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A review by rossbm
The Courage to Be Disliked: How to Free Yourself, Change your Life and Achieve Real Happiness by Ichiro Kishimi, Fumitake Koga
3.0
(read as physical book)
What's it about?
It's a book of philosophy/psychology, in the form of a Socratic dialogue between a wise philosopher and frustrated youth. The book was originally written in Japanese and translated to English, but it espouses "Adlerian" psychology in order to achieve eudaimonia (greek for happiness/flourishing). Alfred Alder was contemporary of Freud, but espoused very different views, among which (from the book)
- trauma is not real
- you choose your emotions based on your goals
- freedom is the courage to be disliked
- all problems are interpersonal problems
- you can't avoid other people (and shouldn't try, since contributing to community is a source of happiness), but to avoid problems you should focus on your tasks, and leave other people to do their tasks
What did I think?
I liked this book. It has some interesting ideas. Can't say that I agree with all of them or all of them resonated with me, but some ideas were very powerful. I think the idea of separating tasks is very powerful. It is a good lens to bring to a couple of relationships in my life that sometimes cause me grief. The dialogue style of the book was interesting, but got kind of tedious.
What's it about?
It's a book of philosophy/psychology, in the form of a Socratic dialogue between a wise philosopher and frustrated youth. The book was originally written in Japanese and translated to English, but it espouses "Adlerian" psychology in order to achieve eudaimonia (greek for happiness/flourishing). Alfred Alder was contemporary of Freud, but espoused very different views, among which (from the book)
- trauma is not real
- you choose your emotions based on your goals
- freedom is the courage to be disliked
- all problems are interpersonal problems
- you can't avoid other people (and shouldn't try, since contributing to community is a source of happiness), but to avoid problems you should focus on your tasks, and leave other people to do their tasks
What did I think?
I liked this book. It has some interesting ideas. Can't say that I agree with all of them or all of them resonated with me, but some ideas were very powerful. I think the idea of separating tasks is very powerful. It is a good lens to bring to a couple of relationships in my life that sometimes cause me grief. The dialogue style of the book was interesting, but got kind of tedious.