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May 3 - June 30, 2025
When you treat a person’s life as a vast narrative, there is an easily understandable causality and sense of dramatic development that creates strong impressions and is extremely attractive. But Adler, in denial of the trauma argument, states the following: “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.”
Regardless of what may have happened in the past, it is the meaning that is attributed to it that determines the way someone’s present will be.
Right now, you are unable to feel really happy. This is because you have not learned to love yourself. And to try to love yourself, you are wishing to be reborn as a different person.
To quote Adler again: “The important thing is not what one is born with but what use one makes of that equipment.”
But you are unhappy now because you yourself chose being unhappy. Not because you were born under an unlucky star.
Lifestyle is the tendencies of thought and action in life.
he wants to leave the possibility of “I can do it if I try” open, by not committing to anything. He doesn’t want to expose his work to criticism, and he certainly doesn’t want to face the reality that he might produce an inferior piece of writing and face rejection.
he gets rejected, so be it. If he did, he might grow, or discover that he should pursue something different. Either way, he would be able to move on. That is what changing your current lifestyle is about.
But if you change your lifestyle—the way of giving meaning to the world and yourself—then both your way of interacting with the world and your behavior will have to change as well.
“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.” That you, living in the here and now, are the one who determines your own life.
the past does not exist.
What I can do is to get the person first to accept “myself now,” and then regardless of the outcome have the courage to step forward. In Adlerian psychology, this kind of approach is called “encouragement.”
it’s basically impossible to not get hurt in your relations with other people. When you enter into interpersonal relationships, it is inevitable that to a greater or lesser extent you will get hurt, and you will hurt someone, too. Adler says, “To get rid of one’s problems, all one can do is live in the universe all alone.” But one can’t do such a thing.
If all interpersonal relationships were gone from this world, which is to say if one were alone in the universe and all other people were gone, all manner of problems would disappear.
My feelings about my height were all subjective feelings of inferiority, which arose entirely through my comparing myself to others.
Because if there hadn’t been anyone with whom to compare myself, I wouldn’t have had any occasion to think I was short.
However, there is one good thing about subjectivity: It allows you to make your own choice.
We cannot alter objective facts. But subjective interpretations can be altered as much as one likes. And we are inhabitants of a subjective world.
The problem of value in the end brings us back to interpersonal relationships again.
the pursuit of superiority and the feeling of inferiority are not diseases but stimulants to normal, healthy striving and growth. If it is not used in the wrong way, the feeling of inferiority, too, can promote striving and growth.
As Adler says, the feeling of inferiority can be a trigger for striving and growth.
When someone is insisting on the logic of “A is the situation, so B cannot be done” in such a way in everyday life, that is not something that fits in the feeling of inferiority category. It is an inferiority complex.
The real issue is how one confronts that reality. If what you are thinking is, I’m not well educated, so I can’t succeed, then instead of I can’t succeed, you should think, I don’t want to succeed.
How to compensate for the part that is lacking. The healthiest way is to try to compensate through striving and growth.
one can’t tolerate the inferiority complex of thinking, A is the situation, so B cannot be done. One can’t accept “one’s incapable self.” At that point, the person thinks of trying to compensate in some other fashion and looks for an easier way out.
Superiority complex
Ah, but you are wrong. Those who go so far as to boast about things out loud actually have no confidence in themselves. As Adler clearly indicates, “The one who boasts does so only out of a feeling of inferiority.”
If one really has confidence in oneself, one doesn’t feel the need to boast. It’s because one’s feeling of inferiority is strong that one boasts.
as long as one continues to use one’s misfortune to one’s advantage in order to be “special,” one will always need that misfortune.
The pursuit of superiority is the mind-set of taking a single step forward on one’s own feet, not the mind-set of competition of the sort that necessitates aiming to be greater than other people.
It’s enough to just keep moving in a forward direction, without competing with anyone.
A healthy feeling of inferiority is not something that comes from comparing oneself to others; it comes from one’s comparison with one’s ideal self.
It is in trying to progress past who one is now that there is value.
If there is competition at the core of a person’s interpersonal relationships, he will not be able to escape interpersonal relationship problems or escape misfortune.
When one is conscious of competition and victory and defeat, it is inevitable that feelings of inferiority will arise. Because one is constantly comparing oneself to others and thinking, I beat that person or I lost to that person.
You think of interpersonal relationships as competition; you perceive other people’s happiness as “my defeat,” and that is why you can’t celebrate it. However, once one is released from the schema of competition, the need to triumph over someone disappears.
when one is challenged to a power struggle, one must never allow oneself to be taken in.
We can convey our thoughts and intentions and be accepted without any need for anger. If you learn to understand this experientially, the anger emotion will stop appearing all on its own.
The moment one is convinced that “I am right” in an interpersonal relationship, one has already stepped into a power struggle.
It’s only when we take away the lenses of competition and winning and losing that we can begin to correct and change ourselves.
First, there are two objectives for behavior: to be self-reliant and to live in harmony with society. Then, the two objectives for the psychology that supports these behaviors are the consciousness that I have the ability and the consciousness that people are my comrades.
can see that it is a crucial subject: to be self-reliant as an individual while living in harmony with people and society.
Wishing so hard to be recognized will lead to a life of following expectations held by other people who want you to be “this kind of person.” In other words, you throw away who you really are and live other people’s lives. 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.
At this point, the most important thing is whether the child feels he can consult frankly with his parents when he is experiencing a dilemma, and whether they have been building enough of a trust relationship on a regular basis.
Look, the act of believing is also the separation of tasks. You believe in your partner; that is your task. But how that person acts with regard to your expectations and trust is other people’s tasks. When you push your wishes without having drawn that line, before you know it you’re engaging in stalker-like intervention.
If you are leading a life of worry and suffering—which stems from interpersonal relationships—learn the boundary of “From here on, that is not my task.” And discard other people’s tasks. That is the first step toward lightening the load and making life simpler.
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All you can do with regard to your own life is choose the best path that you believe in.
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.
no matter how much your boss tries to vent his unreasonable anger at you, that is not your task. The unreasonable emotions are tasks for your boss to deal with himself. There is no need to cozy up to him, or to yield to him to the point of bowing down. You should think, What I should do is face my own tasks in my own life without lying.
First, one should ask, “Whose task is this?” Then do the separation of tasks. Calmly delineate up to what point one’s own tasks go, and from what point they become another person’s tasks.
One should be ready to lend a hand when needed but not encroach on the person’s territory. It is important to maintain this kind of moderate distance.
