The Courage to be Disliked

The Courage to be Disliked is absolutely one of the best books, I've read in 2021. I found it a week ago and can’t stop sharing it with my friends. Two Japanese writers re-frame Alfred Adler’s theories as a conversation. It touches every part of life such as childhood, marriage, business, parenting, and many more. If you can figure out “being disliked” by others are OK, you will be freer.

How strongly I recommend it: 10/10

MY NOTES

None of us live in an objective world, but instead in a subjective world that we ourselves have given meaning to. The world you see is different from the one I see, and it’s impossible to share your world with anyone else.

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.

We determine our own lives according to the meaning we give to those past experiences. Your life is not something that someone gives you, but something you choose yourself, and you are the one who decides how you live.

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.

And please remember this: If you are not living to satisfy other people’s expectations, it follows that other people are not living to satisfy your expectations. Someone might not act the way you want him to, but it doesn’t do to get angry. That’s only natural.

You are worried about other people looking at you. You are worried about being judged by other people. That is why you are constantly craving recognition from others. Now, why are you worried about other people looking at you, anyway?

That is Adler’s life-lie again. I can’t do my work because I’ve been shunned by my boss. It’s the boss’s fault that my work isn’t going well. The person who says such things is bringing up the existence of the boss as an excuse for the work that doesn’t go well. Much like the female student with the fear of blushing, it’s actually that you need the existence of an awful boss. Because then you can say, “If only I didn’t have this boss, I could get more work done.”