Finishing the following chapters 2 and 3 of the book ”The courage to be disliked”, I have something to share with you. Connected to the first part, the content is also between the dialogue of the youth and the philosopher, the youth still can not accept the concept of what the philosopher said about trauma and teleology theory. Thus, the youth came to meet the philosopher again to argue for his stand of point.
In the beginning of their communication, the youth refute the teleology which is the study of purpose by asking what is the purpose of not liking ourselves, and he thinks there are no strong points about himself. Knowing the youth’s question, the philosopher said that not liking himself is a virtue to the youth, and he sees no strong point is the way to achieve the goal of not liking himself. The thought beneath it is that people tend to escape the truth that the disadvantage of you or the thing you don’t like of yourself is created by you because these are beneficial to you, and thus creating an image that if I did not have these weaknesses, I could achieve the things I wanted. Keep going on, the philosopher introduced the concept of “encouragement” in Adlerian psychology, which is focused on how to accept “yourself now”, and pointed out the youth’s fear of being refused by people and further got into the idea that all problems are interpersonal problems. In order to describe this idea more clearly, the philosopher mentioned another two nouns “inferiority” and “inferiority complex”, which have different meanings but are usually misapplied by people. Feeling of inferiority is a term that has to do with one’s value judgement of oneself, and the reason for it is that humans have the instinct to pursue superiority, and the inferiority complex is that people use the feeling of inferiority as a kind of excuse. Based on the Adlerian psychology, the inferiority is all out of subjective explanation not a comparison with others, and elicit the life is not a competition. Besides, Adlerian psychology denies the need to seek recognition from others, and the interpersonal relationship can be simple by separation of tasks and discarding others tasks.
Overwhelmed with all the new viewpoints of Adlerian psychology, I did every effort to comprehend and accept these ideas which totally turned my thoughts, but I still found it difficult to do in some parts . First of all, the teleology theory can tell we sometime fall into a situation that we create a excuse to achieve the purpose to dislike ourselves, but we could do nothing to deal with it even we understand the reason. I believe it is not easy to transform the thinking of oneself in these few words, and as what was mentioned in this book, you are the only one who can change yourself. For those who are not willing to take action to make changes, or in other word, not having the courage, all of these are out of fantasy. Additionally, I understand that writing the log, how I feel about this book, is the most convincing provement that I do not have the encouragement to step forward, but no change in the feelings that I hate myself. Secondly, I have the question of how we balance fulfilling life tasks well between keeping our world simple by discarding others tasks. What’s more, I found it difficult to practice because we can not ask others to do so as we finally achieve how to discard others tasks, but our life tasks are connected to others. It comes to me as a classical example in modern society, emotional blackmail. Finally, the reel freedom is an attitude to push yourself from below and freedom is being disliked by other people is much easier for me to accept but I think it takes time not only to practice having the courage to enjoy the freedom. It is really hard and tough, sometimes it reveals all the recognition in your mind but you do admit that is right.
I knew this book when a Japanese YouTuber called Pinkid giving this book to his sister, who was young and helping her brother to film videos. As you mentioned, all people's problems are interpersonal problems, I quite agree with it. People often want be loved by everyone because they are afraid of alone. We always spend too much effort to make friends rather than enemies, however, it is tired. Someone used to say: 朋友在精不在多, it's very simple, but few people can do it.
ReplyDeleteI think this is an intriguing and relatable topic for people all over the world. Before having the courage to be disliked, one needs to have self-acceptance. Before accepting and embracing all our strengths and weaknesses, we must first know ourselves. From knowing ourselves, self-acceptance, to the courage to be disliked needs time and process because everything is easier said than done. Thank you so much for the reminder. It's such a thought-provoking log!
ReplyDeleteHello! Jan,
ReplyDeleteFirst of all, thank you for reading this book, writing this log, it let me now have a chance sharing my inner thoughts for other people.
“Not like yourself is a virtue for youths”, I totally agree with that, I don’t like myself at all, there are remain many disadvantages of me, those feelings are created by me; however, rather than escaping from the truths, I tend to embrace them directly. Because I consider it would be better that my advantages or disadvantages were by judged by myself instead of others’ thinking.
Don’t hate yourself, although I also sometimes hate myself, it’s not very convincing for me to encourage you; however, I hope I can at least feel the same feelings as yours and to share my thoughts with you. Accepting yourself, is not compromising to the disadvantages, instead, is to embrace them and to make changes at your best, that is, some of them are unchangeable, you don’t have to change them to be liked.
It’s truly difficult to like myself or yourself, you are not alone, I’ve been training my thinking toward the courage to be disliked, the encouragement of moving forward cannot be given by others, you must find it in somewhere some time. We both are practicing, practicing how to enjoy those freedom. It’s hard but it’s the essential road I must take, I believed you must understand what’s my feelings. Hoping my words can at least give you better thoughts on yourself, and just like what others always said: you must love yourself before you want to let others love you.
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ReplyDeleteThe Courage to Be Disliked is a bit different from Adlerian psychology. If you are interested in Adlerian psychology, I recommend you read What Life Should Mean to You, one of Alfred Adler’s works, which is talking about low self-esteem can be a positive power to help us chase better self rather than a negative one. You will be impressed by Alfred Adler’s statement, which is somehow unreasonable and a little arbitrary.
ReplyDeleteLife tasks are always connected to others. However, once you get used to it and have more and more experience of making decisions between “self and others”, you will find a balance that is suitable to you, and it is changing as getting older.