Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga have written a New York Times bestselling book, The Courage to Be Disliked, that is based on the psychology of Austrian psychiatrist Alfred Adler. The book’s main premise is that “freedom is being disliked by other people”. When you are disliked by someone, “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.”
Kishima and Koga have a full section of their book focused on living in earnest in the here and now. Here are twenty key principles, all based on Adlerian psychology:
- “Make the switch from attachment to self (self-interest) to concern for others (social interest) and gaining a sense of community feeling. Three things are needed at this point: “self-acceptance”, “confidence in others”, and “contribution to others.”
- “Focus on what one can change, rather than on what one cannot. This is what I call self-acceptance.”
- “Have the courage to change what one can change. This is self-acceptance.”
- “The basis of interpersonal relations is founded not on trust but on confidence.”
- “One believes unconditionally without concerning oneself with such things as security. That is confidence.”
- “Unconditional confidence is a means for making your interpersonal relationship with a person better and for building a horizontal relationship.”
- “If one can simply accept oneself as one is and ascertain what one can do and what one cannot, one becomes able to understand that ‘taking advantage’ is the other person’s task, and getting to the core of ‘confidence in others’ becomes less difficult.”
- “To feel it’s ‘okay to be here’, one has to see others as comrades. And to see others as comrades, one needs both self-acceptance and confidence in others.”
- “Does one accept oneself on the level of acts, or on the level of being? This is truly a question that relates to the courage to be happy.”
- “Children who try to be especially bad – that is to say, the ones who engage in problem behavior – are endeavoring to attract the attention of other people even as they continue to avoid any such healthy effort. In Adlerian psychology, this is referred to as the “pursuit of easy superiority.”
- “’Revenge’ and ‘pursuit of easy superiority’ are easily linked. One makes trouble for another person while trying at the same time to be ‘special’.”
- “If you possess the courage to be normal, your way of looking at the world will change dramatically.”
- “We live only in the here and now. Our lives exist only in moments.”
- “With dance, it is the dancing itself that is the goal, and no one is concerned with arriving somewhere by doing it. Naturally, it may happen that one arrives somewhere as a result of having danced. Since one is dancing, one does not stay in the same place. But there is no destination.”
- “Life is a series of moments, and neither the past nor the future exists. You are trying to give yourself a way out by focusing on the past and the future. What happened in the past has nothing whatsoever to do with your here and now, and what the future may hold is not a matter to think about here and now.”
- “The life of the past that looks like a straight line appears that way to you as a result of your making ceaseless resolutions to not change. The life that lies ahead of you is a completely blank page, and there are no tracks that have been laid for you to follow.”
- “The greatest life-lie of all is to not live here and now. It is to look at the past and the future, cast a dim light on one’s entire life, and believe that one has been able to see something.”
- “No matter what moments you are living, or if there are people who dislike you, as long as you do not lose sight of the guiding star of ‘I contribute to others’, you will not lose your way, and you can do whatever you like”.
- “When you have danced here and now in earnest and to the full, that is when the meaning of your life will become clear to you”.
- Major viewpoints of Adlerian psychology:
- “All problems are interpersonal relationship problems.”
- “People can change and be happy from this moment onward.”
- “The problem is not one of ability, but of courage.”
Kishimi and Koga have written a thought-provoking book on achieving real happiness in life.