This unstoppable duo could save you…
Today I was going to talk about my morning routine. But that will have to wait for another day. Because today, I have read my email, one of those necessary evils, and one of them made my blood boil, my head mangle and my mouth spit feathers. It knocked me off my stride and kicked me in the Bojangles.
All of that emotion and reaction happened in a fleeting second, I could’ve kicked kittens (no, not kittens, I like them, maybe baby wasps, I could’ve kicked them, maybe). That was until I remembered what I had recently been learning.
And so now, my lovely morning routine blog has had to play second fiddle to this. But that’s OK, in fact, that’s how it was always meant to be….and that’s beautiful.
I believe that it was fate that recently turned my interest to meditation. And I believe that it was fate that got me reading a lot about stoicism. And thanks to these new habits, I did not have a full-on meltdown after reading that enraging email.
“If it happened, then it was meant to happen, and I am glad that it did when it did. I am meant to make the best of it.” Ryan Holiday
It was reading a short piece by Ryan Holiday that got me learning about the stoics, stoicism and to the concept of Amor Fati (love of fate). Ryan Holiday is the champ of stoicism, but he in turn is standing on the shoulders of giants. Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, Friedrich Nietzsche, Viktor Frankl and Robert Greene, have all written about the virtues of learning from the stoics and adopting the Amor Fati mindset.
If you don’t know about the stoics or Amor Fati, I implore you to do some research, look it up, it’s a game changer.
Those giants I mention speak about the concepts and ideas of stoicism, much more eloquently and brilliantly than I ever could, but in a nutshell, it’s about choosing how you react to life.
“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 Frankl
Choosing to see the positive in ALL of life’s ups and downs. Choosing to eschew anger and fear and accept what is happening with courage, faith, gratitude and determination. That is the way of the stoic.
To understand that what is happening, is happening for a reason, and that reason is always a force for good. That reason is always to help you grown and develop as a human being, to make your life better in the long run. As Ryan Holiday puts it “So that like oxygen to a fire, obstacles and adversity become fuel for your potential.” In other words, whatever happens, is the good shit, its the nectar of life, embrace the hell out of it.
“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. Not only to endure what is necessary, still less to conceal it — all idealism is falseness in the face of necessity — , but to love it…” Friedrich Nietzsche
The second concept I have been studying AND PRACTISING recently is mindfulness and meditation. Mindfulness is the psychological process of bringing your attention to experiences occurring in the present moment. This could be bringing your attention to what you touch, taste, hear, smell, OR THINK. Whenever you notice what you’re directly experiencing at any given moment via your senses, or to your state of mind via your thoughts and emotions, you’re being mindful.
This short post explains mindfulness brilliantly.
There’s growing research showing that when you train your brain to be mindful, you’re actually remodelling the physical structure of your brain. And meditation is all the training you need.
I struggled with meditating for a long time, never really getting it, or knowing if “I was doing it properly”. That was until I started using the Headspace App. i have found this to be the best and easiest way to learn and consistently maintain the habit of meditation. You don’t have to use Headspace, there are other meditation apps and guidance tools out there. All I strongly suggest is that you use one of them, they will bring on your meditation practice in leaps and bounds.
Now, my major breakthrough in the last few weeks is to understand how these two practices compliment each other beautifully. I have learned that the Amor Fati mindset combined with basic mindfulness techniques is a force to reckon with. It’s like Thor and his hammer, Batman and Robin, Turner and Hooch, the combination is unstoppable.
“You are not your thoughts; you are the observer of your thoughts.” Amit Ray
If we combine Amor Fati with the idea we are not our thoughts, then nothing can defeat us. We can turn everything to our own advantage, absolutely everything. You are not the thinker of your thoughts, you are the one who hears them. And as such you are the one who can choose how you react to them. And if we adopt Amor Fati properly, then the way we react to them is to see everything happens for a reason. Fate has sent us this experience to help us grown and develop, it’s a positive, a learning opportunity. It was always meant to happen.
“Rather than being your thoughts and emotions, be the awareness behind them.” Eckhart Tolle
These are not some airy-fairy positive thinking techniques. They are solid, they are strong. They empower you to be your true self and protect you from pain and suffering. They turn negative into positive and help you to live a life of power instead of a life of fear.
I implore you, learn these ideas, practice them, incorporate them into your very being and release your own Turner and Hooch, see what happens, you’ll never look back.
