The Courage to Be Disliked: The Japanese Phenomenon That Shows You How to Change Your Life and Achieve Real Happiness

by Ichiro Kishimi

“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.”

Focus on the point Adler is making here when he refers to the self being determined not by our experiences themselves, but by the meaning we give them.

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.

Every one of us is living in line with some goal. That is what teleology tells us.

The question isn’t “What happened?” but “How was it resolved?”

Life isn’t just hard. If the past determined everything and couldn’t be changed, we who are living today would no longer be able to take effective steps forward in our lives. What would happen as a result? We would end up with the kind of nihilism and pessimism that loses hope in the world and gives up on life. 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

In Adlerian psychology, however, lifestyle is thought of as something that you choose for yourself.

PHILOSOPHER: Of course, you did not consciously choose “this kind of self.” Your first choice was probably unconscious, combined with external factors you have referred to—that is, race, nationality, culture, and home environment. These certainly had a significant influence on that choice. Nevertheless, it is you who chose “this kind of self.” YOUTH: I don’t get what you’re saying. How on earth could I have chosen it? PHILOSOPHER: Adlerian psychology’s view is that it happens around the age of ten.

PHILOSOPHER: That is not true. If your lifestyle is not something that you were naturally born with, but something you chose yourself, then it must be possible to choose it over again.

You’ll probably face disappointment and start looking at other people and feeling, I wish I’d been born in their circumstances. But you can’t let it end there. The issue is not the past, but here, in the present. And now you’ve learned about lifestyle. 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.

YOUTH: Then how do I choose again? You’re telling me, “You chose that lifestyle yourself, so go ahead and select a new one instantly,” but there’s no way I can just change on the spot! PHILOSOPHER: Yes, you can. 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.

PHILOSOPHER: People are constantly selecting their lifestyles. Right now, while we are having this tête-à-tête, we are selecting ours. You describe yourself as an unhappy person. You say that you want to change right this minute. You even claim that you want to be reborn as a different person. After all that, then why are you still unable to change? It is because you are making the persistent decision not to change your lifestyle.

PHILOSOPHER: Although there are some small inconveniences and limitations, you probably think that the lifestyle you have now is the most practical one, and that it’s easier to leave things as they are. If you stay just like this, experience enables you to respond properly to events as they occur, while guessing the results of one’s actions. You could say it’s like driving your old, familiar car. It might rattle a bit, but one can take that into account and maneuver easily. On the other hand, if one chooses a new lifestyle, no one can predict what might happen to the new self, or have any idea how to deal with events as they arise. It will be hard to see ahead to the future, and life will be filled with anxiety. A more painful and unhappy life might lie ahead. Simply put, people have various complaints about things, but it’s easier and more secure to be just the way one is. YOUTH: One wants to change, but changing is scary? PHILOSOPHER: 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. I am sure you have selected the latter. YOUTH: Wait… Just now, you used the word “courage.”

PHILOSOPHER: Yes. 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.