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

by Ichiro Kishimi

Dale Carnegie, who wrote the international bestsellers How to Win Friends and Influence People and How to Stop Worrying and Start Living, referred to Adler as “a great psychologist who devoted his life to researching humans and their latent abilities.” The influence of Adler’s thinking is clearly present throughout his writings. And in Stephen Covey’s The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, much of the content closely resembles Adler’s ideas. In other words, rather than being a strict area of scholarship, Adlerian psychology is accepted as a realization, a culmination of truths and of human understanding. Yet Adler’s ideas are said to have been a hundred years ahead of their time, and even today we have not managed to fully comprehend them. That is how truly groundbreaking they were. YOUTH:

So in Adlerian psychology, we do not think about past “causes” but rather about present “goals.”

Your friend is insecure, so he can’t go out. Think about it the other way around. He doesn’t want to go out, so he’s creating a state of anxiety.

Think about it this way. Your friend had the goal of not going out beforehand, and he’s been manufacturing a state of anxiety and fear as a means to achieve that goal. In Adlerian psychology, this is called “teleology.” YOUTH: You’re joking!

This is the difference between etiology (the study of causation) and teleology (the study of the purpose of a given phenomenon, rather than its cause). Everything you have been telling me is based in etiology. As long as we stay in etiology, we will not take a single step forward.

“People are not driven by past causes but move toward goals that they themselves set”—that was the philosopher’s claim.

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

Reward-and-punishment education? PHILOSOPHER: If one takes appropriate action, one receives praise. If one takes inappropriate action, one receives punishment. Adler was very critical of education by reward and punishment. It leads to 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. You already have the goal of wanting to be praised when you start picking up litter. And if you aren’t praised by anyone, you’ll either be indignant or decide that you’ll never do such a thing again. Clearly, there’s something wrong with this situation.

Wanting to be recognized by people you like, to be accepted by people close to you, is a normal desire. PHILOSOPHER: You are badly mistaken. Look, we are not living 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.

PHILOSOPHER: 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.

A sense of belonging is something that one acquires through one’s own efforts—it is not something one is endowed with at birth. Community feeling is the much-debated key concept of Adlerian psychology.

Let me try to straighten things out a bit. First, at the gateway of interpersonal relations, we’ve got the separation of tasks, and as the goal, there’s community feeling. And you’re saying that community feeling is having “a sense of others as comrades” and “an awareness of having one’s own refuge” within the community. Up to this point, it is something I can understand and accept. But the details still seem a bit far-fetched. For one thing, what do you mean by expanding this thing you call “community” to include the entire universe, and then even the past and the future, and everything from living things to inanimate objects?

For the time being, suffice it to say that the scope of community is infinite.

Therefore, there is a principle of action that I would like you to commit to memory. When we run into difficulties in our interpersonal relations, or when we can no longer see a way out, what we should consider first and foremost is the principle that says, “Listen to the voice of the larger community.”

it. Living in fear of one’s relationships falling apart is an unfree way to live, in which one is living for other people.

Do not cling to the small community right in front of you. There will always be more “you and I,” and more “everyone,” and larger communities that exist.

How does carrying out the separating of tasks connect with good relations? That is to say, how does it connect with building the kind of relations in which we cooperate and act in harmony with each other? Which brings us to the concept of “horizontal relationship.”

One must not praise, and one must not rebuke. That is the standpoint of Adlerian psychology.

In the act of praise, there is the aspect of it being “the passing of judgment by a person of ability on a person of no ability.”

Whether we praise or rebuke others, the only difference is one of the carrot or the stick, and the background goal is manipulation. The reason Adlerian psychology is highly critical of reward-and-punishment education is that its intention is to manipulate children.

One wishes to be praised by someone. Or conversely, one decides to give praise to someone. This is proof that one is seeing all interpersonal relationships as “vertical relationships.”

Adlerian psychology refutes all manner of vertical relationships and proposes that all interpersonal relationships be horizontal relationships. In a sense, this point may be regarded as the fundamental principle of Adlerian psychology. YOUTH: Is this something that is conveyed

by the words “equal but not the same”? PHILOSOPHER: Yes. Equal, that is to say, horizontal. For

interpersonal relations as vertical, and sees the other party as beneath one, that one intervenes. Through intervention, one tries to lead the other party in the desired direction. One has convinced oneself that one is right and that the other party is wrong. Of course, the intervention here is manipulation, pure and simple.

That’s right, one neither praises nor rebukes. This kind of assistance, which is based on horizontal relationships, is referred to in Adlerian psychology as “encouragement.”

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.

YOUTH: But we’re just going around in circles! That’s basically the same as giving praise. When one is praised by another person, one becomes truly aware of one’s ability and regains one’s courage. Please do not be stubborn about this point—just acknowledge the necessity of giving praise. PHILOSOPHER: No, I will not acknowledge that. YOUTH: Why not? PHILOSOPHER: The reason is clear. Being praised is what leads people to form the belief that they have no ability.

The more one is praised by another person, the more one forms the belief that one has no ability. Please do your best to remember this.

You convey words of gratitude, saying thank you to this partner who has helped you with your work. You might express straightforward delight: “I’m glad.” Or you could convey your thanks by saying, “That was a big help.” This is an approach to encouragement that is based on horizontal relationships.

one is receiving judgment from another person as “good.” And the measure of what is good or bad about that act is that person’s yardstick.

“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.

So even if you’re judged as “good” by another person, you don’t feel that you’ve made a contribution? PHILOSOPHER: That’s right. This is a point that will connect to our subsequent discussion as well—in Adlerian psychology, a great deal of emphasis is given to “contribution.”

In Adler’s view, “It is only when a person is able to feel that he has worth that he can possess courage.”

There is a clear difference. Self-affirmation is making suggestions to oneself, such as “I can do it” or “I am strong,” even when something is simply beyond one’s ability. It is a notion that can bring about a superiority complex, and may even be termed a way of living in which one lies to oneself. With self-acceptance, on the other hand, if one cannot do something, one is simply accepting “one’s incapable self” as is and moving forward so that one can do whatever one can. It is not a way of lying to oneself. To put it more simply, say you’ve got a score of 60 percent, but you tell yourself, I just happened to get unlucky this time around, and the real me is 100 percent. That is self-affirmation. By contrast, if one accepts oneself as one is, as 60 percent, and thinks to oneself, How should I go about getting closer to 100 percent?—that is self-acceptance.

“affirmative resignation.” YOUTH: Affirmative resignation?

one simply has to focus on what one can change, rather than on what one cannot. This is what I call self-acceptance.

PHILOSOPHER: No, it is not. What would you say is the opposite of confidence? YOUTH: An antonym of confidence? Uh . . . PHILOSOPHER: It is doubt. Suppose you have placed “doubt” at the foundation of your interpersonal relations. That you live your life doubting other people—doubting your friends and even your family and those you love. What sort of relationship could possibly arise from that? The other person will detect the doubt in your eyes in an instant. He or she will have an instinctive understanding that “this person does not have confidence in me.” Do you think one would be able to build some kind of positive relationship from that point? It is precisely because we lay a foundation of unconditional confidence that it is possible for us to build a deep relationship.

“People can change and be happy from this moment onward,” and “The problem is not one of ability, but of courage” was to utterly change the worldview of this rather confused youth.