Friday, May 2, 2014

The Antifragile Person

I was talking to some other people there afterwards and one of his old friends from Lebanon said something about Taleb that’s stuck with me -

“Nassim doesn’t care about normal people. Normal people don’t get it.”

And that’s true. None of his writing makes sense unless you’ve been through some shit.For Taleb it was his father being shot, his country falling apart, and the collapse of financial markets as a trader.

I’ve found it to be an extremely effective heuristic for figuring out if a relationship is worth pursuing.How long into a conversation does a person go before they call you out on your bullshit?

The Antifragile person both appreciates being called out and aren’t afraid to do it to others. They aren’t so insecure. Antifragile people take failure, criticism and feedback and actually get stronger.

I’ve always felt that one of my problems is that almost everyone likes me. I’m non-confrontational and agreeable. Besides having a nasty habit of showing up 5 minutes late for all my meetings, I’m pretty easy to get along with.However, a lot of people that I respect tend to be more polarizing than I am.Not polarizing in that they use it as a way to create drama and get attention but in the sense that they have strong convictions and express them confidently. By the nature of social dynamics, that turns off most people.

I was talking to a friend recently and he cut me off to say - “Taylor – It sounds like you’re using this as a rationalization for a decision you’ve already made for entirely different reasons. Which is fine and may be a convenient excuse, but realize that it’s a rationalization.”

At that point I had already spent a couple of days working on and thinking about what we were discussing, but I stopped and thought about it for maybe 5 seconds before I realized that he was absolutely right.

And it was an extremely valuable insight.

One of the characteristics that people I really connect with is that they’re exceptionally good at calling me out on my bullshit.


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