Find the courage to own what’s yours, let go of what isn’t, and live now with others.

I’m a proud and a embarrassed to admit that I just re-read this book.

The irony is telling and darkly amusing: I first read The Courage to Be Disliked in February 2022 but couldn’t bring myself to publish a note for it. I lacked the courage to let you know I read a book about finding courage.

Someone I admire recently shared how life-changing this book was for them, which inspired me to read it again.

I happened to change e-readers between readings and it was interesting to see how my highlights differed. There were a lot of similarities, but with this second reading my highlights faintly moved from the trouble of how things are to what I could think or do. In other words, less “that nicely captures my conundrum” and more “this is worth more thought or action.” Seems positive!

The format and translation was just as distracting this time, but I was startled to realize how much I really absorbed two years ago. Some of the concepts of Adlerian pyschology apparently stuck with me and resurfaced in other things I read, watched, and even wrote.

That all problems are interpersonal problems, and we’re more alike than we’re not.

That freedom is taking responsibility for what we can change and letting go of what we can’t.

That happiness is ultimately about self-love and a sense of communal belonging that comes from active commitment.

That now is the only reality we exist in, and our ideas about the past and future often let us squirm away from being present.

Adlerian psychology is a psychology of courage. Your unhappiness cannot be blamed on your past or your environment. And it isn’t that you lack competence. You just lack courage. One might say you are lacking in the courage to be happy.

There’s a lot more to it than courage; it’s an appeal to taking complete responsibility for your life, your decisions, and not meddling with those of others. (Which, despite how that sounds, is not easy or solitary work.)

We humans are not so fragile as to simply be at the mercy of etiological (cause-and-effect) traumas. From the standpoint of teleology, we choose our lives and our lifestyles ourselves. We have the power to do that.

The format of a youth questioning a philosopher was helpful for me because I learn best pushing against new ideas until I can understand them. The youth even describes my posture toward arguing:

I realized a little while ago that maybe I don’t just want to take apart your argument—I want you to take apart mine, too.

Choosing highlights to share was hard because I have so many of them. But I could probably stand to tattoo this to my face so I never stop reading it in the mirror:

One must not get too serious. Please do not confuse being earnest with being too serious.

Highly recommended.