The Courage To Be Disliked - by Ichiro Kishimi, Fumitake Koga

A book that showcases Adlerian psychology and philosophy, written in the form of a conversation between an old philosopher and a young, angry and frustrated disciple, who’s facing disappointment from being an spectator of his unchanging and unfulfilling life. It works very well as the philosopher’s arguments are developed, the disciple’s point of view is intended to be a projection of the reader’s doubts, concerns and biased opinions.

Lifestyle is the tendencies of thoughts and actions in our life. One of the strongest arguments in the book is that, at all times, we’re in full control of steering our lifestyle. This is because it’s a subjective interpretation of the world around us and being so, we can change it. Lifestyle is not really an objective fact. It’s how we view, accept and relate to things and people. And that’s always within our control.

It argues that the root of our frustrations and feelings of inferiority always come from interpersonal relationships and their dynamics. Failure to obtain goals, supposed traumas and feelings of incompleteness are not consequence of past experiences, on the contrary, past experiences are subjective tools we use in the present to justify those feelings.

It touches on ‘separating tasks’, which means dealing only with actions, thoughts and feelings that are within our control and nothing else. By exercising this, we can achieve freedom. This will come when we learn to avoid basing our lives, actions, feelings on the actual cause of imprisonment of our minds, the one thing that keeps away from freedom: the desire for recognition.