The Courage To Be Disliked

The life changing multi-million copy global bestseller

Ichiro Kishimi, Fumitake Koga

• Publisher: Allen & Unwin
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN:
  9781760638269
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Personal Success

THE NO. 1 SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER

THE 15 MILLION COPY BESTSELLER

Stop people-pleasing and achieve true happiness.

'I highly recommend it to everybody... a really interesting book' Andrew Huberman, Huberman Lab

Millions have already benefited from the wisdom dispensed in The Courage to Be Disliked, its simple yet profound advice showing us how to harness our inner power to become the person we would like to be.

A philosopher and a student have a discussion. Their conversation reveals a profoundly liberating way of thinking: by developing the courage to change, set healthy boundaries and resist the impulse to please others, it is possible to find genuine and lasting happiness.

Your life is not something that someone gives you, but something you choose yourself, and you are the one who decides how you live.

WHY YOU DISLIKE YOURSELF

YOUTH: So, after last time, I calmed myself down, focused, and thought things over. And yet, I’ve got to say, I still can’t agree with your theories.

PHILOSOPHER: Oh? What do you find questionable about them?

YOUTH: Well, for instance, the other day I admitted that I dislike myself. No matter what I do, I can’t find anything but shortcomings, and I can see no reason why I’d start liking myself. But, of course, I still want to. You explain everything as having to do with goals, but what kind of goal could I have here? I mean, what kind of advantage could there be in my not liking myself? I can’t imagine there’d be a single thing to gain from it.

PHILOSOPHER: I see. You feel that you don’t have any strong points; that you’ve got nothing but shortcomings. Whatever the facts might be, that’s how you feel. In other words, your self-esteem is extremely low. So, the questions here, then, are why do you feel so wretched? And, why do you view yourself with such low esteem?

YOUTH: Because that’s a fact—I really don’t have any strong points.

PHILOSOPHER: You’re wrong. You notice only your shortcomings because you’ve resolved to not start liking yourself. In order to not like yourself, you don’t see your strong points, and focus only on your shortcomings. First, understand this point.

YOUTH: I have resolved to not start liking myself?

PHILOSOPHER: That’s right. To you, not liking yourself is a virtue.

YOUTH: Why? What for?

PHILOSOPHER: Perhaps this is something you should think about yourself. What sort of shortcomings do you think you have?

YOUTH: I’m sure you have already noticed. First of all, there’s my personality. I don’t have any self-confidence, and I’m always pessimistic about everything. And I guess I’m too self-conscious, because I worry about what other people see, and, then, I live with a constant distrust of other people. I can never act naturally; there’s always something theatrical about what I say and do. And it’s not just my personality—there’s nothing to like about my face or my body, either.

PHILOSOPHER: When you go about listing your shortcomings like that, what kind of mood does it put you in?

YOUTH: Wow, that’s nasty! An unpleasant mood, naturally. I’m sure that no one would want to get involved with a guy as warped as me. If there were anyone this wretched and bothersome in my vicinity, I’d keep my distance, too.

PHILOSOPHER: I see. Well, that settles it then.

YOUTH: What do you mean?

PHILOSOPHER: It might be hard to understand from your own example, so I’ll use another. I use this study for simple counselling sessions. It must have been quite a few years ago, but there was a female student who came by. She sat right where you are sitting now, in the same chair. Well, her concern was her fear of blushing. She told me that she was always turning red whenever she was out in public, and that she would do anything to rid herself of this. So I asked her, ‘Well, if you can cure it, what will you want to do then?’ And she said that there was a man she wanted. She secretly had feelings for him but wasn’t ready to divulge them. Once her fear of blushing was cured, she’d confess her desire to be with him.

YOUTH: Huh! All right, it sounds like the typical thing a female student would seek counselling for. In order for her to confess her feelings for him, first she had to cure her blushing problem.

PHILOSOPHER: But is that really the whole case? I have a different opinion. Why did she get this fear of blushing? And why hadn’t it gotten better? Because she needed that symptom of blushing.

YOUTH: What are you saying exactly? She was asking you to cure it, wasn’t she?

PHILOSOPHER: What do you think was the scariest thing to her, the thing she wanted to avoid most of all? It was that the man would reject her, of course. The fact that her unrequited love would negate everything for her; the very existence and possibility of ‘I’. This aspect is deeply present in adolescent unrequited love. But as long as she has a fear of blushing, she can go on thinking, I can’t be with him because I have this fear of blushing. It could end without her ever working up the courage to confess her feelings to him, and she could convince herself that he would reject her anyway. And finally, she can live in the possibility that If only my fear of blushing had gotten better, I could have …

YOUTH: Okay, so she fabricated that fear of blushing as an excuse for her own inability to confess her feelings. Or maybe as a kind of insurance for when he rejected her.

PHILOSOPHER: Yes, you could put it that way.

YOUTH: Okay, that is an interesting interpretation. But if that were really the case, wouldn’t it be impossible to do anything to help her? Since she simultaneously needs that fear of blushing, and is suffering because of it, there’d be no end to her troubles.

PHILOSOPHER: Well, this is what I told her: ‘Fear of blushing is easy to cure.’ She asked, ‘Really?’ I went on: ‘But I will not cure it.’ She pressed me, ‘Why?’ I explained, ‘Look, it’s thanks to your fear of blushing that you can accept your dissatisfaction with yourself and the world around you, and with a life that isn’t going well. It’s thanks to your fear of blushing, and it’s caused by it.’ She asked, ‘How could it be … ?’ I went on: ‘If I did cure it, and nothing in your situation changed at all, what would you do? You’d probably come here again and say, “Give me back my fear of blushing.” And that would be beyond my abilities.’

YOUTH: Hmm.

PHILOSOPHER: Her story certainly isn’t unusual. Students preparing for their exams think, If I pass, life will be rosy. Company workers think, If I get transferred, everything will go well. But even when those wishes are fulfilled, in many cases nothing about their situations changes at all.

YOUTH: Indeed.

PHILOSOPHER: When a client shows up requesting a cure from fear of blushing, the counsellor must not cure the symptoms. If they do, recovery is likely to be even more difficult. That is the Adlerian psychology way of thinking about this kind of thing.

YOUTH: So, what specifically do you do, then? Do you ask what they’re worried about and then just leave it be?

PHILOSOPHER: She didn’t have confidence in herself. She was very afraid that things being what they were, he’d reject her even if she did confess to him. And, if that happened, she’d lose even more confidence and get hurt. That’s why she created the symptom of the fear of blushing. 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 Adlerian psychology, this kind of approach is called ‘encouragement’.

YOUTH: Encouragement?

PHILOSOPHER: Yes. I’ll explain systematically what it consists of once our discussion has progressed a little farther. We’re not at that stage yet.

YOUTH: That works for me. In the meantime, I’ll keep the word ‘encouragement’ in mind. So, whatever happened to her?

PHILOSOPHER: Apparently, she had the chance to join a group of friends and spend time with the man, and in the end it was he who confessed his desire to be with her. Of course, she never dropped by this study again after that. I don’t know what became of her fear of blushing. But she probably didn’t need it any longer.

YOUTH: Yes, she clearly didn’t have any use for it anymore.

PHILOSOPHER: That’s right. Now, keeping this student’s story in mind, let’s think about your problems. You say that, at present, you notice only your shortcomings, and it’s unlikely that you’ll ever come to like yourself. And then, you said, ‘I’m sure that no one would want to get involved with a guy as warped as me,’ didn’t you? I’m sure you understand this already. Why do you dislike yourself? Why do you focus only on your shortcomings, and why have you decided to not start liking yourself? It’s because you are overly afraid of being disliked by other people and getting hurt in your interpersonal relationships.

YOUTH: What do you mean by that?

PHILOSOPHER: Just like the young woman with the fear of blushing, who was afraid of being rejected by the man, 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.

YOUTH: Ha-ha! Well, you’ve really put me in my place now.

PHILOSOPHER: Don’t be evasive. Being ‘the way I am’ with all these shortcomings is, for you, a precious virtue. In other words, something that’s to your benefit.

YOUTH: Ouch, that hurts. What a sadist; you’re diabolical! Okay, yes, it’s true: I am afraid. I don’t want to get hurt in interpersonal relationships. I’m terrified of being snubbed for who I am. It’s hard to admit it, but you are right.

PHILOSOPHER: Admitting is a good attitude. But don’t forget, it’s basically impossible to not get hurt in your relations with other people. When you enter into interpersonal relationships, it is inevitable that to a greater or lesser extent you will get hurt, and you will hurt someone, too. Adler says, ‘To get rid of one’s problems, all one can do is live in the universe all alone.’ But one can’t do such a thing.

ALL PROBLEMS ARE INTERPERSONAL RELATIONSHIP PROBLEMS

YOUTH: Wait a minute! I’m supposed to just let that one slip by? ‘To get rid of one’s problems, all one can do is live in the universe all alone?’ What do you mean by that? If you lived all alone, wouldn’t you be horribly lonely?

PHILOSOPHER: Oh, but 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. That is to say, it is only in social contexts that a person becomes an ‘individual’.

YOUTH: If you were really alone, that is, if you existed completely alone in the universe, you wouldn’t be an individual and you wouldn’t feel lonely, either?

PHILOSOPHER: I suppose the very concept of loneliness wouldn’t even come up. You wouldn’t need language, and there’d be no use for logic or commonsense, either. But such a thing is impossible. Even if you lived on an uninhabited island, you would think about someone far across the ocean. Even if you spend your nights alone, you strain your ears to hear the sound of someone’s breath. As long as there is someone out there somewhere, you will be haunted by loneliness.

YOUTH: But then, you could just rephrase that as ‘if one could live in the universe all alone, one’s problems would go away’, couldn’t you?

PHILOSOPHER: In theory, yes. As Adler goes so far as to assert, ‘All problems are interpersonal relationship problems.’

YOUTH: Can you say that again?

PHILOSOPHER: We can repeat it as many times as you like: all problems are interpersonal relationship problems. This is a concept that runs to the very root of Adlerian psychology. If all interpersonal relationships were gone from this world, which is to say if one were alone in the universe and all other people were gone, all manner of problems would disappear.

YOUTH: That’s a lie! It’s nothing more than academic sophistry.

PHILOSOPHER: Of course, we cannot do without interpersonal relationships. A human being’s existence, in its very essence, assumes the existence of other human...

Table of contents

• COVER PAGE
• ABOUT THE AUTHOR
• TITLE PAGE
• COPYRIGHT PAGE
• AUTHORS’ NOTE
• CONTENTS
• INTRODUCTION
• THE FIRST NIGHT: DENY TRAUMA
• THE SECOND NIGHT: ALL PROBLEMS ARE INTERPERSONAL RELATIONSHIP PROBLEMS
• THE THIRD NIGHT: DISCARD OTHER PEOPLE’S TASKS
• THE FOURTH NIGHT: WHERE THE CENTRE OF THE WORLD IS
• THE FIFTH NIGHT: TO LIVE IN EARNEST IN THE HERE AND NOW
• AFTERWORD