The Courage to Be Disliked

The trouble it addresses

The Courage to Be Disliked was published in Japan in 2013 and became a phenomenon there and in South Korea, selling millions of copies before it was translated into English in 2017. It was written by Ichiro Kishimi, a philosopher and leading Japanese interpreter of the psychologist Alfred Adler, together with the writer Fumitake Koga. It takes the form of a dialogue over five nights between a philosopher and an angry young man who has come to refute him.

The young man’s trouble is a common one. He is unhappy, dislikes himself, and believes his character was fixed by his upbringing. He cannot change, he says, because of what happened to him. The philosopher’s claim, which the youth finds outrageous, is that people can change at any moment, that happiness is available to everyone, and that what stands in the way is not the past but a lack of courage.

The ideas come from Adler (1870–1937), a Viennese physician who was an early member of Sigmund Freud’s circle and broke with him in 1911 to found what he called individual psychology. Adler is less famous today than Freud or Jung, but concepts he introduced, such as the inferiority complex, became part of ordinary language.

The exercises

Look for the goal, not the cause. The first and most startling idea is Adler’s teleology. Freud explained behaviour by past causes, such as trauma. Adler explained it by present purposes. In the book’s example, a person who stays at home because of anxiety is not prevented by anxiety; they create the anxiety because they have already chosen not to go out, perhaps to avoid the risk of rejection. The exercise is uncomfortable: when you notice yourself saying “I can’t because…”, ask what the “because” protects you from.

Accept that all problems are interpersonal. The philosopher claims that all of a person’s problems are, at root, problems of relationships. Even feelings of inferiority arise only in comparison with others. Seeing problems this way moves attention from fixed traits to relationships that can be changed.

Separate tasks. The book’s most practical idea is the separation of tasks. For any situation, ask whose task it is: who will ultimately bear the consequences of the choice. If it is someone else’s task, such as whether a child studies, or what a colleague thinks of you, do not intervene in it, and do not let others intervene in yours. One can offer help, but one cannot take over another person’s task. The book’s image, borrowed from a proverb, is that you can lead a horse to water but cannot make it drink.

Stop seeking recognition. Much unhappiness, the philosopher argues, comes from living to meet others’ expectations. A person who needs approval will always be controlled by those who give or withhold it. Freedom means accepting that some people will dislike you, which is the courage of the title.

Build horizontal relationships. Adler distrusted both praise and rebuke, because both assume a vertical relationship in which one person judges another from above. He preferred encouragement, expressed through gratitude and respect between equals. The exercise is to replace “well done” with “thank you”, and to notice how often one places oneself above or below others.

Live in the present. The final night argues that life is not a line toward a destination but a series of moments, like a dance in which each step is complete in itself. A person who lives for a future goal treats the present as a mere means. The philosopher urges the youth to live “here and now” with full seriousness.

The picture of a life behind them

At the centre of Adler’s picture is community feeling, a sense of belonging to and caring for others, extending in principle to all humanity. Happiness, in his view, comes from contribution, from feeling useful to others. Self-acceptance, confidence in others and contribution form a cycle. A person who accepts themselves can trust others; trusting others, they can contribute; contributing, they come to feel that they have worth.

The book places this view within a dialogue that echoes the Socratic method, which suits it: Kishimi trained in ancient Greek philosophy before he turned to Adler. The philosopher never simply lectures. He lets the youth object, gets angry with him, and finally wins him over not through argument alone but through the youth’s own recognition of himself.

Adler’s teleology is a strong claim, and the book presents it in a particularly uncompromising form. Psychologists of other schools give more weight to the lasting effects of trauma and circumstance, and readers dealing with serious mental illness should read the book alongside proper care. The book’s core point, that the meaning we give to the past is something we can revise, is close to ideas at the centre of cognitive therapy and of Viktor Frankl’s logotherapy.

Carrying it into ordinary work

The separation of tasks is directly useful at work. Many conflicts arise from people taking on tasks that are not theirs, such as managers who own their reports’ choices, or employees who take responsibility for their boss’s mood. Asking “whose task is this?” clarifies what one can control and where one must let go.

The warning against praise and rebuke is a challenge to management habits. Expressing gratitude and treating people as equals, rather than handing out grades, changes the tone of a team. And the courage to be disliked is part of leadership. A manager who needs to be liked by everyone will avoid hard decisions. Accepting that some people will be unhappy with a fair choice is a condition of making it.