The Courage to be Happy: True contentment is within your power—the new Japanese phenomenon from the authors of the global bestseller, The Courage to be Disliked

PHILOSOPHER: Love is all. The person who lives wanting an easy life or looking for the easy way may find fleeting pleasures, but they will not be able to grasp real happiness. It is only by loving another person that we are liberated from self-centredness. It is only by loving another person that we can achieve self-reliance. And it is only by loving another person that we arrive at community feeling.

PHILOSOPHER: That the world is simple, and life is too. But also, that ‘Keeping it simple is difficult.’

Self-reliance is ‘breaking away from self-centredness’.

friendship is a relationship of ‘confidence’.

Raising one’s voice in anger in such a way is also an expression of feelings of inferiority. When one’s feelings of inferiority are aroused, one tries to resolve them by using the emotion of anger.

Self-reliance is one’s own determining of one’s worth

Furthermore, rebuking and praising, or, in other words, reward and punishment, stand in the way of the child’s self-reliance. Because reward and punishment is a method of trying to keep the child under one’s control, and the adult who relies on this conduct is, somewhere deep inside, afraid of the child’s self-reliance.

Adler denies even the need for approval. He says that we should not seek approval from others, but instead switch to our own approval of ourselves.

YOUTH: And again, one must not praise, either. Praising gives rise to the principle of competition within the community and implants in the child a lifestyle, or worldview, of ‘other people are my enemies’.

PHILOSOPHER: If you feel insulted by these words, you are probably still trying to be a ‘special me’. Consequently, you seek approval from others. Consequently, you seek to gain admiration and draw attention and continue to live within the framework of problem behaviour.