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Setbacks / 39m
Nietzsche on Hardship
A Practical Guide to Hardship, Meaning, Resentment, and the Strength to Begin Again
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Setbacks / 39m
A Practical Guide to Hardship, Meaning, Resentment, and the Strength to Begin Again
“What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.”
Almost everyone knows the line. Far fewer know the life behind it.
Friedrich Nietzsche spent much of his adult life dealing with severe illness, chronic pain, failing eyesight, insomnia, loneliness, professional collapse, and books that almost nobody bought. His philosophy of hardship was not written from a safe distance.
Nietzsche on Hardship explores what his famous saying actually means, and why suffering does not automatically make anyone stronger.
You’ll discover:
The Demon Question: would you willingly live yesterday again?
How Nietzsche’s eternal recurrence can expose where your life needs to changeAmor Fati: the demanding idea of loving your fateOne Yes: a practical way to begin without pretending suffering is goodHow these ideas apply to job loss, illness, chronic pain, divorce, caregiving, and long-term hardshipA seven-day Ancient Coping practiceYou did not choose everything that happened to you. But there are still hours ahead that you can choose.
The audiobook also includes a practical companion guide to help you work with hardship without forcing yourself to pretend it made you stronger. It includes Deeper Not Better, The Why, The Gardener, The Demon Question, One Yes, guided reflection pages, and a seven-day Nietzsche practice for rebuilding meaning and direction.
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You have heard the line. You have probably said it yourself, or had it said to you when things were going badly. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger. It is on gym walls, in films, on tattoos. It gets said at funerals and redundancy meetings and hospital bedsides, usually by people who are trying to help and do not know what else to say. Most people who say it do not know where it comes from. It comes from a German philosopher called Friedrich Nietzsche. And most people who say it have no idea what kind of life he was living when he wrote it. He was a man who was ill almost every day of his adult life. Headaches so violent he would lie in a darkened room for days, vomiting. Eyes so weak he could barely read. Stomach problems, insomnia, loneliness. He lost his career at thirty-four. His books sold so badly that he paid to have some of them printed himself. He had very few friends, no wife, no children, and very little money. And out of that life, he produced some of the most powerful writing about hardship ever put on paper. Not comfortable writing. Not the kind that tells you everything will be fine. The kind that asks you to look your suffering in the face and do something with it.
A Practical Guide to Unfairness, Bitterness, Envy, Acceptance, and Knowing When to Fight Back
How to Stop Letting One Failure Define You and Become Stronger After a Setback
A Practical Guide to Handling No, Letting Go of Approval, and Trying Again
Stoic Lessons for Handling No, Rejection, Failure, and the Fear of Not Being Chosen