The Courage to Be Disliked

The Japanese Phenomenon That Shows You How to Change Your Life and Achieve Real Happiness

Ichiro Kishimi, Fumitake Koga

Summary: A dialogue of a philosopher and a young man about life; presenting mostly Adlerian life philosophy

Score: 60 / 100

• etiology (the study of causation) and
• teleology (the study of the purpose of a given phenomenon, rather than its cause).

No experience is in itself a cause of our success or failure. We do not suffer from the shock of our experiences—the so-called trauma—but instead we make out of them whatever suits our purposes. We are not determined by our experiences, but the meaning we give them is self-determining.”

Your life is not something that someone gives you, but something you choose yourself, and you are the one who decides how you live.

Anger is a means to achieve a goal.

Saying “If only I could be like Y” is an excuse to yourself for not changing.

No matter what has occurred in your life up to this point, it should have no bearing at all on how you live from now on.

When you enter into interpersonal relationships, it is inevitable that to a greater or lesser extent you will get hurt, and you will hurt someone, too.

To feel lonely, we need other people.

All problems are interpersonal relationship problems.

Adler was very critical of education by reward and punishment.

Children who have not been taught to confront challenges will try to avoid all challenges.

Freedom is being disliked by other people.

The cost of freedom in interpersonal relationships is that one is disliked by other people.

The courage to be happy also includes the courage to be disliked. When you have gained that courage, your interpersonal relationships will all at once change into things of lightness.

I think that until I encountered Adlerian psychology, I understood it in that kind of way. Because my father was a moody, taciturn person. But to think to myself, He hit me that time, and that is why our relationship went bad, is a Freudian etiological way of thinking. The Adlerian teleology position completely reverses the cause-and-effect interpretation. That is to say, I brought out the memory of being hit because I don’t want my relationship with my father to get better.

When we run into difficulties in our interpersonal relations, or when we can no longer see a way out, what we should consider first and foremost is the principle that says, “Listen to the voice of the larger community.”

One must not praise, and one must not rebuke.

Whether we praise or rebuke others, the only difference is one of the carrot or the stick, and the background goal is manipulation.

The reason Adlerian psychology is highly critical of reward-and-punishment education is that its intention is to manipulate children.

The more one is praised by another person, the more one forms the belief that one has no ability. Please do your best to remember this.

We do not lack ability. We just lack courage.

Those who sacrifice their own lives for others are people who have conformed to society too much.

“Work” does not mean having a job at a company. Work in the home, child-rearing, contributing to the local society, hobbies, and all manner of other things are work.

Does one accept oneself on the level of acts, or on the level of being? This is truly a question that relates to the courage to be happy.

Happiness is the feeling of contribution.

Life is a series of moments.

The greatest life-lie of all is to not live here and now.