The Courage to be Disliked by Kishimi and Koga

We all can recall examples where two persons viewed the same occurrence with diametrically opposite perspectives. So, while what happens in the world is objective, what we perceive is a subjective interpretation of that objective truth.

We ascribe meaning and intent to events and actors – for instance, a colleague doesn’t say hello when passing your desk. That fact is neutral. But you may interpret it as, “He dislikes me”, while another person might think, “He must be lost in thought”. The event is fixed; the meaning is invented.

Adler calls this the subjective worldview. We don’t respond to reality itself — we respond to our interpretation of reality.

Essentially, all of us are living in a subjective world we create at each moment.

“None of us live in an objective world, but instead in a subjective word that we ourselves have given meaning to.”.

For a person looking to build a life of greater happiness, agency, abundance: “The key question isn’t ‘what happened?’, but ‘how was it resolved?’”, i.e., how you chose to see a particular event.

And, if all you see around you are problems with the world: the unscrupulous politicians, the disrespectful youngsters, the rising prices, and so on – then the real problem might be in you.

If you find yourself constantly pointing fingers at “the world”, Adler would say you’re looking in the wrong direction. These complaints don’t reveal the world; they reveal your inner posture toward the world. If you’re not happy with the world, then really, you are not happy with yourself. The game isn’t about what happened out there but about what’s happening in here. What you carry inside determines whether life feels like opportunity or oppression.

Fundamentally, each lens is a lens about change. One believes that change is not possible (or if it is then it will only be for the worse), while another believes that change is possible for the better if the right effort is put in. If this sounds familiar, you may be thinking about Fixed Mindset versus Growth Mindset, concepts popularised by Dr. Carol Dweck.

As I wrote in my Field Note – Mindset, growth mindset is the belief that change in skill and ability is possible, while fixed mindset believes skills to be fixed and unchangeable. In the book, these two (Growth and Fixed mindset) are not referred to by name, instead the authors talk about the two related (but not same) concepts of Teleology and Aetiology.

This is the bold claim Adler makes via the book’s authors: you are, at every moment, deciding to think and act in certain ways, though you might not be conscious of it all – and therefore, when you take on a victim mindset, you do that because you want to take on a victim mindset, because somewhere deep down you’ve calculated it will be beneficial to you.

It follows then, even those thoughts and actions that you think you developed after trauma and which make you behave in ways you simply cannot help, are in reality chosen by you because you think it is beneficial to act and think in those ways.

This is one of the places where you, as the reader, might balk – so maybe I can share a real life example:

Imprisoned in Nazi concentration camps, he lost his parents, his wife, and his brother – objectively he suffered unimaginable trauma. Yet, Viktor Frankl decided not to let suffering dictate his life. In Man’s Search for Meaning he wrote, “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms — to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances.”.

Instead of becoming broken, he turned his trauma into logotherapy, a framework that has helped millions.

“Lifestyle”, in the Adlerian sense, is a person’s way of thinking and acting that they choose for themselves.

The personality they have, their proclivities to behave in a certain way, their usual disposition, and of course, how they view the world.

This choice of lifestyle may be conscious, that is, the person forethought a logical reason to choose that lifestyle. Or, the choice may be unconscious, that is, the person took on the lifestyle unknowingly (the authors say that this usually happens around the age of ten).

They give the example of a man who gets angry when a waiter spills coffee over his new coat, this man might believe that the anger was a spur of the moment emotion that they had no control over. You too may agree with this “reasonable” behaviour given the circumstances. But consider that the man also had the options to behave in a calm but firm manner, demanding compensation from the restaurant’s management. Why did he not choose that option?

Or consider another example the authors give: a mother is shouting angrily at her daughter when the phone rings. As she picks up the phone the mother’s voice becomes calm and composed, and she greets the caller pleasantly. What was the reason that her anger did not carry over to the telephonic conversation?

The author’s surmise that the anger was not a spontaneous emotion, even though it may feel that way to us, but rather it was a tool that the persons were using to achieve a goal.

Perhaps the man wanted to show the rest of the customers in the restaurant that he was not to be messed with. Perhaps the mother wanted to make her daughter comply with her instructions. Both subconsciously thought that anger as an emotion would help them achieve the goals they wanted to.

Note that Adlerian psychology does not deny emotions, it does not say that all emotions are a ruse. Just like trauma it acknowledges that people feel real emotions, but they aren’t necessarily slaves to them.

The Socratic Argument states that: No one desires evil for its own sake, yet there is evil in the world. People always act in ways they believe will bring them good or benefit — even if the action is destructive or mistaken in reality.

That is, no one sets out to do evil, no one wakes up in the morning with a genuine desire to kill millions of people just for the fun of it – they want to do all that because they believe that the act will ultimately somehow be beneficial for their world.

Even Hitler believed that exterminating Jews was an act of good. “To the perpetrator, [evil] is something for which there is a justification, and which can be restated as an accomplishment of ‘good’.”

Applying the Socratic Argument to the concept of lifestyle, we can argue that people choose a certain lifestyle because they have calculated that the particular lifestyle is ultimately “good” even if it may make them miserable. In other words: people choose to be unhappy.

Unhappiness is not something imposed on you — it’s the byproduct of the lifestyle and goals you’ve chosen. You calculated that sulking, complaining, blaming, or victimhood would serve you — perhaps by protecting you, perhaps by excusing you from risk, perhaps by getting you attention.

You are unhappy because, on some level, you believe unhappiness “works”.

Let’s take an extreme example to even more clearly demonstrate what Adler is saying, and where his ideas become controversial and brutal: say a person decides to commit suicide and cuts herself. Adler wouldn’t say the act is “good” in any cosmic or moral sense — he’d say the person believes (at some level) that the act will bring a form of relief, resolution, or victory that they cannot get in life. Adler’s point isn’t that these beliefs are objectively correct — in fact they’re often tragically mistaken — but that even in the most self-destructive act, the person is still aiming at something they consider “good” or beneficial, even if it’s just the cessation of suffering or the final reclaiming of agency. A few possibilities Adler would point to:

• Escape from unbearable tension or shame: The person sees death as the only way to stop an intolerable inner state. To them, it’s a form of peace.
• A final assertion of control: Life feels out of control; death is the one thing they can still decide for themselves. So suicide appears as a way to “win” against chaos.
• Punishment or communication: Some suicides have a hidden message: “See what you made me do” or “Now you’ll understand how much I was hurting.” This can be an unconscious attempt to force recognition, revenge, or remorse from others.
• Illusion of transcendence: The person may fantasise that death will free them from their identity, pain, or body — that in dying they’ll “become” something purer or better.

Or, let’s take another example of a man in his early sixties. He has a pessimistic and cynical view of the world. Even when he sees someone doing good for another, he feels there will be an ulterior motive. He has a hard time believing that even the people closest to him – his own family – could work for him out of love, and suspects they really want to be included in his will. As a result of this worldview, this man has become bitter and suspicious in his interactions, he finds it hard to be around people (and people find it hard to be around him) and often spends time alone, listening to the 24×7 news cycle which further stoke his suspicions and negative attitude towards the world. Adler would repeat that even here, this man has chosen – consciously or unconsciously – that having a cynical and pessimistic world view is “good” for him.

• By believing that “everyone has an ulterior motive,” he shields himself from the pain of betrayal, disappointment, or dependence. It spares him the vulnerability of love and the responsibility of community.
• From the outside, it looks like misery and isolation. From the inside, it feels like self-protection, a way to “win” against a threatening, unreliable world.
• During cases when the person does get betrayed or left alone at parties – his suspicions are confirmed – he thinks: “I knew it, they just wanted to be with me for my money. See how they scampered when I made it clear I would give them nothing.”.

Of course he doesn’t realise that his cynical nature might have been the very reason he faced betrayal. A self-fulfilling prophecy. That is why Adler says: “We are not determined by our experiences, but the meaning we give them is self-determining.”.

The reason people don’t change even when they say they want to is because with experience in living a certain way, one gains familiarity and comfort with it, they’re able to live automatically and the responses to life experiences come without effort.

The author’s give the example of a old family car: it rattles quite a lot, and you are sure one wheel is a little loose, but you know it well and have become adept at working around its shortcomings.

The old rattling family car might be unsafe, uncomfortable, and embarrassing to drive — but you know every quirk of it. You know when it will stall, what angle to jiggle the key, how to keep it alive for one more trip.

A different lifestyle (or a brand-new car,) by contrast, requires you to learn all over again, to accept uncertainty, and to risk the unfamiliar. How should you behave differently when a familiar situation presents itself? How should you react when a person snubs you? Human beings are wired to prefer the certainty of misery over the uncertainty of freedom. That’s why Adler insists: the issue is not whether you can change, it’s whether you can risk the discomfort of changing.

To change requires courage.

Thus, at its core, Adlerian psychology is a psychology of courage.

Whatever you constantly find yourself wishing for, you’re lacking the courage to fully pursue it.

If you want something and don’t have it, it’s not because of fate, parents, trauma, or society. It’s because you lack the courage to pursue it.

Which means: the path forward is not waiting for the world to change or for someone else to fix you. It is cultivating courage — the willingness to risk rejection, discomfort, failure, and uncertainty in order to live differently.

This makes Adler’s view quite an empowering yet at the same time unforgiving philosophy.

Unforgiving, because it strips away the comforting shield of victimhood.

You can no longer say “I can’t” only “I won’t”. It is not for the meek to face life in its fullness.

Life in its fullness means admitting you’ve chosen your lifestyle, your excuses, your victimhood – and that there is nothing really preventing you from choosing a new lifestyle.

The danger is that you can live your entire life in this suspended state—endlessly rehearsing possibilities, but never choosing. This is not harmless daydreaming; Adler calls it cowardice.

Why? Because to live in “if only” is to avoid the discomfort and risk of actual change. It’s safer to imagine what could be than to confront what is—your fear, your laziness, your responsibility. You construct a fantasy future where everything is aligned, while avoiding the hard truth that today, right now, you could take a step if you dared.

The bitter irony is that living in “if only” looks like hope but produces paralysis. You never fail, but you never grow. You never risk humiliation, but you also never taste glory. Adler’s philosophy is uncompromising here: the moment you catch yourself saying “If only I could…”, you should hear it for what it is—not possibility, but avoidance. True freedom lies in acting with the tools and limits you have today. The life you want doesn’t start after “if only.” It starts the moment you stop hiding behind it: “… saying ‘if only I could be like Y’ is an excuse to yourself for not changing.”.

Over years of reflecting, I have come to appreciate the value of movement, or flowing, in life. Just like a river, our lives need to keep flowing to remain healthy.

Flowing means that we must let life move through us by not clinging to parts of it that are clearly the past.

We must learn to let go of old things to be bale to experience new things, and in this flowing there is happiness.

A life where one clings to the past becomes like a choked river whose water quickly becomes stagnant.

We give weight to our problems, indeed, we even recognise they exist when we have someone or something else to compare with. Every emotion of “I’m not enough” (or “I’m better than them”) depends on a mental act of comparison.

When there is no “other” to measure against, the problem dissolves. You don’t feel tall or short unless someone stands beside you; you don’t feel rich or poor until you start looking across the fence.

Thus, most of what we call personal suffering is actually relationally imagined suffering.

What we feel when we feel ourselves “lesser” than someone else are “feelings of inferiority”. Feelings of inferiority arise because of subjective interpretation rather than objective fact – which means that our objective reality does not carry value-judgement, only our subjective reality does.

Naturally, this subjective nature of value means that what and who we choose to compare ourselves with has tremendous impact on our mental health, the power of this fact is either ignored by most or deemed impractical as they feel one must “naturally” compare with people above them on things they have less of, only then will “growth” happen.

And I suppose this stance it is not all bad (“There’s nothing bad about feelings of inferiority themselves.”) — in fact, they are the driving force behind striving and growth, what Adler calls the “Pursuit of Superiority”. “The pursuit of superiority is the mindset of taking a single step forward on one’s own feet, not the mindset of competition …”.

But there are worse ways of remedying one’s feeling of inferiority.

For instance, a person can remedy their feeling of inferiority by competing with and trying to one-up others. This is not the wise way to go about things. As the authors write: “If there is competition at the core of a person’s interpersonal relationships, he will not be able to escape interpersonal relationships or escape misfortune.”. Because where there is competition, there is the duality of victory and defeat, and no one wants to be a loser.

This person, who remedies his feelings of inferiority by competing with the world will see “… everyone in the whole world, as [an] enemy.”. Even further, they will always find something to feel inferior about, and they will “… perceive other people’s happiness as ‘my defeat’ …”.

When a person carries such a mindset into their interpersonal relationships, every interaction they have with others has a potential of becoming a “power struggle”, that is, a situation where one tries to remedy their feeling of inferiority by dominating over someone else. Situations may start out as discussions of politics or policy or some other topic where answers can be nuanced, but with a competitive attitude they can turn into ad hominem attacks.

And once a power struggle has begun, it is hard to end it, because the loser of the struggle would like to exact revenge for the increase in their feelings of inferiority that the other person caused. The authors write, “… once the interpersonal relationship enters the revenge stage, it is almost impossible for either party to find a solution. To prevent this from happening, when one is challenged to a power struggle, one must never allow oneself to be taken in.”.

On a personal note, this is exactly the kind of mindset I had a few years ago and it cost me my peace of mind more times than I can count, it is something that I actively guard against. The guardrail being that one should compete with their self as it was yesterday, and see other people as comrades.

The person may boast about their connections with powerful people. They may purchase overly expensive jewellery/clothing/items (that they sometimes might not even be able to afford) to show their superiority. They may boast about their past achievements.

“It’s because one’s feeling of inferiority is strong that one boasts. One feels the need to flaunt one’s superiority all the more. There’s the fear that if one doesn’t do that, not a single person will accept one ‘the way I am’.”

The person may even make their inferiority a source of superiority by “… bragging about one’s own misfortune.”. Which means that they take their tough experiences not only as excuse to not do anything courageous or uncomfortable, but also use them as power over others — whenever someone tries to guide them or challenges them to do better they may retort “You have no idea what I have been through.”, essentially closing the conversation and telling other’s that they need to be handled with kid-gloves all the time. “By declaring how unfortunate they are and how much they have suffered, they are trying to worry the people around them … and to restrict their speech and behaviour, and control them.”.

These are a few of the many ways a person can hide their inferiority complex behind something called the “superiority complex”.

How you should think:

• “I have the ability”
• “People are my comrades”

How you should behave:

• Be self-reliant (including not blaming what happened in the past for your behaviour now)
• Live in harmony with society

Tasks of work

Shallowest level, easiest to make and break. What a person is expected to do to achieve work results (like a work with others for a project that needs to be delivered).

These are the kinds of interpersonal relationships we see at workplaces, where even if people don’t get along, they can still cooperate with others to get work done.

There is not a lot of emotion involved, and ideally all persons performing the tasks of work should be focused on effectively and efficiently achieving the end outcome – beyond that, however, almost no restrictions apply on what the person does outside their work.

Tasks of Friendship

Intermediate level, harder to make and break. What a person is expected to do to make and maintain close friendships, the kind one can rely on during time of need.

Unlike tasks of work, tasks of friendship do not have an explicit end goal and are performed for the fact of maintaining friendship.

Restrictions increase versus tasks of work, and one’s friends have some impact on the kinds of things a person can do (for example, coworkers don’t care if you drink after work, but your friends do).

Tasks of love

Deepest level, hardest to make and even harder to break.

Divided in two stages: love relationships (lover-lover) and relationships with family (sibling-sibling, parent-child).

The essense is the same as tasks of friendship, but the restrictions are the highest and one’s freedom is curtailed even further (for example, your friends might not care who you sleep with, but your lover will).

Adler would tell you that you should not care about whether or not others recognise you, “Adlerian psychology denies the need to seek recognition from others … people are not living to satisfy your expectations.”.

In short, Adler would advise you to focus on your task and not intrude on the tasks of others.

Confronting your life tasks is your task, but reacting to that is the task of others.

An easy way to know whose task it is:

“Who will receive the end result of the choice that is made?”, and also,

“Who will be investing the most attention if the choice is made?”

In the situation I painted above, when you confront your life tasks, it is you who will receive the result of your choice (in terms of changed thinking and behaviour).

And when other’s recognise the change in you, they will receive the result of their choice (in terms of how they perceive you).

But if you expect them to recognise the change in you, you are intruding on their task.

Adler’s framework rests on the idea: the only thing within your control is your own thinking and behaviour. Everything else — including whether others notice, approve, or reciprocate — belongs to their side of the boundary. That is their task, and trying to manage it only breeds resentment or dependence. The moment you start expecting acknowledgment, you’ve shifted your orientation from task to reward.

Adler saw this as a hidden form of control — a way of saying, “I’ll change, but only if you confirm I’ve changed.”. That’s still externally anchored.

Real freedom comes when you stop negotiating your effort for external validation.

This does not mean that the parent be apathetic to the child, Adler would say that they should guide the child appropriately, explaining the reasoning behind why they should study, as well as let them know that should they face any difficulty they can ask for help – but they should not use the reward and punishment approach to get the child to study by force. The moment the parent uses threats or rewards to compel studying, they have crossed the boundary into the child’s task.

Nor should the parents intervene and do their child’s homework for them, they are “… taking the child’s task away … the child will cease to learn anything, and will lose the courage to face [their] life tasks.”.

Conversely, for the child who has decided that not studying is “good”, it should also not matter to them how sad their refusal to study makes their parent.

Because feeling sad or indifferent or happy at the child’s behaviour is the parent’s task, not the child’s. If the child studies so that it makes her parent happy then she is intruding in her parent’s task.

But if she studies because, as of the information available to her, it is “better” than not studying – now she is focusing on her task.

Notice what Adler (via the authors) has said till now: do not let your past become an excuse for your present, consider others as comrades but do not seek their recognition, care for your children but do not force them to do anything.

If you were to give such advice to the so called “rational man” he’d call you crazy: “Consider others as my friends, but do not think about how they think about me. Guide my child, but do not scold her when she does not study. Are you crazy? How is that even possible? If you care for someone – friend, child or lover – you care about how they behave. What’s all this about ‘how they behave is their task’?!”

This person does not seek recognition from others yet considers all of them comrades. They do the work yet do not crave reward (likes). They leave the job of liking or disliking them on those whose task it is: the rest of the world.

Which means they are totally aware of, and okay with, the fact that there will always be people who will dislike them.

In other words, they have the courage to be disliked.

“Disliked” not in the sense that they go out and deliberately do bad things, but rather that in their pursuit of “right” and “good”, they are not afraid if what they do makes them unpopular.

According to Adler, why do we separate tasks?

So that we can focus on our life tasks (work, friendship, and love).

What happens when we focus on our life tasks, and discard the tasks of others

We think of others as our comrades.

How does this happen?

When tasks are not separated, relationships become tangled in covert control.

The parent who insists their child must study isn’t simply “caring”; they’re attaching their self-worth to the child’s obedience and grades. The friend who demands constant reassurance isn’t relating; they’re outsourcing their sense of security. The partner who measures love in compliance isn’t loving; they’re managing.

When we blur boundaries like this, our relationships become contracts of mutual manipulation — “I’ll feel okay if you act this way.”. This is not community; it’s hidden control and guilt.

When you separate tasks, you stop trying to control how others think, feel, or behave.

And when you stop controlling, the space between two people becomes safe.

In that safety — that non-coercive space — you begin to see others not as threats or tools for your self-esteem, but as fellow travellers – comrades – equal beings facing their own life tasks, just as you are.

It is the opposite of what you may think separating tasks would do, i.e. drive people into isolation.

“Separation of tasks” sounds emotionally cold, but in Adler’s model, it’s the opposite of indifference; it’s the precondition for genuine connection.

Consider this: when you consider yourself as part of a smaller community like a company, you can relate to someone else as an equal (both of you are company employees). But there are also “higher” communities in the company that you are not part of, such as the company’s leadership team – both you and the CEO are equals as company employees, but not equal as company leadership. The same “higher/lower” division exists in all other communities from families to countries. But when it comes to the “community of existence” there cannot be a higher or a lower, since there are no gradations to existence, and all members are equal.

Why is this, being “equal”, so important, and what’s wrong about having a stack ranking of communities? It is because unless one considers others their equal, they cannot be free. At this stage we should talk about vertical and horizontal relationships.

When a father tells his daughter, “You did very well! Good job!”, he is essentially creating a vertical relationship with her – by judging her performance he is signalling to her that he is the one who can decide whether the performance was good or bad, and thus is the superior one.

Repeated enough times, his daughter may lose her courage to be disliked, work only for the appreciation of her father, and essentially lose her freedom. The same happens in any case where a person praises or condemns another. Therefore, according to Adler, one must not praise or rebuke – this goes back to the same dislike Adler had for education by reward and punishment.

And when a person considers the other their equal in a relationship, then they will not praise or rebuke the other as in a vertical relationship, but instead treat them with gratitude or invite responsibility.

As I wrote previously, this is known as “encouragement” in Adlerian psychology. If your partner helps you with house chores, do you say “good job!”? Likely not, and such a statement might even be seen as being talked down to by your partner.

Instead, what you likely do (should) say is: thank you. Thanking someone is done at the level of equals, it is an expression of gratitude from one to the other for their contribution. Encouragement one to feel that they are a contributing member of their community.

Although, even the words “thank you” can turn vertical when they carries judgment or subtle manipulation. Tone, not wording, determines whether your thank you frees or binds.

Vertical “thank you” (control disguised as kindness): Here, the speaker evaluates from above — approval is conditional. The other learns to perform for praise.

• “Thank you, you really impressed me today.”
• “Thanks, I didn’t expect you to handle it so well.”

Horizontal “thank you” (connection without hierarchy): Here, gratitude simply recognises shared effort and agency — no judgment, no ranking.

• “Thank you — your clarity helped the team move forward.”
• “I appreciate how you followed through; it made things smoother for everyone.”

Self-acceptance

Simply put, this is honestly and non-judgementally acknowledging your current situation. Without feeling guilty, or sad, or regretful, or proud – basically without any emotion – stating the state of affairs as they are, not how they should be.

Separation of tasks is part of self-acceptance because it is about accepting the things that are in your control and things that are outside your control. The authors write: “Accept what is irreplaceable. Accept ‘this me’ just as it is. And have the courage to change what one can change. That is self-acceptance.” – this is very much the serenity prayer.

Confidence in others

Simply put, this is believing in the goodness of others without any pre-conditions, even if they take advantage of you. Why?

First, because to not have confidence in others would mean that you doubt them; “Do you think one would be able to build some kind of positive relationship from that point? … if you are afraid to have confidence in others, in the long run, you will not be able to build deep relationships with anyone.”

And second, because taking advantage of you is not your task, it is the other person’s – even if you are super careful, it does not guarantee you will not be taken advantage of, and if you have confidence that does not automatically mean you will be taken for a ride every time. If you decide to believe in another person based on the condition that they must not take advantage of you, you are intervening into their task and have not properly accepted yourself (from the previous point).

Contribution to others

Self-acceptance and confidence in others naturally lead to feeling that others are one’s comrades. But to get the community feeling, one needs the final ingredient of contribution to others. Simply put, this is about believing that whatever effort you are making will benefit the members of your community. And of course, if one considers others as their comrades, it will be only natural for them to work towards their comrades’ benefit.

It should not matter to you what your community members think of your contribution, because that is not your task. All you need is the “… subjective sense that ‘I am of use of someone’, or in other words, a feeling of contribution.”.

When one feels they are contributing to others, they feel innate worth, in fact, contribution to others is Adler’s “guiding star” – “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 … Whether you’re disliked or not, you pay it no mind and live free.”.