Ikigai series #1 : Resilience and Antifragility

Meher Deepika
3 min readMay 22, 2021

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Hi everyone, I recently finished reading Ikigai: The Japanese Secret to a Long and Happy Life and was really impressed by the way it highlighted simple yet often overlooked advice. To document my journey, I’ll be sharing a series of entries in the coming weeks on my key take-aways from the book.

The chapter titled “Resilience and Wabi-Sabi: How to face life’s challenges without letting stress and worry age you” (chapter 9) talks about two main concepts — resilience and antifragility. It also presents various tactics on how one can develop/strengthen these qualities in their life.

The book starts off stating that one thing every person with a clearly defined ikigai (life purpose) has in common is this — they pursue their passion no matter what. They are, in other words, extremely resilient.

Resilience

Resilience is our ability to deal with setbacks. It means persevering in the face of adversity. Attributes that demonstrate resilience —

  • Staying focused on the important things in life rather than what is most urgent (being able to distinguish & withstand external pressures to work on what’s meaningful to you)
  • Concentrating only on the things you can control and not worrying about the things that are outside of your control. (But for that, we should first develop a clear sense of what we can change and what we can’t).
  • Not getting carried away by negative emotions.

Stoicism and emotional resilience

Epictetus, a Greek philosopher of stoicism says — It’s not what happens to you, it’s how you react that matters.

The Stoics viewed those who were able to control their emotions as virtuous. This contributes to emotionally resilience as stoic people can stay level-headed regardless of the nature of the experience, be it pleasurable or adverse.

Meditate for healthier emotions

Meditation involves observing thoughts and emotions as they appear, neutrally (without judgement), and letting them go without getting carried away. This helps us manage negative emotions better, first by increasing awareness and then helping us release them in a healthy way.

Keep in mind the impermanence of things

The present is the only thing we can control, Instead of worrying about the past or the future, we should learn to appreciate things just as they are in the moment, in the now. At the same time, we should never forget that everything we have and all the people we love will disappear at some point. This awareness does not have to make us sad or pessimistic (we all felt the instinctual sadness that crept up when we read the sentence), rather it can help us love the present and appreciate the people around us more.

Antifragility

We use the word fragile to describe people and things that get weakened when harmed. The words resilient and robust stand for being able to withstand harm without weakening. As an extension to this, Nassim Nicholas Taleb, the author of “AntiFragile: Things That Gain From Disorder” proposes the term antifragile, for things that get stronger when harmed.

“Antifragility is beyond resilience or robustness. The resilient resist shocks and stay the same, the antifragile gets better.”

How can we apply this concept to our daily lives?

It involves three important steps —

  • Create more options. Have multiple salary sources, have a primary and secondary occupation if possible, diverse set of interests, hobbies, strong friendships etc. Essentially saying “don’t put all your eggs in one basket”.
  • Bet conservatively in certain areas and take small risks in others (mostly from a financial perspective).
  • Get rid of things that make you fragile. Set “good riddance” new-year goals to carefully eliminate people, things and habits that make us vulnerable. E.g; Avoid spending time with toxic people.

Each setback can be an opportunity for growth. With the antifragile attitude, we can aim to come back stronger with every blow.

On a lighter note, this is just a summary (a window into the book in a way) and so I tried to keep it highlights-only, which might have left you a bit disengaged as a reader. I recommend you to read the book (with all its examples and interviews) to connect with the advice on a personal level. If you’ve already read the book, do let me know what parts/advice appealed the most to you (or what didn’t).

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Meher Deepika
Meher Deepika

Written by Meher Deepika

I care about doing the right thing.

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