The Courage to Be Disliked
The Core Insight
You are not determined by your past. You are not controlled by trauma. You are not a victim of circumstance.
You move toward goals you set. You give meaning to your experiences. You choose how to live.
No experience, by itself, causes your success or failure. Nothing is determined by what happened to you. You are shaped by the meaning you give your past, and you live from that meaning.
This is Alfred Adler's psychology, delivered through a dialogue between an angry student and a patient teacher. The title is a distraction. "Disliked" is not the point. The point is freedom.
The Framework
Adlerian psychology rests on three radical ideas:
1. Teleology Over Etiology
Most psychology asks: "What caused this?" Adler asks: "What goal does this serve?"
People are not driven by past causes. They move toward goals they set.
The trauma argument is determinism, and it leads to nihilism. It denies free will and treats humans like machines.
If someone says, "I can't go out because I was abused," consider that his goal might be to not go out. He creates anxiety and fear as reasons to stay inside. Why stay inside? To make his parents worry. To get their attention. If he goes out, he becomes one of the faceless many. He risks being average, and no one takes special care of him.
2. Separation of Tasks
Ask: "Whose task is this?" Separate your tasks from other people's tasks. Discard other people's tasks.
All relationship trouble comes from intruding on others' tasks, or having your tasks intruded upon.
To tell whose task it is, ask: "Who will ultimately receive the result of this choice?"
What another person thinks of you is that person's task. Face your own tasks in your own life without lying.
3. Horizontal vs. Vertical Relationships
In vertical relationships, you want to be praised or you want to control. You see others as above or below you. Inferiority arises here.
In horizontal relationships that are equal but not the same, inferiority complexes have little room to grow.
If you build even one vertical relationship, you start treating all relationships that way.
Key Ideas
You Are Not Your Past
We do not suffer from experiences as "trauma" that decides us. We use experiences for our purposes.
No matter what has happened up to now, it has no bearing on how you live from now on.
Personality is something you choose. External factors influence that choice, but you still chose this kind of self. Adlerian psychology says this settles around age ten.
Your lifestyle is like driving an old familiar car. It rattles, but you know how to handle it. A new lifestyle is hard to see ahead in. It brings anxiety. A more painful life might be waiting. So it feels safer to stay broken.
Being "the way I am," flaws included, becomes a precious virtue.
Anger Is a Tool
You did not get angry and then shout. You got angry so you could shout. To reach the goal of shouting, you created anger.
Anger is a tool you can take out and put away. It can disappear when the phone rings and return when you hang up. Anger is a means to a goal.
Personal anger is a tool to make others submit. It is one form of communication, but communication is possible without it.
You are not controlled by emotion. When you rage and shout, it is you, as a whole, choosing to do it. It is a lie to split "I" from "emotion" and say, "The emotion made me do it."
All Problems Are Interpersonal
All problems are interpersonal relationship problems. To remove them completely, you would have to live alone in the universe. You can't. So we suffer in relationships.
Loneliness is not being alone. It is being around people while feeling excluded. To feel lonely, you need other people.
Internal worry does not exist. In every worry, other people are present in the background.
You fear being negated by others. You think it would be easier to have no relationships. Your goal is not to get hurt.
The Inferiority Complex
The pursuit of superiority and the feeling of inferiority can stimulate healthy striving and growth.
But "A is the situation, so B can't be done" is an inferiority complex. It implies, "If only not for A, I'd be capable and valuable." It claims a superior "real me" that is merely obscured.
Those who make themselves look big on borrowed power are living by other people's values. They are living other people's lives.
People can use misfortune to their advantage and control others by declaring how unfortunate they are. A baby is the strongest person.
Withdraw from places obsessed with winning and losing. Competition gets in the way of being yourself.
The Separation of Tasks
This is the key to freedom.
Do not intervene in others' tasks, and do not allow even one person to intervene in yours. Intervening in others' tasks is essentially egocentric.
The child must face his own tasks. He must make the resolution. That is how he gains confidence in his studies and his life.
Good relationships require distance. Too close and you can't read the page. Too far and you can't see it.
No matter what appeal someone makes, you decide what you will do.
We must not seek reward, and we must not be tied to it.
Freedom Is Being Disliked
It is easier to live to satisfy others' expectations, because you are handing your life to them.
There is no reason you should not live your life as you please.
Desires and impulses try to drag you wherever they want. Living that way makes you their slave. But we are not stones. We can resist. We can stop tumbling downhill and climb.
Freedom is being disliked by others. It proves you are exercising your freedom and living by your principles. Trying to avoid being disliked by anyone is extremely unfree.
Sometimes you bring up old memories because you do not want a relationship to improve. Many people think the other person holds the cards. But they are holding all the cards.
Neither Praise Nor Rebuke
Praise implies judgment from a capable person to a less capable one. You praise to manipulate.
If you live in vertical relationships, you want to be praised. Praise keeps you dependent.
Why intrude on others' tasks? Because you see them as beneath you. You intervene to steer them where you want. You decide you are right and they are wrong.
Assistance based on horizontal relationships is called encouragement. It helps when someone has lost the courage to face their tasks.
Being praised can lead people to believe they have no ability.
Contribution Is Happiness
Happiness is the feeling of contribution. If you truly feel you contribute, you no longer need recognition.
You gain real worth when you can feel, "I am beneficial to the community."
Scoring 60% and saying, "I got unlucky, and the real me is 100%," is self-affirmation. Accepting yourself as 60% and asking, "How do I get closer to 100%?" is self-acceptance.
The basis of relationships is not trust but confidence. Confidence is believing in others without conditions, without demanding security. Some people keep confidence in you no matter how they are treated.
Unconditional confidence improves relationships and builds horizontal connection. If you do not want to improve a relationship, sever it. Severing is your task.
Life Is a Series of Moments
If life is climbing a mountain to reach the top, most of life becomes "en route." That misses the point.
Life is a series of dots, moments called now. What looks like a line is only a chain of moments, and the "straight line" of the past appears straight because you kept resolving not to change.
A well-planned life is impossible. The violinist who dreamed since childhood did not live "on the way" to the orchestra. He lived in each piece of music, here and now.
Dancing is the goal. No one dances to arrive somewhere. You may arrive somewhere as a result, but there is no destination.
If you are under a bright spotlight, you can't see even the front row. If you shine the spotlight on now, you can't see the past or future.
When you set distant objectives and treat now as preparation, you postpone life. But the now in which you study for the future is still a real now.
Life is always simple. It does not need heavy seriousness. Life is always complete.
The Greatest Life-Lie
The greatest life-lie is believing you have truly seen the past and the future.
Don't look back and ask, "What caused this?" Let hardship be the moment you look ahead and ask, "What can I do from now on?"
Whatever meaning life has, the individual assigns it.
No matter what moment you are living, and even if people dislike you, if you keep the guiding star "I contribute to others," you won't lose your way. You can do whatever you like.
If "I" change, the world changes. The world can be changed only by me. No one else will change it for me.
Practical Applications
Stop using the past as an excuse. Whatever happened to you, the meaning you assign it determines what happens next.
Ask "Whose task is this?" Before reacting, determine who will receive the result of this choice. If it is not your task, step back.
Let people dislike you. Trying to please everyone hands your life to them. Freedom requires accepting that some won't approve.
Replace anger with communication. Recognize anger as a tool you chose. Find another way to express what you need.
Build horizontal relationships. Stop ranking people as above or below you. Treat everyone as different but equal.
Encourage instead of praise. Help people face their own tasks. Don't manipulate through approval.
Accept yourself at 60%. Start from where you are, not from a fictional "real you" waiting to emerge.
Contribute without seeking recognition. Happiness comes from feeling beneficial to others, not from being noticed for it.
Live in the present moment. Stop treating now as preparation for later. The dance is the goal.
Change yourself to change the world. Don't wait for others to change. If "I" change, the world changes.
Who Should Read This
Read this if:
- You catch yourself saying "I can't because..." followed by something that happened to you
- You feel trapped by other people's expectations and have made decisions in the last month primarily to avoid disappointing someone
- You are interested in an alternative to Freudian "your childhood made you this way" psychology
- You like philosophy delivered through dialogue (Socratic style)
Skip this if:
- You want quick tips and actionable frameworks (this book is philosophy, not tactics)
- You need empirical backing for every claim (Adler's ideas are not presented with studies)
- You are not willing to question whether your suffering might serve a purpose you chose
The test: Think of a limitation you believe you have. Can you trace it to a past event you use as an explanation? If yes, this book will challenge whether that explanation is a cause or a choice.
The Decision
This book reframes everything.
You are not your past. You are not your trauma. You are not a victim of what happened to you. You are the meaning you assign to your experiences, and the goals you move toward.
All your problems are relationship problems. The solution is not to avoid relationships. It is to separate your tasks from others' tasks, build horizontal connections instead of vertical hierarchies, and find happiness through contribution rather than recognition.
The title promises courage to be disliked. But "disliked" is not the point. The point is freedom. Freedom to live by your own principles. Freedom to stop seeking approval. Freedom to contribute without demanding reward.
Next step: This week, identify one situation where you are trying to control what someone else thinks of you. Ask: "Whose task is this?" If it is their task to form an opinion, let them. Redirect your energy to your own tasks.
If "I" change, the world changes.
Keep reading
You might also like
Psycho-Cybernetics
Notes from Maxwell Maltz's classic on self-image psychology. Your results aren't limited by talent. They're limited by what you accept as true about yourself.