There's no word for the true opposite of fragile. And yet the concept is the secret to thriving in life whatever comes our way.
Fragility refers to something becoming weaker when it's exposed to volatility.
An egg can cope with a lot of jostling in a nest under the body of a parent bird. But when exposed to the tap of a teaspoon, it becomes weaker.
If something doesn't become weaker when exposed to volatility, most people would describe it as something like "strong" or "resilient".
But the true opposite of fragile is when something becomes stronger when exposed to volatility.
And, curiously, there's no commonly-used word for it. So let's use the word coined by Nassim Nicholas Taleb - "anti-fragile".
So what has this got to do with thriving in life?
Our biggest fears are not that something bad will happen to us, but rather that we couldn't handle it if it did.
Consequently, most of us do everything we can to reduce our exposure to volatility and the chances of something bad happening. As a result we forget that we can actually cope with volatility.
But if we can be anti-fragile and become stronger when exposed to volatility, we won't care so much about bad things happening.
The more we create positive experiences of coping well with volatility - of not making a drama out of a crisis - the more we will realise that we can handle much more than we ever imagined. Because that's just how we're built.
