AMOR FATI - STOIC WISDOM FOR DEALING WITH CHAOS

Fear, uncertainty, and doubt is a three headed monster that can cause people to do things they wouldn’t normally do under less stressful conditions. It seems these days that all we hear or see in the news is F.U.D., fear, uncertainty, and doubt. As human beings, we’re programmed to respond to stressful and fearful situations in one of three ways, we fight, we flee, or we freeze. You’ve all heard of the fight or flight response, which is our brain-body response to scary situations. It’s a natural self-defense response whereby your brain floods your body with a chemical cocktail of adrenaline and cortisol to help us with the fighting and fleeing part. This is how our ancestors remained alive long enough to be called our ancestors. It’s the programming in our DNA that continues to this day even though the threats, both perceived and real, have changed drastically over the millennia. 

If you are alive and listening to this episode, you are likely surrounded by messages of threats from a variety of different directions. If it’s not the threat of terrorist attack, it’s the threat of the next pandemic. If it’s not the next pandemic, it’s the threat of a market crash. If it’s not the threat of a market crash, it’s the threat of your job or business being made irrelevant by the likes of Chat GPT and AI. Big data, big banks, big government, big pharma, big censorship, world war, you name it, it’s all coming for us, or so it would seem. To top it all off, the next collapse of the banking system is happening as we record this episode.

Welcome to the show my friends, my name is Blaine Feyen, and I am your host for this and every episode of the always sponsor free, Real Value Podcast. It’s great to be with you again this week despite all the fear, uncertainty, and doubt. In fact, with all of that F.U.D. in the air these days, I believe it’s probably never been more important to increase your overall fitness and, by overall fitness, I’m referring to your mental fitness, your physical fitness, your spiritual fitness, your financial and fiscal fitness, and your emotional fitness. Stress is one of biggest killers there is and how we all handle it individually will play a strong role in how well you do as big, potentially stressful things happen around you. 

I know a lot of real estate appraisers, a lot of Realtors, and a good handful of people in the lending world will be leaving their respective industries over the coming months as they simply won’t survive the shifts that are taking place in all of those industries. Some of it by their own doing, some of it caused by events completely out of their control. Regardless of the reasons, all of those people will likely be moving to other industries and businesses to earn a living and I want to try to open some of their minds a little bit before that happens. 

If you haven’t heard yet, there were several banks in serious trouble last week and this week. While this probably doesn’t affect most people at any significant level, the news of all of it is a tad frightening to many, especially those in the financial sectors. The daisy chain effect over the coming weeks and months will be interesting to watch, to say the least. Those of you who try to stay in the know by researching and taking in lots of information from a wide variety of sources have known these kinds of ‘events’ were coming. They’ve been in various stages of incubation for a long time now.

If you listened to last week’s show called, ‘Take That, Fannie Mae’, we talked specifically about a recent announcement from Fannie Mae that full appraisals on real estate transactions would no longer be the default, which set portions of the appraisal industry aflame. Again, it would seem that it’s coming from all sides and it’s closing in on us, whatever ‘It’ is. People are right to be fearful, they’re right to be uncertain, and they’re right to have some doubts, after all, it’s what has kept us alive as a species for as long as scientists believe we’ve been around and upright.

However, as I’ve preached on this show for as long as it’s been around, if you’ve been digging your well before you’re thirsty, you’ll know that with fear, uncertainty, and doubt lie opportunities. I’m not talking about taking advantage of people when they’re down, but simply having an attitude of always asking the right questions, being open to the opportunities, and having a mindset of resilience and action. The coming months and years will be ones of extreme change for a lot of people, maybe some of you. How open and ready you are for change, and how ready you are to capitalize on and seize opportunities will largely be determined by your mindset about all of it. 

The Stoics had a way of looking at and dealing with life and all of its challenges that could quickly be summed up with the Latin phrase, Amor Fati. Amor Fati literally means; love of one’s fate. The Stoics didn’t use this exact phrase, but their teachings are filled with this idea that to truly be at peace, we must come to love what happens to us, not merely accept it as our fate. Almost 2000 years later, the German philosopher, Nietzsche, was fond of this concept of not just laying down and taking what is handed to us, but instead loving what the world presents to us and looking for the opportunity in the struggle to become a more fully realized human being. Now, I get it, most of us aren’t necessarily concerned about becoming a more fully realized human being every day, we’re trying to figure out what comes next for our businesses, our lives, our relationships, etcetera, and Amor Fati addresses all of this. 

To understand this philosophy a little better, it helps to read how the Stoics talked about it. One of the most famous Stoic teachers, Epictetus, said this: “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.” Confusing, right? Not really! In fact, it’s so simplistic, it sounds like double talk. He simply said, don’t wish for things to happen your way, or even a certain way, instead, thank things for simply happening and accept that that’s the way things happen. When you can adopt this mindset of just accepting and thanking things for simply happening, you’re much more relaxed and open, not only to everything that happens, but the opportunities that come from the happenings. 

In another of his writings, he said: “Every difficulty in life presents us with an opportunity to turn inward and to invoke our own submerged inner resources. The trials we endure can and should introduce us to our strengths.” Our strengths, he said, lie within us and cannot be revealed except through some kind of trial or difficulty. In essence, we should wish for and be thankful for the difficulties we experience in life because that’s where we grow, its where opportunity lives, and the mindset makes you more or less impervious to what goes on around you because you remain loose and flexible, which makes you uniquely poised to move when it’s time to move. He went on to say, “Prudent people look beyond the incident itself and seek to form the habit of putting it to good use. On the occasion of an accidental event, don’t just react in a haphazard fashion: Remember to turn inward and ask what resources you have for dealing with it. Dig deeply. You possess strengths you might not realize you have. Find the right one. Use it.”

Amor Fati, love your fate! Another way of looking at this concept is to say fall in love with the whole process, instead of the just the end result. If you’re always just focused on the end result, you miss all the lessons along the way and the lessons along the way usually include the struggle, the pitfalls, the potholes, and anything that got in your way or caused you to have second thoughts. It’s in the struggle that the lessons and instructions for what to do and where to go next live. Love the whole process, as well as the result, because it’s a perfect mirror for what to do next. All of it informs us moment to moment what to do and which direction to be heading in.

There are a couple of tips I have for you for how to use Amor Fati in your daily life, with the understanding that this Stoic and Zen idea of, not just accepting your fate or accepting all outcomes, but loving them is much easier to do when everything is going your way. If I had taught you about Amor Fati 3 or 4 years ago when everything in the real estate markets was booming, interest rates were at 3%, appraisers, lenders, and agents were drinking from a fire house money was raining down from the sky, you all would have said, “Awesome Blaine! I’m in love with my fate man! It’s awesome! Never made so much money in my life!” It’s when things aren’t going your way and the news does not appear to be in your favor that Amor Fati is much more valuable. Accepting that the downs must exist for the ups to be considered ups, or a better way to say it is that we must learn to excel in the valleys so that we can explode in the peaks.

The first tip for how to make this concept of Amor Fati a useful part of your daily existence is to learn to catch yourself any time you find yourself labeling something as either good or bad. Something being good or bad is always up to us to label. What you see as good, somebody else might see that as bad, and vice versa. Learning to refrain from labeling something as either good or bad relieves you of the responsibility to then react to that thing based on predetermined programming within you. When we see or experience something that we’ve previously always labeled as being bad, we’re now obligated to react to that thing every time as a negative. When things are thought of as negative in our lives, we tend not to extract all of the lessons and opportunities from the experience until long after the situation or experience has passed, and we’ve calmed down a bit.

Amor Fati teaches us to remain open and ditch the labels. Everything that goes on around us does not need an instant label of either good or bad. Something that was previously considered a bad thing for you could, today, be looked at as a good thing. All of the sudden, that thing that caused you some pain and suffering in the past is now pure potential to be observed and maybe even celebrated. The first step in learning to love your fate and accept things as they are is to eliminate the need to label it or define it. Once you’ve defined or judged something, you trigger an inbuilt reaction or response that may not be the most helpful for you going forward. Stop the judgment, you stop the automatic and often limiting response.

I’ve talked in other episodes about Tim Ferriss’ fear setting exercise, which can be extremely helpful for people who deal with a lot of fear and anxiety, and it speaks directly to this idea of Amor Fati. If you can write down a description of the event in the most unemotional and detached language as possible, you get a much clearer picture of things than if you add all of the emotional content that naturally comes with judgment. After that, you simply write out answers to this question, “what’s the worst things that could happen from this?” After that question, you write out, “what’s the more likely things to happen from this?” Once you have that part of the exercise completed you can write out and answer a third question, which is, “how could I benefit from this situation?”, or “what are the good things that can come from this?”

In almost all things, we must train ourselves to respond differently than we have in the past in similar situations if we want a different outcome than what we’ve previously gotten. Habits can be difficult to break, so it’s important to look at this as practice. Catch yourself labeling throughout the day and see how often you do it, and then see how often you can stop the judgment in its tracks.

The next tip for making Amor Fati, the love of your fate, an empowering part of your life and mindset is to come up with an empowering mantra that reminds you and helps you automatically switch into this fate loving, opportunity seizing machine. If you’re familiar with the popular former Navy Seal author, podcaster, speaker, Jocko Willink, then you’re probably familiar with his book Discipline Equals Freedom, and also his YouTube video where he talks about his mantra, which is a simple one word mantra: GOOD! In the book, Jocko says, “When things are going bad: Don’t get all bummed out, don’t get startled, don’t get frustrated. No. Just look at the issue and say: “Good.” Now, I don’t mean to say something trite; I’m not trying to sound like Mr. Smiley Positive Guy. That guy ignores the hard truth. That guy thinks a positive attitude will solve problems. It won’t. But neither will dwelling on the problem. No. Accept reality, but focus on the solution. Take that issue, take that setback, take that problem, and turn it into something good.”

Personally, I love this mantra and his explanation in the YouTube video. I heard this idea many years before Jocko Willink became famous but heard it in the form of a phrase that I’ve been using ever since. The phrase I’ve been using when anything happens is this, “thank you! everything is going perfectly, just as I planned it!” The thank you is a blessing and immediate acceptance of the event as an opportunity, and it puts my mind in opportunity mode. The rest of the phrase, ‘everything is going perfectly, just as I planned it’, is a reminder to myself that no matter what, I’m prepared, even if only mentally, to deal with this situation and take full advantage of the opportunities that will inevitably arise as a result. 

So, the first step in learning to love your fate and everything that happens around you is to stop judging everything as either good or bad. The second step is come up with a mantra to help retrain your brain, develop a new mindset, and make it habitual. When you get good at this process, it happens almost immediately and you find yourself very rapidly moving toward opportunity while everyone else is frozen in fear, whining and complaining, or running in the opposite direction away from potential opportunity. Essentially, you stand in the middle of the chaos or previously labeled bad situation and rejoice because you love your fate. You take whatever is happening and just accept it as it is. 

I’ve come to love the imagery of the great plains Bison with a massive snow-covered head as the symbology of Amor Fati, the loving of your fate. If you’re not familiar with the behavior of the Bison in a storm, it’s been observed over the centuries as one of the only mammals to head directly into the direction of a storm. It’s believed that the Bison can sense the storm coming over the mountains and so it heads in the direction of the oncoming storm somehow knowing that by doing this, it will inevitably suffer for less time as the storm will pass over the Bison quicker. The Bison also seem to be uniquely suited to dig through deep snow with their massive plow shaped heads in search of food where all of the other animals would likely starve and freeze trying to uncover and food source. In essence, the Bison doesn’t freak out when a storm comes its way. Instead, and in the exact opposite behavior of a typical cow, it heads straight into the storm knowing that opportunity is in the direction of the storm. 

Stop judging things as good or bad, come up with a mantra to remind you of the love of your fate, and the third tip is to make it habitual. Making something habitual is practicing it every single day, without fail. It means every time something happens to you, you say to yourself, “I love this!”. No matter how bad the thing is, or how you would’ve labeled the event before becoming a bulletproof bison, you adopt an attitude of, “this is perfect, this is exactly what I was hoping for, everything is going just as I planned it!” 

When your computer goes on the fritz just as you’re finishing up that last monster file, you say, “I love this, this is exactly the challenge I need!” When the software you’re working in decides to freeze up and give you the blue screen of death, you say, “Perfect! I chose this and I love it!” When that friend betrays you, you simply say to yourself, “Amor Fati, everything is going perfectly, and this is what I needed!” When someone passes away, it’s ok to be sad and to grieve the loss, but no amount of crying, screaming, praying, begging, or pleading brings them back to us. These are the moments when we exclaim, “Amor Fati” and we use the fuel that it’s given us to be somebody better. 

I carry a coin in my pocket that has the words, ‘Amor Fati’ on one side, and on the other it says, “a blazing fire makes flame and brightness out of everything that is thrown in it.” It’s a reminder and direct quote from the Stoic, Marcus Aurelius. He’s speaking to this idea that everything thrown at us in life is fuel for our fire and it illuminates our path. With this attitude of Amor Fati, loving our fate, often the path illuminated is one we wouldn’t have seen otherwise, certainly not if we had labeled the situation as bad and just complained about it.

 Friends, there are lots of fires raging in the world today. It’s easy to read the headlines, watch the nightly news, or scan social media and become overwhelmed with the negativity, the doom and gloom, and all that is bad in the world, or we can look at things objectively and just say, ‘Amor Fati – I chose this and I love it! I’m going to make something out of this!' 

For my appraiser colleagues looking to diversify their appraisal business away from the lending side of the ledger and add more non-lending type work to your bank account, I want you to have the hour long video workshop I made just for you, at www.coachblaine.com/diversify . It’s completely free, jam packed with usable information, and hopefully valuable for you in your efforts to reshape your appraisal business into a very profitable business not dependent on banks and AMCs for your next meal. While you’re at coachblaine.com, look for the button that gets you all of the private bonus appraisal episodes only for members. That is also free for you and it’s where you’ll get the podcast delivered to your email address each week, along with any other bonuses I might send your way just for being a member of the value syndicate. That’s my free membership for people like you who like to get free stuff, a first crack at new courses coming out, and bonus podcasts only for Value Syndicate members.

So, until I see you over on that side of this fence, or until next week, I’m out…