The Courage to Be Disliked: How to Free Yourself, Change Your Life and Achieve Real Happiness

by Ichiro Kishimi

you are afraid of being negated by other people. You’re afraid of being treated disparagingly; being refused, and sustaining deep mental wounds. You think that instead of getting entangled in such situations, it would be better if you just didn’t have relations with anyone in the first place. In other words, your goal is to not get hurt in your relationships with other people. YOUTH: Huh … PHILOSOPHER: Now, how can that goal be realised? The answer is easy. Just find your shortcomings, start disliking yourself, and

become someone who doesn’t enter into interpersonal relationships. That way, if you can shut yourself into your own shell, you won’t have to interact with anyone, and you’ll even have a justification ready whenever other people snub you. That it’s because of your shortcomings that you get snubbed, and if things weren’t this way, you too could be loved.

A human being’s existence, in its very essence, assumes the existence of other human beings. Living completely separate from others is, in principle, impossible.

There is no such thing as worry that is completely defined by the individual; so-called internal worry does not exist. Whatever the worry that may arise, the shadows of other people are always present.

PHILOSOPHER: My feelings about my height were all subjective feelings of inferiority, which arose entirely through my comparing myself to others. That is to say, in my interpersonal relationships. Because if there hadn’t been anyone with whom to compare myself, I wouldn’t have had any occasion to think I was short. Right now, you too are suffering from various feelings of inferiority. But please understand that what you are feeling is not an objective inferiority, but a subjective feeling of inferiority. Even with an issue like height, it’s all reduced to its subjectivity.

value is something that’s based on a social context.

If I were the only person in this world and no one else existed, I’d probably be putting those one-dollar bills in my fireplace in wintertime. Maybe I’d be using them to blow my nose.

There is nothing particularly wrong with the feeling of inferiority itself. You understand this point now, right? As Adler says, the feeling of inferiority can be a trigger for striving and growth. For instance, if one had a feeling of inferiority with regard to one’s education, and resolved to oneself, I’m not well educated, so I’ll just have to try harder than anyone else, that would be a desirable direction. The inferiority complex, on the other hand, refers to a condition of having begun to use one’s feeling of inferiority as a kind of excuse. So, one thinks to oneself, I’m not well educated, so I can’t succeed, or I’m not good-looking, so I can’t get married. 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.

PHILOSOPHER: Yes. As Adler points out, no one is capable of putting up with having feelings of inferiority for a long period of time. Feelings of inferiority are something that everyone has, but staying in that condition is too heavy to endure forever.

There’s the kind of person who likes to boast about his achievements. Someone who clings to his past glory, and is always recounting memories of the time when his light shone brightest. Maybe you know some people like this. All such people can be said to have superiority complexes.

It’s because one’s feeling of inferiority is strong that one boasts. One feels the need to flaunt one’s superiority all the more. There’s the fear that if one doesn’t do that, not a single person will accept one ‘the way I am’. This is a full-blown superiority complex. YOUTH: So, though one would think from the sound of the words that inferiority complex and superiority complex were polar opposites, in actuality they border on each other? PHILOSOPHER: Yes, they are clearly connected. Now, there is one last example I’d like to give, a complex example that deals with boasting. It is a pattern leading to a particular feeling of superiority that manifests due to the feeling of inferiority itself becoming intensified. Concretely speaking, it’s bragging about one’s own misfortune. YOUTH: Bragging about one’s own misfortune? PHILOSOPHER: The person who assumes a boasting manner when talking about his upbringing and the like; the various misfortunes that have rained down upon him. If someone should try to comfort this person, or suggest some change be made, he’ll refuse the helping hand by saying, ‘You don’t understand how I feel.’

Adler says, ‘In fact, if we were to ask ourselves who is the strongest person in our culture, the logical answer would be the baby. The baby rules and cannot be dominated.’ The baby rules over the adults with his weakness. And it is because of this weakness that no one can control him.

Does that mean you dropped out of competition? That you somehow accepted defeat? PHILOSOPHER: No. I withdrew from places that are preoccupied with winning and losing. When one is trying to be oneself, competition will inevitably get in the way. YOUTH: No way! That’s a tired-out old man’s argument. Young folks like me have to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps amid the tension of competition. It’s because I don’t have a rival running alongside me that I can’t outdo myself. What’s wrong with thinking of interpersonal relationships as competitive? PHILOSOPHER: If that rival was someone you could call a comrade, it’s possible that it would lead to self-improvement. But, in many cases, a competitor will not be your comrade.

If someone were to abuse me to my face, I would think about the person’s hidden goal. Even if you are not directly abusive, when you feel genuinely angry due to another person’s words or behaviour, please consider that the person is challenging you to a power struggle.

For instance, a child will tease an adult with various pranks and misbehaviours. In many cases, this is something done with the goal of getting attention, and will cease just before the adult gets genuinely angry. However, if the child does not stop before the adult gets genuinely angry, then his goal is actually to get in a fight.

The first thing that I want you to understand here is the fact that anger is a form of communication, and that communication is nevertheless possible without using anger. 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.

It’s not that you mustn’t get angry, but that there is no need to rely on the tool of anger. Irascible people do not have short tempers—it is only that they do not know that there are effective communication tools other than anger. That is why people end up saying things like ‘I just snapped’ or ‘he flew into a rage’. We end up relying on anger to communicate. YOUTH: Effective communication tools other than anger …

PHILOSOPHER: We have language. We can communicate through language. Believe in the power of language, and the language of logic.

The moment one is convinced that ‘I am right’ in an interpersonal relationship, one has already stepped into a power struggle.

In the first place, the rightness of one’s assertions has nothing to do with winning or losing. If you think you are right, regardless of what other people’s opinions might be, the matter should be closed then and there. However, many people will rush into a power struggle, and try to make others submit to them. And that is why they think of ‘admitting a mistake’ as ‘admitting defeat’.

So, when you’re hung up on winning and losing, you lose the ability to make the right choices? PHILOSOPHER: Yes. It clouds your judgement, and all you can see is imminent victory or defeat. Then you turn down the wrong path. It’s only when we take away the lenses of competition and winning and losing that we can begin to correct and change ourselves.

So, why do you see other people as enemies, and why can’t you think of them as your comrades? It is because you have lost your courage and you are running away from your ‘life tasks’.

There are the following two objectives for behaviour: to be self-reliant and to live in harmony with society. And there are the following two objectives for the psychology that supports these behaviours: the consciousness that I have the ability and the consciousness that people are my comrades …

If romantic love is a relationship connected by red string, then the relationship between parents and children is bound in rigid chains. And a pair of small scissors is all you have. This is the difficulty of the parent–child relationship. YOUTH: So, what can one do? PHILOSOPHER: What I can say at this stage is: you must not run away. No matter how distressful the relationship, you must not avoid or put off dealing with it. Even if in the end you’re going to cut it with scissors, first you have to face it. The worst thing to do is to just stand still with the situation as it is. It is fundamentally impossible for a person to live life completely alone, and it is only in social contexts that the person becomes an ‘individual’. That is why in Adlerian psychology, self-reliance as an individual and cooperation within society are put forth as overarching objectives. Then, how can one achieve these objectives? On this point, Adler speaks of surmounting the three tasks of work, friendship and love; the tasks of the interpersonal relationships that a living person has no choice but to confront. The youth was still struggling to grasp their true meaning.

Look, people are extremely selfish creatures who are capable of finding any number of flaws and shortcomings in others whenever the mood strikes them. A man of perfect character could come along, and one would have no difficulty in digging up some reason to dislike him. That’s exactly why the world can become a perilous place at any time, and it’s always possible to see everyone as one’s enemies.

That’s right. Adler indicated the state of coming up with all manner of pretexts in order to avoid the life tasks, and called it the ‘life-lie’.

One shifts one’s responsibility for the situation one is currently in to someone else. 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. It’s exactly the same as with the story I mentioned earlier about the female student with the fear of blushing. One lies to oneself, and one lies to the people around one, too. When you really think about it, it’s a pretty severe term.

Adlerian psychology is not a ‘psychology of possession’, but a ‘psychology of use’. YOUTH: So, it’s that statement: ‘It’s not what one is born with, but what use one makes of that equipment.’ PHILOSOPHER: That’s right. Thank you for remembering it. Freudian aetiology is a psychology of possession, and eventually arrives at determinism. Adlerian psychology, on the other hand, is a psychology of use, and it is you who decides it.

‘Money is coined freedom.’ What do you think? Isn’t ‘coined freedom’ a rather refreshing term? But seriously, I was fascinated to find this one line that drove right to the heart of this thing called money.

Studying is the child’s task. A parent’s handling of that by commanding the child to study is, in effect, an act of intruding on another person’s task. One is unlikely to avert a collision in this way. We need to think with the perspective of ‘whose task is this?’ and continually separate one’s own tasks from other people’s tasks.

Naturally, one gives all the assistance one possibly can. But beyond that, one doesn’t intrude. There’s a saying that goes, ‘You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink.’ Please think of counselling and all other assistance provided to other people in Adlerian psychology as having that kind of stance. Forcing change while ignoring the person’s intentions will only lead to an intense reaction. YOUTH: The counsellor does not change the client’s life? PHILOSOPHER: You are the only one who can change yourself.

A parent suffering over the relationship with his or her child will tend to think, My child is my life. In other words, the parent is taking on the child’s task as his or her own, and is no longer able to think about anything but the child. When at last the parent notices it, the ‘I’ is already gone from his or her life. However, no matter how much of the burden of the child’s task one carries, the child is still an independent individual. Children do not become what their parents want them to become. In their choices of university, place of employment and partner in marriage, and even in the everyday subtleties of speech and conduct, they do not act according to their parents’ wishes. Naturally, the parents will worry about them, and probably want to intervene at times. But, as I said earlier, other people are not living to satisfy your expectations. Though the child is one’s own, he or she is not living to satisfy one’s expectations as a parent. YOUTH: So, you have to draw the line even with family? PHILOSOPHER: Actually, with families there is less distance, so it’s all the more necessary to consciously separate the tasks. YOUTH: That doesn’t make sense. On the one hand, you’re talking about love, and on the other, you’re denying it. If you draw the line between yourself and other people that way, you won’t be able to believe in anyone anymore! PHILOSOPHER: Look, the act of believing is also the separation of tasks. You believe in your partner; that is your task. But ho...

This is a discussion that is concerned with the fundamentals of Adlerian psychology. If you are angry, nothing will sink in. You think, I’ve got that boss, so I can’t work. This is complete aetiology. But it’s really, I don’t want to work, so I’ll create an awful boss, or I don’t want to acknowledge my incapable self, so I’ll create an awful boss. That would be the teleological way of looking at it.

Then, supposing you had done the separation of tasks. How would things be? In other words, 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 cosy 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. YOUTH: But, that’s … PHILOSOPHER: We are all suffering in interpersonal relationships. It might be the relationship with one’s parents or one’s elder brother, and it might be the interpersonal relationships at one’s workplace. Now, last time, you were saying that you wanted some specific steps. This is what I propose. 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. And do not intervene in other people’s tasks, or allow even a single person to intervene in one’s own tasks. This is a specific and revolutionary viewpoint that is unique to Adlerian psychology and contains the potential to utterly change one’s interpersonal relationship problems.

Well, I don’t mean to contradict you, but not everyone can become Alexander the Great. Isn’t it precisely because there was no one else who could have cut the knot that the anecdote portraying it as a heroic deed is still conveyed to this day? It’s exactly the same with the separation of tasks. Even though one knows one can just cut through something with one’s sword, one might find it rather difficult. Because when one presses forward with the separation of tasks, in the end one will have to cut ties with people. One will drive people into isolation. The separation of tasks you speak of completely ignores human emotion! How could one possibly build good interpersonal relationships with that? PHILOSOPHER: One can build them. The separation of tasks is not the final objective for interpersonal relationships. Rather, it is the gateway. YOUTH: The gateway? PHILOSOPHER: For instance, when reading a book, if one brings one’s face too close to it, one cannot see anything. In the same way, forming good interpersonal relationships requires a certain degree of distance. When the distance gets too small and people become stuck together, it becomes impossible to even speak to each other. But the distance must not be too great, either. Parents who scold their children too much become mentally very distant. When this happens, the child can no longer even consult the parents, and the parents can no longer give the proper assistance. One should be ready to lend a hand when needed, but no...

When one thought of all one’s problems as being in one’s interpersonal relationships, the separation of tasks was effective. Just by having this viewpoint, the world would become quite simple. But there was no flesh and blood in it. It gave off no sense of one’s warmth as a person.

Does one choose recognition from others, or does one choose a path of freedom without recognition? It’s an important question—let’s think about it together. To live one’s life trying to gauge other people’s feelings and being worried about how they look at you. To live in such a way that other’s wishes are granted. There may indeed be signposts to guide you this way, but it is a very unfree way to live. 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.

It is true that there is no person who wishes to be disliked. But look at it this way: 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. If there are ten people, one must swear loyalty to all ten. When one does that, for the time being one will have succeeded in not being disliked by anyone. But at this point, there is a great contradiction looming. One swears loyalty to all ten people out of the single-minded desire to not be disliked. This is like a politician who has fallen into populism and begun to make impossible promises and accept responsibilities that are beyond him. Naturally, his lies will come to light before long. He will lose people’s trust, and turn his own life into one of greater suffering. And, of course, the stress of continual lying has all kinds of consequences. Please grasp this point. If one is living in a such a way as to satisfy other people’s expectations, and one is entrusting one’s own life to others, that is a way of living in which one is lying to oneself, and continuing that lying to include the people around one. YOUTH: So, one should be egocentric, and live however one pleases? PHILOSOPHER: Separating one’s tasks is not an egocentric thing. 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 noth...

An adult, who has chosen an unfree way to live, on seeing a young person living freely here and now in this moment, criticises the youth as being hedonistic; of course, this is a life-lie that comes out so that the adult can accept his own unfree life. An adult who has chosen real freedom himself will not make such comments, and will instead cheer on the will to be free.

Not wanting to be disliked by other people. To human beings, this is an entirely natural desire, and an impulse. Kant, the giant of modern philosophy, called this desire ‘inclination’.

it is one’s instinctive desires, one’s impulsive desires. Now, if one were to say that living like a stone tumbling downhill and allowing such inclinations or desires or impulses to take one wherever they will is ‘freedom’, one would be incorrect. To live in such a way is only to be a slave to one’s desires and impulses. Real freedom is an attitude akin to pushing up one’s tumbling self from below.

A stone is powerless. Once it has begun to roll downhill, it will continue to roll until released from the natural laws of gravity and inertia. But we are not stones. We are beings who are capable of resisting inclination. We can stop our tumbling selves and climb uphill. The desire for recognition is probably a natural desire. So, are you going to keep rolling downhill in order to receive recognition from others? Are you going to wear yourself down like a rolling stone, until everything is smoothed away? When all that is left is a little round ball, would that be ‘the real I’? It cannot be.

As I have stated repeatedly, in Adlerian psychology, we think that all problems are interpersonal relationship problems. In other words, we seek release from interpersonal relationships. We seek to be free from interpersonal relationships. However, it is absolutely impossible to live all alone in the universe. In light of what we have discussed until now, the conclusion we reach regarding ‘what is freedom?’ should be clear. YOUTH: What is it? PHILOSOPHER: In short, that ‘freedom is being disliked by other people’. YOUTH: Huh? What was that? PHILOSOPHER: 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.

It is certainly distressful to be disliked. If possible, one would like to live without being disliked by anyone. One wants to satisfy one’s desire for recognition. But conducting oneself in such a way as to not be disliked by anyone is an extremely unfree way of living, and is also impossible. 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.

You’ve probably been thinking of freedom as ‘release from organisations’. That breaking away from your home or school, your company or your nation is freedom. However, if you were to break away from your organisation, for instance, you would not be able to gain real freedom. Unless one is unconcerned by other people’s judgements, has no fear of being disliked by other people, and pays the cost that one might never be recognised, one will never be able to follow through in one’s own way of living. That is to say, one will not be able to be free.

Be disliked by other people—is that what you are saying? PHILOSOPHER: What I am saying is, don’t be afraid of being disliked. YOUTH: But that’s— PHILOSOPHER: I am not telling you to go so far as to live in such a way that you will be disliked, and I am not saying engage in wrongdoing. Please do not misunderstand that.

Can people actually endure the weight of freedom? Are people that strong? To not care even if one is disliked by one’s own parents—can one become so self-righteously defiant? PHILOSOPHER: One neither prepares to be self-righteous, nor becomes defiant. One just separates tasks. There may be a person who does not think well of you, but that is not your task. And again, thinking things like, 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. One moves forward without fearing the possibility of being disliked. One does not live as if one were rolling downhill, but instead climbs the slope that lies ahead. That is freedom for a human being. Suppose that I had two choices in front of me—a life in which all people like me, and a life in which there are people who disli...

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.

Many people think that the interpersonal relationship cards are held by the other person. That is why they wonder, How does that person feel about me?, and end up living in such a way as to satisfy the wishes of other people. But 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.

I did not change in order to change my father. That is an erroneous notion of trying to manipulate another person. Even if I change, it is only ‘I’ who changes. I do not know what will happen to the other person as a result, and that is not an aspect I can take part in. This too is the separation of tasks. Of course, there are times when, in tandem with my change—not due to my change—the other person changes too. In many cases, that person will have no choice but to change. But that is not the goal, and it is certainly possible that the other person will not change. In any case, changing one’s own speech and conduct as a way of manipulating other people is clearly a mistaken way of thinking.