asymmetry limits the losses but creates opportunity for significant gains, making the overall strategy “antifragile” – gaining from disorder. 

Stress makes us stronger. Though he deduced this phenomenon mostly from the world of trading and investing, this principle exists across many systems (biological, social, ecological, technological, business). For instance, companies that seek innovation and encourage experimentation have a greater tolerance to stress failure and can survive economic winters. It works particularly well with personal growth. Human systems are Antifragile by nature: meaning we benefit from stress. Our bones, muscles, tendons, and neural networks grow stronger when exposed to repeated positive stressors (like exercise or exposure therapy). So by seeking challenges or engineering stress, we become more resilient.

Practice trumps theory. Traditional pedagogy places emphasis on facilitating instruction to favor theoretical understanding over real world practice. Though it’s important to ‘learn how to think’ through inquiry-based learning, constructing new mental models, or examining one’s mental processes when processing information for problem solving, there is very little behaviorism involved (or observing the responses to environmental stimuli through reinforcement). Especially to external stimuli that may be deemed “harmful”, “uncomfortable” or even “punitive” in some eyes. Antifragile training might look like learning in a purposefully challenging environment with built in unpredictability without putting people at risk. Or setting meaningful goals with both consequences and rewards. Or actually building something from scratch with feedback loops rather than just learning the ‘how to’ strategies. It’s very easy to get stuck in that tyranny of “how".

A exponential future needs antifragile training. Education is innovating with some of these growth principles in mind — but the adult learning arena isn’t taking advantage of the advantageous neuroplasticity that still exists among adults. In a time of hyperbolic growth where are brains and bodies are having an even harder time keeping up with the changes in our environments, reinforcing our antifragile nature is fundamental to not just surviving but thriving in the times ahead. We’ve gotten all excited about building digital second brains these days…what about also reinforcing antifragile body-brains? 

INSPIRATION
(what we want)

The AntiFragile Academy: an evidence-based education, training, and coaching approach that promotes thriving, resilience and optimal performance. Fortify. Integrate. Thrive. 

PhD duo Dr. Nick Holton and Dr. Adam Wright work with high performers from Meta to the Olympics Committee to break down the science-backed ingredients of flourishing and reinforce through antifragile behavior change. More practitioners than theorists, these two work with executive and athletic teams, as well as 2:1 in-depth coaching with individuals. They are putting the finishing touches to their gamified group mastermind this summer.

• Get your shit aligned. Learn the science-backed ingredients to thrive, feel better and perform consistently.

• Master your environment. Build beliefs, systems and routines that help you navigate daily life.

• Embrace adversity. Master your nervous system by coping with stress/anxiety with reliable protocols.

• Develop empowering mindsets. Practice overcoming big challenges with a growth mindset and strategies to find satisfaction in the journey, not just the destination.

• Psychological flexibility. Flex your psychological muscles to adapt to changing circumstances.

• Sharpen your awareness. Direct and sustain your attention and awareness of self, others, and environment. 

• Optimize your motivation. Leverage both intrinsic and extrinsic motivators to give yourself the necessary fuel for consistent anti-fragility.

Here is a checklist to self-assess whether you are living antifragile!

INNOVATION
(what we wish for)

Dice Club: a buddy-to-buddy accountability app where you input goals into a gamified experience built from Antifragile principles. 

Some times we need engineered intensity in our lives. One of the ways to do this is by adding more unpredictability on purpose as a way to stress test whether you’re reinforced and ready at all times. Find a trusted buddy. Craft meaningful goals that would change everything. Set consequences that hurt and rewards that encourage. Look for some dice. Make deep commitments. Roll. Track. Score. Win/Lose. Repeat.

Designed from Antifragile principles:

1. Stick to simple rules: we don’t get consumed by data and play by a few simple rules that you can easily remember.

2. No single point of failure: We’ve built in redundancy, optionality and layers to the game.

3. Resist the urge to suppress randomness: we let the dice choose our actions.

4. Skin and soul in the game: we help you dig deeper to set meaningful goals that make life better rather than vanity targets.

5. Experiment and tinker: built so you  take lots of small risks, stack habits, and honor feedback loops.

6. Mitigate the downside: designed to avoid risk rather than chase upside that would wipe us out.

7. Not reinventing the wheel: we respect the old rather than chase novelty as evidence of what’s worked before.

8. Favor the practitioner: no theorists here — only doers.

Credit for this innovation goes to Tom Fazio of Weightlessness (who even wrote a book about this concept), and challenged me with this idea of dice rolls in the past and shifted my paradigm on true resilience a decade ago when I really needed it! Thank you Tom 🙏