The Courage to Be Disliked: How to Free Yourself, Change your Life and Achieve Real Happiness
by Ichiro Kishimi, Fumitake Koga
The Courage to Be Disliked explores Adlerian psychology via informal conversations between an older ‘philosopher’ and a young ‘pupil. The dialogues between them allow a naturally flowing question-and-answer format that teases out the conversation points and turns them into applicable lessons.
The book discusses trauma and self-definition, free choice, the ability to change, emotions and their role in decision-making, the separation of tasks, interpersonal relationships, and one’s role in society.
The conversations are distributed over five nights (themes) :
- Deny trauma: Let go of the narrative that explains your present condition. You are responsible for your life. Some past injury or fortune does not define you.
- All problems are interpersonal relationship problems: Measuring yourself against others leads to pain and suffering, yet one cannot live in a vacuum.
- Discard other people’s tasks: You must free yourself from responsibility for the expectations of others, both approval, and disapproval.
- Where the center of the world is: The individual is not the center of the world. The center of the world is the community(ies) we create. To be happy is to feel that you are contributing to the whole.
- Live in earnest in the here and now: Life is not a trajectory, it is a series of moments, and each has value. Recognize that now is the only moment you can act upon.
Given the dialogue format, Kishimi’s book is highly accessible, even for someone unfamiliar with different pscyhological traditions.
The audiobook version is very good.
Different voice actors take the two-dimensional book and give it depth. Start here and buy The Courage to Be Disliked if you think its content is valuable enough to study in depth.
Anyone interested in self-improvement or philosophy should read this book.
It joins my list of other self-help books to read again next year.
Did you read The Courage to Be Disliked? What did you think about it? Any opinions on Adlerian Psychology? Other book recommendations?