Accept Your Reality: Stoic Wisdom, Amor Fati, and ACT for Moving Forward with Purpose
🎧 Show Notes: Accepting Your Reality
Host: John Sampson Episode Theme: How to respond to life's biggest challenges and move forward with purpose by embracing reality.
Life has moments when "the ground shifts"—a job disappears, a relationship ends, or a difficult diagnosis arrives. The key question in these moments isn't "Why me?" but "What now?". This episode explores a practical framework for accepting your reality and taking intentional action, drawing on centuries of wisdom.
🔑 Key Concepts & Philosophies
The episode traces the idea of accepting reality through several influential minds and a modern therapeutic approach:
Plato's Myth of Er: The Cosmic Frame
The myth teaches two layers of acceptance: acceptance of the unchangeable structure of reality (the Fates and Necessity) and acceptance of personal responsibility for how we respond.
Radical Acceptance parallels this: Stop resisting what is fixed, focus on what you can control (your attitude and actions), and transform regret into wisdom. The stage is set, but the performance is yours.
Stoic Amor Fati: Love of Fate
The Stoics encouraged not just accepting fate, but loving it (Amor Fati).
Marcus Aurelius noted that while misfortune may happen, you can choose to remain unharmed by it and continue to act with virtues like justice, prudence, and self-control.
Seneca viewed misfortune as a necessary "training ground" for practicing virtue and growing. Misfortune happens to everyone, so the task is to acquire a "stout heart" to endure it.
The Dichotomy of Control: Focus energy only on what you can control (your thoughts, judgments, and actions), not on things outside your control (body, health, past, others' actions). This is echoed in the Serenity Prayer.
Nietzsche & Frankl: Radical Life-Affirmation
Friedrich Nietzsche's Amor Fati is a radical yes-sayer to everything in life, past and present. He encouraged actively creating value from events, turning suffering into an impetus for self-overcoming.
Psychiatrist Viktor Frankl affirmed that when you can no longer change a situation, you are challenged to change yourself. Suffering ceases to be suffering when it finds a meaning.
Carl Jung's Wisdom
"We cannot change anything until we accept it". Acceptance creates the mental space for transformation, whereas resistance deepens inner tension.
Focus on the "next thing that needs to be done" to move forward from paralysis toward positive action.
Aristotle's Realism
Aristotle believed that happiness and virtue are achieved in spite of adversity.
Facing misfortune with nobility and greatness of soul is when courage shines through. You must first recognize your reality before you can actualize your potential.
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)
A modern therapeutic approach that promotes psychological flexibility: accepting what's out of your control while committing to actions that align with your values.
ACT has shown strong reductions in depression and anxiety disorders, fostering emotional resilience and improvements in emotional regulation.
Acceptance is particularly advantageous during acute stress or trauma, where cognitive control is limited, as it helps downregulate distress.
âś… The Fivefold Path to Accepting Your Reality
John Sampson distills the wisdom into five actionable steps:
Recognize what is fixed that you cannot change. Accept the unchangeable, including the past.
Affirm it. See the circumstance as an opportunity necessary for your growth and a chance to test your virtue (Amor Fati).
Radically embrace it. Say yes to all of it, even the hard parts, in a way you would be proud to live over and over.
Identify what values matter to you. Determine how your core values can be applied to this specific situation.
Take action. Choose the next step that moves you forward and aligns with your identified values.
The Takeaway: Your circumstances set the stage, but your values and courage write the script.
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John Sampson: Welcome to Weekly Wisdom with your host, John Sampson.
There’s at least one moment in every life when the ground shifts. The job you thought was secure disappears. The relationship you thought would last forever and that built your future around ends. The diagnosis you never imagined hearing becomes your reality.
As you’ll see in our discussion today, it’s in how we respond to these situations that will shape our future. The question for us isn’t “Why me?”, instead it’s “What now?”
Today we’re going to explore how some of the greatest minds – from ancient philosophers to modern psychologists – have answered that question. We’ll travel from Plato’s cosmic vision, to the Stoic embrace of fate, to Nietzsche’s radical affirmation of life, to Carl Jung’s grounded wisdom, to Aristotle’s realism, and finally to a modern therapeutic approach called Acceptance and Commitment Therapy.
By the end, you’ll have a practical framework for accepting your reality – and moving forward with purpose.
At the end of The Republic, Plato tells the Myth of Er – a soldier who dies in battle, travels to the afterlife, and witnesses souls choosing their next lives. The choices are made before reincarnation, in the presence of the Fates and the goddess Necessity. Once chosen, each soul must live out that life without alteration. The moral weight of this action falls on the chooser: you must select wisely, because once the thread is spun, there’s no going back.
The myth suggests two layers of acceptance:
- First, acceptance of the cosmic order – the spindle of Necessity and the Fates symbolize the unchangeable structure of reality. Certain conditions in life are fixed once the choice is made (or, if it helps you relate, once events have happened).
- The second is acceptance of personal responsibility – even if you can’t change the situation, you can own your role in how you respond.
Souls that choose rashly suffer; those who choose with foresight flourish. He notes that Odysseus, the protagonist of The Odyssey, is one of the souls and he chooses last and most carefully because he remembers the trials he previously experienced, and so he’s learning from his past challenges.
The lesson for the living is that dwelling on “what might have been” is futile. Once a choice or event is set in motion, the task is to live it out as well as possible. This parallels the modern psychological idea of radical acceptance:
- Stop resisting what is already fixed – energy spent wishing reality were different only deepens suffering
- Focus on what remains within your control – your attitudes, virtues, and actions in the present moment
- Transform regret into wisdom – use past missteps to inform future decisions, rather than to punish yourself
The Myth of Er reframes fate not as a prison, but as a stage: the set is built, but the performance is yours. If you accept your current reality – whether or not you would have chosen it – you become free to act with intention, and to choose more wisely when the next opportunity arises.
John Sampson:
The Stoics didn’t just say “accept your fate”, they said love it. Amor Fati
Marcus Aurelius reflects on this in different instances throughout his Meditations.
“To be like the rock that the waves keep crashing over. It stands unmoved and the raging of the sea falls still around it.”
And he writes:
“It’s unfortunate that this has happened. No. It’s fortunate that this has happened and I’ve remained unharmed by it – not shattered by the present or frightened of the future. It could have happened to anyone. But not everyone could have remained unharmed by it. Does what’s happened keep you from acting with justice, generosity, self-control, sanity, prudence, honesty, humility, straightforwardness, and all the other qualities that allow a person’s nature to fulfill itself? So, remember this principle when something threatens to cause you pain: the thing itself was no misfortune at all; to endure it and prevail is great good fortune.”
In these lines, he’s saying you can choose to remain calm even when the circumstances around you are raging, and you can choose how you will respond and how your character is displayed.
He furthers the idea by writing:
“The mind is that which is roused and directed by itself. It makes of itself what it chooses. It makes what it chooses of its own experience.”
“To love only what happens, what was destined. No greater harmony.”
So, you get to choose how you respond and how you learn from events. You can let them crush you, or you can see them for what they are and move forward.
In his letters to Lucilius, Seneca touches on using misfortune as a training ground to practice virtue and become better people.
In one, he states, “For our powers can never inspire in us implicit faith in ourselves except when many difficulties have confronted us on this side and on that, and have occasionally even come to close quarters with us. It is only in this way that the true spirit can be tested – the spirit that will never consent to come under the jurisdiction of things external to ourselves.”
So, he’s recognizing that it’s through these trials and tribulations that we all face that we get real growth.
His most direct discussion of accepting your reality or fate is in his letter “On Obedience to the Universal Will.”
“The program of life is the same as that of a bathing establishment, a crowd, or a journey: sometimes things will be thrown at you, and sometimes they will strike you by accident. Life is not a dainty business. You have started on a long journey; you are bound to slip, collide, fall, become weary, and cry out: “O for Death!”. At one stage you will leave a comrade behind you, at another you will bury someone, at another you will be apprehensive. It is amid stumbling of this sort that you must travel out this rugged journey.”
“My slaves have run away from me!” Yes, other men have been robbed, blackmailed, slain, betrayed, stamped under foot, attacked by poison or by slander; no matter what trouble you mention, it has happened to many.”
“And we cannot change this order of things; but what we can do is to acquire stout hearts, worthy of good men, thereby courageously enduring chance and placing ourselves in harmony with Nature.”
He’s saying here that misfortune will happen to everyone and that for everything bad that happens to you, something equally bad or worse has happened to someone else before, so maintain that perspective. The world isn’t out to get you, so don’t waste time on the whole “woe is me” mindset but instead work to develop that stout heart and stout character that will allow you to overcome this obstacle and move forward in a way that you would be proud of.
Sometimes it can help to imagine that whatever happened to you happened instead to someone else. How do you think they should act in that circumstance? Should they give up all hope, or would you guide them otherwise?
The stoics also believed strongly in the dichotomy of control. Essentially, there are two buckets, things that we can control, like our own thoughts, judgments, desires, and voluntary actions; and there are things outside of our control, our body, health, reputation, the actions of others, the past, and the ultimate outcome of events. Once you recognize this, you can properly focus on what you can change that will better your circumstances.
If this sounds familiar, it’s likely because it’s echoed through the Serenity Prayer: “grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”
John Sampson:
German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche gave the phrase Amor Fati an even bigger name in his works The Gay Science and Ecce Homo. He writes: “I want to learn more and more to see as beautiful what is necessary in things; then I shall be one of those who makes things beautiful. Amor Fati: let that be my love henceforth!... some day I wish to be only a yes-sayer”
and
“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.”
Nietzsche had this concept of eternal recurrence, the notion that we must live our lives as if we would relive the same experiences eternally. Don’t passively absorb events, but actively create value from them, turn even suffering into an impetus for self-overcoming and joy.
Famed psychiatrist and holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl talked about similar themes in his work “Man’s Search for Meaning”.
He says: “When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.”
And
“In some way, suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning.”
So, we can embrace even the painful parts of life as opportunities to live with dignity and purpose, echoing the same ideas of the Stoics and Nietzsche. He frames fate as a question that life asks us, and our duty is to answer with the right action, regardless of what cards we’re dealt.
Carl Jung, a Swiss Psychiatrist and psychoanalyst also talked about the importance of acceptance and moving forward. He said, “we cannot change anything until we accept it. Condemnation does not liberate, it oppresses.”
So, by accepting reality, our circumstances, emotions, and inner conflicts, we clear the way for transformation. Resistance or denial only deepens this inner tension, whereas acceptance creates the mental space needed to identify new possibilities.
He also said, “If you always do the next thing that needs to be done, you will go most safely and surefootedly along the path prescribed by your unconscious.”
For Jung, you don’t need to see the whole future, you just need to take the next step that reality and your inner thoughts are presenting to you. This can help you move forward from a state of paralysis toward taking positive action.
Aristotle’s philosophy was grounded in habituation, practical wisdom, and attention to contextual reality; one where we’re not resigned to fate, but we have an active and rational engagement with our circumstances. For him, happiness and virtue were to be accomplished not in ideal circumstances, but in spite of the adversity that we face.
In Nichomachean Ethics, he tells us that while certain chance or uncontrollable events will certainly make us happier or sadder, life will still be what we make of it based on our actions. Even in the face of a multitude of great events that bring us pain and hinder our activities, this is when nobility shines through. “When a man bears with resignation many great misfortunes, not through insensibility to pain, but through nobility and greatness of the soul.
We get to choose how we respond, and if we respond with noble actions or base actions. And when misfortune strikes, this is where our focus should be, how can we best respond to this circumstance.
Later, in his discussion on courage, he writes: “It is for facing what is painful, then, that men are called brave. Hence also courage involves pain, and is justly praised; for it is harder to face what is painful than to abstain from what is pleasant.”
We’ve all seen examples of someone acting with this sort of courage when faced with awful circumstances, and we know when their actions speak a truth to us about the right way to respond to those circumstances. Think of the parent who bravely guides their child through a cancer diagnosis and treatment, even though they themselves are breaking on the inside. Or, the person who loses their job, but instead of wallowing in their grief, strikes out with their chin up to find new ways to put food on their family’s table, even if that means working multiple jobs and sleeping little.
This is the type of courage that Aristotle is describing, and how we can still act with nobility in the face of adversity. But, to act in this way, you must first recognize your reality. Aristotle talked a lot about potentiality, what something could become, but you can’t actualize potential without starting from reality as it is. In other words, start where you are, act with virtue, and you’ll grow into what you’re meant to be.
John Sampson:
The capacity to accept one’s current reality and take forward-moving action is increasingly recognized as a cornerstone of psychological well-being in contemporary psychological science. Over the past several years, research has identified the mechanisms, outcomes, and applications of acceptance in a variety of therapeutic contexts, highlighting its role in fostering emotional resilience, cognitive flexibility, and adaptive functioning.
Radical acceptance is a signature skill taught for coping with distressing emotional events. It requires us to fully acknowledge reality as it is, without judgment, no matter how painful it is to do so. It doesn’t mean that we approve of our circumstances, but it helps us stop the internal struggle against reality, which then lets us focus our energy on moving forward with clarity and self-compassion.
Practically, the steps are: notice what you’re resisting; name and describe reality without judgment or avoidance; let go of “shoulds” and “what ifs”, validate your emotional responses, and focus on what you can control next.
So, let’s think about this in the form of a real-world example. Say you’ve recently been diagnosed with cancer. This is life-changing, and life threatening. Maybe you’re a parent, or a spouse, or not. Regardless, you have dreams of your future life that you want to live, and this cancer diagnosis was likely not a part of that. Step one is to notice what you’re resisting, maybe you are in denial about the diagnosis, or it’s severity, or maybe it’s thinking about the consequences for your family if you die. Step two is to describe your current reality, I’ve been diagnosed with stage-x cancer and I may die, leaving my family without my income stream, or my kids without a parent. Step three is to let go of the “shoulds”, this is where you realize that the life you imagined was not ever fully within your control and that your current circumstances are not a punishment, or something you deserve, but just something that has happened that is currently unchangeable. Next, validate your emotional responses. It’s ok to be sad and angry and mourn the loss of the ideal life you had imagined for yourself. Lastly, you focus on what you can control next. Maybe that is looking at the treatment options, preparing your family for what is to come, developing ways that you can pass on wisdom, and love to your family for them to have even if the worst does come to pass.
Studies have shown that radical acceptance can also serve as a catalyst for using other strategies to help regulate emotions, such as cognitive reframing or reappraisal. And, that groups using radical acceptance experienced sustained reductions in stress, depression, and emotion regulation difficulties for sustained periods of time compared to the temporary relief brought about by other techniques like relaxation intervention. This was particularly true under conditions of chronic, uncontrollable stress.
Acceptance and commitment therapy is a related concept to radical acceptance and studies show that ACT helps with depression, anxiety, chronic pain, and PTSD. And that it enhances psychological flexibility, with results that are sustained several months after treatment. ACT has benefited patients not just from symptom reduction, but also improvements in emotional regulation, self-identity reconstruction, and reengagement with meaningful life activities. Compared to compassion-based and mindfulness-based therapies, while all are effective treatments for anxiety and depression, ACT demonstrated the highest overall effect on both disorders.
When compared with cognitive reframing, both approaches reduce negative emotion and distress, but their situational advantages differ.
- Cognitive reframing tends to require more cognitive effort and executive functioning and is particularly effective when one has the mental bandwidth for analytical thinking
- Acceptance on the other hand, is more advantageous when cognitive control is limited, such as during acute stress, or trauma, which provides a pathway for downregulating distress
Importantly, these strategies have additive effects when taught together, with acceptance sometimes potentiating cognitive change by first reducing resistance and defensiveness.
One reason why acceptance is so important is that we have a natural defense mechanism of denial that we have to work to overcome. Denial is an unconscious process that protects us from the immediate impact of distressing information by refusing to acknowledge reality, minimize severity, justify problematic behavior, or project blame. However, the short-term relief that this may provide also impairs our ability to solve real problems, restricts our growth, and increases our risk of depression, anxiety, interpersonal conflict, and dysfunctional behaviors.
Suppression and denial are consistently associated with greater distress and adverse outcomes, whereas of all of the common therapy options, acceptance and commitment therapy has yielded the strongest reductions in depression and anxiety disorders. We have to find a way to transition from denial to acceptance in order to adapt in a healthy manner to the realities of our lives.
So, the primary goal of acceptance and commitment therapy is psychological flexibility, the ability to accept what’s out of your control while committing to actions that align with your values.
John Sampson:
To bring it all together, we can identify five key steps identified by these philosophers and psychiatrists alike in how to deal with unfortunate circumstances and how to accept your reality and move forward.
1. First, recognize what is fixed that you cannot change. In Plato’s Myth of Er, this is what has been designed by the Fates. As the Serenity Prayer and the Stoics encourage, accept the things you cannot change, and that includes the past.
2. Next, affirm it like the Stoics and remember Amor Fati. Recognize it as something that is necessary for your growth. See it as an opportunity to use your virtue to overcome this challenge.
3. Third, radically embrace it. As Nietzsche said, say yes to all of it, even the hard parts. Make yourself approach it in a way that you would be proud to live over and over again.
4. Then, identify what values matter to you and how those values can be applied in this situation. As Aristotle said, this is where we get to test our virtue and respond nobly to even bad circumstances.
5. Lastly, take action that will move you forward and will align with your values.
Now, I first came across the concept of accepting your reality and choosing the next best step forward when I read it in a book called “Principles: Life and Work” by Ray Dalio. About a month later, my daughter was diagnosed with a learning disability. At that moment, a parent’s first reaction is a roller coaster of emotions from anger and sadness, to feeling sorry for your kid, to thinking about their future and the hopes and dreams you had for them.
Thankfully, this phrase of accepting your reality had really struck a chord with me and stuck with me. I was able to pretty quickly change my thinking into accepting the reality that we were in. Yes, she has a learning disability, so what is it that we can do to address it and make the best of it? Became my new mindset.
Being a good father meant more to me than anything else, so I dedicated myself to figuring out the options we had for getting more help at school, tutoring, etc., anything that we could do to take positive steps forward and close the gap between her and her peers. And I was driven by this determination that if I did anything right for the rest of my life, it would be to give her the tools that she needed to be successful.
So, I can tell you from experience, that this does work, it will reframe your psyche, and by accepting your reality and finding that next best step forward, you will improve your circumstances and your life.
Now, let’s make this real for you. Grab a notebook or your phone.
1. Write down one unchangeable fact of your current reality
2. Reframe it as something necessary for your growth
3. Ask yourself: if this repeated forever, could I still say yes to it?
4. Identify one value it connects to
5. Choose one small action you can take in the next 24 hours that honors that value
That’s your next step.
Whether you want to call it your fate, or circumstances outside of your control, it may set the stage, but your values – and your courage – write the script.
Accept the scene you’re in, love it as if you chose it, and take the next step toward the life you want to live.
Until next time, thank you for listening. Make sure you subscribe and be sure to check out next week’s episode.
