The Courage To Be Disliked

Forward: As part of my year of intention I’ve decided to do ‘book reports’ on any books I read. They will serve both as an overview of the contents to help it stick in my brain, as well as my own reactions to the views posed by the book. So here we go!

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The Courage to be Disliked by Fumitake Koga and Ichiro Kishimi is a book on Individual psychology as founded by Alfred Adler, which takes the form of a dialogue between a wise elder and a young contrarian determined to prove him wrong about his views on the world. I wasn’t familiar with this form of psychology before going into this, which made it a fascinating, disruptive read. It was suggested to me by my Psychiatrist, for reasons I have yet to confront him about, but I now have a deep curiosity about. It is (as I learned) a rejection of classical Freudian “Etiological” psychology, that all of our behaviors have causes, instead advocating for Teleology: that our behaviors are formed to serve an end goal. In other words: it’s a book about finding happiness not by looking backwards, but forwards.

The core ideas I took out of the book are as follows:

1. The world is actually pretty simple. We’re the ones inventing all the problems for ourselves. People are not shaped by their past, and can change and be happy right now.
2. All problems are interpersonal relationship problems. We measure ourselves against others, and avoid life’s hardships by foisting our responsibilities on those above or below us, rather than seeking relationships of camaraderie.
3. Living a meaningful life is ultimately about courage: the courage to happy, the courage to be disliked, and (weirdly) the courage to be normal.

Trauma does not exist

The book starts with one of the hardest ideas to accept right out of the gate: that the past does not determine the future. According to Adler, trauma does not exist, and is in fact a dangerous idea that we use as an excuse not to change. No experience is the sole cause of our current behavior; rather, we use those experiences as a tool for whatever suits our purposes. It is much safer to believe that our unhappiness is not our fault, and that there’s nothing that can be done about it. This is one of several supposed life lies laid out in the book. We should instead recognize that the meaning we give these traumas is self-determining, and that we should instead recognize that, with courage, we can reject the hold of the past and decide how we wish to live.

Change is scary, there’s no doubt about that. More often than not, we will continue down the safety of the known path without risk over the unknown road, even if we can clearly see the benefits of changing our direction. We may find ourselves miserable where we are in life and desperate for change, but the book actually goes so far as to state that this way of life is an intentional choice that each person is making to remain where they are, for it suits some purpose. We create the fear ourselves to meet the goal of getting attention, making our lives easier, or whatever else the people around us are doing to accommodate our current behavior. With nothing more than courage, we can change right now, and be happy.

Now for my take: I can see that this framework is itself a very powerful tool for self-improvement. Our focus determines our reality, and I’ve seen firsthand that unshackling myself from certain assumptions about my past or my character can have drastic effect on my overall life¹. On the whole though, I cannot accept the foundations that it rests upon, that determinism is a lie. On its own, this proposed theory is pretty internally consistent, especially with the remainder of the lessons in the book, which is probably why they start with this idea first. This idea, though, ultimately suggests that the internal dialogue that narrates our lives is really all there is, which is pretty radical².

Whatever the underlying ideas, there’s definitely something to this. The book runs through several examples of people “choosing” to get angry with a person, or “wanting” to remain a shut-in, which rubbed me the wrong way, but after a while I decided to interpret that language as simply a way of explaining the behaviors of the subconscious/emotional core. People aren’t consciously thinking that they wanted to stay in a job that they hated, but they do it anyway, and this is one way of interpreting that. More importantly though, it’s an excellent way of bridging the gap between to your subconscious, and doing some good good introspection. If you can identify some hidden feelings or irrational beliefs that are keeping you from making the changes you’d really like to, the more power you will have to correct them. Ultimately, I do believe that people can change.

Do not seek recognition, do not praise others

The book goes on to assert several related ideas about interpersonal relationships, which Adler considers to be the only source of our problems. It points out that we often dislike ourselves due to a feeling of inferiority, but that this is completely subjective. It is living by other people’s standards instead of our own. Similarly, when we seek recognition from others, we are resigning our happiness to the whims of others. This is often the reason we give ourselves to avoid change, and fail to find happiness. Life is not a competition. When we view others as our enemies, and we see life as a zero-sum game, we are falling into the trap of living by other people’s standards, rather than being true to ourselves. True happiness can only be gained by living up to our own values, not those of others.

When we seek recognition from people, we are granting them a position of authority over us. When we praise others, we are also implicitly placing ourselves above them. This is the foundation of a vertical relationship, and it’s one Adler wholeheartedly rejects. If we live in a world of vertical relationships, it is a world where we do not see each other as equals, each with their own responsibilities and freedom. Here’s a profound observation the book makes: if someone close to you, a friend or family member, gives you help, you show gratitude. You’d sound like a psychopath if you were to give them praise, saying “good job” when they helped you move. Yet in a workplace, such a thing is commonplace. Adler suggests that we should seek only horizontal relationships, in which there is no condemnation or praise, merely gratitude. This even extends to a parent-child relationship, which gets interesting.

A horizontal relationship is achieved, the book says, by focusing only on our own tasks, and leaving others to theirs. If you’re not the one who would receive the results of a task, it’s not yours to worry about. We don’t expect a parent to do their kid’s homework, so why do we then blame a parent for not intervening when a child is getting into drugs or dropping out of school? We all see the reasons for the former: children need to learn responsibility, and would fall behind in their studies or continue to rely on their parents to do what is ultimately their own task. It’s when the consequences are more dire that we lose sight of this. Conversely, a parent who does intervene in a child’s life is often done with the message that “it’s for your own good”. The book claims this is a lie, and that the parents are really just trying to fulfill their own goals… which is to be accepted in the eyes of the community, or to impose those ideals onto their children. It all comes back to the observation that we are choosing to live up to the standards of others. We should instead recognize our freedom to measure our own lives and find our own happiness³, and, crucially, to grant others that same freedom.

This all pretty much blew my mind. The instinct to seek recognition and praise from others feels completely natural, and receiving it perfectly healthy and desirable, but this was very clearly showing that not to be true. The harder thing for me, though, was reading about the other half: that inserting myself in other people’s tasks was not only an invalidation of their freedom, but a selfish maneuver as well. I’ve definitely struggled in the past for feeling a deep responsibility for the misfortunes of some of the people I’m closest to in life, and then trying to fix things for them. Why should they suffer when I know that I can jump in and help them? To be sure, there is nothing wrong with feeling concern for others offering help. We are meant to guide others to water, but it is still their responsibility to drink. People need to feel autonomy in their own lives⁴, not that things are out of their control. If we grab the controls away from other people, we are robbing them the chance of finding to their own happiness.

The cost of freedom is the courage to be disliked

Freedom. Finding your own happiness. Sounds great and all. Um, quick question, how though?

The book eventually gets around to defining happiness as “the feeling of contribution”. When one has realized that they are in control of their own lives, and have found a community of comrades⁵ rather than competitors, they can achieve this feeling by seeing that they are of use to others. If we can break out of the habit of self-centeredness, it will shift naturally to concern for others. “But wait! I thought this whole thing was saying to be concerned with my own problems!” Indeed! Here’s how he somersaults through that one: the problems that you’re probably thinking about are still all self-centered. Our life struggle should in fact be to find our places in our various communities, and be of use to others. It’s not about making a certain amount of money, or being liked by other people, or feeling like a super special flower that’s worthy of praise. It’s about knowing that your life has meaning, and only you can measure that. When you feel like you’ve contributed to the lives of others or the environment around you, you don’t feel the need for recognition nor the fear of dislike. You just feel happy.

So all of this builds up to the title of the book, which was never stated much less explained until quite a ways into the book. “Adlerian psychology is about courage”, the wise old man says, days into his conversation with the fictional young man who’s doomed to be convinced.

The courage to be happy: it’s on us to face the world as it is. It’s truly, deeply scary to realize that we’re in charge of the one life we get to live. We cannot use our past, our relationships, or our environment as an excuse for why things can’t change. What you’re born with is out of your control, but everything after that is your dance to dance. So find your place on the dance floor, and have a little fun with it.

The courage to be disliked: it’s on us to accept that we can’t control what other people do or what they think about us. It’s truly, deeply scary to risk displeasing people that support us. We must put our confidence in others to exercise their own freedom, and in so doing we achieve freedom ourselves.

The courage to be normal: it’s on us to just be us. It’s truly, deeply scary to face the idea that this may be our last day. Life cannot be something we live en route to some idealized destination that will give us fulfillment. Self-acceptance means loving every moment of your life. When we find our place in our communities and are of use to those around us, it becomes clear that we have existential worth. All we have to be is ourselves, and we will already fulfilled our purpose in life.

Life is a dance to be lived in here and now. This metaphor is hammered home in the last chapters of the book, and as a definitive Bad Dancer it really brought some of that visceral fear of making a fool out of myself in front of everyone. Of not knowing what I was doing, of being exposed as a fraud or a fool. So, even in that, I profoundly agree with the book that life is about finding courage. The courage to dance as if no one is watching.