A tree, a wire around its trunk, and the trunk that continued to grow, despite the wire.
I watched a video about bonsai this past weekend, and in it was an elm tree, whose trunk was growing around a wire.
The bonsai artist used aluminium wire to bend the trunk into a specific spiral shape and left the wire on the tree for a few months.
As a result, the bark of the tree grew around the bonsai wire. It thickened and continued growing around that wire, with scars.
This got me thinking about antifragility. Maybe my brain was primed from my previous posts about this topic, heh.
I started thinking about how I’ve been developing this skill in my career so far.
I’ve done it through various career changes:
* 3 career pivots.
* 2 career transitions.
* Moving abroad for work.
* Changing industries 4 times.
* Moving back to my home country.
* Transitioning from employee to solopreneur. I prepared for the transition and made the choice deliberately, not automatically.
* Building a business, while doing multiple roles (from coaching and training, to finance and admin, marketing, networking and sales).
* Changing from perfectionist to constructive thinking. This has helped me in previous jobs and in business.
I do hard things intentionally.
I look at my failures directly, in order to understand why those things didn’t work, what I need to adjust, change, upgrade, what I need to learn better.
And yes, I do feel difficult and unpleasant emotions when things don’t work out (frustration, sadness, worry).
However, I face them, I reflect on the hard situations in psychotherapy, I seek solutions or improvements in coaching and mentoring.
Antifragility made me persevere, it made me focus on learning what I don’t know, it helped me improve other skills (in business, decision making, and learning).
Growth mindset helped a lot as well, but honestly, it works when you’re willing to actually feel the discomfort of growth.
Scars and all.
I’d love to hear what antifragility looks like in your own career.
