Nietzsche gave it the name. The Stoics built the practice.
The phrase means love of fate. Not tolerance of fate. Not resigned acceptance. Love. The Stoics, and later Nietzsche who named the concept formally, were pointing at something radical: that the path toward a clear life runs through full engagement with what is actually happening, not through resistance to it or fantasy about alternatives.
This is often misread as passivity. It is the opposite. Amor fati does not mean nothing matters or effort is pointless. It means: this is what exists right now, and my response to it begins from here, not from where I wish I were.
The difference between someone who practises amor fati and someone who does not is not what happens to them. It is what they do with it.
"Do not seek for things to happen as you wish them, but wish for the things which happen to be as they are, and you will find a tranquil life."
Epictetus, Enchiridion
Step 3 asks for a decision to turn your will over to something larger. This is not about abandoning agency. It is about recognising that clinging to total self-determined control has produced the current situation, and that something has to change in how you relate to outcomes you cannot dictate.
For the person in recovery, this step often involves accepting the nature of the addiction itself. That it is real. That it is not simply a matter of deciding to stop. That the past cannot be undone. That the work begins from wherever you actually are, not from where you think you should be.
Amor fati applied to recovery sounds like this: I am someone who has struggled with addiction. That is what is. It is not all that is. What do I do from here? That question, asked honestly, is the beginning of everything useful.
Write down three things about your situation that you have been resisting accepting. Not forgiving, not liking, simply accepting as real. Then write one sentence about what becomes possible once you stop spending energy fighting the existence of those facts.