As an individual, you can feel very fragile or fragile. Because of the corona crisis, I also had a moment when I didn't feel like it. I didn't feel like recording videos or podcasts. So I thought, I'll just read, because at least then something will happen.
Now I am reading books and have discovered a concept of how something becomes stronger through shock, antifragile as it were. Somewhere the whole corona thing is also a shock and now I am reading and that knowledge is making me stronger again
So as an individual you are fragile, but if you do something an external shock can cause you to develop yourself as well.
From fragile to anti-fragile
What I also found interesting was that the Ottoman Empire and the cities of Aleppo and Lebanon were one of the richest cities or areas in the world for 12,000 years. That was just a super rich area. This book on fragile and antifragile also said that the Romans were also very antifragile.
You had small municipalities that had all the power, but they had no central government. This only made the system itself stronger. The emperor in Rome became stronger as a result.
You have the same thing now in Switzerland. You don't have a central government there either, but all municipalities. They do have a prime minister, but the average Swiss person doesn't know who that is.
The book states that the moment centralized governments came along there were two world wars and weapons that could destroy the entire earth in 100 years. Whereas in the years before without centralized government this was not the case.
So what we also see now is that everything is communicated top-down. There is a lot of playing with the fragility of human beings in this. That you can die if you get too close to other people.
But we're going to die sometime anyway.
The rules are deployed on fragility. This alone makes the system more fragile and then it breaks down.
After all, what if we just let it go as in nature?
We don't know that, of course. In the meantime, it could have been worse. Perhaps twenty times worse than it has been.
But what happens next? After that is the buildup and we come out stronger. With those who remain. The natural selection.
That sounds super harsh, of course, but that's how nature works. Nature is relentless. The system gets stronger then the individual is secondary. Of course you are important, but when you look at the whole picture, we are all unimportant.
We can think of ourselves as very important, but how important are we? There are people who linger in history, like Jesus or Caesar, you remember those names. But who was interesting 2000 or 5000 years before that? In China all those dynasties and 50,000 years ago no one at all remembers.
So over controlling and protecting is really the biggest madness of all time. It is quite understandable, though. It is our nature to want to protect yourself and your children.
In the U.S., everyone carries guns to protect themselves and their families.
But for ourselves, we are very protective; the rest can bugger off.
If you look at antifragility, this is actually the worst thing you can do, but how do you stop? It's hard to say you have to let it all go and sit back and watch. The whole world is participating, we are in a lockdown.
I also participate in the 1.5 meters and don't want people in my aura.
But what can be done now? Probably very little.
If you look at other experts who say then the economy is being killed off to help old smokers. The first ones to say it were killed off on Twitter, so to speak, but now you see more and more people demonstrating against it.
You get all kinds of conspiracy theories, about 5G and Bill Gates being behind it and I know it all.
That all plays into your hands if you assume fragility.
If you let it go, those conspiracy theories wouldn't have been there either.
Or there had been a theory that the government is not protecting us and that the virus is there to wipe us all out. Then you would have had other conspiracy theories.
If we look at what you want to achieve as a person, you want to become antifragile as much as possible.
The interesting thing is that we are now betting on fragility on a macro level. And for what? You may ask.
What you can do yourself to combat fragility
On a micro level, we do the same. We eat ourselves full, we stay full, and then your metabolism goes down too. Then you get fat, the famous corona silos.
Then you look at other peoples who are more antifragile. Then you see that these are people who have a varied diet, who have physical work and who do not retire.
What we do. We usually eat about the same, have sedentary jobs and retire.
In doing so, we make ourselves fragile.
And now in these times, we are becoming even more fragile.
Then I wonder what price we will soon pay for the fragile when we come out of lockdown.
This is obviously not a blog to break the rules, but I do think it's good to train yourself to come out of this as strong as possible.
So watch as little news as possible and read things you can read. Less stress, more relaxation, connect with people via Zoom, exercise a lot (for example, in your garden) and try to have fun.
It is our very nature to connect. I advocate antifragility. And ask yourself how you can come out of this stronger and turn this moment into an opportunity.
Also listen to this podcast:
https://www.buzzsprout.com/195236/3564037-we-zetten-in-op-breekbaarheid-dus-we-breken?play=true
Removing emotional fragility
According to researchers, certain traits in people are important to be better able to withstand these kinds of strange economic times later on. To be able to handle it well. Namely a higher education (but how important that is I doubt with my background), your own feelings, the quality of work you want to do (that does matter) and being emotionally stable when you were young adults (also fairly important)[1].
Now you may think you don't possess some of these factors, such as a high education or emotional stability. The nice thing is that you have your whole life to develop yourself. So now can be a good time.
Do you find that you do become emotionally unstable just at this time and can't say you'll just grab a book when you notice your motivation diminishing? Then it might be helpful to get help for that, too.
After all, how did you learn to deal with a long-term crisis? Have you ever experienced a long-term crisis before in your life and what was what you thought was right then? Does that still help you now?
This is something hypnosis can help you with[2]. If you know what you are doing you can go a long way with self-hypnosis and if not, a hypnotherapist will help.
For example, a hypnotherapist can help you change your fixed "crisis response." With regression, for example, you can find out where it comes from. Perhaps you used to be in a crisis situation for a long time, such as when your parents often argued in a way that made you doubt how safe your home environment was.
Then you came up with strategies to deal with this, because yes where can you go as a child? Unconsciously, you may reapply those strategies in your adult life. Maybe you withdraw and your relationships suffer as a result. It could be anything.
With the hypnotherapist, you can find out if there was a moment in your life that created the belief that now causes awkward behavior.
You are then put into hypnosis and then suggested to go back to the first moment when you got the feeling that is now causing motivation problems (or the problem that has come since corona). You might first go back in your mind to the moment the corona crisis began, but you can also go back further.
Then you and the hypnotherapist take another look at that moment. Now you can also consciously examine what was going on now. Why did what happened happen and can you explain it now with the knowledge you have now?
This alone can change your strategy for dealing with stress or crisis and make you more anti-fragile.
There are also other strategies that can help you stay more emotionally stable so that you are motivated to make something of your life.
Want to learn more about hypnosis? Join us for a free online master class on hypnosis.
Or enroll directly in one of our training courses to master the techniques for yourself and to help others.
Sources:
[1] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1467-6494.2009.00596.x
[2] https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00029157.2016.1163662
