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

1. Travel light. One-way tickets, no itinerary. Uncertainty becomes breakfast.
2. Publish first, edit later. Let the market of ideas throw tomatoes; I harvest data from the splatter.
3. 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 🏋️‍♂️⚡