Embracing Amor Fati: Nietzsche’s Formula for Human Greatness and Resilience
An article about "amor fati", the lesson every young person needs to learn
You fail a test, mess up a job interview, or make the wrong decision.
You worry day and night, constantly thinking back: “What could I have done differently?”
Yet, you can’t do anything about it. It’s something that already happened.
This worrying is unnecessary. All that energy spent on imagining alternate realities is wasted.
It’s much healthier to accept your fate and focus on the future. That is the concept of Amor fati.
Amor fati means love of one’s fate in Latin. It’s the concept of seeing every life event as good or necessary to happen. The concept applies to everything, even suffering or pain. In this way, suffering is seen as something that makes people more “profound” and a precondition for growth and good.
The German philosopher Nietzsche stated:
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—all idealism is mendacity in the face of what is necessary—but love it.
He says the same thing: the best way to grow is to want nothing to be different and to love and see all events as necessary.
The ancient Stoic philosophers also had a similar take on Amor Fati. They focused on accepting the things that happened to them as they were meant to be.
One distinction can be made though: The Stoics saw fate as planned and that all events were meant to be. Nietzsche saw fate as a series of events that appear out of the random. In a way, Stoicism is more rational and Nietzsche is more aesthetic. For this reason, it’s much harder to accept the concept of Amor fati in Nietzsche’s terms.
“find beauty in every step of your journey”
In modern psychology (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy), the concept of Amor fati is also used. The goal of ACT is to have patients accept their inner emotions and hardships, and to not suppress their negative emotions.
Other philosophies that have embraced this concept:
Existentialism: amor fati is a way to embrace the absurd
Camus’s idea of rebellion: loving fate despite it being meaningless
The quote, “One must imagine Sisyphus happy,” by Camus says that despite having to repeatedly roll a boulder up a hill for eternity, Sisyphus acknowledges that it’s his task and accepts it as his fate (I’ll likely cover absurdism in the future).
Buddhism: accepting suffering (dukkha) as a part of existence
Taoism: flowing with the natural order (Tao) without resistance
“The sage embraces the inevitable” — Zhuangzi
Next time you face failure or suffering, ask yourself: “how could this be necessary for my growth?”
It will make it much easier to deal with the pain. Instead of regretting, or focusing on resentment, see challenges as times you grew.
Implementing Amor Fati When Hardship Strikes
Pause & Accept: notice your feelings; consciously accept the hardship
Reframe: ask “how is this necessary for my growth?“
Act: take a step forward with the lessons learned
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Amor Fati is heavily influenced by the topics in Stoicism.
Marcus Aurelius once wrote, “A blazing fire makes flame and brightness out of everything that is thrown into it,” a twist on how growth is created through suffering.
Read my article on Stoicism and the dichotomy of control (determining the events that are in or out of someone’s control):
The Ancient Stoic Trick to Stop Worrying About the Wrong Things
"Some things are within our power, while others are not. Within our power are opinion, motivation, desire, aversion, and, in a word, whatever is of our own doing; not within our power are our body, our property, reputation, office, and, in a word, whatever is not o…
Meditations by Marcus Aurelius and the Gay Science by Nietzsche are also great reads.
Something I’ve been thinking about lately:
You fail a test.
Mess up a job interview.
Make the wrong call.
It feels like the end of the world, but it’s not.
Nietzsche had this idea: amor fati, or loving your fate.
Not just accepting setbacks, but seeing them as part of the process.
Not everything happens for a reason.
But everything can be used to build one.
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Perhaps one should think of life events as signals along life’s path. To pause reframe and reexamine. I think the greatest disservice we do ourselves is not being willing to recognize where we are trying to maintain a comfortable path (attachment) that may not be the right one in order to avoid perceived suffering (aversion). Life is best fully lived and fully embraced in all its complexity!