book-Summary - The Courage To Be Disliked

• Author: Ichiro Kishimi, Fumitake Koga

• GoodReads: The Courage to Be Disliked - How to Free Yourself, Change your Life and Achieve Real Happiness

• Author believes that a person can change at anytime and it is easy to change as well. A person is not changing because he/she internally does not want to change or they lack the courage to face the events which will occur due to the change. They might be afraid of the unknowns - so they are lacking the courage.
• The past events/experiences does not have any impact on the  current state of a person. Its we who give certain connotation or emotion to an experience. As experience itself does not have any meaning or character to it, like there is no good experience or bad experience, later based on our wishes (or goals) that experience will be turned to good or bad to achieve our goal.
• Society always wants to determine the cause of an effect. If I know the cause, at least we will not repeat the same thing in the future or we take a counter measure which might help in nullify the effect.  Rather author prescribes to look for the purpose.  There are several reasons for it. “Cause” has happened in the past, so we cannot modify it. Most of the time we just find the cause and blame it on the past/cause and we are more than happy to drop that there only as we found a way to blame on something (easy escape). We justify for not taking any action saying “this has happened to me in the past so I cannot go and undo it, so I cannot change it”.  Also what looks like a cause now  is actually part of a short term goal in the past. The effect is not something that is happening involuntarily due to past events rather effect was a goal and we are driving towards it. To achieve that short term goal, we are doing a task in a certain way which will lead to that goal. 
• The first step in finding the courage for the change is accepting yourself - what we are now as it is. We should accept our short comings, our lacking in things, its okay to miss something, nobody is perfect.
• In any interpersonal relationship, both parties will get hurt, I will be hurting others and other person will be hurting me at one point or another. There is no escaping from it.
• So all problems which comes from the interpersonal relationship can be avoided if we live alone - there is no comparison. Imagine that you are all alone in this universe, then there is no comparison or insecurities, probably you are content with what you are or there might be desire to do something all for yourself. You do not want to show off to others, rather something you liked, so you will do it and you will be happy that you are able to do it. Just because you are alone does not mean there will not be any desire, there will be desire for personal improvements. So the argument that without comparison you will not improve is wrong.   Now the other argument is,  would not we feel lonely? Actually no, loneliness comes when you know there are people somewhere and you are not part of that group.
• When we value one of our attribute and judge that it is of not much value or has less value, it is called the “feeling of inferiority”. Example height - I might be short when compared to average height of  people. Now the height measurement or attribute itself is a fact but providing the value to that is very subjective. Example in a social status generally people of height is associated with power or strength, so people having average or above height are preferred in the social circles or relationships. So anyone with smaller height will feel inferior about their height due to being left out. Now this is subjective because if you see in another way having smaller height is an advantage in the social circle - other people will be more relaxed when interacting with shorter people when compared with other people who are treated as threat.  So “feeling of inferior” is very subjective and is based on the social group we are in and comparing among the group members.
• If we get the feeling of inferior as part of improving ourselves, that is, you are in the pursuit of trying to be superior of yourself that is a natural desire. But if we are trying to be superior when compared to others, than it is wrong.  If we use the feeling of inferior as a reason to not improve yourself then that is bad or that is called inferiority complex , for example - I cannot do it because I am bad at this; I can never be able to achieve that because I am not good in ,so and so.
• You will have feeling of inferior, and to overcome that, you will strive to grow. That is the natural way of growth. But some do not do this, rather they cannot tolerate their feeling of inferior, so they try to mask this inferiority by using easy escape route - by acting that they are already superior or they act as if they have overcome their inferiority. This is called superiority complex.  Example - One lets other know that he knows a bigger personality or in good terms with a powerful personality so that others provide the same status to them as provided to powerful personality.  Even people who keep on repeating their past successes are also exhibiting superiority complex, they are expecting people to give special status because they did something great in past. There is another version were they gloat their misfortune and try to gain special status based on their misfortune - “You do not understand how I feel”.
• Competition is bad. It makes everything to be looked in terms of binaries - win or loose, success or failure. Person involved are ranked as winner or looser, colleagues who are working with you are friends and who are not working with you are enemies. At the end everyone around is enemy. So, basically everyone who are working to get success in the eyes of society will all turn up into lot less happier. As they are surrounded with enemies and will end up with lot of interpersonal relationship issues. Once you remove this competition mindset, you will see all the people surrounding you are friends and you will be able to truly enjoy their success.
• Anger is just a tool to make other person to submit to your view. This is not at all a good tool. It might appear to be very effective in short term but it has negative effects  in long term. Always talk, explain things and do not submit to anger.
• Do not get into power struggle. Example discussion between two people over politics turns into a heated discussion. Now one of the person will start levelling personal charges on the other person. Basically person is challenging the other person for a power struggle and believes that he/she can overcome the other person by making other person dishonourable or ashamed. Now if second person retaliates with more personal charges, the person started might either back out or move to more harder charges. Even if they back out, it is for temporary and will plan for the revenge to get back. Most of the time, power struggle happens when the feeling of “I am right” appears. 
• There are 2 objectives which need to guide our behaviour - “To be Self Reliant” and “To live in Harmony with the Society”. To achieve these objectives, we need to have following view - “I have the ability” and “People are my friends”. These will help in achieving life tasks - “tasks of work”, “tasks of love” and “tasks of friendship”. So, any task of interpersonal relationship can be divided among these three life tasks.
  • Tasks Of Work - Here we develop relationship with others for the sake of work, that is to complete a common objective/goal.
  • Tasks of Friends - Here we develop relationship outside of workplace and this relationship should be deep. So, usually it is difficult to initiate. There is no value in having large number of friends and acquaintances because the relationship is not deep. Can you say for instance you loose touch of your friend for years together and one day you meet and you can start conversation as if you had a talk with them just yesterday? That requires a deep friendship.
  • Tasks of Love - Relationship of Parent - Child, Spouses, lovers. This is the most difficult among the 3 tasks. This relationship survives if either of them feel free when with the other. If either of the one tries to control or restrict, this will fall apart. It is not about how passionate the love is rather how much freedom you enjoy with your loved one matters. I guess freedom only comes when we accept each other as is and treat each one of us as equal.
• We need to face all these tasks, no matter how difficult the interpersonal relationship in each of them might be, otherwise we will be failing our objectives of “self reliance” and “to live in harmony with the society”. Escaping any one of them will lead to more issues.
• Any reason we come up in order to avoid these life tasks are life lies. Example Person A and person B are married, and they are living together for some time. All of a sudden after some time Person A starts to feel repulsed from person B. Every action or activity of person B feels irritated to person A. Here at some time after the relationship started, person B put a goal to stop the relationship with person A. So person B is now finding all the reasons to end this relationship. So, person B is running away from life task but blaming it on person A, which is a life lie. Here, its not that person B suddenly turned evil or lost morality rather person B just stopped having courage to continue the relationship.
• We always want to be recognised by the people we love, people we care, people whom we respect. This is the desire for recognition. But we need to understand, we should not have this desire for recognition. This is a dangerous thing. It boils down to “I will only do this work because they will recognise me otherwise I will not do this work” -> Work for the work sake not being done here.
• The reason people develop “desire for recognition” is because of the “reward and punishment” education system. If you do this work, we will reward you or else we will punish you. This is taught to the child from young age and later on child develops the desire for  recognition. So, when you are only working for recognition, you are basically living on others liking or trying to live other peoples life.
• Most of the interpersonal relationship problem happens because someone intruded into others task.  Each task is the responsibility of one person. How can we determine who owns the task - “Who will bear the end result of this task?” That person will be the owner of the task. Example scenario - A child is not studying, here studying in class is the task and it is owned by child and not by the parent. If child does not study, it is going to lag in the class tests and other activities. So end result is affecting child and hence child is the owner. Now parent can hard down on the child to make it study, but this is intruding into the task of child. Generally child might study now but it will not be liking the study and it is going to hate the study part as it grows and also might hate the parent.  Here it does not mean parent will not care about the child’s studies, rather parents will not interfere in child’s studies.  Parent is responsible of the child, so they will check on whats happening with the child, or how they are spending time, they need to know the problems faced by the child. Only thing a parent can do after knowing is to offer assistance and suggestions. It is up to the child to take that assistance and suggestions. Here important point is child should be able to build up enough trust with parent to ask for suggestions, also parent himself is not doing things for child, rather both know each others responsibilities - then they both are doing the separation of tasks.
• The thought that “My child is my life” make a parent to intrude into child’s life and tasks, because of this parent gets the false notion of “I am only doing for the good of my child” . This is the seed of the inter personal relationship problems with the child and parent. Child is an independent individual.
• It is not your task to make others believe you or make others recognise you or make others like you.  Example Parents say they do not approve of  your choice, it is their task to judge but it should not have any affect on you as its not your task. What others think is something you do not have control over and its not your task. “Do your Dharma”
• Any decision you make and act on it, the whole responsibility of that decision is on you. So, you will not take any decision just because some one appealed to you or some reward is tied to the request or emotion is tied to the request, you make a decision based on your understanding and not for the sake of others. We are tuned to rewards and short term gains, if I do this I will be rewarded by this in x period. Reward may be appreciation from the boss, appreciation of parents, appreciation of wife/husband, patching of things temporarily so peace of mind stays temporarily, I will get rid of that guilt, I have payed back the previous help from that person and so on.
• It is a natural feeling that “I need to be liked by all or no one should dislike me” but we should accept that it is also natural that “someone will dislike me or not everyone will be pleased by my action”, as everyone is different. If some are disliked by you, it is a sign that you are trying to be free. Also it is not your task to make other people dislike you to have the feeling of freedom, rather you do your task, based on that task if some get disliked its their task not your problem.
• Do not aim to change others. Rather change your thinking and your work. Example - father and son are not in good terms. Basically father is moody and not that communicative. Son will avoid talking to him with giving reason “He is always moody , so I cannot talk to him. If he was not moody, then I would have better communication with him”. This is a life lie. The son needs to put effort to improve the communication with father irrespective of how father will respond, because its his duty. Now son should not change his behaviour just to change the way father is, rather son will try his best to improve the communication independently. Whether father also changes based on the change in son is up to the father and should not affect son.
• To maintain a good interpersonal relationship, we need to maintain a certain degree of distance.
• A person who has the desire for recognition is also an egoist or self centred person. If you are only thinking that I need to be thought well by others, or I should look good in front of others or every one should like me, is all about “I”.  Remember you are the main person in your life but you are not the centre of the whole world so others will not be living their life as per your expectations.  We should always think that we are just part of the community or the world but not the centre of the world. This will keep our ego in check.
• We can get a sense of belonging to a community only when we give something to the community. It is not enough to be just present in the community rather our thought should change from “What I can get something from this person/community?” to “what I can give to this person/community?”
• We are always part of a bigger community when compared to smaller community we are actively working on. I may be part of the office community but I am also part of the country, world and universe community. This part of belonging to larger community helps us to avoid the trap of escapism and shutting ourselves off in case things are not going smoothly in the smaller community.
• When we use rebuke or praise for the others during the training , it is basically we are trying to manipulate others or passing on a judgement based on our thinking. Example of training here includes even parent-child relationship.Remember we are all equal but not the same. So there should not be any reward-punishment method to manipulate others. We should follow the encouragement approach. Understand what is the current condition of the person and make sure you let them know what are the assistance you can provide to help them in the situation, rather than you command them or tell them how they should do it. We act in such a way that, it builds confidence in them. Remember just by praising the other person we are not building that confidence. We help them to get that courage to face their task. Rather praise use gratitude for being there or helping out or doing that work.
• When a person feels that he is worth, then only he gets the courage or when he realises he has the ability, he gets the courage. The way to get that feeling of worth is by realising that he is beneficial to the community. This can only happen when we accept us as it is.
• 3 important steps in evolving -
  • self acceptance - You accept what you are born with and  understand that it cannot be changed. You are okay with that. This helps in gaining self reliance as well as gaining the ability to change. You can clearly do separation of tasks of what can be changed and what cannot be changed. Invest in improving those abilities that can be improved. By understanding what we are, we can clearly eliminate those that cannot be done or not suitable for us. We can avoid false affirmation. Example when I get less marks in exam, false affirmation says it was purely luck due to which I got less, but self acceptance would accept that I got this marks because I only studied less, but I need to spend more time to improve on it. Confidence in others is not same as trusting in others. Trust is based on a security, example Bank trusts you with a loan money based on a security you provide, but confidence is unconditional. 
  • Confidence in others -  We provide unconditional support to others believing that others will not take advantages. Whether other person takes advantage or not, its other persons task, so do not worry about that aspect.
  • Contribution to others - Example - one works in an organisation not just for earning money but for committing to society or that organisation is contributing to that community via your work. If you are happily doing the work with the belief that this work is for others, then you set an environments where others can come and help you to further the work. But if you keep thinking or mumbling your dissatisfaction or just complaining then nobody would like to come and help. This change only happens when  we think others as our friends rather than as enemies.
• Because I can accept myself (self- acceptance) as is, I will be able to put confidence in others. Because of this confidence in others, I will be able to contribute to others. Because of this community help, I feel worth of myself and thus helping the self acceptance part.
• A person who is not in harmony with the life, usually finds the one thing wrong and assumes that everything else is wrong, example, finds one person dislikes him and thinks everyone dislikes him. Always given a 10 person whom you had contact, one person strongly dislikes, 2 person strongly likes and the rest 7 do not care. Usually we only think of that one person who dislikes us.
• Harmony in life is achieved if we do our duty. Here duty is not just one aspect of say going to work in a company it can be duty of being a son to parents, duty of being a husband/wife, duty of being parent, duty of engineer, duty of being member of a community, duty of being a citizen of country and so on.