what if I told you that pain can lead to the most powerful and profound experience of Life? What if I told you that what is most unpleasant in your reality right now is, in fact, the greatest thing happening to you? You'd probably call me crazy and get your one-way ticket out of the Tony Robin seminar, and rightfully so. Suffering sucks, and no one wants to suffer. In fact, we should all try to fix suffering collectively, right? Nietzsche, the most profound 19th-century thinker, wasn't so sure. He saw that most every religion and philosophy was a response to suffering in some way. Most of them promised the end of suffering through following some Doctrine or gaining access to some Heavenly Kingdom or true World. Nietzsche himself was no stranger to chronic pain and loneliness, but instead of trying to fix suffering, he sought to go the other way. He believed that only by affirming life as it is and being joyful through the challenge of it could you bring forth the greatness within and live into your

highest freedom, freedom, and flourishing. Let's investigate one of the most applicable and profound ideas that never penned: Amor Fati. Tanicha meant energetically loving your fate, love whatever misfortune or fortune smiles on you. Let's say you're feeling like [ __ ] today, or you're anxious and melancholy, and the girl didn't text you back, and you lost money in the stock market. Can you find the space to love that too? Amor Fati means to accept whatever fate comes you with cheerfulness, to accept the shitty parts of life and wish it to be no other way. This mindset is a recapitulation of stoic ideas, which is funny because never condemned the stoics in many passages, but hey, he was never known for consistency. The stoic taught Amor Fati to love your fate in order to help man retract his mind from outer events and to protect him from swirling and unnecessary distress. No one wants to face pain or loss or disease or heartbreak, but that's just life. Bad

things happen, and there's nothing you can do about it. The Stoics responded to this problem with a more ati but n took it one step further. He sought to turn suffering into a joyful opportunity and to enthusiastically embrace the full spectrum of human experience. He sought to break out of the old molds of valuation. Oh, suffering is bad, how do I fix it? He's like, No, don't fix it, love it, make it beautiful, make it worthy. This attitude of energetic acceptance is so powerful because it changes how you value experiences in life. Most of the time, we overreact to unpleasantness and value experiences based on whether it's pleasurable or painful, whether it's desirable or undesirable. This valuation comes from a place of weakness and life denial. In n's eyes, instead of valuing situations based on whether they're pleasurable or not, aor encourages you to love this experience and to value it based on what is strong within it, what is good, all that heightens the feeling of power, the will to power, power itself.

in man, what is bad, all that proceeds from weakness. What is happiness? The feeling that power increases, that a resistance is overcome, and the loving acceptance of what is unpleasant can actually be joyful because it increases power. Rising into pain or suffering with energetic love requires overcoming resistance and your weaker nature. This exercising of strength through adversity enhances the power of life and even creates joy. It's why athletes or marathon runners feel bliss in the midst of discomfort, and why mothers feel bliss in the intense pain of childbirth, and why there is something satisfying about hard work. I know, even when I was sick with the flu and battling heartbreak years ago, I eventually rose through song and dance and a more fatty into a profound state of happiness within a storm, a state unperturbed by what was previously unbearable. In this, I saw a truth: when pain and unpleasurable circumstances are accepted with heroic love, they can be transmuted into a positive experience. This is the secret of warrior philosophers. Real quick here.

if you want to learn more about heroic suffering and go deeper into and self-overcoming, check out my new book The Psychology of Slang Dragons. This is written for you. It's on Amazon. Let's get on with the video. Part two: Turn suffering into an advantage. Amor fati is about energetically embracing the suck and turning pain into power. This is how greatness is born. 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: the hard truth that nature recognized and called out is that suffering creates greatness, perhaps the most major purpose in his philosophy, especially seen in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, was to liberate higher types of men from base valuations of good and bad and to encourage them to suffer heroically. Loving your fate is not about taking a backseat and passively letting life happen to you. Rather, it's a mindset that

allows you to seize life without fear and shape your suffering into something beautiful. Feeling sorry for yourself and sinking into despair, frustration, or apathy when things go wrong is not helpful. It decreases your power and action, and eventually leads to resentment and more misery. Energetically loving your fate, however, elevates your mind above circumstances and encourages action. Ultimately, the Amor Fati approach liberates you from unnecessary mental disturbances and produces more power through struggle. Nietzsche endured a crippling physical disease most of his life. He would be bedridden with nausea, headaches, and pain for weeks at a time. All pleasures of life were cut off to him except thinking. Most people would be in miserable spirits in this situation, but Nietzsche sought to use it to his advantage. He sharpened his mind and went deeper into his own psyche than most any man before him. He said his suffering was the fire that fueled his thinking. After hours of pain and thought, he would rise with great courage to scribble down a few lines before falling back into bed.

many books were created in this manner. Through his method, he turned suffering into an advantage and became one of the most prolific philosophers ever. We too can apply this in our own way and learn to find the advantage within our suffering. Amor fati to me is best exercised as a question rather than a command. I don't say to myself, Love your fate, love your fate, man, or else you're weak. No, rather I ask myself, How can I love my fate? How can I rejoice even in this? I asked myself this the other day on the mountain when I was feeling lonely for the hundredth night in a row. How can I use this to my advantage? How can I love my fate? And the answer came like lightning, as it sometimes does. It said, Channel the pain into supreme creative and spiritual effort. And so I did. I came back down from the mountain after meditating and channeled my pain into creative work, into writing fiction, into writing scripts. And I've done that for quite a few nights, and honestly

every step I've taken on that path has been full of joy. Another example of this is getting sick. I was sick last week, and for two days, I was bedridden. I could have got all down on it and projected fears into the future about prolonged illness and yada yada yada, but instead, I looked for that silver lining, and the Silver Lining was, Hey, I get to rest, I get to read, right, I get to take a break, and in that taking a break, I got new ideas and to see my creative process in a new way. Ultimately, these are pretty mundane examples, and it just comes from the question of how can you find the advantage in the suffering, how can you make this pain meaningful, and how can you love your fate. There's always an advantage to be found in suffering, there's always an opportunity in the pain, and if there's no external gain or meaning to be found, you need to learn how to love it heroically, kind of like Victor Frankl who wrote Man's Search for

meaning, I remember him slaving away in the concentration camps of Germany through long Winters, and struggling to find any reason for Joy or love. He settled on the fact that just bearing his suffering with honor was meaningful in and of itself because it created spiritual growth and spiritual meaning. Now, to be clear, a mora doesn't have to be rational. Oh, I'm going to suffer well so I can get to this point. In fact, Nietzsche found it to be more therapeutic than anything. Life can be cruel and random, ROM and beautiful and hard, but we're stuck with it, so we might as well learn to love it, learn to love it all the way as it is. Imagine the ideal embodiment of aore Fati. That man would be unperturbed by struggles, unbothered by pain and suffering, supremely emotionally resilient, and most importantly, he'd be free from the weakness and fears that rule most of our lives. He would be content with what comes and free to seize this moment fully. Now, take that image and contrast it with

how you're addressing and facing life right now, and see if you can gain at least a little bit of inspiration for how you face today, and how you face the unpleasantness to come. Honestly, my friends, the path towards who you could be is a Rocky one, and if you want to live your most flourishing and excellent life, you need to create a new relationship to pain, to Misfortune, and to problems. You need to learn how to love it, or else you're always going to be discontent and struggling am more Fati. In the end, it creates freedom - freedom from unnecessary mental distress, freedom from dependency on Pleasure for a good time, and freedom from the fear of pain. Energetically loving your fate requires the heart of a warrior, and though it's hard, this practice creates the highest Liberation and Excellence am more Fati, my friends. Hey, thanks for watching Wisdom Warriors. I got two things for you before you go. Number one is a lot of this script comes from Heroic Suffering in my book, and there's so much in here about

the Warriors Way niche and self-overcoming. Secondly, I'm looking for you. I'm looking for a few leaders to join me in 2024 for a powerful initiation program with me and men's group. If you're looking for accountability to level up with brothers and to work with me one-on-one, link in the description below for a free Discovery call. I'll see you over there, and if not, I'll see you at the next N Video. This is Wisdom Warriors. I'm Christian. Peace.

Nietzsche - How pain leads to greatness

Nietzsche - How pain leads to greatness