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Started reading
September 21, 2025
Maybe you’ll want the glasses back on, but can you even take them off in the first place? Can you look directly at the world? Do you have the courage?
This reminds me of the matrix. Do you have the courage to be uncomfortable, work on your social skills and be aware of your behavior. To work on it and to trust yourself and realize you are not separate from your environment
So in Adlerian psychology, we do not think about past “causes” but rather about present “goals.”
Every one of us is living in line with some goal. That is what teleology tells us.
So does that mean we are always goal oriented, even if you say you have no goals. Is it a goal to have no goals and maintain that?
The procedure of explaining things in normal words felt like too much trouble, and you tried to get out of that and make this unresisting person submit to you. The tool you used to do this was the emotion of anger.
The Freudian etiology that is typified by the trauma argument is determinism in a different form, and it is the road to nihilism. Are you going to accept values like that?
“People are not driven by past causes but move toward goals that they themselves set”—that
This is because you have not learned to love yourself.
You want to be Y or 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.
At some stage in your life, you chose “being 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.
In Adlerian psychology, we describe personality and disposition with the word “lifestyle.”
In Adlerian psychology, however, lifestyle is thought of as something that you choose for yourself.
But what you do with it from here on is your responsibility. Whether you go on choosing the lifestyle you’ve had up till now, or you choose a new lifestyle altogether, it’s entirely up to you.
People can change at any time, regardless of the environments they are in. You are unable to change only because you are making the decision not to.
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 in the courage to be happy.
life seems complicated just because I make it complicated, all of which is what makes it difficult for me to live happily.
I don’t have enough courage to choose a new lifestyle. In other words, I do not have enough courage to be happy, and that’s why I’m unhappy.
saying “If only I could be like Y” is an excuse to yourself for not changing.
“tasks of work,” “tasks of friendship,” and “tasks of love,”
Interpersonal relationships of work have the easy-to-understand common objective of obtaining good results, so people can cooperate even if they don’t always get along, and to some extent they have no choice but to cooperate.
There’s no value at all in the number of friends or acquaintances you have.
Adlerian psychology is a psychology for changing oneself, not a psychology for changing others.
Relationships in which people restrict each other eventually fall apart.
Whenever I am with this person, I can behave very freely, one can really feel love.
Restriction, on the other hand, is a manifestation of the mind-set of attempting to control one’s partner, and also an idea founded on a sense of distrust.
“If two people want to live together on good terms, they must treat each other as equal personalities.”
But it isn’t that you dislike Mr. A because you can’t forgive his flaws. You had the goal of taking a dislike to Mr. A beforehand and then started looking for the flaws to satisfy that goal.
people are extremely selfish creatures who are capable of finding any number of flaws and shortcomings in others whenever the mood strikes them.
the state of coming up with all manner of pretexts in order to avoid the life tasks the “life-lie.”
One is running away from one’s life tasks by saying that everything is the fault of other people, or the fault of one’s environment.
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.
For instance, you might be blessed by great wealth but not have anyone who loves you; you have no comrades whom you could call friends, and you are not liked by anyone.
Adlerian psychology denies the need to seek recognition from others.
one must not seek recognition.
Being recognized by others is certainly something to be happy about. But it would be wrong to say that being recognized is absolutely necessary.
Why is it that people seek recognition from others? In many cases, it is due to the influence of reward-and-punishment education.
mistaken lifestyles in which people think, If no one is going to praise me, I won’t take appropriate action and If no one is going to punish me, I’ll engage in inappropriate actions, too.
It is not necessary to satisfy other people’s expectations.
When one seeks recognition from others, and concerns oneself only with how one is judged by others, in the end, one is living other people’s lives.
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.
Indeed, it is in order to overcome the nihilism of a godless world that it is necessary to deny recognition from other people.
When trying to be recognized by others, almost all people treat satisfying other people’s expectations as the means to that end.
In general, all interpersonal relationship troubles are caused by intruding on other people’s tasks, or having one’s own tasks intruded on.
Who ultimately is going to receive the result brought about by the choice that is made?
Noninterference is the attitude of not knowing, and not even being interested in knowing what the child is doing.
“You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink.”
You are the only one who can change yourself.
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.
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.
All you can do with regard to your own life is choose the best path that you believe in. On the other hand, what kind of judgment do other people pass on that choice? That is the task of other people, and is not a matter you can do anything about.
