The Courage to Be Disliked

"The Courage to Be Disliked" by Ichiro Kishimi.

“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.”

• Unhappiness is something you choose for yourself

• How to love without being controlled by the past

• Are you okay just as you are?

• People fabricate anger.

• People always choose not to change

• Do Not Live to Satisfy the Expectations of Others

• From Power Struggle to Revenge

• Admitting Fault Is Not Defeat

• Trauma does not exist.

• You Can Be Happy Now

Unhappiness is something you choose for yourself

For one thing, right now you are unable to feel real happiness. You find living hard, and even wish you could be reborn as a different person. But you are unhappy now because you yourself chose to be unhappy. Not because you were born under an unlucky star.

Without question, there is no shortage of behaviour that is evil. But no one, not even the most hardened criminal, become involved in crime purely out of desire to engage in evil acts. Every criminal has an internal justification for getting involved in crime. A dispute over money leads someone to engage in murder.

At some stage in your life, you chose to be 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.

How to love without being controlled by the past

If the past determined everything, we who are living today would no longer be able to take effective steps forward in our lives. As a result, we end up with the kind of nihilism and pessimism that loses hope in the world and gives up on life.

Are you okay just as you are?

The important thing is not what one is born with but what use one makes of that equipment. You want to be 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.

Someone could be born with autism but can still accomplish what a normal person can do. The guy with autism isn't focused on what he's born with but he is focusing on what he can accomplish. If you've got the mindset of succeeding then it doesn't matter what your born with.

People fabricate anger.

Youth: Yesterday afternoon, I was reading a book in a coffee shop when a waiter passed by and spilled coffee on my jacket. I'd just bought it and it's my nicest piece of clothing. I couldn't help it, I just blew my top. I yelled at him at the top of my lungs. I'm not normally the type of person who speaks loudly in public places. But yesterday, the shop was ringing with the type of person who speaks loudly in public places. But yesterday, the shop was ringing with the sound of my shouting because I flew into a rage and forgot what I was doing. So how about that? Is there any room for a goal to be involved here? No matter how you look at it, isn't this behaviour that originates from a cause?

Philosopher: So you were stimulated by the emotion of anger and ended up shouting. Though you are normally mild-mannered, you couldn't resist being angry. It was an unavoidable occurrence, and you couldn't do anything about it. Is that what you are saying?

Youth: Yes, because it happened so suddenly. The words just came out of my mouth before I had time to think.

Philosopher: Then suppose you happened to have had a knife on you yesterday, and when you blew up you got carried away and stabbed him. Would you still be able to justify that by saying, "It was an unavoidable occurrence, and I couldn't do anything about it"?

Youth: That... Come on, that's an extreme argument!

Philosopher: It is not an extreme argument. If we proceed with your reasoning, any offense committed in anger can be blamed on anger and will no longer be the responsibility of the person because you are saying that people cannot their emotion.

Youth: Well, how do you explain my anger, then?

Philosopher: The goal of shouting came before anything else. That is to say, by shouting, you wanted to make the waiter submit to you and listen to what you had to say. As a means to do that, you fabricated the emotion of anger.

One day, a mother and daughter were quarrelling loudly. Then, suddenly, the telephone rang. "Hello?" The mother picked up the receiver with her voice still tick with anger. The caller was her daughter's teacher. As soon as the mother realized who was phoning, the tone of her voice changed and she became very polite. Once she hung, in a moment, her expression changed again and she went straight back to yelling at her daughter

• In a word, anger is a tool that can be taken out as needed. It can be put away the moment the phone rings, and pulled out again after one hangs up. The mother isn't yelling in anger she cannot control. She is simply using the anger to overpower her daughter with a loud voice and thereby assert her opinions.

People always choose not to change

When we try to change our lifestyles, we put our great courage to the test. There is the anxiety generated by changing, and the disappointment attendant to not changing. Adlerian phycology 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 your are lacking in the courage to be happy.

Do Not Live to Satisfy the Expectations of Others

• If you aren’t living your life for yourself then who’ll live it for you.

Wishing hard to be recognised will lead to a life full of expectations by people who want you to live in a specific way. If you follow this path then you are not living your own life, you’re living the life of others.

From Power Struggle to Revenge

We get into arguments because they want us to know that they’re superior. If you get angry at this point, the moment he has been anticipating will arrive, and the relationship will suddenly turn into a power struggle. No matter what the provocation, you must not fall for his tricks.

We cause problems as an act of revenge. We want others around us to react to the problems we have caused. Why would a child cut their wrists? Think how the people around the child will act if they realised what he did.

Admitting Fault Is Not Defeat

Someone insults you to your face what do you do? Is it really that easy to not react at all with some sort of anger? Instead of reacting with anger let’s find a way to settle things without using the emotion of anger. Anger is just a form of communication and it is possible to communicate without using anger.

“We need to convey our thoughts and intentions and be accepted without any need for anger”.

“We can communicate through logic. Logic uses truth and a bit of intelligence and if there’s one thing that people don’t like, it’s truth”.

Focusing on “I am right” leads to the assumption that the other person is wrong. This becomes a contest and you ask yourself that you need to win. This causes a power struggle.

Not admitting ones mistake results in ending up choosing the wrong path. Admit mistakes, apologise and stepping down from the power struggle is not defeat.

When your hung up on winning or losing, you lose the ability to make the right choices.

Trauma does not exist.

I am not saying that the experience of abuse during childhood or other such incidents have no influence or forming a personality; their influences are strong. The important thing is nothing is actually determined by those influences. 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.

You Can Be Happy Now

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. In other words, a person who is obsessed with the desire for recognition does not have any community feeling yet, and has not managed to engage in self-acceptance, confidence in others, or contribution to others.

The world is simple, and life is too.