Truly free?

Do you have the courage to be disliked?

True freedom is the courage to be disliked.

I don’t know about you, but whenever I have tried to ‘be liked’ by others - I have always failed. Always. And it takes a lot of courage (and thick skin) to be oneself (and eventually disliked by others for not fitting-in).

The book The Courage to Be Disliked by Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga offers profound insights into Adlerian psychology*, emphasizing personal freedom, self-acceptance, and the importance of community.

Here are the atomic ideas (and hard-hitting quotes) from the book:

Freedom from the past and future

The book emphasizes that individuals are not defined by their pasts or constrained by their futures. Adlerian psychology posits that people can change at any moment through their current choices and actions.

A healthy feeling of inferiority is not something that comes from comparing oneself to others; it comes from one's comparison with one's ideal self

The past does not dictate one's future; instead, it is the decisions made in the present that shape our lives.