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September 21, 2025
You haven’t done the separation of tasks yet. You assume that even things that should be other people’s tasks are your own. Remember the words of the grandmother: “You’re the only one who’s worried how you look.”
What I should do is face my own tasks in my own life without lying.
forming good interpersonal relationships requires a certain degree of distance.
One should be ready to lend a hand when needed but not encroach on the person’s territory.
When reward is at the base of an interpersonal relationship, there’s a feeling that wells up in one that says, “I gave this much, so you should give me that much back.”
“Children who have not been taught to confront challenges will try to avoid all challenges.”
denies etiology, denies trauma, and adopts teleology. It treats people’s problems as interpersonal relationship problems. And the not-seeking of recognition and the separation of tasks, too, are probably antithetical to normal social thinking.
Desire for Recognition Makes You Unfree
Now, why are you choosing such an unfree way to live? You are using the term “desire for recognition,” but what you are really saying is that you don’t want to be disliked by anyone.
What should one do to not be disliked by anyone? There is only one answer: It is to constantly gauge other people’s feelings while swearing loyalty to all of them.
Intervening in other people’s tasks is essentially an egocentric way of thinking, however. Parents force their children to study; they meddle in their life and marriage choices. That is nothing other than an egocentric way of thinking.
Real freedom is an attitude akin to pushing up one’s tumbling self from below.
“freedom is being disliked by other people.”
It’s that you are disliked by someone. It is proof that you are exercising your freedom and living in freedom, and a sign that you are living in accordance with your own principles.
There is a cost incurred when one wants to exercise one’s freedom. And the cost of freedom in interpersonal relationships is that one is disliked by other people.
He should like me or I’ve done all this, so it’s strange that he doesn’t like me, is the reward-oriented way of thinking of having intervened in another person’s tasks.
The courage to be happy also includes the courage to be disliked. When you have gained that courage, your interpersonal relationships will all at once change into things of lightness.
if they can grasp the separation of tasks, they will notice that they are holding all the cards. This is a new way of thinking.
In any case, changing one’s own speech and conduct as a way of manipulating other people is clearly a mistaken way of thinking.
When one is tied to the desire for recognition, the interpersonal relationship cards will always stay in the hands of other people. Does one entrust the cards of life to another person, or hold onto them oneself?
forming good interpersonal relationships requires a certain degree of distance.
This sense of others as comrades, this awareness of “having one’s own refuge,” is called “community feeling.”
community feeling is the most important index for considering a state of interpersonal relations that is happy.
Community feeling is also referred to as “social interest,” that is to say, “interest in society.”
You make the switch from attachment to self (self-interest) to concern for others (social interest).
People who are incapable of carrying out the separation of tasks and who are obsessed with the desire for recognition are also extremely self-centered.
People who are obsessed with such a desire for recognition will seem to be looking at other people, while they are actually looking only at themselves. They lack concern for others and are concerned solely with the “I.” Simply put, they are self-centered.
A way of living in which one is constantly troubled by how one is seen by others is a self-centered lifestyle in which one’s sole concern is with the “I.”
other people are not living to satisfy your expectations.
That person didn’t do anything for me. That person let me down. That person isn’t my comrade anymore. He’s my enemy. People who hold the belief that they are the center of the world always end up losing their comrades before long.
You are a part of a community, not its center.
In Adlerian psychology, however, a sense of belonging is something that one can attain only by making an active commitment to the community of one’s own accord, and not simply by being here.
If you are “the center of the world,” you will have no thoughts whatsoever regarding commitment to the community; because everyone else is “someone who will do something for me,” and there is no need for you to do things yourself.
One needs to think not, What will this person give me? but rather, What can I give to this person? That is commitment to the community.
gain the awareness that you belong to a separate, larger community that is beyond the one you see in your immediate vicinity—for example, the country or local society in which you live—and that you are contributing in some way within that community.
“Listen to the voice of the larger community.”
Living in fear of one’s relationships falling apart is an unfree way to live, in which one is living for other people.
It is because you are living in vertical relationships that you want to be praised.
A company employee and a full-time housewife simply have different workplaces and roles, and are truly “equal but not the same.”
If one can build horizontal relationships that are “equal but not the same” for all people, there will no longer be any room for inferiority complexes to emerge.
Adlerian psychology tells us that the issue here is not one of ability but simply that “one has lost the courage to face one’s tasks.” And if that is the case, the thing to do before anything else is to recover that lost courage.
When receiving praise becomes one’s goal, one is choosing a way of living that is in line with another person’s system of values. Looking at your life until now, aren’t you tired of trying to live up to your parents’ expectations?
“Thank you,” on the other hand, rather than being judgment, is a clear expression of gratitude. When one hears words of gratitude, one knows that one has made a contribution to another person.
If one is able to feel one has worth, then one can accept oneself just as one is and have the courage to face one’s life tasks.
Instead of feeling judged by another person as “good,” being able to feel, by way of one’s own subjective viewpoint, that “I can make contributions to other people.”
It is about having concern for others, building horizontal relationships, and taking the approach of encouragement. All these things connect to the deep life awareness of “I am of use to someone,” and in turn, to your courage to live.
Without judging whether or not other people did something, one rejoices in their being there, in their very existence, and one calls out to them with words of gratitude.
grateful on the level of being.
They treat the idealized image as one hundred points, and they gradually subtract from that. This is truly a “judgment” way of thinking. Instead, the parents could refrain from comparing their child to anyone else, see him for who he actually is, and be glad and grateful for his being there.
“Someone has to start. Other people might not be cooperative, but that is not connected to you. My advice is this: you should start. With no regard to whether others are cooperative or not.”
