The Stoics made a clear distinction between things within their control and the things outside their control.
That’s because nothing outside our control is actionable, it’s simply our fate. We can either choose to deny our reality or learn to embrace it.
This post focuses on the Stoic concept of amor fati. We’ll discuss what it means and how we can use it to live a better life.
What is Amor Fati?
We can look at amor fati as a formula for human greatness.
This Stoic mindset aims to make the best of everything that happens to us. Each moment, no matter how challenging or awful it may seem, is something to be accepted and embraced. There is good in everything that happens. That’s why we should love everything that happens and never avoid anything.
This concept relates heavily to the Stoic dichotomy of control. Whereas the dichotomy of control allows us to focus our energy on things within our control, amor fati focuses on accepting anything that’s outside our control. In other words, love your fate and embrace whatever might happen.
While it’s easy to write about these concepts, it’s pretty abstract until we actually put them to the test.
Stoic Amor Fati
The concept of amor fati comes from ancient Stoicism, which we can now see in the work of the most famous Stoic philosophers.
For example, Marcus Aurelius wrote in his meditations:
A blazing fire makes flame and brightness out of everything that is thrown into it.
We can compare every event in our lives to a fire. Negative thoughts allow the fire to engulf your mind, while positive and proactive thoughts build on the fire, using it as fuel.
Epictetus, another great Stoic, once said:
Do not seek for things to happen the way you want them to. Rather, wish that what happens happen the way it happens. Then you will be happy.
As a crippled slave, Epictetus had more to complain about than most, but he chose instead to accept and embrace everything. That’s amor fati.
The Art of Perception
In Stoic terms, perception is how we see and understand things that happen around us. We have the power to decide what each event means to us. Stoics grouped these kinds of impressions under the concept of Katalepsis.
Viktor Frankl, the author of Man’s Search for Meaning, was a renowned Austrian psychologist who was deported to two of the deadliest Nazi concentration camps during World War II. In Man’s Search for Meaning, Frankl offers a similar take on dealing with hardships in life.
You cannot control what happens to you in life, but you can always control what you will feel and do about what happens to you.
This was his attitude and key to surviving the camps when few others did. He found personal meaning in the experience. And this gave him the will to carry on.
Nietzsche & Amor Fati
Despite being in Latin, Friedrich Nietzsche was the first to coin the term amor fati. Nietzsche learned about the concept from the Roman Stoics and wrote about it in his own words.
My formula for greatness in a human being is amor fati: that one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity. Not merely bear what is necessary, still less conceal it… but love it.
Nietzsche
Nietzsche wrote this after a period of inner turmoil. There was a lot in his life that he had been wanting to change and overcome. The prejudices that swept across Europe in the late 1800s irritated him. He had difficulties finding women to connect with on an intellectual level. And all the while, his books were not selling well.
He began to question whether he was wrong to leave academia, or if he should have chosen a more popular writing style. This line of thinking also led him to wish he could be more confident around certain women and even to complain that he was not born in France. During this period, he was stuck lamenting his circumstances and reliving decisions he had made in the past.
This all changed when he read about the Stoics, Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus.
Nietzsche’s Takeaways
The entire world’s history was necessary to lead up to every moment of happiness we have ever experienced. Without the same history, we would not be in that exact position, and we would not have felt that happiness.
If you resist, hate, or complain about fate, you resist the exact conditions that have resulted in your life. Everything that ever happened in the past needed to have happened for you to be here in this situation right now.
We need to accept fate and use it to make something positive. That’s where happiness comes from. Life is not meant to be easy. Our goal is to show what we’re capable of when faced with adversity. Remember that Hercules would not have been celebrated today if he sat on his sofa drinking beer all day. When it is our fate, the obstacle is the way.
Resistance to things that have already happened is a source of unnecessary suffering. It’s not always obvious the positive effects of the bad things that happen to us.
Modern Amor Fati
Amor fati reminds us to put our energies and emotions where they have real impact. As Ryan Holiday puts it:
If it happened, then it was meant to happen, and I am glad that it did when it did. I am meant to make the best of it.
Ryan Holiday
It may seem weird to love things we never wanted to happen in the first place. Especially the things we think of as “bad”. But it helps to think of worse adversities that this event might have saved us from.
At the very least, every new experience is a learning opportunity. And usually, equally unexpected positive events might happen as a direct result.
Nobody asked for a global pandemic in 2020, but you can probably find something to be positive about during that time. While social isolation at face value isn’t great, it may have helped you reflect more or disconnect from workplace rat race.
If you think about it, we often look back at difficult times fondly. So why not just skip ahead and feel that way now? That’s a modern take on Stoicism.
Amor Fati in Modern Therapy
Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT) actively and explicitly teaches us how to employ amor fati.
REBT claims we disturb ourselves and stop ourselves from loving our fate when we hold one or more of the following attitudes towards the adversities in life.
- I must do perfectly well and never veer away from my ideal behaviour.
- Other people must treat me nicely, fairly, and never stand in the way of my pursuits and well-being.
- Life must unfold as I wish when I desire. It can only be as complicated and challenging as I want it to be.
Each of the above attitudes is rigid, illogical, false, and self-defeating. These attitudes don’t allow us to achieve happiness when we encounter the inevitable adversities fate puts in our way.
How Can We Adopt Amor Fati In Our Everyday Lives?
Now that we’ve discussed the concept of amor fati and the benefit of following this life philosophy, we’ll run through some actionable tips to achieving this state.
Stop Complaining
We’re often quick to victimise ourselves, explaining how the thing that we want is so difficult to acquire. Yet, at the same time, we’re usually quick to write off how easy it is for others to achieve the same goals.
Stop wishing for something else to happen, for a different fate. That is to live a false life.
Marcus Aurelius
Complaining is the enemy of doing. It anchors us to negativity and prevents useful action.
Rather than justifying why we don’t have what we want, we should instead focus our mental energies on strategising. If other people have what we want, we can get it too.
Planning and execution is the only way for us to get where we want in life.
Embrace Everything That Happens
Amor fati is the practice of accepting and embracing everything. Everything that has happened, is happening, might happen and is yet to happen.
The nature of the universe is constant change and transformation. If that were not the case, we would not exist and our lives would be completely different. Stagnant and boring. The most valuable things in life are the direct result of change.
Nothing can last forever. And even if it could, why would we want it to?
Frightened of change? But what can exist without it? What’s closer to nature’s heart? Can you take a hot bath and leave the firewood as it was? Eat food without transforming it? Can any vital process take place without something being changed? Can’t you see? It’s just the same with you—and just as vital to nature.
Marcus Aurelius
In this sense, Marcus Aurelius points out how we are connected with nature. Just as fire requires burning firewood and nutrition requires digesting food, our lives require their own necessary change.
That’s why we shouldn’t reject anything. Next time you’re stuck in the rain, don’t get annoyed at the weather. Instead, embrace it. Focus on how it feels and try to enjoy it.
Taking something that might at first seem negative and flipping it to something positive. That’s amor fati.
Save Energy for What Actually Matters
Where do our minds go when our thoughts are left unchecked? Oftentimes, through unproductive loops that lead us back to where we started. Focusing on things outside of our control opens up a million possible thought processes for review.
On the other hand, relatively few things are within our control. We would include our own voluntary thoughts and actions in this list – and very little else.
Focusing on our own thoughts and actions can help us strategise, plan and execute our goals. These are the things that have the greatest impact on our lives.
Search for the Rigid “Musts”
When we notice our thoughts at any time becoming inconsistent with amor fati, REBT suggests that we search for the rigid musts that we hold. These are the deep, underlying beliefs that result in our disturbed reactions.
The Stoics advocated proper reasoning in the same way. Once we acknowledge our rigid, self-defeating musts we can analyse them rationally. Then we can rework these beliefs to make them more flexible and self-helping.
Disputing our rigid musts forces us to ask questions like:
- Does this attitude help me get what I want in life and avoid what I don’t want? How does it make me act in the face of adversity?
- Is this attitude true or false? Does any evidence exist that backs up this belief?
- Is this attitude logical and consistent with who we are? Does the conclusion logically follow from any inherent assumptions with it?
These three questions help us identify problems with our attitudes toward adversity. Simply put, absolute musts do not help us function at our full capacity. For that reason, we need an alternative.
Adopt Three Alternative Attitudes
In this section, we’ve identified three alternative attitudes that are functional, true, internally consistent and logical.
Stoic meditation or REBT disputing would normally conclude that these attitudes are suitable alternatives to the three rigid musts mentioned previously.
- I want to do perfectly well and never deviate from my ideal behaviour. Fallible humans make errors, and I will never be perfect. I can only strive to do better. Perfection is unrealistic.
- I would like others to treat me nicely, fairly, and not obstruct me in my pursuits, but I realise they don’t have to do this. I’m responsible for my own emotional reactions to other people’s actions. I will not condemn others, because they are just as fallible as I am.
- I hope life unfolds the way I want, but I accept that sometimes things will turn out differently. Life and reality are what they are. It’s in my best interest to accept everything as it is unless I can influence it to my liking.
In a similar fashion to REBT, the Stoics used morning and evening reflection to become aware of their own self-defeating emotions and behaviours. We should reflect each day to review what we did well and poorly in the day – including our attitude toward adversity.
Embrace Humanity like Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius reminded himself each morning that he would encounter all sorts of misbehavior from other people. The passage below is from Meditations.
When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself: the people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous, and surly. They are like this because they can’t tell good from evil. But I have seen the beauty of good, and the ugliness of evil, and have recognized that the wrongdoer has a nature related to my own – not of the same blood and birth, but the same mind, and possessing a share of the divine. And so none of them can hurt me. No one can implicate me in ugliness. Nor can I feel angry at my relative, or hate him. We were born to work together like feet, hands, and eyes, like the two rows of teeth, upper and lower. To obstruct each other is unnatural. To feel anger at someone, to turn your back on him: these are unnatural.
With this passage, we can understand how one of the most powerful people on Earth prepare himself for adversity. We see how little Marcus Aurelius expects of other people. He justifies others’ negative traits, simply by saying that they can’t tell good from evil.
But it’s not worth getting upset about. It’s worth embracing.
Amor Fati in a Nutshell
While Nietzsche may have coined the term, Amor Fait has its origin in the Stoic school of philosophy in ancient Greece and Rome.
The Stoics understood that certain things are outside our control. And we can either allow these things to negatively impact our well-being. Or we can learn to embrace them. That’s the path of amor fati.
Many things happen in our lives that we might consider bad and we can get upset about. But adopting the mindset of amor fati can help us find tranquility when we face our greatest adversities. It’s all a matter of perception.
From the ancient Stoics to Nietzsche and Modern therapy, the concept of amor fati has proven a useful instrument. We can use it to gain clarity, accept our fate and ultimately have the greatest impact with our time and energy.
Embrace everything that happens with amor fati and Mind & Practice today.