Amor Fati: Reliably Regain Your Tranquility Today



After a long day of work, you decide on taking a walk outside. As you stroll, by people, cars, trees and buildings, the sun’s brightness sparkles all around you. All of the sudden, dark gray clouds appear in the sky, and next thing you know, water lashes down on you, hijacking the beautiful sun. “Why is this happening to me?” you whisper to yourself while frowning. Flouncing back home, anger is at your side. Suddenly, the whole world looks ugly; you are upset.

Embracing Your Situation Enhances Your Life

Being upset at the rain isn’t very useful, it just ruins your walk. When you got upset, you did not realize the rain doesn’t obey your moods. Yet you still got mad and it ruined your walk, a relaxing part of the day. But there’s another way to look at events that will prevent you from having a useless bad reaction.

This way of viewing things is Amor Fati (or love of fate). More practically, it means to love what happens. That might be an event, an emotion or a circumstance. This mindset is a reminder to take things lightly and to enjoy your fate. Applying Amor Fati as way of life makes you want to improve your circumstances rather than to complain about them.

The bottom line is this: by loving what happens, you can change your outlook on life, and by changing your outlook, you change your life.

Wrongly Judging Events

“It is not events that disturb the minds of men, but the view they take on them.” — Epictetus

You are in control of your reactions, not events.

Loving whatever happens has immense benefits on the quality of our lives. It makes our reaction to a disturbing event more positive and productive.

As Epictetus said, events themselves can have no impact on our minds: that power only resides in our own judgements. Rain on its own can’t make you loose your peace of mind. It needs an accomplice, and this accomplice is your own mind and opinions.

Therefore, being able to change views about an event is a kind of superpower because it opens up the opportunity to choose: do I want this situation to disturb me, or not?

You are the one in control, now. You decide.

You do not control events, but you control your view on the event

Misconceptions on Amor Fati

Before I explain how to implement Amor Fati in your life, I need to present a few misconceptions about it.

1-Inaction

First, to love a situation does not mean to do nothing about it. You can love the fact that you are under the rain and still walk back home. Again, loving a situation doesn’t mean never doing anything about it.

The goal of this mindset is for you to take things in a lighter and less personal way. It’s neither a justification for procrastination or a reason for inaction.

2-Emotionlessness

Second, a common concern is that if you use Amor Fati, you will become emotion-less. For example, a fear is that if someone close dies, you couldn’t feel enough sadness, which ‘turns you into a monster.’

But Amor Fati won’t make your emotions disappear. All it can do is help you come to terms with them by loving the fact that you feel sad.

The goal isn’t emotionlessness. This is the thing: with Amor Fati, you can choose to be affected in a good way by an event rather than in a bad way. You can choose to love whatever comes, even the emotions.

I believe having the choice is better than being forced into the only route we know, which is the reason I am sharing this here. Being able to choose is our power.

3-Bearing VS Loving

While practicing Amor Fati, know there is a difference between loving what happens and merely bearing it. As a guy named Nietzsche expresses here,

“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.”

How to Use Amor Fati

If you want to apply Amor Fati in your life, all you have to do is remember to love the things that happen to you. What you control is your own actions and reactions, but not the event themselves.

View these events as opportunities to practice the new concept you just learned. You can also create a visual reminder of the motto; it will help you remember to put it into action.

The beautiful thing about this concept is that it’s possible to apply it whenever you want to apply it. The choice is in your hands.

You can reclaim the power of your own opinions today. That power, you had it all along. All you have to do is choose and react.





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