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Amor Fati: 6 Mindsets To Love & Master Your Fate

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My formula for human greatness is amor fati: that one wants nothing to be different, not in the future, not in the past, not for all eternity. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Amor Fati (translated to ‘Love of Fate’ from Latin) is Stoicism’s mantra and practice of accepting what is outside our control. When we become indifferent, accept, or even love our fate, we relieve ourselves of our stress wasted on entirely unaffected outcomes. Effectively halving our worries, we have doubled our energies to apply in areas of our lives we can control. Where we now apply our newly found energy, we maximise our happiness and fulfilment, skyrocketing our lives for the better.

With these 6 stoic mindsets, we can live independently of life’s outcomes and use its opportunities to improve ourselves instead.

1. Life Comes From You, Not At You

You could be the master of your fate. You could be the captain of your soul. But you have to realise that life is coming from you and not at you, and that takes time. ~ Timothée Chalamet (quoting William Ernest Henly)

Amor Fati shows us how important our perspective on fate is. If we perceive our circumstances negatively, the external world will feed that back to us through pain, frustration and stagnation. On the other hand, if we accept our circumstances exactly as they are, the external world will feedback to us perspective, appreciation and the unlocking of new opportunities.

Therefore, the distinction between living a fulfilling existence is not external materials, opinions or circumstances but our perception of them. If we realise life flows from our perspective, then external influences only impact us if we allow them to.

Fighting against our fate using the power of ‘what ifs’ only results in expectation, disappointment and dissociation from reality. It is important to reflect on fate to seek its lessons and truths, but there is no benefit or change if we fantasise about things being different. Use this feeling to inspire new paths, but ruminating too long will never affect reality or your growth until you release that burden yourself.

2. Accept Your Fate Exactly As It Is

Don’t seek for everything to happen as you wish it would, but rather wish that everything happens as it actually will — then your life will flow well. ~ Epictetus

Despite the emotional pull to regret our past, if we accept our fate, we are left with a blank canvas free from judgement and imagination. Wanting nothing to be different is not only liberating, but now your mind is grounded and poised, ready for the next action to move forward.

Feeling pain, regret, and longing for the past can never change or deliver justice for it. Interestingly, appreciating Amor Fati is similar to any rejection or failure. It is not the event that harms us or defines us, but our added interpretation on top of it that does. If we add judgements that harm us, we have the same power to remove them.

In his Discourses, Epictetus often talks about exile and death as examples of unfavourable fortunes. In one of his analogies, he said to his students, “I must die. But must I die bawling?”. Although an intense example, we accept this is the outcome for every one of us. Still, we can always decide whether we spend our lives upset about it, or not. Epictetus, in this short quote, perfectly distinguishes what we control (our thoughts) and what we do not (our present fate).

When we focus only on what we control right now, our mindset and immediate actions, we effectively half our worries and double our energy into things that objectively matter. What would you do with half your stressors and double your energy? For one, you would live much happier and make a monumental difference where things truly matter.

3. Amor Fati Reveals Hidden Possibilities

In 300 BC, Zeno, the original mind of Stoicism, had lost all of his wealth in Athens from a single shipwreck. Presented with this, he decided to visit a local bookstore and discovered the philosophy of Socrates and Crates. These very inspirations helped him develop the beginnings of Stoic Philosophy. Within his biography, he interestingly said:

You’ve done well, Fortune, driving me thus to philosophy. ~Zeno

He should have been emotionally devastated by his life’s work being lost in a moment completely outside his control. However, this experience actually guided him to wealth that transcends beyond what lay in the Aegean Sea: the opportunity to understand his mind. He did not stress over what was outside of his control but instead focused on how he could make the best of it. This single shipwreck led to a philosophy that has spanned over 2000 years and is the philosophical foundation of modern therapy…

If you think back to your past, there will be an event you thought devastating at the time. However, this actually steered you to a better path, which makes you now feel oddly grateful for it happening. Why not apply this mindset to all of our present circumstances? If we concentrate not on our current fate being anything else than it is but seek the hidden opportunities within it, we become the masters of our fate.

4.1 What Stands in The Way Becomes the Way

The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way. ~ Marcus Aurelius

When fate deals us a poor hand, our natural reaction is to avoid it. We are naturally wired to avoid discomfort at all costs, and our emotions drive this. Our emotions are not all distrustful, but they are only concerned with soothing the immediate discomfort. With this, imagine a year ahead from now. If we avoided discomfort at all costs, how much progress would you make in the next 12 months?

Paradoxically, the emotional and literal obstacles we avoid in our lives are giving us the exact instruction to improve ourselves exponentially. The simplest example is our comfort zone. The more we live outside of it, the scarier it seems, yet the best growth and experiences we ever have come from following our discomfort, not avoiding it.

An important deadline creates the environment for you to work on it. A goal to hit 100kg bench press disciplines you to train on the days you feel like lying in. A difficult conversation you try to communicate develops perspective, acceptance and forgiveness.

4.2 The Things That Hurt, Instruct

When I read The Obstacle Is The Way, I learned that the very thing we try to avoid is actually the best path to take for our happiness. My favourite quote came from Benjamin Franklin:

That which hurts, also instructs. ~ Benjamin Franklin

If we are unhappy with an aspect of our life, there is always something we can do. We should also explore this unhappiness head-on rather than distract from it. Within the obstacle itself, we have revealed opportunities for gratitude, humility, pursuing something new, persisting, or letting go entirely.

The stoics did not advocate blindly following our emotions because of their fleeting and biased nature. However, if we actively listen to what our emotions are avoiding, they might be signposting exactly what we need to do right now for our next improvement in life. Even if it’s testing and letting go of this emotion entirely.

5. Everything You Add To The Fire Becomes Fuel For The Fire

A blazing fire makes flame and brightness out of everything that is thrown into it. ~ Marcus Aurelius

Amor Fati does not have to be a life-altering event for you to use it. A person cutting you off while driving could fuel your rage or patience. If you want a person to like you, it could fuel your anxieties in opinions or enlighten your self-perception. You could suffer an ACL injury and be unable to play football for the next couple of years. This event could fuel envy for others or a side hustle you were scared to start.

Marcus Aurelius had this perfect analogy for Amor Fati; like a fire that cannot burn all its fuel becomes weaker, so does a man who cannot stomach everything he eats. If we are not actively using our fate to our advantage, we weaken ourselves by leaving opportunities on the table.

Similar to The Obstacle Is The Way, it is okay to be dissatisfied with our current circumstances. Instead of using that energy to bathe in frustration, use it to reach activation energy for your next actions to improve your fate. When we feel these emotions however, test these impressions first.

Yes, you could use your breakup for forbidden pre-workout (scrolling through an ex’s messages and igniting your personal best in the gym). That is another way of interpreting this doctrine. However, neither the impression nor the action serves you a positive purpose. One extra rep in the short term leads to another month of grief in the long term. Good choices seek virtue. So, only use your fate in ways your future self will thank you. Otherwise, use it to fuel your acceptance.

6. Embrace Amor Fati, Now Shape Your Fate

A man cannot directly choose his circumstances, but he can choose his thoughts, and so indirectly, yet surely, shape his circumstances. ~ James Allen

It is critical to note that we are not passive in what we do next with our fate. We accept everything as it is and then use this blank canvas for new paths and opportunities. For example, my priority became a fulfilling job/purpose drawn from passion rather than expectation. At the time, I had my cushy yet soul-destroying job distant from my interests. So, I tried to become a solicitor at a multinational law firm in 2023 and got to the final out of five stages: a two-week internship.

I worked as hard as I could for eight months straight to get to that final stage, and after two weeks of a mental and physical blitz, I got a single copy-and-paste email saying I did not get the training contract. Within a single decision, my ‘fate’ collapsed, and I would have to begin from scratch if I wanted to pursue that career again.

I could have been devastated, lost, and frustrated (which I was for a while), but then I focused on solace, contentment, and opportunity from this event. This experience taught me to be consistently disciplined over long periods of time, an invaluable skill I could apply to anything I wanted to excel in.

Law was a passion of mine, but the intensity was too much of a sacrifice for my other aspirations to coexist. Now knowing this, I chose to shift away from law entirely. In the short term, I achieved a promotion within my old job, then used that discipline and perspective to find a new job I was passionate about in podcasting. Without this resulting fate of failing my application, I would not have had the discipline or wisdom to reach the next layer of my fulfilment.

Amor Fati is accepting your fate exactly as it is. This calms and relieves us of all pressures that are not in our control. Once our energies and perspectives align with what is in our control (our reactions, learnings, and next actions), we can begin to cultivate our own fate. Like a flower cannot grow without a seed, our fate cannot be mastered unless we grow our mindset first.

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5 Ways Stoicism Will Help You Overcome Overthinking

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In its simplest terms, overthinking is applying too many interpretations to a situation. These interpretations are our natural emotions, judgments, and imagination. If we are unaware of these reactions, we can become lost in the past, the future, or fantasy. We lose our ability to feel peace, be present, and act from our best selves in any situation life throws at us.

Do we ever question where this automatic, reactive interpretation of events comes from? How many times have we actually got it wrong, following what our emotions pulled us to believe? We often suffer the whiplash of poor decisions or letting our lives pass us by without acting as the best version of ourselves. This article aims to reverse that habit.

We suffer more in imagination than in reality.

Seneca

Stoicism offers many solutions to unlearning an overthinker’s mentality. Firstly, we can choose to test these thoughts and hold them to the light, disregard interpretations, use their opportunities to affirm our character, visualise alternate pathways, or act without analysing them altogether. This article is for people who overthink and struggle to separate emotions from reality. A thought can ruin our whole day, but why do we act on it or let ourselves suffer because of it? Just as true as choosing to be hurt or consumed by a thought, we have the same choice whether to be hurt at all.

1. Test Your Interpretations

Choose not to be harmed – and you won’t feel harmed. Don’t feel harmed – and you haven’t been.

Marcus Aurelius

Think of a memory or fantasy in your mind that makes you feel negative emotions. Now, remove any opinions, interpretations, and judgments you have added to that scenario. What is left? Is it as scary, painful, or upsetting if a situation is absent of your interpretations? Interpretations create expectations, and the pressure of expectations is the true cause of our unhappiness.

I know this because I have suffered from feelings of retroactive jealousy. These are feelings of jealousy from someone’s past experiences, which are entirely separate from you. Reminiscing over their past romantic partner made me uncomfortable. The pain of someone else being with my partner at the time hurt deeply, so I acted on it. This led to arguments that only existed because of my overthinking. There was no resolution because you cannot solve an irrational emotion with logic.

I held my interpretations to the light with curiosity rather than judgment. I found the cause was not her actions; it was my insecurity. Insecurity is only resolved within us and can be relieved by building our self-confidence. If you allow yourself the freedom to be exactly as you are, you also give other people the freedom to be as they are. Therefore, if I accept all my flaws and strengths as I see them, there is no more expectation that my partner will be anything other than who they are too. The feelings of jealousy become weightless because I feel confident in my own character to be enough in the relationship.

Once we realise an event only has meaning if we allow it to, we can also relieve that meaning if it is not helpful. Overthinking can be a symptom of hidden causes beneath our emotional reactions. We can find if we look at our interpretations with curiosity. Another person will have the same experience as me, but not feel jealous. Therefore, the choice is whether to feel jealous at all, and that interpretation was because I needed to heal myself first.

2. See Things Only As They Are

Truth is not what you want it to be; it is what it is. And you must bend to its power or live a lie.

Miyamoto Musashi

If we strip away everything that is subjective to a circumstance, like an opinion, judgement or interpretation, we are left simply what is there. This process is using observation over perception, which Miyamoto Musashi in The Book of The Five Rings applied. Observation empties the mind, leaving only what is objectively important in this moment.

Emptying your mind is emptying all of your personal biases and interpretations from a situation. Instead of a high stakes interview, you are left with a chat between two humans. Instead of a past that upsets you, you are left with an entirely obsolete event that happened, like the way the moon rises in the evening. Instead of running through future scenarios, you are left with nothing, and that’s entirely freeing.

Seeing things as they are alleviates the pressure you were complicit in adding in the first place. Perception is only your reaction to something based on past experiences and predictive functions in your brain. These are passive, prejudiced, and biased, unconsciously or not. If you add perspective to a situation, you are seeking truth, presence, and honestly relief.

3. Overthinking is A Powerful Opportunity To Prove Who You Really Are

A blazing fire makes flame and brightness out of everything that is thrown into it

Marcus Aurelius

In certain overthinking frenzies, you can miss the opportunity to catch the impression, test it and disregard it. Sometimes the emotion feels so powerful you cannot apply perspective right away. Sometimes you are hit in the chest with a tsunami of pain, envy or worry… Another option is actually using the fire in your chest to prove you are not what you fear, but what you are.

The stoics call this ‘Amor Fati’, meaning ‘Love Fate’. Marcus Aurelius said, like a fire which cannot not burn all of its fuel becomes weaker, so does a person who cannot stomach everything he eats. If we cannot use our thoughts, then we become weaker from missing that opportunity to prove your good character.

You can be initially swept by an emotion, but you still have the power to channel it into proving who you really are. This is an actively defiant, aggressive charge which in its correct place, reinforced my character rather than poisoned it. That wave of emotion that hits you is so strong it can give you an intense fury of energy. You can stand in its face and say ‘I am going to spite this feeling, by using it to prove who I choose to be’.

If you can stomach a blow from your thoughts and actively defy it, you are not being consumed by it, but have used its opportunity to prove who you are. You can act with grace and have that fire in your chest. This fire does not burn up your good character, but ignites it further with intense fury.

What would have become of Hercules do you think if there had been no lion, hydra, stag or boar – and no savage criminals to rid the world of? What would he have done in the absence of such challenges? Obviously he would have just rolled over in bed and gone back to sleep. […] What would have been the use of those arms, that physique, and that noble soul, without crises or conditions to stir into him action?

Epictetus

4. Apply The Other Person’s Perspective

You could leave life right now. Let that determine what you do and say and think.

Marcus Aurelius.

Put yourself in the shoes of the other person. Using my previous example, how would you react if you were confronted with that retroactive jealousy interpretation. You would feel confused, judged and guilty, for something that is irrelevant and meaningless to begin with. If you apply perspective instead of perception, you apply better ways of thinking which are founded in understanding.

Memento Mori is the coldest but most potent stoic mantra that inspires finding new perspective. Meaning ‘Remember Death’, the use of our lives in this way is such a waste of our insurmountable odds of even being here, is justification enough to separate yourself from influences that poison your reality.

What if you did die tonight, next week, at the end of the year? What if the person you were overthinking did? How would that change how you think, how you act, or what was truly important in this moment? We can never truly guarantee we will be alive tomorrow, neither will our loved ones, so use that temporary and fragile reality, to act with virtue. Apply Memento Mori, and emotions from your overthinking will melt away into gratitude and clarity.

5. Action Over Thought

If we lock ourselves in a room for 4 hours and try to think our way out of problems, sometimes we may succeed, but others we only make our problems worse. Sometimes you cannot think your way out of overthinking, but you can act in the right way away from your overthinking.

There are times to continue mastering your thoughts, but there are others where action is far more potent in providing respite. If no matter how much you apply perspective, reasoning, fuel to your fire, you are still consumed, action is going to help unravel the knot rather than tighten it.

Exercise would be my number one action when I cannot reason my way out of a thought chain reaction. People like to take cold showers, see a friend, go for a long walk or watch a film. All of these require distraction from your mind, but creates a positive feedback loop from caring for yourself even in this feeling, loosening a grip that is woven well.

You may resolve the overthinking by simply doing something else. Other times you can come back to it with a new lease of energy by giving yourself that productive break. The stoics were always at peace in knowing there is always something you can do, even in things outside of your control.

Overthinking is a Habit That Can Be Unlearned

As you can see there are many vehicles to help you take the power back from your overthinking using stoicism. You can hold it up to the light and test it, you can strip away interpretations all together, you can use it to flame a stronger character, visualise new perspectives, and you can move forward by acting.

Overthinking is just a habit like any other. The only difference between a mellow and a neurotic person, are the patterns of thought they are familiar with. The purpose of this blog is to use stoicism to inspire the fact you have control over your happiness, because things are only bad if you add that meaning to it. Even in an emotional overwhelm from overthinking, there is always something you can do…