Book Summary: The Courage to Be Disliked
The Courage to Be Disliked is about a lot more than the courage to be disliked. It covers all of Adlerian psychology—a philosophical approach to psychology established by Austrian psychiatrist Alfred Adler. The book can be dense at times, so I recommend reading it in many different sittings. I also found it helpful to skim to the big picture rather than get lost in the philosophical debates. The book is written as a dialogue between a philosopher and a youth. The philosopher teaches, and the youth learns. Of course, the youth has a lot of push-back because the ideas in this book often go against everything we’ve been taught.
For example, this approach to psychology is antithetical to traditional talk therapy where one could argue there are times where you mull on your problems and loop around them in circles. Rather, this philosophy puts you in charge of your mood, happiness, health, wealth, etc. You are at the center of your universe and get to decide when it can all change at any given moment. Putting responsibility on yourself can be challenging, especially when there are elements of our lives that are at times truly out of our control. But Adler psychology always pushes us back into what we can control: ourselves.
Here’s a taste at the ideas that resonated the most with me in this book:
The world isn’t complicated. You are making the world complicated. The issue is not about how the world is, but about how you are.
None of us live in an objective world. We live in a subjective world that we give meaning to.
Self pity is a trap.
The past does not matter.
We are taught the concept of ‘etiology’ (the study of cause and effect) that trains us to believe everything from our past is a ‘cause’ and our present is the ‘effect.’ Under this model, past trauma carries a heavy weight into the current moment, impacting your life in many ways. Adler psychology teaches ‘teleology’ which directly interferes with that line of thinking. In Adlerian psychology, it’s not about past “causes,” but rather about present “goals.” This can be a brutal way of looking at things. It’s extremely self-confronting and at times not entirely compassionate to people with trauma, but on the flip side: what is more compassionate than removing the heavy weight that trauma bears? What is more compassionate than teaching someone that they can free themselves of it by altering their present goals? If you’re struggling with something, it’s not about asking, “Why did this happen to me? What caused this? Did I cause this?" Rather, it’s more helpful to ask “What is the purpose of this event? What did it teach me? What is my goal now that it has happened to recover and move forward?” We get to decide the meaning of every single event in our lives, whether that event was in our control or not. We can choose a meaning for the event that suits our purposes and present goals.
We determine our own lives.
“Every single one of us is living in line with some goal.”
We are not controlled by emotion or the past. We decide our emotions. We often use our emotions to pursue our goals.
“The important thing is not what one is born with but what use one makes of that equipment. Instead you’ve got to focus on what you can make of your equipment.”
“The Greek word for ‘good’ (agathon) does not have a moral meaning. It just means ‘beneficial.’ Conversely, the word for ‘evil’ (kakon) means ‘not beneficial.’ Our world is rife with injustices and misdeeds of all kinds, yet there is not one person who desires evil in the purest sense of the word, that is to say something ‘not beneficial.’”
Lifestyle is the tendencies of thought and action in life. You choose your lifestyle.
“If your lifestyle is not something that you were naturally born with, but something you chose yourself, then it must be possible to choose it over again.” You’re never stuck.
“When we try to change our lifestyles, we put our great courage to the test.”
“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 the courage to be happy.”
“The novelist who never seems to be able to complete his work is choosing not to. He doesn’t want to expose his work to criticism. He doesn’t want to face the reality that he might produce an inferior piece of writing and face rejection. He wants to live inside that realm of possibility, where he can say that he could do it if he only had the time, or that he could write if he just had the proper environment, and that he really does have the talent for it.”
“Having simple tasks—things that should be done—while continually coming up with various reasons why one can’t do them sounds like a hard way to live, doesn’t it?”
Youth: Your philosophy is too tough!
Philosopher: Indeed, it is strong medicine.
“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.”
The good thing about subjectivity is that it allows you to make up your own choice. When it comes to feelings of superiority or inferiority, you get to decide. Does being tall make you superior? Or does being short give you an edge that others don’t have? We cannot alter objective facts like our height, but we can alter our subjective interpretations. And we often do. We often find ways to be superior to others as much as possible through our own subjective thinking. Is having a fancier car better than an average car? Or is having an average car financially smarter than the fancy one? There are endless ways to rationalize your desires and lifestyle to be better than someone else’s.
All problems are interpersonal problems.
If you were the only person on the planet, you’d use cash to blow your nose. You wouldn’t know what illness is, because you wouldn’t know what health is.
“People enter this world as helpless beings. And people have the universal desire to escape from that helpless state. Adler called this the ‘pursuit of superiority.’” This is something you can think of as “hoping to improve” or “pursuing an ideal state.” —> whoa, does this explain everyone’s obsession with self-improvement?
The pursuit of superiority is not a disease. It’s a healthy stimulant for normal striving and growth.
If problems are hurting you at the moment, think to yourself if you have the courage to change your lifestyle. Often, we don’t realize how much we are choosing our problems by being unwilling to change. “It’s easier with things just as they are not, even if you have some complaints or limitations.”
“Braggarts have feelings of inferiority. If one really has confidence in oneself, one doesn’t feel the need to boast.”
Don’t get too caught up in feelings of superiority/inferiority and comparison. We are all on an even playing field. “Some people are moving forward, and other people are moving forward behind them. Keep that image in mind. 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.”
“Everyone is different. Don’t mix up that difference with good and bad, and superior and inferior. Whatever differences we may have, we are all equal.”
See everyone as your comrades, not your enemies. If you compete with people around you, you have no choice but to be conscious of victory or defeat. Before you know it, everyone in the world is your enemy.
“That is what is so terrifying about competition. Even if you’re not a loser, even if you’re someone who keeps on winning, if you are someone who has placed himself in competition, you will never have a moment’s peace. You don’t want to be a loser. And you always have to keep on winning if you don’t want to be a loser.”
“Once one is released from the schema of competition, the need to triumph over someone disappears. One is also released from the fear that says, Maybe I will lose. And one becomes able to celebrate other people’s happiness with all one’s heart. One may become able to contribute actively to other people’s happiness.”
“The person who always has the will to help another in times of need—that is someone who may properly be called your comrade.”
“If someone were to abuse me to my face, I would think about that person’s hidden goal. They are challenging me to a power struggle.”
"The moment one is convinced that ‘I am right’ in an interpersonal relationship, one has already stepped into a power struggle.”
“There are 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 are the consciousness that I have the ability and people are my comrades.”
Interpersonal relationships thrive when you can behave very freely around the other person. That is the only way you can truly feel love. “If two people want to live together on good terms, they must treat each other as equal personalities.”
“Even if you are avoiding your life tasks and clinging to your life-lies, it isn’t because you are steeped in evil. It is not an issue to be condemned from a moralistic standpoint. It is only an issue of courage.”
“It is only an issue of courage.”
Do not live to satisfy the expectation of others.
Desire for recognition makes you unfree.
Discard other people’s tasks and do not interfere. Many interpersonal relationship problems stem from meddling in other people’s tasks. The parent should not scold the child to do their homework. That is the child’s task. If the child doesn’t do their homework, it only affects the child’s outcome: the school they can get into, the job they can get. Parents often care because of appearances and think it is their task to make the child do their homework. This is very similar to Mel Robbins idea of ‘let them.’
If you want to be liked, you are not free.
People want to like themselves. They want to feel that they have worth. To feel that way, they need to contribute. It makes them feel, “I am of use to someone.” Seeking recognition is an easy way to gain that feeling of contribution, but it is coming from someone else and not from yourself.
“Happiness is the feeling of contribution.”
“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.”
If you feel like you are contributing, then you will no longer feel the need for recognition from others. Your desire for recognition is simply validation that you are contributing. If you feel that way naturally inside of yourself because your work and time are truly adding value, then you will not care for praise, validation, or recognition in your career or life. It makes us happy to contribute. If you know in your heart that you helped someone have a good day, you don’t really need to hear them say ‘thank you.’ You get your happiness from knowing you made a difference.
Desire for recognition in our careers is really just a masked way of saying, “I care what people think.” And desiring praise.
“Revenge and pursuit of superiority are linked. One makes trouble for another person while trying at the same time to be ‘special.’”
Life is only a series of moments.
Traditional psychology teaches us that life is a line—a string of moments in connection to one another. These lines help us tell stories about ourselves. It helps us see our goals as a pursuit similar to climbing a mountain. However, every step up that moment is just in service of getting to the top. Though this line of thinking, if your life is interrupted ‘en route’ or if one fails to reach the top, then your life that entire time was just your tentative life, and you are just a ‘tentative me.’
Instead, Adler psychology teaches you that life is just a series of dots. There isn’t a lot of cause and effect. Just your courage to choose a lifestyle for yourself and choose happiness. Our lives exist only in moments. We teach linear lines to young people: good university, big company, stable household, and you’ll have a happy life. You don’t need to have a well-planned life.
Live like you’re ‘dancing.’ Everyone who has achieved great things, didn’t do so through great planning and goal-setting. The amazing violinist isn’t someone who planned to be that way. She loved the dance of playing the violin and she played it every day. She enjoyed each individual moment or that so-called linear journey and ended up being very good at what she does.
‘Dancing’ itself is the goal.
“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 kind of life I am talking about could be called an ‘actual-active-state’ life.” In the end, it does not matter if you make it to the ‘mountaintop’ or not.
Shine a light on the here and now.
“It is enough to do it little by little. In short, one can dance the dance. By doing so, you have a sense of “this is what I did today.” The goal is to live earnestly in the here and now, not to achieve a grand objective.
There is no meaning to life besides the one you choose to give it.
The book ends with these words:
“The world is simple, and life is, too.”
