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

by Ichiro Kishimi

None of us live in an objective world, but instead in a subjective world that we ourselves have given meaning to. The world you see is different from the one I see, and it’s impossible to share your world with anyone else.

The issue is not about how the world is, but about how you are.

‘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.’

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.

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If emotions are denied, humans will be nothing more than poor excuses for machines.

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.

‘People are not driven by past causes, but move toward goals that they themselves set’—that

The first step to change is knowing.

‘The important thing is not what one is born with, but what use one makes of that equipment.’

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 in 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 only unable to change because you are making the decision not to.

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.

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.

‘No matter what has occurred in your life up to this point, it should have no bearing at all on how you live from now on.’ That you, living in the here and now, are the one who determines your own life.

being alone isn’t what makes you feel lonely. Loneliness is having other people and society and community around you, and having a deep sense of being excluded from them. To feel lonely, we need other people.

the feeling of inferiority can be a trigger for striving and growth.

They use their misfortune to their advantage, and try to control the other party with it. By declaring how unfortunate they are and how much they have suffered, they are trying to worry the people around them (their family and friends, for example), and to restrict their speech and behaviour, and control them.

we are not living to satisfy other people’s expectations.

so so important!!!

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.

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