Ralin Mae Lopez
Bio
Stories (3)
Filter by community
Don’t chase happiness. Become antifragile | Tal Ben-Shahar | Big Think
There are only two kinds of people who do not experience painful emotions. The first kind is psychopaths. The second kind is dead. There is a false understanding or expectation that a happy life means being happy all the time. No, Learning to accept, and even embrace painful emotions is an important part of a happy life. And the study of painful emotions is an important part of the field of happiness studies. There is a very important concept that was introduced by Nassim Taleb. And that is antifragility. Antifragility is essentially resilience 2.0. Resilience 1.0 is when we put pressure on a system. After the pressure is lifted, that system goes back to its original form. Antifragility takes this idea a step further. You put pressure on a system. It grows bigger, stronger. We see antifragile systems all around us and within us. For example, in our muscular system, we go to the gym and we lift weights. We're putting pressure on our muscles. What happens, as a result, we grow stronger. We're an antifragile system. On the psychological level, you know what that's called? PTG, post-traumatic growth. So where post-traumatic stress disorder, PTSD, is about breaking down, post-traumatic growth is about growing stronger as a result of the pressure of stress. It's antifragility. The role of the science of happiness is to teach us what conditions we can put in place to increase the likelihood of growing from hardship.
By Ralin Mae Lopez3 years ago in Education
