For some people, events in our past determines a failed life. But for others, the same even can be the seed of success. It is the perceptive filter that leads to two entirely different destinations. 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. But do you have the courage to change?

The Courage to be Disliked shows you how to unlock the power within yourself to become your best and truest self, change your future and find lasting happiness. This is the most recommended book we’ve had from the listeners, so about time we got to it! And it didn’t disappoint.

Trauma and Change

Imagine someone who shuts himself in his room for years. He wishes to go out and wants to have a job. So he wants to change the way he is. He is a very serious person who could be great use to society. Except he’s afraid to leave his room. If he takes a single step outside, he suffers palpitations in his arms and legs shake. He wants to change, but can’t. Is she proof that awful things determine what happens?

According to Adlerian Psychology, your friend had the goal of not going out beforehand, and he’s been manufacturing a state of anxiety and fear as means to achieve the goal. In Adlerian psychology this is called ‘teleology’. He is not pretending. The anxiety and fear is very real. On occasion, he might suffer migraines and stomach cramps. However, these too are symptoms that he has created in achieving the goal of not going out/

AETIOLOGY = study of causation / cause-and-effect
TELEOLOGY = study of the purpose of a given phenomena, not it’s cause

In Adlerian psychology, trauma is definitively denied. This is a very new and revolutionary point. Certainly Freud’s idea is interesting. That a persons traumas cause present unhappiness. When we treat a person’s life as a vast narrative, there is easily understandable causality and sense of dramatic development that creates strong impressions that are extremely attractive. But Adler, in denial of trauma 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.

Think about our friend who locked herself into her room and actually thinks “I can’t fit into society because I was abused by my parents, it’s still because it is his goal to think that way”. Think about it from the parent’s view. How would you feel if your child were shut up in a room?

You’d be pretty worried of course. You want her to go out and return to society. Want her to be well and wonder if you’d raised him properly. You’d try in every way to make him come back to normal existence

That is where the problem is. If she stays in my room all the time, without ever getting out, my parents will worry. I can get all of my parent’s attention focused on her. They’ll be extremely careful around her and handle me with kids gloves. On the other hand, if I take one step outside, she’ll just become part of a faceless mass who no one pays attention to. I’ll be surrounded by people I don’t know and just end up, less than average and no one will take special care of me. Such stories about reclusive people are not uncommon.

Take for example, Francis Ngannou, my (Jonesy’s) favourite UFC fighter. He was born in Cameroon to a family in the poorest rung of the world’s population. One day, he worked hard and ‘made it’ by his country’s standards. He bought a moto-scooter, with the ability to taxi people around and make a little bit of coin. This is considered the pre-determined lid for most people in his position. If your born with his cards, then your limit is predetermined from the AETIOLOGY perspective. However, Francis took purpose from his past to invent a different future. On a 13 month journey that was similar in epicness to Vin Diesel in Fast and the Furious 13, he went North in search of his dream. After selling everything he owned for the bus trip, jumping barbed wire fences to enter new countries, long journeys through the desert on the brink of death he made it to France to begin working on his dream. And after 10 years, Francis is fighting for the UFC Heavy Weight Championship (at the time of writing).

If everything was predetermined, then this story would be possible. We would be destined to end up at places that are defined by past actions.We can make of our past whatever suits our purposes. We determine our own lives according to the meaning we give to those past experiences. Your life is not something that someone gives you. But something you choose yourself and you are the one who decides how you life

Courage to Change

The author once had a female student who came by. Her concern was her fear of blushing. She’d always turn red when she went into public. She also said that there was a man she wanted. She secretly had feelings for him but wasn’t ready to divulge them. Once her fear was cured, she’d confess her desire for him.

What do you think was the scariest thing for her? That she wanted to avoid the most? That he would reject her of course. As long as she has a fear of blushing, she can go on thinking, “I can’t be with him because I have a fear of blushing”. It could end without her ever working of the courage to confess feelings to him. She landed on if only, X, I could Y.

He told her “fear of blushing is easy to cure’. But if the psychologist cured it, you’d want the fear back. She didn’t have confidence in herself. She was afraid that things being what they were, he’d reject her. If that happened, she’d lose even more confidence. That’s why she created the symptom of the fear of blushing.

Who was afraid of being rejected by the man, you are afraid of being negated by other people. You’re afraid of being refused and sustaining deep mental wounds. You think that instead of getting tangled up in such situations, you’d be better to have no relations in the first place. Your goal is to not get hurt in your relationships with other people. Now, how can that goal be realised?

You might describe yourself as an unhappy person. You say you want to change right at this minute. You even claim that you want to be reborn into someone else. After all that, why are you still unable to change? It’s because you are making the persistent decision not to change your lifestyle.

What your path is, is different to others.

In general, all interpersonal relationship troubles are caused by intruding on other people’s tasks. Or having one’s own tasks intruded on. Carrying out the separation of tasks is enough to changes one’s interpersonal relationships dramatically

There is a simple way to tell whose task it is. Think, who ultimately is going to receive the end result brought about by the choice that is made?

When the child has made the choice of not studying, ultimately the end result of that decision – not being able to keep up in class or to get into the preferred school – does not have to be received by the parents. Clearly, it is the child who has to receive it. In other words, studying is the child’s task.

Its true that one often hears parents today using the phrase “it’s for your own good”. But they are clearly doing so in order to fulfil their own goals. Which could be their appearance in the eyes of society. Their need to put on airs, or their desire for control. In other words it isn’t ‘for your own good’ but for the parents and it is because the child senses the deception he rebels

Of course one has to pay attention. It doesn’t recommend the non interference approach. Non interference is the attitude of not knowing and not being interested in knowing what the child is doing. Instead it is by knowing what the child is doing that one protects him. If it’s studying , one tells the child that this is his task and lets him know that one is ready to assist whenever he has the urge to study but one mustn’t intrude on the child’s task. When no requests are being made, it does not do to meddle in things

One should give all the assistance one possibly can. But beyond that – don’t intrude; “you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink”.

Intervening in another’s tasks and taking them on, turns one’s life into something heavy and full of hardship. If you are leading a life of worry and suffering – which stems from interpersonal relationships. First learn the boundary ‘from here on, that is not my task’ and discard other people’s tasks. That is the first step towards lightening the load and making life simpler.

Courage to be Disliked

There is no person who wishes to be disliked. But look at it this way. What should one do to not be disliked by anyone? There is only one answer: to consistently gauge other’s feelings while swearing loyalty to all of them. If there are 10 people, you need to swear loyalty to all of them. When one does that, for the time being , you’ll succeed in not being disliked. But at this point, there is a great contradiction looming. One swears loyalty to all ten. This is like the politician who has fallen into populism and begun to make impossible promises and accept responsibilities beyond him. He will lose people’s trust and turn his own life into one of greater suffering. And of course, the stress of continual lying has all kinds of consequences.

If one is entrusting one’s own life to others, that is the way of living in which one is lying to oneself. And continuing that lying to include the people around one.

Separating one’s tasks is not an egocentric thing. Intervening in other people’s tasks is essentially an egocentric way of thinking

Freedom: Is being disliked by other people. It is proof that you are exercising your freedom and living in freedom and a sign that you are living in accordance with your own principles. It is certainly distressful to be disliked. There is a cost when you exercise one’s freedom and the cost of freedom in interpersonal relationships is that one is disliked by other people.

When you have gained that courage, your interpersonal relationships will all at once change into things of lightness.