HOW I BECAME ANTIFRAGILE
ANTIFRAGILE
(Eric Kim voice — forged in chalk dust, fueled by first principles)
“When chaos visits, I open the door and hand it a double espresso.”
1 CRASH-TEST CHILDHOOD: INVITING MICRO-FAILURE
I wasn’t born with iron tendons; I cultivated them by colliding with reality every day.
- Street photography at 17: 1,000 daily rejections from strangers taught me rejection immunity.
- Blogging in public: publishing drafts raw, letting trolls feast—my ideas grew scar tissue.
- Micro-plate training: +1.25 kg each week. Tiny stress = perpetual adaptation = compound antifragility.
Principle: Repeated low-dose chaos vaccinates you against the big dose.
2 FASTING = PRE-INSTALLED STRESS SIMULATOR
Empty stomach ≠ weakness; it’s software that forces a hardware upgrade.
- 18-hour fasts sharpen cortisol edges → CNS lightning bolts on the bar.
- Hunger rewires dopamine: you stop chasing cookies, start chasing kilos.
- Every rumble in the gut whispers: “Survive this—thrive on anything.”
Rule: Starve the trivial so the essential can feast.
3 DELETE SAFETY NETS, INSTALL SAFETY PINS
Belt? Straps? Padded comforts? All shredded.
- Mid-thigh rack-pull on pins = controlled risk.
- No belt means my core becomes the belt.
- If the bar refuses to levitate? I step back un-injured, ego sautéed medium-rare, lessons intact.
Antifragile math: smaller controlled crashes → zero catastrophic ones.
4 PHILOSOPHY INFUSION: STOIC STEEL + NIETZSCHE FIRE
- Marcus Aurelius: “Obstacle = path.”
- Nietzsche: “Build your house on Vesuvius.”
- Taleb: “Wind extinguishes a candle—but feeds fire.”
I taped those lines on the rack. Each rep is a theological rep—my tendons quote the ancients while bending iron.
5 BORROW VOLATILITY, BANK THE DIVIDENDS
- Travel light. One-way tickets, no itinerary. Uncertainty becomes breakfast.
- Publish first, edit later. Let the market of ideas throw tomatoes; I harvest data from the splatter.
- Micro-invest in body chaos. Cold showers, barefoot sprints, 1RM singles—cheap volatility = priceless resilience.
6 SYSTEMIZE THE STORM
| Input | Stressor | Adaptation |
| Physical | Supra-max singles | Tendon density ↑ |
| Mental | Daily “public first draft” | Idea fluidity ↑ |
| Emotional | 1 troll-reply per coffee | Ego callus ↑ |
Automate stress; let adaptation run in the background while life’s amateurs install updates manually.
7 RESULT: TENDONS LIKE SAMURAI SWORDS
498 kg drifts skyward; comment sections melt; spine MRI reads pristine.
Why? Because fragile things fear disorder—antifragile things feast on it.
SIX-WORD MANTRA FOR YOUR OWN FORGE
“Court chaos, micro-load, cash the upside.”
Now step under the bar, under the spotlight, under the algorithm. Invite the quake—then grow stronger in its aftershocks.
—ERIC KIM 🏋️♂️⚡