Issue #10: Stoicism and Amor Fati, The Best Books of the Year, and The Biggest Lessons From History

Stoicism and Amor Fati, Book Recommendations from Me and Ryan Holiday, The Biggest Lessons from History, and Ralph Waldo Emerson

Hey friends,

First of all Happy New Year’s to everyone! I hope that 2021 will see you accomplish all your goals and will just generally be a way better year than 2020 for everyone! I’m going to keep this newsletter short and get right into it.

In this week’s issue we will cover:

• Stoicism and Amor Fati

• My Favorite Books This Year

• Ryan Holiday’s New Year’s Recommendations

• The Biggest Lessons from History by Morgan Housel

• A quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Stoicism and Amor Fati

"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."

- Friedrich Nietzsche

This year was the year that I came across Stoicism for the first time and looking back, that has been such a blessing given the turbulent times that we have all gone through the last year.

Stoicism is an ancient philosophy formed around 304 BC in Athens when a merchant named Zeno was shipwrecked, in the process losing all of his possessions. From that misfortune, though, was born a philosophy that preached courage, temperance, justice, and wisdom.

It’s also referred to as “an ideal operating system for thriving in high-stress environments” according to Tim Ferriss. Environments that we are altogether used to in 2020.

And while Stoicism has many practical uses and sayings, something that I’ve been thinking about at the end of this year has been the stoic mantra of “Amor Fati” which can be best translated into “a love of fate”. As Nietzsche said not just to bear what has happened but to love it.

2020 has been a challenging year for us all, and we are still by no means over the events that have happened this year. A lot of us have lost family, some of us have lost jobs, and other things. We still don’t really know what the long term effects of this pandemic or the other political events of the year, but whatever happens we need to come to terms with the past and make our peace with it.

And while it may take some time for us end up loving this time, I’m going to venture to predict that in a couple of years most of us will look back on 2020, probably not with fondness but, paired with hindsight, more of an understanding of how the events of this year made us who we were meant to be.

In the wise words of Marcus Aurelius:

A blazing fire makes flame and brightness out of everything that is thrown into it.

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My Favorite Books This Year

• Can’t Hurt Me - David Goggin’s story is a must-read. A truly amazing journey from beginning to end along with helpful challenges and takeaways that you can readily implement in your own life.

• Atomic Habits - This book has already changed the way that I’ve approached habit building and the new year massively. My copy is full of highlights and James Clear does a great job presenting so much information in an engaging and interesting way.

• The Almanack of Naval Ravikant - Speaking of a bunch of highlights, this book is another one just chocked full of wisdom. Naval has been one of my favorite discoveries this year and this book is a great summary of many of his interviews and insights across the years.

• Angels and Demons - Although I had already watched the movie I dove into Dan Brown’s first Robert Langdon book and was absolutely absorbed. I ended up finishing all 700 odd pages in about 4 days because I was so absorbed by the story.

• Red Notice - A real life thriller, I tore through this book in two days this past week. It made me realize that despite all of its faults - America is way better than certain other more autocratic parts of the world. There were many times when I couldn’t believe the audacity of the Russian government in this book but it actually all turned out to be true. Could not recommend enough.

• Greenlights - I’ve already talked about this book in a previous edition of this newsletter but this book by Matthew McConughey was easily one of the top books that I read this year with many great lessons and hilarious stories.

*These links are Amazon Affliate Links which means if you purchase through these links I do get a small percentage of the sale with no added cost to you.

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Ryan Holiday’s Book Recommendations

Keeping in theme with the book recommendations, this video by Ryan Holiday introduced me to a few other great books that I’m adding to my reading list. His commentary about the books is also worth watching the video for alone.

The books recommended:

• The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History by John M. Barry

• Meditations by Marcus Aurelius

• The Road by Cormac McCarthy

• Leadership: In Turbulent Times by Doris Kearns Goodwin

• Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison

• Parting the Waters: America in the King Years 1954-63 by Taylor Branch

• Pillar of Fire: America in the King Years 1963-65 by Taylor Branch

• Lives of the Stoics by Ryan Holiday

*These links are Amazon Affliate Links which means if you purchase through these links I do get a small percentage of the sale with no added cost to you.

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The Big Lessons From History

I came across this excellent article from Morgan Housel this week that reflected on the past to come up with 5 key lessons. They include:

• Calm plants the seeds of crazy

• Progress requires pessimism and optimism to coexist

• People believe what they want to believe, see what they want to see, and hear what they want to hear

• Important things rarely have one cause

• Risk is what you don’t see

While Morgan uses examples from the past to illustrate these key insights, upon reflection one can see that us humans are still repeating the same mistakes even till this day. Recognizing these mistakes and learning from them however is the way forward.

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Quote of the Week

Every man I meet is my master in some point, and in that I learn of him. 

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

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That’s all for this week. Once again Happy New Year to everyone and hopefully 2021 will bring us better fortune in all areas of our life going forward. Until next week!