Episode 64: Book – Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga, The Courage to Be Disliked

Note

The book “The Courage to Be Disliked” by Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga explores the idea that we are responsible for our actions and choices, emphasizing the importance of self-fulfillment over seeking approval from others. The book introduces Adlerian psychology, focusing on empowerment and the concept that trauma is a result of subjective interpretations rather than objective facts. The authors use a dialogue format to explain Adler’s ideas, but the character development and radical approaches in the book may oversimplify complex topics and potentially lead to dismissive attitudes towards trauma. The core message of the book is to have the courage to be disliked, live in freedom, and focus on self-acceptance and contribution to others rather than seeking recognition or approval.

Highlights

• 2025-01-03 11:18 This book has 277 pages and I finished reading it on September 3rd of 2023. The book in three we alone are responsible for the actions we take in life and the choices we make and blaming others or events in our past for our current and possible future predicaments are excuses which get us nowhere.

• 2025-01-04 23:21 Living in fear of other people’s judgment or seeking approval and recognition from others blocks us from focusing on our own growth and self fulfillment. Happiness comes from identifying as a valuable part of community building, strong connections and contributing impressions have you ever heard of the Austrian psychiatrist Alfred Adler?

• 2025-01-04 23:22 Another of these potentially harmful ideas would be that trauma doesn’t exist. You definitely need to put that statement into context, which the book does to an extent, but it leaves the situation unsolved in my opinion. I’ve followed this book up with a book on child psychology which deals with childhood trauma at its core.

• 2025-01-04 23:22 And the person who reads this and doesn’t think of themselves as having experienced trauma will will now behave towards people who claim to have been traumatized in a dismissive way. Possibly. That’s the main problem I have with this book because it overly simplifies many such topics, the trauma stance just being one of them. The other smaller problem I see is the believability of the two characters, especially the one described as a youth. He is supposed to be the person you as the reader can identify with the most because he’s there to learn, but he has such a weird personality and makes it hard to do so.

• 2025-01-03 11:27 For example, Dale Carnegie, who wrote the international best sellers 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.

• 2025-01-04 23:22 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.

• 2025-01-04 23:22 It’s that you judged being unhappy to be good for you. But what you do with it from here on is in your responsibility. Whether you go on choosing the lifestyle you’ve had up until now or you choose a new lifestyle altogether, it’s entirely up to you.

• 2025-01-03 11:33 Adler 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 completely.

• 2025-01-03 11:37 There is a simple way to tell whose task it is who ultimately is going to receive the end result brought about by the choice that is made. When the child has made the choice of not studying.

• 2025-01-03 11:38 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.

• 2025-01-04 23:23 Interpersonal relations are the source of happiness. First of all, each of us is a member of a community, and that’s where we belong

• 2025-01-04 23:23 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.

• 2025-01-04 23:23 In other words, the mother who praises the child by saying things like, you’re such a good helper or good job or well, aren’t you? Something is unconsciously creating a hierarchical relationship and seeing the child as beneath her.

• 2025-01-04 23:24 In Adler’s view, it is only when a person is able to feel that he has worth, that he can possess courage. It’s quite simple. It is when one is able to feel I am beneficial to the community that one can have a true sense of one’s worth. Someone has to start.

• 2025-01-03 11:42 My advice is should start with no regard to whether others are cooperative or not. To live in earnest in the here and now.

• 2025-01-03 11:43 That reminds me of a line that the writer Kurt Vonnegut quoted in one of his God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom always to tell the difference. It is in the novel Slaughterhouse Five. Right now you are only concerned about the times you were taken advantage of and nothing else.