What attempts to destroy you will only make you stronger.
Antifrafile vlog
What is anti-fragility?
One of the most formative books that I’ve read in my life was anti-fragile by Nassim Taleb. Not only was it a very fun and entertaining read, but, it also totally changed and revolutionized my mind, in terms of how I thought about things.
The basic gist is this:
Small dose stressors actually strengthens you.
For example, weightlifting. I believe that the biological function of weightlifting is this:
You lift a very very heavy weight, at your maximum, once, and the stress that it puts on your body is a positive stress, a “eustress”.
For example, gravity is a eustress. Astronauts who go into space and don’t have gravity, their bones and bodies atrophy. Apparently astronauts need to spend about six hours a day exercising in the space station, just to maintain their bone density.
As your bones weaken, you become older.
A very interesting thought:
The cause of biological aging and weakening is a result of your bones weakening.
The bias is that as you get older, your bones weaken. This is not necessarily true. It is possible that as you age, assuming that you lift weights, your bones can actually strengthen.
For example, currently speaking, at the age of 34, I am 1000 times stronger than I was at the age of 24. And I also aspire to become stronger by the age of 44, 54, 64, 74 and beyond.
Even my mom, who is currently 67 years old, I got her into weightlifting. Doing the one rep max type of lifting, doing the squat hold as well as the rack pull. Just two weeks of daily weightlifting, she is the strongest and most confident she has ever been, far stronger and better than she was at 57, 47, even 37.
“Aging”?
Typically what happens is this —
As we get older, and as the years go on, we fall into more degenerative habits.
For example, something that I have witnessed is that most people my age, in their early or mid 30s, even in their late 20s, are far sicklier, older looking, weaker, and more degenerate looking than they were back in high school, college, even in the early 20s.
Even one of my friends in college, junior year, all he did was eat really bad food, drink a lot of alcohol, smoked a lot of cigarettes, and never exercised, at that age of around 21, he already look like a 55-year-old man.
What causes your bones to weaken?
Things which causes your bones to weaken include sitting, not walking, not weightlifting, not running around, not playing on uneven and irregular surfaces, etc.
For example, driving. The time you spend sitting and commuting, and being stuck in traffic, your hips weaken, your knees weaken, your feet weaken your back weakens, etc. Anytime that you’re spending not standing or lying down on your back is bad. The only caveat is when you are lying down flat on your back, either when you are napping or sleeping.
It doesn’t matter how old you are, or young you are, anybody and everybody could benefit from weightlifting. It doesn’t matter whether you are 12 years old, 16 years old, 22 years old, 28 years old, 34 years old, 42 years old, 52 years old, 62 years old, 72 years old, 80 years old, etc. I aspire to lift weights until I die at the age of 120.
But isn’t lifting weights dangerous?
No. Also, the hilarious irony is that a lot of people don’t lift weights because they think it will cause them to damage their bones, or hurt themselves. Ironically enough the truth is actually the opposite; you lift weights in order to strengthen your bones, and prevent yourself from injuring yourself in the future.
Therefore my great innovation of the squat hold, the atlas hold, or the atlas lift; it will strengthen your spine 1000x.
Life
An insanely optimistic thought is this:
Anything that happens to you in life, whether good or bad, will strengthen you and make you more powerful in the long run.
For example, other people. Issues or things that make you angry, annoyed, etc., it will all strengthen to benefit you in the long run.
For example, I have a strong sense of justice. Whenever somebody talks to me in such a way which I believe as disrespectful, I get insanely angry. And it seems the most productive way to channel your anger is to either use that as a tool of philosophical introspection, And or to defend yourself. Anger is a good defense mechanism.
But isn’t it bad to be “defensive“? Nonsense. Defense is the highest good.
Even if you think about America, and our military, the “department of defense“. The way that we Americans defend ourselves and our own self interests is we put military bases all around the world, and we keep indefinitely strengthening our military in order to defend ourselves through our offensive strength. Or in other words, as long as America has the biggest stick, nobody will mess with us.
If we think about Machiavelli and Il Principe, Machiavelli says that to preemptively strike is also a virtuous form of self-defense.
Thought framing
Whenever something bad happens to you in life, think to yourself:
How can this minor annoyance end up strengthening me in the long run?
For example, COVID-19 was actually a positive thing because it helped forced people to innovate.
Or, let us say that you injure yourself in the gym. This could be critical information to teach you to spend more time warming up, more time warming up with yoga, or just changing your approach and technique. For example I discovered that doing flat bench press, as well as flat dumbbell press put undue stress on my shoulders in a bad way. Therefore, this information helped me innovate a new concept; doing a floor bench press, or even a floor dumbbell press — how I do it.
Antifragile Photography
I believe street photography is the path to anti-fragile photography.
Why is that? It is because in street photography, we often encounter many setbacks. For example, wanting to shoot a certain scene, but, chickening out, and as a result, not shooting the photo. This leads to regret.
An anti-fragile way to approach street photography is that whenever you have a situation in which you chicken out because you hesitated, you think yourself:
This time I may have chickened out, but let this be a good lesson to myself the next time I see a similar situation or scene, I push myself extra harder to have the courage to shoot it.
STREET PHOTO STARTER KIT — says
99.9% of street photography is courage.
With courage, it is also an anti-fragile thing. That is, increasing and augmenting your courage is a piecemeal approach. That is, there are certain days you are more confident than others, and some days you’re less confident. And that is OK and all part of the game.
How to augment your courage
Courage is everything. To become more courageous in life;
- Let us know that courage comes from the heart. Anything that you do which strengthens your heart is a good thing.
- Let us also consider the physiological consideration; fear is a manifestation of or hormonal responses to things. If you are able to shift your hormonal response, increase your testosterone, etc., likewise you will also increase your courage.
- Weightlifting at the gym, one repetition maximum attempts. what is a one repetition maximum lift? That is, I had as much weight to the barbell as humanly possible, and just see you at the point in which you could just successfully lift it up even a quarter of an inch, once. Don’t go for reps (repetitions). Reps are for suckers. Or another example, it is better to deadlift 551 pounds once, than to deadlift 405 pounds twice.
It’s all good.
Ultimate way to approach life:
Anything and everything that happens to you, it is all good!
ERIC
Moar stoic thoughts
More random thoughts
- Perhaps the best car is a hybrid. Some sort of hyper super car that is a hybrid. Perhaps currently — the new goat is the NSX TYPE S. Get it in red. Or the Gotham grey matte paint. You get the upside of the pick up from the electric motor, and you can still be loud, because it has a gasoline engine. Also, superior miles per gallon.
- Barefoot: spend more time a day barefoot, this will be great for you in almost every single way. For example, weightlifting barefoot is a great idea.
- More beef liver, beef heart, beef intestines. 100% ERIC KIM CARNIVORE DIET. Only organ meats, then beef ribs. Meat is supreme. And — if you have the option and choice — liver, heart, small intestines (beef) as positively superior to any type of flesh meat. Even better than beef ribs! Also hit up the bone marrow when possible.