تفسیر درس

AntiFragile VIP - Commentary

Hello, this is A.J. and welcome to the Commentary for this month’s lesson. In this commentary, I’m going to talk a little bit about this theme, this idea of antifragile. I want to talk more about some of my personal experiences too. In some of these commentaries, I’ll talk a little bit more about my personal experiences and what led me to be attracted to some of these ideas that I’m teaching you about, some of these mental strategies that I’m teaching you and what led me to develop them in some cases.

It’s this idea of antifragile. It’s important. I don’t want to say that it’s a key to survival, but certainly a key trait to develop so that you become more and more the master of your life and really have a deep feeling of confidence in your own abilities, in yourself.

I think to develop that you have to have experiences. There’s no replacement for experiences.

The problem is that many people have experiences and they use those experiences as an excuse to feel weaker. I’ve talked about this before. I think one of the key things is to actually choose more of your experiences, especially to choose your difficult experiences.

Most people avoid difficult experiences, so when they happen to them by chance – because things happen in life – they feel like victims and they complain. It’s terrible, I can’t handle it.

When you actually choose difficult things, you kind of develop a certain mental toughness and a confidence inside.

I don’t know if I can pick an exact time when this started for me, but the thing that I remember most was my first trip to India because it developed in me a certain amount of mental toughness, confidence and a bit of this antifragile mindset. I was in school. I’d been in the United States my whole life and I just kept wanting to travel. I was just so excited about it and I wanted to go somewhere different.

I’ve told this story before in other podcasts. I finally decided on India because it seemed like the most different place ever and I decided to go by myself. The thing that tested me was that I got physically sick and I ended up in an Indian hospital. It was kind of my worst nightmare really.

One of my biggest fears was that I would get sick. I got so sick. I got dehydrated and I couldn’t eat. I was throwing up – which means to vomit. I could hardly eat and I wasn’t even drinking water.

It was super hot and I was in the desert part of India – the Rajasthan area. It was so hot and eventually I pretty much collapsed. I didn’t fall down but I got so weak that I couldn’t stand up anymore. Eventually I got taken to a hospital with no foreign people. In my mind I was so worried. This is terrible. This is a disaster. In some ways I was so sick and so weak that I really couldn’t worry too much.

When the worst things happen and when you’re in the middle of it, you really don’t even have time to worry so much. It’s all the time before that you spend worrying. When it’s actually happening, you often discover that you’re a little stronger than you thought and that it’s less scary than you thought.

That’s what happened to me. I ended up getting into the hospital and all my fears of some horrible Indian hospital were not true. It was actually a very clean place and I was taken care of very well. It wasn’t very fun and it wasn’t exciting. I remember that I was reading Stephen King’s book, The Stand. I think I finished that book. I think I finished The Shining too. I don’t know why I was reading Stephen King books during that trip.

I stayed in my bed all the time and I got IV’s. That’s where they basically put water into you.

They have a tube and they put it into your arm and you just suck up saltwater. It’s called saline.

Saline is saltwater. I read books and I ate bananas. That’s all I could eat for about four days, I think.

After I got out of that and started up my trip again, something had changed. I’d faced a big fear, a big challenge, certainly something that all my family had worried about. What if you get sick and you have to go a hospital? Nobody’s there to take care of you.

Well, I faced it and it really was not so bad. I handled it. Was it pleasant? Not really but I handled it. By going through that tough experience, it kind of changed my standards. I realized oh I can handle more than I thought. I can face more than I thought. I can handle more uncertainty than I thought.

I realized that I didn’t need to be quite so nervous about traveling, for example, and so I started traveling more and more. Now that’s my lifestyle because I realized that it’s something I love and something I’ve always wanted to do. I wanted to have this more nomadic adventurous life.

I still get physically tired sometimes from traveling but I know that I can always get better. I know that I can take care of myself. I know that I can handle it. You can too. That’s the point of this.

You’ll never know until you get out there and face some tough things and get through them, and then you’ll realize oh I can handle that. I’m tougher than I thought.

Then you go and try to do some things that are even a little bit tougher. Most people as they get older do the opposite. They start avoiding tough things. They start trying to make their life more and more comfortable, more and more easy. They avoid difficult things more and more. I’ve seen this happen with many of my family members.

As a result, has that made them stronger and healthier? No, it’s done the opposite. It’s made them weaker and weaker and weaker mentally and physically. They’re more easily scared.

They’re more easily worried about things. Physically of course they’re not as strong. They can’t handle things as well.

This antifragile mentality is very strong. It’s very tough. It’s very important but you have to develop it. This is not something that you can just do with some mental tricks. You can certainly use psychology as much as you can to change your beliefs and all that, but eventually you actually have to get out there and test yourself, push yourself and do some tough things.

When you try to do something tough and difficult, one of two things will happen. Number one, you’ll actually maybe succeed and do much better than you thought you would and that will give you confidence. Wow, I’m better than I thought.

The other possibility is that you’ll totally fail and it will be horrible and it will suck. To suck means to be horrible. You’ll feel miserable but you’ll survive. You’ll get through it. This also will give you confidence because you’ll realize okay that was terrible, that was just as bad as I thought it might be but I’m still alive. I got through it. I could handle it. Maybe I can handle more things than I thought. Maybe I’m tougher than I thought.

All this happens unconsciously. You won’t necessarily say all this to yourself or out loud, but this kind of starts happening in your brain. The more you do tough and difficult things, it happens.

This gives you many advantages in life.

Advantage number one is when something tough happens in the world, a situation that you cannot avoid, you’ll be stronger. You’ll be able to handle it better than most people. Therefore, you’ll adapt better and you’ll have a better chance of succeeding, for example in a tough economy or in some other situation, whereas lots of other people who aren’t so antifragile will complain and whine. They’ll feel like victims and they’ll get weaker and weaker, but you’ll say I can handle this, it’s all right and you keep going.

Another advantage of developing this toughness, another reason to seek out and actually look for tough or even painful situations sometimes is that when you can handle more difficulty, normal life starts feeling much easier.

I’ve done this to myself recently. I noticed myself about a year ago just complaining about every little thing. Every little frustration or problem just made me so upset, so I started seeking out more difficult challenges and more tough challenges. As a result the little things didn’t seem like such a problem anymore.

Sometimes I’ll get really tired and worn down and then I get irritated by small things too, but usually now not as much because I’m pushing myself to face bigger and tougher things. This is a big advantage.

I can’t remember who said this quote. I just recently saw it online somewhere. The quote goes something like this. Don’t wish for life to be easier. Don’t pray and ask for your life to be easier.

Ask for and pray to be stronger and able to handle tougher situations. Pray to be stronger. Don’t pray for life to be easier.

That’s a different mentality but it makes a big, big difference. Of course I suggest that you don’t just sit around praying and waiting for the universe, God or Buddha or whatever to somehow do it for you. You’ve got to do it. Instead of waiting and praying to be stronger, make yourself stronger.

I think all this starts very much at a physical level. We’re physical animals. We’re physical creatures, so I think often times starting at a physical level is important. That means pushing yourself into tough physical challenges and making yourself physically tougher.

This is a big one for me in my life. When I’m less fit, less healthy and when I’m not working out really hard and challenging myself physically, I notice that I become mentally softer too. I become more frustrated more easily. Smaller problems bother me more.

On the other hand, when I’m really pushing myself physically and doing tough things, training for some tough race, doing pushups and pull-ups and running and sprints, then as my body gets tougher, I notice that my mind seems to get tougher too. My emotions get tougher.

Why? At a simple level by pushing myself physically, I’m also training my mind because I’m training myself mentally to endure physical pain, to endure exhaustion and tiredness, to endure the pain and the difficulty of working out and struggling physically. That’s good.

I recommend number one start with something physical. This month if you choose, choose a tough physical challenge, something tough and publicly register for it. I’ve done this myself. I’m starting to do these things called obstacle races. Instead of just running a little 5k or a 10k jog or run, that gets a little boring for me now, so I’m doing these obstacle races. It’s more like a military style obstacle race.

An obstacle is some kind of challenge. That means as you’re running in the race – maybe it’s 5k or 10k or more – you also have to crawl on the ground, you have to jump over walls or you have to climb ropes. They have all these things that you have to do. Number one it’s more interesting but it also makes it much tougher. You need more strength. It’s physically harder.

So I’ve signed up for one of these and I’m going to sign up for some more. I tell everyone that I’m doing it, so I commit publicly to do it. That’s what I’m telling you to do. You don’t have to choose an obstacle race, but choose something that’s tough for you maybe three or four months from now, something that you’d really have to train for, something that maybe you can’t quite do right now that would be really hard to do, so you’re going to have to get tougher to accomplish it.

Maybe it’s a 5k race. Maybe it’s a long hike. Maybe it’s lifting a certain amount of weight. I don’t know what it is but choose something. Get tougher physically. Also choose a mental challenge, something that will make you tougher and stronger, something difficult.

It could be traveling. I like travel examples because travel is often unpredictable and it can also be quite tough at times, especially when you go to certain places in the world that are quite different from your own.

Find a mental challenge that’s tough, something that requires some strength and toughness that will actually be difficult and maybe even painful and do it. Push yourself to do it. I know that it seems strange that I’m telling you to go do something painful and difficult for no reason except just to endure it, but try it. Get in the habit of doing this, getting tougher and stronger, and I think you’ll find that in fact life becomes much more pleasant and enjoyable.

I’ll see you next time. Bye-bye.