# The Courage to Be Disliked  ## Metadata - Author: [[Kishimi, Ichiro; Koga, Fumitake;]] - Full Title: The Courage to Be Disliked - Category: #books - Summary: True happiness comes from feeling useful to others and seeing people as comrades. Problems in life often come from thinking we are the center of the world and expecting too much from others. Living courageously means accepting yourself and building equal, encouraging relationships with those around you. ## Highlights - On the outskirts of the thousand-year-old city lived a philosopher who taught that the world was simple and that happiness was within the reach of every man, instantly. A young man who was dissatisfied with life went to visit this philosopher to get to the heart of the matter. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01k0tm9991j772jgjeya527e1g)) - PHILOSOPHER: None of us live in an objective world, but instead in a subjective world that we ourselves have given meaning to. The world you see is different from the one I see, and it’s impossible to share your world with anyone else. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01k0tmcee10hmg4r43e4fk97hn)) - PHILOSOPHER: You may know this, but well water stays at pretty much the same temperature all year round, at about 18 degrees. That is an objective number—it stays the same to everyone who measures it. But when you drink the water in the summer it seems cool and when you drink the same water in the winter it seems warm. Even though it’s the same water, at the same 18 degrees according to the thermometer, the way it seems depends on whether it’s summer or winter. YOUTH: So, it’s an illusion caused by the change in the environment. PHILOSOPHER: No, it’s not an illusion. You see, to you, in that moment, the coolness or warmth of the well water is an undeniable fact. That’s what it means to live in your subjective world. There is no escape from your own subjectivity. At present, the world seems complicated and mysterious to you, but if you change, the world will appear more simple. The issue is not about how the world is, but about how you are. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01k0tmdntrsxcyzhb2mk91qtv9)) - PHILOSOPHER: I am a philosopher; a person who lives philosophy. And, for me, Adlerian psychology is a form of thought that is in line with Greek philosophy, and that *is* philosophy. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01k0tmkcpj2xsshv7kme4ctfy7)) - PHILOSOPHER: If we focus only on past causes and try to explain things solely through cause and effect, we end up with ‘determinism’. Because what this says is that our present and our future have already been decided by past occurrences, and are unalterable. Am I wrong? ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01k0tmnyyqm37n3p1b9051y2r9)) - PHILOSOPHER: In Adlerian psychology, trauma is definitively denied. This was a very new and revolutionary point. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01k0tmtey07xnycxg1268bz7tm)) - But Adler, in denial of the trauma argument, states the following: ‘No experience is in itself a cause of our success or failure. We do not suffer from the shock of our experiences—the so-called trauma—but instead we make out of them whatever suits our purposes. We are not determined by our experiences, but the meaning we give them is self-determining.’ ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01k0tmtagwpcfrscra3490gppq)) - Your life is not something that someone gives you, but something you choose yourself, and you are the one who decides how you live. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01k0tmvbbdvbcbngrnzbrqfs4j)) - But then, does that divorce feel cold or does it feel warm? So, this is a ‘now’ thing, a subjective thing. Regardless of what may have happened in the past, it is the meaning that is attributed to it that determines the way someone’s present will be. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01k0tn1aprntc7ddrmav30e4se)) - Does fixating on what you are born with change the reality? We are not replaceable machines. It is not replacement we need, but renewal. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01k11fd6qnvx4dv93q5107r483))