The Courage to Be Disliked

Ichiro Kishimi, Fumitake Koga

Highlights

  • # The Courage to Be Disliked by Ichiro Kishimi, Fumitake Koga
  • “People are not driven by past causes but move toward goals that they themselves
  • I am not saying it’s fine to be “just as you are.” If you are unable to really feel happy, then it’s clear that things aren’t right just as they are.
  • “The important thing is not what one is born with but what use one makes of that equipment.” You want to be Y or someone else because you are utterly focused on what you were born with. Instead, you’ve got to focus on what you can make of your equipment.
  • At some stage in your life, you chose “being unhappy.” It is not because you were born into unhappy circumstances or ended up in an unhappy situation. It’s that you judged “being unhappy” to be good for you.
  • In Adlerian psychology, we describe personality and disposition with the word “lifestyle.”
  • Lifestyle is the tendencies of thought and action in life.
  • Adlerian psychology is a psychology of courage. Your unhappiness cannot be blamed on your past or your environment. And it isn’t that you lack competence. You just lack courage. One might say you are lacking in the courage to be happy.
  • “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.” That you, living in the here and now, are the one who determines your own life.
  • “To get rid of one’s problems, all one can do is live in the universe all alone.” But one can’t do such a thing.
  • being alone isn’t what makes you feel lonely. Loneliness is having other people and society and community around you, and having a deep sense of being excluded from them.
  • Adler goes so far as to assert, “All problems are interpersonal relationship problems.”
  • the feelings of inferiority we’re suffering from are subjective interpretations rather than objective facts?
  • there is one good thing about subjectivity: It allows you to make your own choice. Precisely because I am leaving it to subjectivity, the choice to view my height as either an advantage or disadvantage is left open to me.
  • We cannot alter objective facts. But subjective interpretations can be altered as much as one likes. And we are inhabitants of a subjective world.
  • Adler is saying that the pursuit of superiority and the feeling of inferiority are not diseases but stimulants to normal, healthy striving and growth. If it is not used in the wrong way, the feeling of inferiority, too, can promote striving and growth.
  • if one had a feeling of inferiority with regard to one’s education, and resolved to oneself, I’m not well educated, so I’ll just have to try harder than anyone else, that would be a desirable direction. The inferiority complex, on the other hand, refers to a condition of having begun to use one’s feeling of inferiority as a kind of excuse. So one thinks to oneself, I’m not well educated, so I can’t succeed, or I’m not good-looking, so I can’t get married.
  • When someone is insisting on the logic of “A is the situation, so B cannot be done” in such a way in everyday life, that is not something that fits in the feeling of inferiority category. It is an inferiority complex.
  • One makes a show of being on good terms with a powerful person (broadly speaking—it could be anyone from the leader of your school class to a famous celebrity). And by doing that, one lets it be known that one is special. Behaviors like misrepresenting one’s work experience or excessive allegiance to particular brands of clothing are forms of giving authority, and probably also have aspects of the superiority complex. In each case, it isn’t that the “I” is actually superior or special. It is only that one is making the “I” look superior by linking it to authority. In short, it’s a fabricated feeling of superiority.
  • As Adler clearly indicates, “The one who boasts does so only out of a feeling of inferiority.”
  • They use their misfortune to their advantage and try to control the other party with it. By declaring how unfortunate they are and how much they have suffered, they are trying to worry the people around them (their family and friends, for example), and to restrict their speech and behavior, and control them.
  • “In our culture weakness can be quite strong and powerful.”
  • Adler says, “In fact, if we were to ask ourselves who is the strongest person in our culture, the logical answer would be, the baby. The baby rules and cannot be dominated.” The baby rules over the adults with his weakness. And it is because of this weakness that no one can control him.
  • The pursuit of superiority is the mind-set of taking a single step forward on one’s own feet, not the mind-set of competition of the sort that necessitates aiming to be greater than other people. YOUTH:
  • It’s enough to just keep moving in a forward direction, without competing with anyone. And, of course, there is no need to compare oneself with others.
  • A healthy feeling of inferiority is not something that comes from comparing oneself to others; it comes from one’s comparison with one’s ideal self.
  • If there is competition at the core of a person’s interpersonal relationships, he will not be able to escape interpersonal relationship problems or escape misfortune.
  • There is a difference between personal anger (personal grudge) and indignation with regard to society’s contradictions and injustices (righteous indignation). Personal anger soon cools. Righteous indignation, on the other hand, lasts for a long time. Anger as an expression of a personal grudge is nothing but a tool for making others submit to you.
  • that you are still stuck in the power struggle. When you are challenged to a fight, and you sense that it is a power struggle, step down from the conflict as soon as possible. Do not answer his action with a reaction.
  • Irascible people do not have short tempers—it is only that they do not know that there are effective communication tools other than anger.
  • the conviction that “I am right” leads to the assumption that “this person is wrong,” and finally it becomes a contest and you are thinking, I have to win.
  • There are the following two objectives for behavior: to be self-reliant and to live in harmony with society. And there are the following two objectives for the psychology that supports these behaviors: the consciousness that I have the ability and the consciousness that people are my comrades
  • Adler made three categories of the interpersonal relationships that arise out of these processes. He referred to them as “tasks of work,” “tasks of friendship,” and “tasks of love,” and all together as “life tasks.”
  • Adler does not accept restricting one’s partner. If the person seems to be happy, one can frankly celebrate that condition. That is love. Relationships in which people restrict each other eventually fall apart.
  • The kind of relationship that feels somehow oppressive and strained when the two people are together cannot be called love, even if there is passion. When one can think, Whenever I am with this person, I can behave very freely, one can really feel love.
  • Restriction, on the other hand, is a manifestation of the mind-set of attempting to control one’s partner, and also an idea founded on a sense of distrust.
  • No matter how distressful the relationship, you must not avoid or put off dealing with it. Even if in the end you’re going to cut it with scissors, first you have to face it. The worst thing to do is to just stand still with the situation as it is.
  • Adlerian psychology denies the need to seek recognition from others.
  • There is no need to be recognized by others. Actually, one must not seek recognition. This point cannot be overstated.
  • We need to think with the perspective of “Whose task is this?” and continually separate one’s own tasks from other people’s tasks.
  • One does not intrude on other people’s tasks. That’s all.
  • In general, all interpersonal relationship troubles are caused by intruding on other people’s tasks, or having one’s own tasks intruded on. Carrying out the separation of tasks is enough to change one’s interpersonal relationships dramatically.
  • There is a simple way to tell whose task it is. Think, Who ultimately is going to receive the result brought about by the choice that is made?
  • Forcing change while ignoring the person’s intentions will only lead to an intense reaction.
  • Intervening in other people’s tasks and taking on other people’s tasks turns one’s life into something heavy and full of hardship. If you are leading a life of worry and suffering—which stems from interpersonal relationships—learn the boundary of “From here on, that is not my task.” And discard other people’s tasks. That is the first step toward lightening the load and making life simpler.
  • Are you saying that it doesn’t matter how sad I make my parents feel? PHILOSOPHER: That’s right. It doesn’t matter.
  • All you can do with regard to your own life is choose the best path that you believe in. On the other hand, what kind of judgment do other people pass on that choice? That is the task of other people, and is not a matter you can do anything about.
  • You should think, What I should do is face my own tasks in my own life without lying.
  • First, one should ask, “Whose task is this?” Then do the separation of tasks. Calmly delineate up to what point one’s own tasks go, and from what point they become another person’s tasks. And do not intervene in other people’s tasks, or allow even a single person to intervene in one’s own tasks.
  • when reading a book, if one brings one’s face too close to it, one cannot see anything. In the same way, forming good interpersonal relationships requires a certain degree of distance. When the distance gets too small and people become stuck together, it becomes impossible to even speak to each other. But the distance must not be too great, either.
  • One should be ready to lend a hand when needed but not encroach on the person’s territory. It is important to maintain this kind of moderate distance.
  • What should one do to not be disliked by anyone? There is only one answer: It is to constantly gauge other people’s feelings while swearing loyalty to all of them.
  • There is no reason of any sort that one should not live one’s life as one pleases.
  • In light of what we have discussed until now, the conclusion we reach regarding “What is freedom?” should be clear. YOUTH: What is it? PHILOSOPHER: In short, that “freedom is being disliked by other people.”
  • One neither prepares to be self-righteous nor becomes defiant. One just separates tasks. There may be a person who does not think well of you, but that is not your task.
  • 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.
  • Many people think that the interpersonal relationship cards are held by the other person. That is why they wonder, How does that person feel about me? and end up living in such a way as to satisfy the wishes of other people. But if they can grasp the separation of tasks, they will notice that they are holding all the cards. This is a new way of thinking.
  • In Adlerian psychology, physical symptoms are not regarded separately from the mind (psyche).
  • When Adler refers to community, he goes beyond the household, school, workplace, and local society, and treats it as all-inclusive, covering not only nations and all of humanity but also the entire axis of time from the past to the future—and he includes plants and animals and even inanimate objects.
  • way of living in which one is constantly troubled by how one is seen by others is a self-centered lifestyle in which one’s sole concern is with the “I.”
  • While the “I” is life’s protagonist, it is never more than a member of the community and a part of the whole.
  • 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.”
  • When one person praises another, the goal is “to manipulate someone who has less ability than you.” It is not done out of gratitude or respect.
  • Adlerian psychology refutes all manner of vertical relationships and proposes that all interpersonal relationships be horizontal relationships.
  • A company employee and a full-time housewife simply have different workplaces and roles, and are truly “equal but not the same.”
  • If one can build horizontal relationships that are “equal but not the same” for all people, there will no longer be any room for inferiority complexes to emerge.
  • So intervention is this kind of intruding on other people’s tasks and directing them by saying things like “You have to study” or “Get into that university.” Whereas assistance, on the other hand, presupposes the separation of tasks, and also horizontal relationships. Having understood that studying is the child’s task, one considers what one can do for him. Concretely speaking, instead of commanding from above that the child must study, one acts on him in such a way that he can gain the confidence to take care of his own studies and face his tasks on his own.
  • The more one is praised by another person, the more one forms the belief that one has no ability.
  • When receiving praise becomes one’s goal, one is choosing a way of living that is in line with another person’s system of values.
  • You might express straightforward delight: “I’m glad.” Or you could convey your thanks by saying, “That was a big help.” This is an approach to encouragement that is based on horizontal relationships.
  • If receiving praise is what one is after, one will have no choice but to adapt to that person’s yardstick and put the brakes on one’s own freedom. “Thank you,” on the other hand, rather than being judgment, is a clear expression of gratitude. When one hears words of gratitude, one knows that one has made a contribution to another person.
  • “It is only when a person is able to feel that he has worth that he can possess courage.”
  • It is when one is able to feel “I am beneficial to the community” that one can have a true sense of one’s worth.
  • With regard to this issue of community feeling, there was a person who asked Adler a similar question. Adler’s reply was the following: “Someone has to start. Other people might not be cooperative, but that is not connected to you. My advice is this: you should start. With no regard to whether others are cooperative or not.” My advice is exactly the same.
  • It’s about community feeling, after all. Concretely speaking, it’s making the switch from attachment to self (self-interest) to concern for others (social interest) and gaining a sense of community feeling. Three things are needed at this point: “self-acceptance,” “confidence in others,” and “contribution to others.”
  • Accept what is irreplaceable. Accept “this me” just as it is. And have the courage to change what one can change. That is self-acceptance.
  • if I am grumbling to myself as I wash the dishes, I am probably not much fun to be around, so everyone just wants to keep their distance. On the other hand, if I’m humming away to myself and washing the dishes in good spirits, the children might come and give me a hand. At the very least, I’d be creating an atmosphere in which it is easier for them to offer their help.
  • “The two objectives for behavior: to be self-reliant and to live in harmony with society. The two objectives for the psychology that supports these behaviors: the consciousness that I have the ability and the consciousness that people are my comrades.”
  • People with neurotic lifestyles tend to sprinkle their speech with such words as “everyone” and “always” and “everything.” “Everyone hates me,” they will say, or “It’s always me who takes a loss,” or “Everything is wrong.”
  • the feeling of “I am beneficial to the community” or “I am of use to someone” is the only thing that can give one a true awareness that one has worth.
  • If one really has a feeling of contribution, one will no longer have any need for recognition from others. Because one will already have the real awareness that “I am of use to someone,” without needing to go out of one’s way to be acknowledged by others.
  • People can be truly aware of their worth only when they are able to feel “I am of use to someone.” However, it doesn’t matter if the contribution one makes at such a time is without any visible form. It is enough to have the subjective sense of being of use to someone, that is to say, a feeling of contribution. And then the philosopher arrives at the following conclusion: Happiness is the feeling of contribution.
  • Think of life as a series of dots.
  • With dance, it is the dancing itself that is the goal, and no one is concerned with arriving somewhere by doing it. Naturally, it may happen that one arrives somewhere as a result of having danced. Since one is dancing, one does not stay in the same place. But there is no destination.
  • The life that lies ahead of you is a completely blank page, and there are no tracks that have been laid for you to follow. There is no story there.
  • As long as we postpone life, we can never go anywhere and will pass our days only one after the next in dull monotony, because we think of here and now as just a preparatory period, as a time for patience. But a “here and now” in which one is studying for an entrance examination in the distant future, for example, is the real thing.
  • The greatest life-lie of all is to not live here and now. It is to look at the past and the future, cast a dim light on one’s entire life, and believe that one has been able to see something. Until now, you have turned away from the here and now and shone a light only on invented pasts and futures. You have told a great lie to your life, to these irreplaceable moments.
  • What is the meaning of life? What are people living for? When someone posed these questions to Adler, this was his answer: “Life in general has no meaning.”
  • And Adler, having stated that “life in general has no meaning,” then continues, “Whatever meaning life has must be assigned to it by the individual.”
  • Just like the traveler who relies on the North Star, in our lives we need a guiding star. That is the Adlerian psychology way of thinking. It is an expansive ideal that says, as long as we do not lose sight of this compass and keep on moving in this direction, there is happiness.
  • No matter what moments you are living, or if there are people who dislike you, as long as you do not lose sight of the guiding star of “I contribute to others,” you will not lose your way, and you can do whatever you like. Whether you’re disliked or not, you pay it no mind and live free.
  • in its original meaning, philosophy refers not to “wisdom” itself but to “love of wisdom,”

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