Give Yourself Some Credit

I have four tattoos, two on each forearm. One of them says AMOR FATI, which means ‘love of fate’ in latin, borrowed from the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. It is a stoic concept, a reminder to accept everything that was happening to me around 2016 when my heart was broken in more than one way. I even had a speech I gathered from different philosophers, memorized, and repeated each morning during that time.

One of the keys to navigating life is learning how to move on from things you don’t like anymore, from old friends, from ex-lovers, from negativity, from losses, from past mistakes, and from bad situations.

You've got to learn how to let go of things that weigh on your soul. And moving on doesn’t mean you shun the feelings of pain that such things cause you; it means allowing the emotions to be felt completely, without resisting them. Letting them flow through you.

“We part with first one thing and then another with pain and suffering,” Yogi Ramacharaka writes, “until we reach a position from which we can see what it all means.”

It is the nature of life, unavoidable and necessary. Don’t resist it. Don’t avoid the heavy emotions. Don’t avoid problems. Because if you do, they won’t go away. Cry it all out. Breathe. Just surrender, and things will gradually, slowly start to get better.

Stop playing the mental game on what things would have, could have, or should have been. Just accept them as they are. As the ideas I compiled and memorized remarked:

❝

“Amor Fati. A love of what happens. Because that’s your only option. You want nothing to be different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity. Not merely bear what is necessary, but love it. A blazing fire makes flame and brightness out of everything that is thrown into it. Treat every moment as something to be embraced. To not only be okay with it, but love it and be better because of it. So that like oxygen to a fire, obstacles and adversity become fuel for your potential.”

Appreciate the process of learning and growing. Every small improvement is to be celebrated. Even the smallest effort you put in matters. Give yourself some credit for enduring the hardships of life. The art of moving on is accepting what was, as it is. Forgive yourself, love yourself, and appreciate how far you’ve come.