“How could one live a happy life while being disliked?” was a question I asked myself when I read the the title of this book authored by Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga.
Whole-heartedly, this book exceeded my expectations. A happy and free life told from the lens of Adlerian psychology and teleology differs from mainstream Freudian ideas. For example, it rejects the impact of past trauma on behavior. While the approach seems less empathetic, I found it liberating because it emphasizes personal control and responsibility over your life. When I thought my overly-reserved and people-pleasing nature comes from family values or having grown as a minority, this books is a reminder that everyone have a choice. A choice to change, to be happy, to be self-reliant, to live in social harmony, to encourage people, to have confidence in building deep relationships, to live and see your life anew and lead a happy life.
Unlike typical self-help book, this entire book is a dialogue between a youth and a philosopher. It takes us on a ride as the cynical youth critically exchange arguments to gain deeper understanding. While it maybe odd to some, I thought it was a brilliant style of story-telling and teaching, especially as it’s reminiscent of how Socrates used to engage with his students. If you’re new to Adler’s ideas like me and loves to drown your thoughts in a new kind of philosophical lens, I’d highly recommend this book!
My notes:
While Etiology believes in causation, studies past trauma, and forgiving yourself, Teleology focus on understanding the present goal of the behavior. Adler denies trauma and states that what determines us isn’t the experience itself (which is objective, like how water is 60°), but what we make out of them (our perception dictates hot/cold). Our actions are controlled by our goals, not our past nor emotion. To identify the goal, observe the result of the behavior. Examples:
- he creates anxiety/fear with the goal of staying in his room so he can get attention
- he fabricates anger to give him an excuse of shouting to overpower someone and assert one’s opinions. He could’ve talked it out but it felt too much trouble.
- A misbehaving child could be motivated by revenge. If someone challenges you to a power struggle, with the goal of seeking attention or to win a fight, avoid the conflict. Even if you win the fight, the person will withdraw and take retaliate elsewhere (ie. child skip school, self harm, etc).
Everyone can change. It’s a choice.
Until age ~10, the environment unconsciously influence your choice of ‘lifestyle’ (a worldview or tendency of thought and action), but you can choose it over again.
Why people avoid change:
- Changing is inconvenient because it involves anxiety for one’s inability to use prior experiences to predict the outcome.
- Not changing allows one to continue living in the realms of possibilities (e.g. if only I have the time, proper environment, age, don’t have family to take care of, etc)
But the lack of courage to change faced them with disappointment and makes life complicated, as they always had to come up with excuses.
Happiness is a choice, not a circumstance. At some point, one chose to be unhappy. Example:
- He dislikes himself to justify his goal of self-isolation, which protects him from getting hurt or disliked by others.
Premise: All problems are interpersonal relationship problems
All problems will be gone if you’re alone in the universe. Hurt exists in all relationships. It is only in social contexts that a person becomes an ‘individual’.
Inferiority is a subjective comparison, thus depends on one’s perception (e.g. short people are less intimidating). Inferiority, and the pursuit of superiority in general, is natural because everyone comes to the world powerless. This desire can help one grow, or could be used as an excuse not to pursue growth; this is known as inferiority complex. When inferiority complex is too overbearing, one becomes pretentious to hide their insecurities.
Focus on your own life tasks
Adlerian psychology believes there’s 2 objectives for human behavior: (1) to be self-reliant (2) to live in social harmony. You achieve those by facing life tasks, social tasks that one have no choice but to confront:
- Tasks of work. Failing this task means getting labeled as incompetent by others
- Tasks of friendships. Take the first step to initiate / deepen
- Tasks of love. Believing your partner is your task, but their actions are their task. You shouldn’t push your desires onto them.
Lifestyle is your choice, so you must take full responsibility for your life tasks. Trying to excuse yourself from it is termed as a ‘life lie’.
To intrude someone else’s task makes your life heavier and more difficult. One needs separation of tasks not to keep others away, but to unravel the complex entanglement of interpersonal relation. “You can lead a horse to water, but you cant make it drink”. If you force change while ignoring their intention, you’ll get an intense reaction. Example:
- Adults who intrudes the kid’s tasks, does it not for the kid, but for their own goals (social standing / desire for control). Sensing this, the kid rebels. Instead, one should just pay attention, assist, and let the kid have complete agency to think and make decision for their own.
Live your own life, because who will? The reward-punishment education teaches us to seek recognition and satisfy others, which is unhealthy because one lives in constant fear of judgement and repressing the real self. Being free gets you lost, but it’s more fulfilling. Trying to be liked by everyone means overcomitting and lying to yourself.
Live in social harmony
The goal of relationships is to receive a feeling of community where one finds a place of refuge and belonging, surrounded themselves with comrades. To attain that, one should:
- Switch from self-attachment to concern for others. Desire for recognition or self-loathe is a form of self-interest, because it concerns themselves not others. Imagine a globe where there’re infinite centers. You’re the center of your world but not everyone’s world. Everyone’s not there for your benefit.
- Commit and give back to the community. You find refuge only in places where you make effort to contribute.
‘Community’ includes everything. You are member of a company, a country, the universe. In principle when we run into difficulties in our interpersonal relations, listen to the voice of the larger community and seek refuge there. Beyond the context of school and office, everyone is equal in the larger community of fellow humans.
Build horizontal relationship and treat everyone as equal. No one is above or below you. There’s no competition nor enemies; they’re happiness isn’t your defeat.
Neither praise nor rebuke. It unconsciously creates vertical relationships where one is beneath the other, seen as lacking ability and inferior. It has the goal of manipulating people to go on certain directions you think is right, a life task intervention. Alderian physchology propose that all interpersonal relationship should be horizontal. Offer assistance and show gratitude and respect, just like you would to an equal. That way, you help recover their lost courage of facing their task. Without leaving any judgement, gratitude makes them feel their contribution to the community, elevating their self-worth so they could start possessing courage. At the core, everyone has worth because everyone’s valuable for existing and being in someone else’s life.
Here are steps to transition from self-attachment to concern for others in the community:
- Self acceptance isn’t self affirmation. Start from accepting your flaws and work it out. It is affirmative resignation - to let go of things you can’t change and only focus with courage on ones you can.
- Confidence in others isn’t about trust where there’s an expectation. It is to believe unconditionally, even when you’re being taken advantage of. Placing doubt won’t build a deep relationship, when all you’ll see are evidences of your doubts. To see others as comrades, you need confidence not doubt.
- Contribution to others isn’t self-sacrifice. It is for yourself. One makes contribution and work to get that sense of belonging. It is because one contributes that one feel worthy and self-accept. (🔄 Cycles back to 1️⃣)
Leading a happy life
Part of self-acceptance is the ‘courage to be normal’. Problematic behaviors arise from trying to pursue superiority over others. Normal doesn’t mean incapable. Dreaming of a big goal makes life seem like a journey to a destination. However, the philosopher argues that for a happy life, we should view it as a series of dots or present moments that eventually forms a path. Focus on enjoying the present, like dancing for the sake of dancing, and find fulfillment in the ‘now’. Dance without concerns about where you’ll end up. Life has no destination nor an enroute; ‘Now’ is all you have. Life is always complete at every moment, making planning unnecessary. Focus so intensely on the present that everything else fades away.
Life in general is meaningless, but you can assign meaning to yours. Whatever life means must be assigned by the individual.
Your North Star should be contribution to others. With that you wouldn’t lose your way in freedom.