Fate Sickness and the Dodging of Personal Responsibility
Do you think you have a healthy relationship with fate? Heard of Fate Sickness?
In this article, I address reasons why people quit pursuing their dreams because “they are not destined for it” and what to do about this common self-defeating trap.
A friend and former colleague of mine asked me to write about the unhealthy side of fate and how too many of us use it to keep internal ambitions dormant and inert.
This article discusses the misuse of fate and how your attitude to it may be holding you back in dangerous and unforeseen ways. By the end of this article, there is no doubt you will be able to wield fate to your greatest advantage while sweeping away any toxic relationship you have with fate that lowers your chances of prosperity.
Fate itself is no dangerous thing. Rather, one’s attitude towards it can be self-defeating and even destructively paralytic. Your attitude of fate will either make you or break you.
What is Fate?
Fate is something each of us are familiar with. Merriam Webster defines fate as a “predetermined state or end.” Though this is correct, it is too neutral to let it effectively bring out the best in yourself.
This “best in yourself” is always struggling to get out. It is expressed in creative activities and your unique inclinations (things that attract your excitement and attention).
Holding in any sense of creative potential is the secret orchestrator that brings about unhappiness and dissatisfaction in life.
Expressing it freely is the source of great willpower and deep internal satisfaction.
According to Expat Philosophy, fate is a construct that dilates your attitude to take in more self-belief.
Self-belief is the essential first step towards what you’re looking for.
When you have even the vaguest idea of your ideal realities, you have something worth fighting for. Binding your fight with the concept of fate only increases the likelihood of your success. In binding fate with your vision, it naturally forms an advantaged attitude which expedites your progress. Your mind learns to accept that this ideal future is inevitable. This acceptance is key.
In this acceptance, your energies and motivation expand to meet the required demand of achieving such a wonderous future. Fate is a spear that leads you to fight against challenges and adversity. It just depends on how you mentally wield it.
Then How is Fate Harmful?
Some use fate as a double-edged weapon. On one side, they cut themselves and let their courage bleed out of them. On the other side, they cut down the hard work and progress others make.
“I am destined to be alone while you are destined to be with Mandy,” is a great example of this double-edged cutting.
The sharp edge closest to the speaker becomes the blade that cuts away at their future while the far edge slashes away any sense of hard work one had to do (personally) to be a good partner for Mandy. Mandy’s partner may have had to walk through self-reflecting hell to become someone Mandy loves and admires.
It’s a defeatist’s misuse of fate. Everyone wants to believe in themselves, but it’s common for one to release the difficult responsibility of it—nay, the burden of always being their primary self-advocate. Such a continual activity of maintenance wears on a character who has seen too many defeats (perhaps not from the right angle).
This self-defeating relationship to fate is called Fate Sickness.
In the eyes of my observant friend, she’s come to witness too many people speak of fate as though it were an absolute script destined to only disappoint themselves and enrich others. To them, fate is a mere man with a stick coiled to beat back happiness, yet directs others to new achievements, fortunes, and greatness.
Fate is nothing even close that’s meant to defeat you.
One chooses to believe in fate due to their faith in it. Faith at its root is hope, optimism, a search for better, and a desire to become closer to a greater meaning.
None of these reasons seek to stifle prosperity, achievement, or personal security. Then why do people have such unhealthy relationships with fate, and how does it happen?
First, we need to understand the effects of Fate Sickness.
What Fate Sickness Does to You:
At the surface level, yielding to the misfortunes of “fate” makes the ducking of personal responsibility permissible in getting hard things done. It effectively de-burdens one’s own responsibility to overcome both internal and external challenges.
Check this out:
As you progress in life (or in your creative potential), the area of your achievements expands. As your circle expands, so does the perimeter of your personal power. The scary thing is, as this power expands, so does their responsibility and need for continuing results.
This naturally causes fear and anxiety, as what’s beyond this perimeter of power is uncertainty and fear of losing it all. We fear we may stretch too far so our circle will burst into a disjointed hot mess. We then fear perceived failure and any shame that comes along with it—as failure in trying to make something of yourself brings perceived embarrassment from your following.
We then easily become paralyzed.
To counter this subconscious fear, we believe fate is the ruling hand which stifles our will to move forward.
Temporarily, this relieves our burden of expanding our progress. We can lay down our spear and let it collect dust. Now, we start to dodge any personal responsibility to command our fate.
In doing so, we limit our circle of power and even shrink it down. Shrinking down our circle of power gives us a false sense of control, as we are more able to manage a lesser area.
In saying, “I guess I’m destined to work in retail forever since my podcast isn’t getting ‘listens’,” we withdraw and go back to what we can handle—that PM shift at Banana Republic.
How Your Attitudes Determine Your Relationship to Fate:
I’ve identified three major attitudes that will lead you to Fate Sickness. As most attitudes, they often stem from childhood.
The Depressive Attitude [DA]:
A Depressive Attitude is believing that there is actually something wrong with you. It’s the subconscious decision that you are in fact unworthy of being loved, admired or successful.
As an adult, you predict abandonment which usually becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. From here, it is all-too-easy to withdraw from friends, family and personal progress.
This action will only feed depression, making you more catatonic towards advancing your creative potential. Not only that, but it causes a secret need to harm others and keep their progress at bay.
The Solution to DA:
Usually, one with a DA attracts others due to their sensitive nature, but those who get too close are often inflicted with hurt or unnecessary criticism. Preaching to them about the wonderfulness and excitement of the world doesn’t help them in the long-term, so I’m not going to start (and neither should you). Trust me, I’ve wasted days with this approach.
Rather, show them. Coax them into positive experiences life has to offer.
Have them experience the thrill of a 20 degree climb from an abandoned runway. Get them to see the many colors of beauty from hundreds of fish in the Caribbean Sea. Hell, show them the thrill of defeating an opponent in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu or Judo.
The point isn’t to preach to them that this world is insanely gorgeous and bright but reward them when their Hobbit-hole door creaks open. Reward them by going on an adventure with them.
This will elevate their mood and bring them back into a state of assuredness and favor with fate.
The Avoidant Attitude [AA]:
This attitude falls in-sync with avoidant attachment styles.
Those with the Avoidant Attitude see the world through their own insecurities or perceived deficiencies (usually regarding intelligence or romantic attraction).
It’s easy for them to avoid responsibility because if you do so, you don’t have to work hard and bear potential criticism. Criticism and validating their insecurities are their worst nightmare.
The AA grows with both time and an increase in stakes, making it easier to leave when things get real. Escape routes and eyes towards the exit are common habits.
The Solution to AA:
Any abundant comforting from a seemingly backless place won’t help. If you or someone who has tendencies of AA, a good strategy is to complete a project at the smallest scale to build up munitions against any insecurities. Take the project to the end and embrace the possibility of failure.
Frequently, you’ll surprise yourself with what you are able to achieve.
I myself was avoidant after a series of failures from trying to manage my first company. My studies in engineering and philosophy didn’t prepare me in marketing, finance planning nor how to adapt to a study abroad business after COVID-19. Restarting on a small scale helped greatly. But what really sealed the deal to my vault of insecurities was Aggressive Meditation.
This practice is of my own design and resulted in me making a few different revenue incomes while honing my craft of caring for myself and others. I’ve been practicing it for years and it always wards off insecurities that sneak past my guard.
The Anxious Attitude:
Those with an Anxious Attitude seek to obtain full control. Losing control is their biggest fear. This causes a habit of limiting their efforts, places they’ll go, and things they’ll attempt.
When circles of responsibility and power expand, so does their likelihood to lose control.
As you or your business grows, more variables are introduced into the equation, resulting in more things to control. This increase in burden is often enough for someone with an Anxious Attitude to run for the exit. It eases the mind when fate is blamed for losing control.
If success is seen in others, they may subconsciously undervalue them as they view it as a threat to what they are able to achieve themselves.
The Solution to an Anxious Attitude:
Usually, the anxious have an abundance of energy and focus—as their need for control is high. If you have this attitude, focus your energies into your projects or business. As you do this, be sure to reign in your perfectionism and channel it towards something productive or beneficial to others.
When watching the success of others, consider mimicking their pace and slower way of doing things. If you work with someone who has an Anxious Attitude, be the model influence to soothe their desire for control and perfectionism.
Combinations of these attitudes are not uncommon. Often, the more you have, the more likely you’ll succumb to Fate Sickness.
The Biggest Weapon Against Fate Sickness:
From our attitudes comes our challenges with personal progress. These attitudes dictate our relationship to fate, making it a crutch to lean on or an axe to slash others down. If caught in Fate Sickness, you must redefine your definition of fate.
This is my definition and comes largely from Frederick Nietzsche’s concept of Amor Fati.
Amor Fati is the enthusiastic love and acceptance of what is to become of you. It is the insatiable need to overcome demons of your past and all obstacles of your future.
It’s all the good and bad within you that forms a character. In abandoning one, you forsake the other. So, learn to love them both equally as you’ll be carrying them to your next nexus. In result, fate ought to be the dilation of absorbing more self-belief for yourself and others.
But to even get here, you must practice the art of Self-Transparency.
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Why Self-Transparency is Everything:
For any psychological or philosophical predicament, it’s crucial to be aware of yourself—your feelings, habits of thought, and motives that drive each of these things.
Cultivating and refining your Self-Transparency [ST] is everything.
Self-Transparency is seeing, predicting, and accepting your characteristics and conditions. It is identifying the hidden forces that drive your habits, actions and thoughts. Lastly, it is the investigation as to where these things originate from in the first place.
Only from there can true progress be made.
My Coffeehouse Wager to You:
This is my coffeehouse wager to you:
Identify your own insecurities, recognize your habits of thought, and predict where they will lead you. If such things you harbor shrink your potential, identify the source of these concerns, and come to the realization they will only help you in achieving your envisioned greatness.
They are part of your hero’s journey, and a good journey has dragons and monsters. So don’t banish the dragons because if you do, you banish the hero who conquers the journey.
Your Concise Conclusion:
In conclusion, Fate Sickness is an unhealthy relationship with your (seemingly set) future. It is a self-defeating double-edged sword that harms your creative potential and cuts down the achievement and hard work of others.
Three primary negative attitudes often lead to this unhealthy relationship. Depressive, Avoidant, and Anxious Attitudes all give cause to limiting your circle of power, making existence seemingly more bearable—but it only truncates what you are meant to achieve in life.
Recognizing these habits of attitude and doing some investigative work will not only slay the dragons in your castle but expand what you are able to accomplish for yourself and others in this beautiful world.
I hope you enjoyed this one.
Cheers,
MTK
Reach out on IG (@that.expat.philosophy) because I want to hear other problems you face and how we can handle it!
Mike T. Kelly
Editor of Prosperity
Ex-structural engineer gone expat polyglot. Through his book, speaking events, published writings and online blog, he strives to influence millions of travelers to be their best selves while experiencing novelty overseas or at home. His desire for adventure travel is rivaled by his love for motorcycles, airplanes and family. Michael graduated from Gonzaga University with studies in civil engineering and philosophy. For his 29th birthday, he moved to Africa where he is experiencing his next transformative experience.
Fate Sickness and Dodging Responsibility FAQ:
Why do people ignore responsibility?
The largest contributor to those ignoring responsibility come from their adopted attitudes towards the work required to get done.
Why do people avoid responsibility?
There are many reasons. A major contributor comes from certain attitude types adopted in childhood. Avoidance, anxious and depressive attitudes can cause one to avoid personal responsibility.
Why do people avoid accountability?
There are many reasons. A major contributor comes from certain attitude types adopted in childhood. Avoidance, anxious and depressive attitudes can cause one to avoid personal accountability for their actions.