Today's Thursday • 11 mins read
— By Dr. Sandip Roy.
Fate can be a pretentious princess. She won’t just crash into your life and engulf you in her passion one day. You have to learn to love her.
When you embrace amor fati, you learn to accept that every act of fate in your life, even pain and loss, has shaped you into what you are today.
So, amor fati philosophy is not love at first sight, but rather a slow love that must deepen before you can see its entire beauty.
Amor fati (pronounced aa-more faa-tee) is a Latin phrase that translates as “love of fate,” amor meaning “to love” and fati meaning “fate.” Amor fati is welcoming of all life’s experiences as good.
How To Practice Amor Fati As A Modern Stoic
Amor fati is the Stoic discipline of not just accepting what happens to you, but embracing it as exactly what is needed to happen for your growth and flourishing.
The Daily Practice
To cultivate amor fati in your daily life, start with this three-step approach when facing any challenging situation:
1. Accept the reality completely. Stop fighting what has already occurred. The event itself is neither good nor bad – it simply is. Your resistance to it creates your suffering, not the event itself.
2. Look for the opportunity. Every obstacle contains within it the seed of equivalent or greater benefit. Ask yourself, “How can this make me stronger, wiser, or more virtuous?”
3. Return to your work. Once you’ve accepted the situation and identified the potential benefit, redirect your energy toward what you can control – your choices, actions, and responses.
As Epictetus, the slave who became a Stoic Master, taught:
“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.”
Beyond Mere Acceptance
Amor fati goes deeper than passive resignation. It’s the active choice to see every experience, pleasant or painful, as necessary for your development.
The Stoics understood that we cannot have courage without danger, patience without delays, or wisdom without mistakes.
This doesn’t mean abandoning your goals or becoming complacent. You still work toward your ambitions with full effort. But you hold your preferred outcomes lightly, knowing that whatever unfolds is what the universe determined you needed for your growth.
The Discipline of Perception
Amor fati trains you to reframe adversity in real time. When faced with setbacks, illness, rejection, or loss, the practiced Stoic asks, “What virtue can I develop through this experience? How is this preparing me for something greater?”
Amor fati isn’t positive thinking or denial. It’s the recognition that life’s challenges are training exercises designed to strengthen your character, not punishments.
You do what you must. And let fate do the rest.
Making It Practical
Start small.
- When stuck in traffic, instead of frustration, practice gratitude for the extra time to think.
- When plans fall through, recognize the opportunity for spontaneity or rest.
- When criticized unfairly, see it as practice for emotional resilience.
Amor fati is not a destination but a daily discipline. You gradually train your mind to see the beauty of fate and affirm your love for it, and then march forward towards your hopes and dreams.
To practice amor fati as a modern Stoic, first, accept a stressful occurrence for what it is. Then remind yourself that your fate, however it unfolds, gave you exactly what you needed to become who you’re meant to be.
Is Amor Fati A Stoic Concept?
Amor fati, a Latin phrase meaning “love of fate,” is a concept deeply rooted in Stoic philosophy. It is about embracing everything that happens in life, both good and bad, and accepting it as an integral part of one’s existence.
Amor fati is essentially a Stoic mindset, but it was Nietzsche who coined the phrase to mean a passionate acceptance of everything that happens in one’s life.
The Stoics believed destiny was an integral design of the “universal reason,” the reason that governs the entire universe and its systems. Therefore, a wise person would accept their fate and love it precisely because it is “good,” because it enables them to live a life that is “virtuous” and wholesome.
Amor fati is practical Stoicism because it gently pushes a Stoic to accept that they can only control the process, but not the outcome. Practicing amor fati also does not mean they do nothing or believe that nothing they do is going to turn out worthwhile.
Epictetus explained it this way in his Enchiridion: “Do not seek for things to happen the way you want them to …” An easier way to understand that quote is:
Don’t demand that things happen as you wish; rather, wish that they happen as they do happen: then you will be happy.
Seneca wrote in his book On Tranquility of Mind:
We are all chained to fortune: the chain of one is made of gold, and wide, while that of another is short and rusty. But what difference does it make? The same prison surrounds all of us, and even those who have bound others are bound themselves.
Marcus Aurelius wrote on the Stoic idea of accepting one’s destiny thus:
Accept the things to which fate binds you, and love the people with whom fate brings you together, but do so with all your heart.
The Stoics believed the entire cosmos was organized rationally, including the order of events across the entire time. Nature has predestined everything to happen the way it does.
Fighting this cosmic fate may only lead to misery. A better option is to embrace the outcome lovingly and work hard to make the best of it.
While the idea of amor fati was there during the times of ancient Stoic sages, the exact phrase came much later.
Nietzsche, who popularized the phrase centuries after the ancient Stoics, captured its essence:
“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.”
How To Love Fate Without Getting Discouraged
Something happened outside your expectations. How do you maintain your enthusiasm for life while accepting outcomes you didn’t want?
“We don’t get to choose so much of what happens to us in life, but we can always choose how we feel about it, whether we’re going to work with it or not.” – Ryan Holiday
This is where many people stumble. They think loving fate means becoming passive or resigned. They worry that accepting their circumstances will kill their motivation to improve their situation.
The Foundation: Love as Prerequisite
Amor fati doesn’t come easy. As Guy Elgat, professor of philosophy at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, says:
Nietzsche understands amor fati could not be practiced without an initial endowment of love, in this minimal sense. Like in the case of any activity that is to be done well, some basic resources have to be presupposed as available.
Before you can genuinely embrace your fate, you must appreciate being alive. Without it, amor fati becomes mere endurance.
The Active Nature of Acceptance
Amor fati means loving your fate, but without leaving your goals.
Think of it this way:
Amor fati = Acceptance + Patience + Action
That’s dynamic acceptance. You accept what has happened, remain patient with what’s unfolding, but continue taking meaningful action toward what matters to you.
Practical Implementation
The Stoic practicing amor fati approaches life like an archer.
The archer draws the bow, aims with complete focus, and releases the arrow. But once the arrow leaves, they accept wherever it lands. With each shot, they learn how to do better the next time. Then notch another arrow and repeat the process with full commitment until they get it right.
The key is holding your preferred outcomes lightly while working toward them wholeheartedly.
Most of our stress comes from our attachment to a specific outcome. We convince ourselves that only one particular result will make us happy.
Amor fati dissolves this attachment. It nudges us to recognize that growth and fulfillment can come from multiple paths. Science agrees, as that is the essence of Snyder’s Hope Theory.
The Daily Discipline
Here’s how to love your fate as a Stoic:
1. Strive to live virtuously – Focus on being courageous, just, wise, and disciplined regardless of circumstances.
2. Control what you can – Direct your energies toward your choices, responses, and character development.
3. Don’t fight your fate – Stop wasting too much time on resentment about what’s already happened or anxiety about what might happen.
4. Embrace the results – Find the opportunity for growth in whatever unfolds, knowing that obstacles test your ability to practice virtue.
5. Be happy now – Remind yourself that your well-being depends on your internal state, not external conditions.
Amor fati and the Dichotomy of Control
The dichotomy of control is a Stoic concept that distinguishes between what is and what is not within our power, and helps us focus on what we can influence and accept what we cannot.
- Things we can control: our thoughts, actions, and reactions.
- Things we cannot control: external events, other people’s actions, and outcomes.
The key to practicing amor fati is to reframe it as redirecting your control to things you can control: your effort, attitude, and response.
Focusing on what is within your control, you can reduce your anxiety and improve your well-being. Your happiness no longer depends on getting what you want, but on how well you participate in the process.
Amor fati is a shift in focus from results to process, from external to internal, from what might happen to what you can do right now.
Arguments Against Amor Fati
The main argument against practicing amor fati is that a calm acceptance doesn’t change the outcome. If someone gets cancer, it does not change the outcome if they welcome it lovingly.
Does amor fati mean that if we get cancer, we should lovingly welcome it?
Donald Robertson, the author of How To Think Like A Roman Emperor, answers it:
“Actually, no. That’s not what the Stoics meant. It’s the whole that we should love, not the parts considered in isolation. That’s really central to Stoic epistemology and ethics. So, you would love life, even though you have cancer, which is different from loving the cancer in itself, without reference to life as a whole.”
See it another way. If staying calm doesn’t change the situation or its result, then getting agitated in the same stressful situation also does not change anything.
Accepting cancer as a part of your whole life does not change its finality, but it reduces a person’s angst against the world and improves their focus on the pleasant and tolerable parts of life.
That is the entire point. It can help you become less of a victim and more of an agent.
Amor Fati Quotes
- “Fate leads the willing and drags along the reluctant.” — Seneca
- “Accept the things to which fate binds you, and love the people with whom fate brings you together, but do so with all your heart.” — Marcus Aurelius
- “There is only one way to happiness, and that is to cease worrying about things which are beyond the power of our will.” — Epictetus
- “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.” — Epictetus
- “The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.” — Marcus Aurelius
- “True happiness is to enjoy the present, without anxious dependence upon the future, not to amuse ourselves with either hopes or fears, but to rest satisfied with what we have, which is sufficient, for he that is so wants nothing.” — Seneca
- “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.” — Viktor E. Frankl
- “Accept—then act. Whatever the present moment contains, accept it as if you had chosen it. Always work with it, not against it.” — Eckhart Tolle
Final Words
Download a PDF version of this article.
Amor fati means loving your fate and accepting the result with serenity, without leaving your goals.
As you go about your day, tell yourself:
Everything happened exactly when and how it was supposed to. I willingly accept their occurrence because all of that was already predetermined. Now I’ll strive to make the best of it.
Amor fati.
• • •
√ Also Read: 3 Stoic Ways To Make Bold Choices (When Fear Holds You Back)
√ Please share this if you found it helpful.