In One Sentence

This book is a distillation of Alfred Adler‘s philosophical and psychological ideas and teachings, taking the form of a narrative dialogue between a philosopher and a young man.

Top 3 Takeaways

1. You do not have to be the same person as you were 5 minutes ago. You can change but you lack the courage to change because in the short term its easier and more rewarding to stay the same.

Instead of saying «I’m a pessimist.», you could say «I have a pessimistic view of the world.». The issue is not personality but rather your view of the world.
Personality seems to be an unchangeable fact, but a worldview should be possible to alter.
Adlerian Psychology assumes that you unconsciously choose your first view of the world at around age ten, based on external factors such as nationality, culture, environment etc.

If you once chose your lifestyle, it should always be possible to choose another lifestyle.
You can change anytime. But if you are unable to change it’s only because you are making the decision not to.

Even if you are not entirely satisfied with your current lifestyle, you probably (unconsciously) think that it is the most practical one, and that it’s easier to leave things as they are.
It’s easy, safe and predictable to stay the way you are.
It’s hard, anxiety inducing, unpredictable, painful and courageous to change.

You can feel anxiety to change or disappointment by staying the same. Changing takes courage.
If you are unhappy with your lifestyle and do not change, Adler says you are lacking the courage to be happy.

No matter what has occurred in your life up to this point, it should have no bearing at all on how you live from now on. You, living in the here and now, are the one who determines your own life.

2. How you react to trauma and life is up to you.

The standpoint in Etiology (the study of causation by Freud and Jung) is that trauma is created by things we experienced in the past. They just happen to us and influence us, so it’s not our fault if we act according to it’s effects on us.

Adlerian Psychology denies this way of thinking and the existence of traumas.

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.

Good and bad things happen, how you let these things influence you is up to you. «The important thing is not what one is born with but what use one makes of that equipment.»
The question isn’t «What happened?» but «How was it resolved?». If you think that every cause creates an unchangeable effect, you are in Freudian Etiology. This thinking denies human free will and treats humans like machines. Choices don’t matter or even exist because it’s all determined by what happened to us in the past.

!!! "Trauma does not exist" is a bit harsh:
Adler's approach, that trauma does not exist at all, is too extreme. In fact, this opinion is outdated and incorrect, since scientists have proven that a trauma physically changes your brain. For more information about trauma and it's effects, check out Tiago Forte's summary of "The Body Keeps the Score".
Nonetheless, how you should react to trauma and how to get hold of it is aligning with the teachings of Alfred Adler. He knows what he's talking about, but his words could have been chosen more wisely. In the end, it's you who needs to change and who decides what you do with the trauma that you have experienced.

3. Your life tasks are only your responsibility.

Adlerian Psychology says that in a society, an individual is confronted with interpersonal relationships in three different kinds of tasks:

• Tasks of work
• Tasks of friendship
• Tasks of love

Also, all problems are interpersonal relationship problems. Problems can occur when you do not know what is your own task, if you intrude on someone else’s task or if your own tasks are intruded by someone.

For example: imagine a kid that should study for school but does not like to do it, but the parents try to push the kid into studying.

Adlerian Psychology asks «Whose task is this?».
It’s the kids task because the parents cannot do it. There would be no point if the parents studied instead of the kid. The parents commanding the kid to study is an act of intruding on another person’s task.

You can figure out to whom a task belongs by asking who has to deal with the results and the outcome of the task (whether it’s finished or not, good or bad, on time or late, etc.).

Parents forcing their kid to study is actually for the parent’s good.
If the kid does not study, it suffers from the results (bad grades, bad job, …) – it’s the kid’s task. The parents intrude on this task to fulfill their own goals of being recognized by society to have a brilliant kid (and therefore being good and smart parents) and to up their own status.
Kids can sense this deception and sometimes rebel.

However, there are certainly situations in which it would be easier to intervene in the tasks of another person without doing any separation of tasks – for instance, in a child raising situation, when a child is having a hard time tying his shoes. For the busy mother, it is certainly faster to tie them than to wait for him to do it himself. But that is an intervention, and it is taking the child’s task away from him. And as a result of repeating that intervention, the child will cease to learn anything, and will lose the courage to face his life tasks. As Adler says, «Children who have not been taught to confront challenges will try to avoid all challenges».

Adler advises to let the kid know his tasks and responsibilities, and to let it know that you are ready to offer guidance and assistance if needed and requested, but not to interfere otherwise.

«You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink.». Forcing change while ignoring the person’s intentions will only lead to an intense reaction.
You are the only one who can change yourself.

This does not mean you have to be egoistical, never care about the people around you and never help anyone.
When you have a relationship with someone in a supposedly bad situation, let them know that you are ready to assist them whenever they are in need and encourage them. But do not do more unprompted. This way they know that it’s their responsibility and their task to solve.

Learn the boundary of «From here on, that is not my task.» and discard other people’s tasks. That is the first step toward lightening the load and making life simpler.

Who Should Read This Book?

This is a helpful book for people-pleasers and people struggling with confidence.
It’s also a good read if you are interested in psychology in general and how society behaves, because it’s a radically different approach and view to the more common Freudian psychology. For me it was at first a bit shocking to read about these things as I have never heard anyone think about human behaviour in this way.

How The Book Impacted Me

This is a dense and deep book and its ideas are hard to implement in your everyday life but they feel immensely important. I think about the book every other week and plan to revisit it to remind me of all the concepts.

If found it very hard to compress and summarize the book, and I would recommend to read the whole book (it’s not that long and the conversational writing style is easy). Or at least go through all my notes below to get more context.

Best Quotes

The important thing is not what one is born with but what use one makes of that equipment. (use your unfair advantages)

As long as one continues to use one’s misfortune to one’s advantage in order to be «special», one will always need that misfortune.

No matter what has occurred in your life up to this point, it should have no bearing at all on how you live from now on. You, living in the here and now, are the one who determines your own life.

Someone has to start. Other people might not be cooperative, but that is not connected to you. My advice is this: you should start. With no regard to whether others are cooperative or not.

You are making up flaws in other people just so that you can avoid your life tasks, and furthermore, so you can avoid interpersonal relationships. You are running away by thinking of other people as your enemies.

What another person thinks of you – if he or she likes or dislikes you – that is that person’s task, not yours.

You set objectives for the distant future, and think of now as your preparatory period. You think, I really want to do this, and I’ll do it when the time comes. This is a way of living that postpones life. As long as we postpone life, we can never go anywhere and will pass our days only one after the next in dull monotony, because we think of here and now as just a preparatory period, as a time for patience.
The greatest life-lie of all is to not live here and now.
The life that ends at the age of twenty and the life that ends at ninety are both complete lives, and lives of happiness.

Questions

• In what areas of life do I lack the courage to change?
• Do I ever intrude on other people’s life tasks? Why?

Summary & Notes

DISCLAIMER:
The following notes are my raw notes for each chapter in the book. Read them as a quick overview and not as fully fleshed-out and thought-out sentences.

Author’s Note

• Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, and Alfred Adler are all giants in the world of psychology. This book is a distillation of Adler’s philosophical and psychological ideas and teachings, taking the form of a narrative dialogue between a philosopher and a young man.

Introduction

The world is not complicated. You are making the world complicated.
None of us live in an objective world, but instead in a subjective world that we ourselves have given meaning to. The world you see is different from the one I see, and it’s impossible to share your world with anyone else.

The First Night: Deny Trauma

The Unknown Third Giant

Not quite as famous, Adler is one of the three giants of Psychology together with Freud and Jung.

Why People Can Change

If we focus only on past causes and try to explain things solely through cause and effect, we end up with «determinism». Because what this says is that our present and our future have already been decided by past occurrences, and are unalterable.

The main point in Adlerian Psychology is that the past doesn’t matter. In this way of thinking, it’s not about past causes, but about present goals.

• Example of someone who can’t leave his house: Because of past trauma he always gets anxious and scared. The philosopher claims that «he had the goal of not going out beforehand, and he’s been manufacturing a state of anxiety and fear as a means to achieve that goal (Teleology). But he is not pretending to be sick. The anxiety and fear he is feeling are real.

Different ways to look at things:

• Etiology – the study of causation (Freud and Jung)
• Teleology – the study of the purpose of a given phenomenon, rather than its cause (Adler)

First thoughts: wow this is really a new way to see/think about problems. Have never heard someone talk about this.

Trauma Does Not Exist

The standpoint in Etiology is that trauma is created by things we experienced in the past. They just happen to us and influence us, so it’s not our fault if we act according to it’s effects on us.

Adlerian Psychology denies the existence of traumas. Adler says: «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.»

!!! "Trauma does not exist" is a bit harsh:
Adler's approach, that trauma does not exist at all, is too extreme. In fact, this opinion is outdated and incorrect, since scientists have proven that a trauma physically changes your brain. For more information about trauma and it's effects, check out Tiago Forte's summary of "The Body Keeps the Score".
Nonetheless, how you should react to trauma and how to get hold of it is aligning with the teachings of Alfred Adler. He knows what he's talking about, but his words could have been chosen more wisely. In the end, it's you who needs to change and who decides what you do with the trauma that you have experienced.

People Fabricate Anger

In Teleology, anger is seen as a means to achieve a goal.

Example:

One day, a mother and daughter were quarreling loudly. Then, suddenly, the telephone rang. «Hello?» The mother picked up the receiver hurriedly, her voice still thick with anger. The caller was her daughter’s homeroom teacher. As soon as the mother realized who was phoning, the tone of her voice changed and she became very polite. Then, for the next five minutes or so, she carried on a conversation in her best telephone voice. Once she hung up, in a moment, her expression changed again and she went straight back to yelling at her daughter.

In this story, anger is a tool that can be taken out and put away as needed. The mother uses anger to overpower her daughter with a loud voice and thereby assert her opinions.

How to Live Without Being Controlled by the Past

The question isn’t «What happened?» but «How was it resolved?»

If you think that every cause creates an effect, you are in Freudian Etiology. This thinking denies human free will and treats humans like machines. Choices don’t matter or even exist because it’s all determined by what happened to us in the past.

Socrates and Adler

You should arrive at answers on your own, not rely upon what you get from someone else. Answers from others are nothing more than stopgap measures; they’re of no value.

Are You Okay Just As You Are?

Adler: «The important thing is not what one is born with but what use one makes of that equipment.»
Don’t focus on being like someone/something else, you are not born in the same way. Focus on yourself and what you can make of your equipment.

Unhappiness Is Something You Choose for Yourself

The youth says he is unhappy and the philosopher claims that «at some stage in your life, you chose ‘being unhappy’. It is not because you were born into unhappy circumstances or ended up in an unhappy situation. It’s that you judged ‘being unhappy’ to be good for you.»

Possible reasons:
It’s easy to just complain and not try to change anything. It’s less scary and safer than trying to do something and possibly fail.

People Always Choose Not to Change

In Adlerian Psychology personality and the tendencies of thought and action in life are described as «Lifestyle». As how one views the world.

Instead of saying «I’m a pessimist.», one could say «I have a pessimistic view of the world.». The issue is not personality but rather the view of the world.
Personality seems to be unchangeable, but a view of the world should be possible to alter.

In Adlerian Psychology it is assumed that humans choose their way of living, their lifestyle, at around age ten. Of course you do not consciously choose it. Your first choice is unconscious and influenced by external factors such as nationality, culture, race and home environment. Nevertheless, you chose it.

If you once chose your lifestyle, it should always be possible to choose another lifestyle.
You can change anytime. But if you are unable to change it’s only because you are making the decision not to.

Even if you are not entirely satisfied with your current lifestyle, you probably (unconsciously) think that it is the most practical one, and that it’s easier to leave things as they are.

It’s easy, safe and predictable to stay the way you are.
It’s hard, anxiety inducing, unpredictable, painful and courageous to change.

You can feel anxiety to change or disappointment by staying the same. Changing takes courage.
If you are unhappy with your lifestyle and do not change, one might say you are lacking the courage to be happy.

Your Life Is Decided Here and Now

Don’t make excuses to yourself by saying should/would/if only/etc. Start by making a decision to stop your current lifestyle.

If you don’t commit, you never achieve what you want because you fall into the trap of «I could do it if I really tried». You then live life in the realm of possibilities and excuses.
It’s better to achieve your dreams or have them shattered, rather than living in a constant maybe.

No matter what has occurred in your life up to this point, it should have no bearing at all on how you live from now on. You, living in the here and now, are the one who determines your own life.

The Second Night: All Problems Are Interpersonal Relationship Problems

Why You Dislike Yourself

If you dislike yourself and only focus on your shortcomings and tell yourself that others will never like you, your goal is to not get hurt in your relationships with other people.

How to realize this goal:

Just find your shortcomings, start disliking yourself, and become someone who doesn’t enter into interpersonal relationships. That way, if you can shut yourself into your own shell, you won’t have to interact with anyone, and you’ll even have a justification ready whenever other people snub you. That it’s because of your shortcomings that you get snubbed, and if things weren’t this way, you too could be loved.

All Problems Are Interpersonal Relationship Problems

On being lonely:

To get rid of one’s problems, all one can do is live in the universe alone.
Loneliness is having other people and society and community around you, and having a deep sense of being excluded from them. To feel lonely, we need other people. That is to say, it is only in social contexts that a person becomes an «individual».

Feelings of Inferiority Are Subjective Assumptions

To feel in some way inferior, you need someone else to compare yourself to. But this feeling is only a subjective interpretation rather than an objective fact.
Because it is subjective you can choose how you view your various characteristics and traits.
«Value» is something that is based on a social context.

An Inferiority Complex Is an Excuse

The pursuit of superiority

You are born as a helpless being and people have the universal desire to escape that helpless state. In Adlerian Psychology this is called the «pursuit of superiority».
You can think of it as hoping to improve or pursuing and ideal state, a condition of wanting to improve. All human advancements and progress are due to this pursuit of superiority.

Feelings of inferiority

Feelings of inferiority are something everyone has and there’s nothing bad about them. They are the counterpart to the pursuit of superiority.
Both are stimulants to normal, healthy striving and growth.
If you don’t improve and can’t reach your goals, you get feelings of inferiority, you try to get rid of these feelings by keeping to move forward. It’s a kind of motivation. You want to make progress and you want to be happier.

Inferiority complex

If you have feelings of inferiority and lose the courage to take a single step forward and think that nothing about the situation can be changed, you have an inferiority complex.

The term «complex» is often misused. For example: «I’ve got a complex about my weight» or «He has got a complex about his intelligence».
A complex refers to an abnormal mental state made up of a complicated group of emotions and ideas, and has nothing to do with the feeling of inferiority.

The difference between feelings of inferiority and an inferiority complex

The feeling of inferiority can be a trigger for striving and growth. For example if you feel you are lacking education: «I am not well educated, so I’ll just have to try harder than anyone else».

When you have an inferiority complex, you use your feelings of inferiority as an excuse. «I’m not well educated, so I can’t succeed» or «I’m not good-looking, so I can’t get married».

With an inferiority complex, it’s not that you can’t do something, but that you don’t want to do something.
You don’t want to change and sacrifice your current way of living, it’s easier with things just as they are now, even if you have some complaints or limitations.
In other words, you don’t have the courage to change your lifestyle.

Braggarts Have Feelings of Inferiority

No one is capable of enduring feelings of inferiority for a long period of time.

There are two ways on how to compensate for the part that is lacking and producing the feelings.

• The healthy way would be to compensate by striving, growing and working on yourself.
• You lack courage to change and reason that because of A, you can’t B. So you say to yourself that if it weren’t for A, you could B. The «real you» is fully capable of B but you can’t do anything because fate brought you A. The «real you» is actually superior than your current you that is hidden because of A. You compensate by acting as if you were indeed superior and indulge in a fabricated feeling of superiority.

Superiority complex

You fabricate feelings of superiority by «giving authority».

For example, you show that you are special and «give authority» by:

• Telling everyone how you are good friends with a powerful person (your boss, the popular friend, famous people)
• Lying about your work experience
• Excessive allegiance to particular clothing brands
  You make yourself look superior by linking yourself to authority.
  This all springs from feelings of inferiority.
  –> it’s a superiority complex.

Another example for such a complex are people who boast and brag.
Someone who clings to his past achievements and is always recounting memories of the time when his or her light shone brightest has a superiority complex.
They do not have confidence in themselves.

The one who boasts does so only out of a feeling of inferiority.

Bragging about your misfortune

When talking about their past, some people like to kind of brag about how many misfortunes rained down upon them. How unlucky they were and how bad they had it.
They want to make themselves «special» with their experience of misfortune and then try to place themselves above others.

People try to be «special» by adopting this kind of attitude when they are sick or injured, or suffering the mental anguish of heartbreak. They reveal their feeling of inferiority, use it to their advantage and try to control the other party with it.

About the example from the first chapters, the people who cannot go outside and lock themselves into their rooms:

By declaring how unfortunate they are and how much they have suffered, they are trying to worry the people around them (their family and friends), and to restrict their speech and behaviour, and control them. They frequently indulge in feelings of superiority and use misfortune to their advantage.

Adler says: «In our culture weakness can be quite strong and powerful. In fact, if we were to ask ourselves who is the strongest person in our culture, the logical answer would be, the baby. The baby rules and cannot be dominated.»
The baby rules over the adults with its weakness, and because of its weakness no one can control it.

As long as one continues to use one’s misfortune to one’s advantage in order to be «special», one will always need that misfortune.

Life Is Not a Competition

The pursuit of superiority is the mindset of improving yourself, not the mindset of competition and aiming to be better than others.

A healthy feeling of inferiority is not something that comes from comparing oneself to others; it comes from one’s comparison with one’s ideal self.

From Power Struggle to Revenge

When someone directly starts to insult you or tries to make you angry in another way, think about that person’s hidden goal. That person is probably challenging you to a power struggle.

For instance, a child will tease an adult with various pranks and misbehaviors. In many cases, this is done with the goal of getting attention and will cease just before the adult gets genuinely angry. However, if the child does not stop before the adult gets genuinely angry, then his goal is actually to get in a fight. He wants to win. He wants to prove his power by winning.

Losing or withdrawing from a power struggle can launch people to the next stage – revenge.

Once an interpersonal relationship reaches the revenge stage, it is almost impossible for either party to find a solution.
To prevent this from happening, when one is challenged to a power struggle, one must never allow oneself to be taken in.

Admitting Fault Is Not Defeat

When you are being attacked, don’t just grin and bear it. The idea that you are «bearing it» is proof that you are still stuck in the power struggle.
Try to step down from the conflict as soon as possible. Do not answer action against you with a reaction.

You don’t try to control your anger, because then you are once again «bearing it». Don’t forget that anger is a tool for achieving a goal.
Anger is a form of communication, and communication is always possible without using anger.

There is no need to rely on anger for communication. Irascible people do not have short tempers – it is only that they do not know that there are other effective communication tools other than anger.
«I just snapped» or «I flew into a rage» means that you rely on anger to communicate.

When you think or say «I am right», it assumes that the other person is wrong. This leads to a contest where you think that you have to win -> power struggle.
In this mindset, admitting a mistake is often seen as admitting defeat. It clouds your judgement and you lose the ability to make the right choices.

The pursuit of superiority is not something that is carried out through competition with other people.

Overcoming the Tasks That Face You in Life

Adlerian Psychology says that there are two objectives for behavior:

1. To be self-reliant
2. To live in harmony with society

Also, there are two objectives for the psychology that support these behaviors:

1. The consciousness that I have the ability
2. The consciousness that people are my comrades

Life tasks

When trying to live in a society, an individual is confronted with interpersonal relationships in three different kinds of tasks:

• Tasks of work
• Tasks of friendship
• Tasks of love

Red String and Rigid Chains

On tasks of friendship:

If you change, those around you will change too.
Instead of waiting for others to change or waiting for the situation to change, you take the first step forward yourself.

On tasks of love:

Adlerian psychology does not accept restricting one’s partner. If the person seems to be happy, one can frankly celebrate that condition. That is love. Relationships in which people restrict each other eventually fall apart.
When one can think, Whenever I am with this person, I can behave very freely, one can really feel love.

Don’t Fall for the «Life-Lie»

You don’t dislike someone because you can’t forgive their flaws. You had the goal of not liking this person beforehand and then started looking for the flaws to satisfy that goal.
Why? So you can avoid an interpersonal relationship with that person.

People are extremely selfish creatures who are capable of finding any number of flaws and shortcomings in others whenever the mood strikes them.

The «life-lie»

You are making up flaws in other people just so that you can avoid your life tasks, and further more, so you can avoid interpersonal relationships. You are running away by thinking of other people as your enemies.

Avoiding your life tasks and clinging to your life-lies does not mean you are evil. It’s only an issue of courage.

From the Psychology of Possession to the Psychology of Practice

• Adlerian Psychology is a «psychology of courage»
• Adlerian Psychology also is not a «psychology of possession» but a «psychology of use»
  • «it’s not what one is born with but what use one makes of that equipment»

The Third Night: Discard Other People’s Tasks

Deny the Desire for Recognition

Adlerian Psychology denies the need to seek recognition from others. Being recognized by others is nice but not absolutely necessary.

Do Not Live to Satisfy the Expectations of Others

Adler was very critical of «Reward-and-punishment education. It leads to bad lifestyles where people think, If no one is going to praise me, I won’t take appropriate action and If no one is going to punish me, I’ll engage in inappropriate actions.

If you are not living to satisfy other people’s expectations, it follows that other people are not living to satisfy your expectations. Someone might not act the way you want him to, but it doesn’t do to get angry. That’s only natural.

When trying to be recognized by others, almost all people treat satisfying other people’s expectations as the means to that end.

How to Separate Tasks

Example task: kid should study but does not like to do it, parents try to push kid into studying.

Adlerian Psychology asks «Whose task is this?».
Whether the kid studies or not. There would be no point if the parents studied instead of the kid. The parents commanding the kid to study is an act of intruding on another person’s task.

You need to separate your own tasks from other people’s tasks. You don’t intrude on other people’s tasks.
Adler claims that all interpersonal relationship troubles are caused by intruding on other people’ tasks, or having one’s own tasks intruded on.
-> mind your own business

How to know whose task it is:
Who ultimately is going to receive the result brought about by the choice that is made?

Parents forcing their kid to study is not «for your own good». But actually to the parent’s good.
If the kid does not study, it suffers from the results (bad grades, bad job, …), it’s the kid’s task. The parents intrude on this task to fulfill their own goals of being recognized by society to have a brilliant kid (and therefore being good and smart parents?) and to up their own status.
Kids can sense this deception and rebel.

Adler says to let the kid know its tasks and responsibilities, and to let it know that you are ready to offer guidance and assistance if needed and requested, but not to interfere otherwise.

«You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink.». Forcing change while ignoring the person’s intentions will only lead to an intense reaction.
You are the only one who can change yourself.

Discard Other People’s Tasks

When you have a relationship with someone in a supposedly bad situation, let them know that you are ready to assist them whenever they are in need. But do not do more unprompted. This way they know that it’s their responsibility and their task to solve.

Learn the boundary of «From here on, that is not my task.» and discard other people’s tasks. That is the first step toward lightening the load and making life simpler.

How to Rid Yourself of Interpersonal Relationship Problems

What another person thinks of you – if he or she likes or dislikes you – that is that person’s task, not yours.

You should think, What I should do is face my own tasks in my own life without lying.

Cut the Gordian Knot

When reward is at the base of an interpersonal relationship, there’s a feeling that wells up in one that says, «I gave this much, so you should give me that much back». This is a notion that is quite different from separation of tasks, of course. We must not seek reward, and we must not be tied to it.

However, there are certainly situations in which it would be easier to intervene in the tasks of another person without doing any separation of tasks – for instance, in a child raising situation, when a child is having a hard time tying his shoes. For the busy mother, it is certainly faster to tie them than to wait for him to do it himself. But that is an intervention, and it is taking the child’s task away from him. And as a result of repeating that intervention, the child will cease to learn anything, and will lose the courage to face his life tasks. As Adler says, «Children who have not been taught to confront challenges will try to avoid all challenges».

Desire for Recognition Makes You Unfree

If you always want to be liked and try to satisfy other people’s expectations, you will entrust your life to others. You will not be free and lie to yourself.

What Real Freedom Is

Freedom is when you are disliked by someone:

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.

Obviously, my freedom ends when someone else’s freedom is negatively affected by it. «My freedom ends where yours starts».

There may be a person who does not think well of you, but that is not your task. And again, thinking things like He should like me or I’ve done all this, so it’s strange that he doesn’t like me, is the reward-oriented way of thinking of having intervened in another person’s task.

I don’t want to be disliked, but I don’t mind if I am.

The courage to be happy also includes the courage to be disliked.

You Hold the Cards to Interpersonal Relationships

You yourself have the cards on how you want a relationship to be. You behave accordingly to your principles. If the other person does not agree or does not want to live the relationship the same way as you do, you can’t do anything.

The Fourth Night: Where the Center of the World Is

Individual Psychology and Holism

Holism is the view that human beings are indivisible. Humans are not able to be broken down in smaller parts e.g. mind and body, or emotion and reason.

Critical argument from the youth in the story:
Adlerian Psychology is basically just thinking «I am I, you are you», which leads people to isolation.
It’s saying «I won’t interfere with you, so don’t interfere with me either, and we’ll both go on living however we please.

counter argument?

The Goal of Interpersonal Relationships Is a Feeling of Community

Community feeling describes a happy state in an interpersonal relationship.

Why Am I Only Interested in Myself?

Attachment to self means being self-centered, which is normally considered a bad thing.
But people who can’t separate tasks and are obsessed with the desire for recognition are also extremely self-centered.
When you want others to like you, you seem like you look only at others, but actually you only look at yourself and act for yourself.

Being nice to others just so they reward you with the recognition you desperately look for is pretty selfish.

You are worried how others see you, not how you see them.

You Are Not the Center of the World

The «I» does not rule the center of the world. The «I» is life’s protagonist, but it is never more than a member of the community and a part of the whole.

All of us are searching for the sense of belonging, that «it’s okay to be here».
This can only be attained by an active commitment to the community of one’s own accord, and not simply by being here.
One faces one’s life tasks. In other words, one takes steps forward on one’s own, without avoiding the tasks of interpersonal relationships of work, friendship, and love.
One needs to think not, What will this person give me? but rather, What can I give to this person?. That is commitment to the community.

«A sense of belonging is something that one acquires through one’s own efforts – it is not something one is endowed with at birth.»

Listen to the Voice of a Larger Community

It’s all connected. You are never truly alone or separate from community, and cannot be.

Do Not Rebuke or Praise

One praises or rebukes others to manipulate them. By doing this you automatically create a vertical relationship where the other person is either below or above you.

Adlerian Psychology rejects vertical relationships and proposes that all interpersonal relationships be horizontal relationships where people are «equal but not the same».

The Encouragement Approach

Intervention: when someone intrudes on another persons tasks.

So why does a person intervene?

In the background, vertical relationships are at play. It is precisely because one perceives interpersonal relations as vertical, and sees the other party as beneath one, that one intervenes. Through intervention, one tries to lead the other party in the desired direction. One has convinced oneself that one is right and that the other party is wrong. Of course, the intervention here is manipulation, pure and simple.

Difference between intervention and assistance:

• Intervention is the kind of intruding on other people’s task and directing them to do things.
• Assistance needs the separation of tasks and horizontal relationships, you act on someone in such a way that they can gain the confidence to take care and face their tasks on their own. «You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink.»
• This assistance is also called encouragement. When you are not doing your tasks, it’s not that you don’t have the ability to do them. Adlerian Psychology says that the issue is not one of ability but simply that «one has lost the courage to face one’s tasks».

Giving praise is a judgement that is passed by a person of ability onto a person without ability.

Not sure if I agree with the statement above… I think I can also praise someone that is better than me or equally skilled?

How to Feel You Have Value

Vertical relationships: judgment
Horizontal relationships: gratitude, respect, joy

When you receive praise you give up your freedom because you accept the values and measurements of worth from the praising person.

«I am beneficial to the community» = feeling to have value and worth

Exist in the Present

Youth:

The community feeling, the horizontal relationships, the gratitude for existence, and so on. Who on earth could actually do such things?

Adler:

Someone has to start. Other people might not be cooperative, but that is not connected to you. My advice is this: you should start. With no regard to whether others are cooperative or not.

People Cannot Make Proper Use of Self

You either have vertical relationships or horizontal relationships. Your brain normally does not allow to switch between these two ways of thinking.

If you have one vertical relationships, you will start to think of all others as vertical too.
If you have one horizontal relationship, all other relationships will gradually also become horizontal.

The Fifth Night: To Live in Earnest in the Here and Now

Not Self-Affirmation – Self Acceptance

Self-affirmation is making suggestions to oneself, such as “I can do it” or “I am strong”, even when something is simply beyond one’s ability. It is a notion that can bring about a superiority complex, and may even be termed a way of living in which one lies to oneself.

Accept what is irreplaceable. Accept “this me” just as it is. And have the courage to change what one can change. That is self-acceptance.

Similar to this quote from Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five:

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; the courage to change the things I can; and the wisdom to know the difference.

Also known as the Serenity Prayer in Christian societies.

The Difference Between Trust and Confidence

If you doubt someone, they notice and a horizontal relationship cannot emerge. When you have unconditional confidence in someone, deep relationships can form.

The Essence of Work Is a Contribution to the Common Good

Contributing to others is for oneself.

Young People Walk Ahead of Adults

Even if all this psychological theories sound convincing, they are hard to actually practice in life.

It is even said that to truly understand Adlerian psychology and apply it to actually changing one’s way of living, one needs “half the number of years one has lived.”

In that case, I am looking forward to being forty and wise 🙂

Workaholism Is a Life-Lie

With workaholics, the focus is solely on one specific aspect of life.
They probably try to justify that by saying, “It’s busy at work, so I don’t have enough time to think about my family.” But this is a life-lie. They are simply trying to avoid their other responsibilities by using work as an excuse. One ought to concern oneself with everything, from household chores and child-rearing to one’s friendships and hobbies and so on.
Adler does not recognize ways of living on which certain aspects are unusually dominant.

Workaholics’ lives lack harmony.
Life is all about balance.

You Can Be Happy Now

Happiness is the feeling of contribution.
People seek recognition because they want to like themselves and feel that they have worth. They want a feeling of contribution that tells them “I am of use to someone”. Seeking recognition from others is an easy way for gaining this feeling of contribution.
But if you get this feeling only by being recognized by others, you will never be truly happy as you are not free. You are living your live according to other people’s values and their recognition.

Two Paths Traveled by Those Wanting to Be “Special Beings”

An easy way to get attention is just being problematic (often seen in kids’ behaviour). That way you get a special treatment and the attention you want. This is obviously a bad attitude and not a long-term solution to happiness.

The Courage to Be Normal

Why is it necessary to be special? Probably because one cannot accept one’s normal self. And it is precisely for this reason that when being especially good becomes a lost cause, one makes the huge leap to being especially bad – the opposite extreme. But is being normal, being ordinary, really such a bad thing? Is it something inferior? Or, in truth, isn’t everybody normal?

Life Is a Series of Moments

Life is not a straight line in which you are mostly living “on the way to the goal” and which ends at the end of the life in a big highlight and death. It is a series of moments called “now”. You only exists in these moments. Adults and society often try to impose this “linear” life onto young people. They think that only conventional tracks – good grades, good study, big company job, house and car – lead to a happy life. But life is not made up of lines or anything like that. –> The Pathless Path

Live Like You’re Dancing

With dance, it is the dancing itself that is the goal, and no one is concerned with arriving somewhere by doing it. Naturally, it may happen that one arrives somewhere as a result of having danced. Since one is dancing, one does not stay in the same place. But there is no destination.

Shine a Light on the Here and Now

The life of the past that looks like a straight line appears that way to you only as a result of your making ceaseless resolutions to not change. The life that lies ahead of you is a completely blank page, and there are no tracks that have been laid for you to follow. There is no story there.

The Greatest Life-Lie

You set objectives for the distant future, and think of now as your preparatory period. You think, I really want to do this, and I’ll do it when the time comes. This is a way of living that postpones life. As long as we postpone life, we can never go anywhere and will pass our days only one after the next in dull monotony, because we think of here and now as just a preparatory period, as a time for patience.

The greatest life-lie of all is to not live here and now.

The life that ends at the age of twenty and the life that ends at ninety are both complete lives, and lives of happiness.

Give Meaning to Seemingly Meaningless Life

Life in general has no meaning, whatever meaning life has must be assigned to it by the individual.

Adler says, the North Star in a happy life is “contribution to others”.

If “I” change, the world will change. This means that the world can only be changed by me and no one else will change it for me.

Someone has to start. Other people might not be cooperative, but that is not connected to you. My advice is this: You should start. With no regard to whether others are cooperative or not.