Yes, this world is astonishingly simply and life itself is, too.
PHILOSOPHER: There is no change in what I say. The world is simple and life is simple too.
YOUTH: How? Anyone can see that it’s a chaotic mass of contradictions.
PHILOSOPHER: That is not because the world is complicated. It’s because you are making the world complicated.
Your friend 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. In Adlerian psychology, this is called ‘teleology’.
self being determined not by our experiences themselves, but by the meaning we give them. He is not saying that the experience of a horrible calamity or abuse during childhood or other such incidents have no influence on forming a personality; their influences are strong. But the important thing is that nothing is actually determined by those influences. We determine our own lives according to the meaning we give to those past experiences
You did not fly into a rage and then start shouting. It is solely that you got angry so that you could shout. In other words, in order to fulfil the goal of shouting, you created the emotion of anger. The goal of shouting came before anything else. That is to say, by shouting, you wanted to make the waiter submit to you and listen to what you had to say. As a means to do that, you fabricated the emotion of anger.
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.
You’re telling me, ‘You chose that lifestyle yourself, so go ahead and select a new one instantly,’ but there’s no way I can just change on the spot!
PHILOSOPHER: Yes, you can. People can change at any time, regardless of the environments they are in. You are only unable to change because you are making the decision not to.
Although there are some small inconveniences and limitations, you probably think that the lifestyle you have now is the most practical one, and that it’s just easier to leave things as they are. If you stay just like this, experience enables you to respond properly to events as they occur, while guessing the results of one’s actions. You could say it’s like driving your old, familiar car. It might rattle a bit, but one can take that into account and manoeuvre easily. On the other hand, if one chooses a new lifestyle, no one can predict what might happen to the new self, or have any idea how to deal with events as they arise. It will be hard to see ahead to the future, and life will be filled with anxiety. A more painful and unhappy life might lie ahead. Simply put, people have various complaints about things, but it’s easier and more secure to be just the way one is.
Stuck in a local minima, not even trying to find the global.
‘Fear of blushing is easy to cure.’ She asked, ‘Really?’ I went on: ‘But I will not cure it.’ She pressed me, ‘Why?’ I explained, ‘Look, it’s thanks to your fear of blushing that you can accept your dissatisfaction with yourself and the world around you, and with a life that isn’t going well. It’s thanks to your fear of blushing, and it’s caused by it.’ She asked, ‘How could it be … ?’ I went on: ‘If I did cure it, and nothing in your situation changed at all, what would you do? You’d probably come here again and say, “Give me back my fear of blushing.” And that would be beyond my abilities.’
Your goal is to not get hurt in your relationships with other people. Now, how can that goal be realised? The answer is easy. Just find your shortcomings, start disliking yourself, and become someone who doesn’t enter into interpersonal relationships.
Oh, but being alone isn’t what makes you feel lonely. 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.
Value is something that’s based on a social context. The value given to a one-dollar bill is not an objectively attributed value, though that might be a commonsense approach. If one considers its actual cost as printed material, the value is nowhere near a dollar. If I were the only person in this world and no one else existed, I’d probably be putting those one-dollar bills in my fireplace in wintertime.
First of all, people enter this world as helpless beings. And people have the universal desire to escape from that helpless state. Adler called this the ‘pursuit of superiority’
the pursuit of superiority and the feeling of inferiority are not diseases, but stimulants to normal, healthy striving and growth. If it is not used in the wrong way, the feeling of inferiority, too, can promote striving and growth.
“I’m not well educated, so I’ll just have to try harder than anyone else” vs “I’m not well educated, so I can’t succeed, or I’m not good-looking, so I can’t get married”
One makes a show of being on good terms with a powerful person (broadly speaking—it could be anyone from the leader of your school class to a famous celebrity). And by doing that, one lets it be known that one is special. Behaviours like misrepresenting one’s work experience or excessive allegiance to particular brands of clothing are forms of giving authority, and probably also have aspects of the superiority complex. In each case, it isn’t that the ‘I’ is actually superior or special. It is only that one is making the ‘I’ look superior by linking it to authority. In short, it’s a fabricated feeling of superiority.
When one is conscious of competition and victory and defeat, it is inevitable that feelings of inferiority will arise.
PHILOSOPHER: For instance, a child will tease an adult with various pranks and misbehaviours. In many cases, this is something 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.
YOUTH: Why would he want to get in a fight?
PHILOSOPHER: He wants to win. He wants to prove his power by winning.
When you control your anger, you’re ‘bearing it’, right? Instead, let’s learn a way to settle things without using the emotion of anger. Because after all, anger is a tool. A means for achieving a goal.
Dostoevsky - Money is coined freedom
If you are not living your life for yourself, then who is going to live it for you?
Separation of tasks - whose task is this?
Studying is the child’s task. A parent’s handling of that by commanding the child to study is, in effect, an act of intruding on another person’s task. One is unlikely to avert a collision in this way. We need to think with the perspective of ‘whose task is this?’ and continually separate one’s own tasks from other people’s tasks.
One does not intrude on other people’s tasks. That’s all.
One has to pay attention. Adlerian psychology does not recommend the non-interference approach. Non-interference is the attitude of not knowing, and not even being interested in knowing what the child is doing. Instead, it is by knowing what the child is doing that one protects him. If it’s studying that is the issue, one tells the child that that is his task, and one lets him know that one is ready to assist him whenever he has the urge to study. But one must not intrude on the child’s task. When no requests are being made, it does not do to meddle in things.
You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink.
Well, let’s exaggerate it and say they were vehemently opposed.
Your father was ranting and raving with emotion, and your mother was
protesting your decision with tears in her eyes. They absolutely do not
approve of you becoming a librarian, and if you will not take on the
family business like your brother has, they may very well disown you.
But how to come to terms with the emotion of ‘not approving’ is
your parents’ task, not yours. It is not a problem for you to
worry about
All you can do with regard to your own life is choose the best path that you believe in. On the other hand, what kind of judgement do other people pass on that choice? That is the task of other people, and is not a matter you can do anything about.
he learned of a chariot enshrined in the acropolis. The chariot had been secured tightly to a pillar in the temple by Gordias, the former king, and there was a local legend that said, ‘He who unravels this knot shall be master of Asia.’ It was a tightly wound knot that many men of skill had been certain they could unbind, but no one had succeeded. Now, what do you think Alexander the Great did when he stood before this knot? As soon as Alexander the Great saw how tight the knot was, he pulled out his sword and sliced it in half with one stroke. Destiny is not something brought about by legend, but by clearing away with one’s own sword.’ He had no use for the power of legend, and would forge his destiny with his sword.
Not wanting to be disliked by other people. To human beings, this is an entirely natural desire, and an impulse. Kant, the giant of modern philosophy, called this desire ‘inclination’. Now, if one were to say that living like a stone tumbling downhill and allowing such inclinations or desires or impulses to take one wherever they will is ‘freedom’, one would be incorrect. To live in such a way is only to be a slave to one’s desires and impulses. Real freedom is an attitude akin to pushing up one’s tumbling self from below. A stone is powerless. Once it has begun to roll downhill, it will continue to roll until released from the natural laws of gravity and inertia. But we are not stones. We are beings who are capable of resisting inclination.
Freedom is being disliked by other people. 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.
You do not want to be disliked, but you don’t mind if you are?
PHILOSOPHER: Yes, that’s right. ‘Not wanting to be disliked’ is probably my task, but whether or not so-and-so dislikes me is the other person’s task.
Certainly, it is true that the mind and the body are separate things, that reason and emotion are different, and that both the conscious mind and the unconscious mind exist. That said, however, when one flies into a rage and shouts at another person, it is ‘I as a whole’ who is choosing to shout. One would never think of emotions that somehow exist independently—unrelated to one’s intentions, as it were—as having produced that shouting voice. When one separates the ‘I’ from ‘emotion’ and thinks, It was the emotion that made me do it, or The emotion got the best of me, and I couldn’t help it, such thinking quickly becomes a life-lie.
YOUTH: So, would you say that people like me, who fear being judged by others, are self-centred, too? Even though I try so hard to be mindful of others and adjust myself to them?
PHILOSOPHER: Yes. In the sense that you are concerned solely with the ‘I’, you are self-centred. You want to be thought well of by others, and that is why you worry about the way they look at you. That is not concern for others. It is nothing but attachment to self. The fact that there are people who do not think well of you is proof that you are living in freedom.
The feeling of inferiority is an awareness that arises within vertical relationships. If one can build horizontal relationships that are ‘equal but not the same’ for all people, there will no longer be any room for inferiority complexes to emerge.
It is when one is able to feel I am beneficial to the community that one can have a true sense of one’s worth. : That one can act on the community; that is to say, on other people, and that one can feel I am of use to someone. I can make contributions to other people.
So, let’s look at other people not on the ‘level of acts’, but on the ‘level of being’. Without judging whether or not other people did something, one rejoices in their being there, in their very existence, and one calls out to them with words of gratitude.
Suppose your shut-in child helped you wash the dishes after a meal. If you were to say then, ‘Enough of that already—just go to school,’ you would be using the words of such parents who detract from an image of an ideal child. If you were to take such an approach, the child would probably end up even more discouraged. However, if you can say a straightforward ‘thank you’, the child just might feel his own worth, and take a new step forward.
If you are building even one vertical relationship with someone, before you even notice what is happening, you will be treating all your interpersonal relations as vertical. On the other hand, if one has managed to build a horizontal relationship with at least one person—if one has been able to build a relationship of equals in the true sense of the term—that is a major lifestyle transformation. With that breakthrough, all one’s interpersonal relations will gradually become horizontal.
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. With self-acceptance, on the other hand, if one cannot do something, one is simply accepting ‘one’s incapable self’ as is, and moving forward so that one can do whatever one can. It is not a way of lying to oneself. To put it more simply, say you’ve got a score of sixty per cent, but you tell yourself I just happened to get unlucky this time around, and the real me is one hundred per cent. That is self-affirmation. By contrast, if one accepts oneself as one is, as sixty per cent, and thinks to oneself, How should I go about getting closer to one hundred per cent?— that is self-acceptance.
It is doing without any set conditions whatsoever when believing in others. Even if one does not have sufficient objective grounds for trusting someone, one believes. One believes unconditionally without concerning oneself with such things as security. That is confidence.
Adlerian psychology is not saying ‘have confidence in others unconditionally’ on the basis of a moralistic system of values. Unconditional confidence is a means for making your interpersonal relationship with a person better, and for building a horizontal relationship. If you do not have the desire to make your relationship with that person better, then go ahead and sever it
Contribution to others does not connote self-sacrifice. Adler goes so far as to warn that those who sacrifice their own lives for others are people who have conformed to society too much
‘If there are ten people, one will be someone who criticises you no matter what you do. This person will come to dislike you, and you will not learn to like him either. Then, there will be two others who accept everything about you and whom you accept too, and you will become close friends with them. The remaining seven people will be neither of these types.’ Now, do you focus on the one person who dislikes you? Do you pay more attention to the two who love you? Or would you focus on the crowd, the other seven? A person who is lacking in harmony of life will see only the one person he dislikes, and will make a judgement of the world from that.
You are not the one who decides if your contributions are of use. That is the task of other people
In a word, happiness is the feeling of contribution. That is the definition of happiness.
All types of problem behaviour, from refusing to attend school, to wrist-cutting, to underage drinking and smoking and so on, are forms of the pursuit of easy superiority
Life is a series of moments
these people have lived each and every instant of their lives here and now? That is to say, rather than living lives that are ‘en route’, they are always living here and now. For example, the person who had dreams of becoming a violinist was always looking at pieces of music, and concentrating on each piece, and on each and every measure and note.
If the goal of climbing a mountain were to get to the top, that would be a kinetic act. To take it to the extreme, it wouldn’t matter if you went to the mountaintop in a helicopter, stayed there for five minutes or so, and then headed back in the helicopter again. Of course, if you didn’t make it to the mountaintop, that would mean the mountain-climbing expedition was a failure. However, if the goal is mountain climbing itself, and not just getting to the top, one could say it is energeial. In this case, in the end it doesn’t matter whether one makes it to the mountaintop or not.
For example, one wants to get into a university, but one makes no attempt to study. This an attitude of not living earnestly here and now. Of course, maybe the entrance examination is still far off. Maybe one is not sure what needs to be studied or how thoroughly, and one finds it troublesome. However, it is enough to do it little by little—every day one can work out some mathematical formulas; one can memorise some words. In short, one can dance the dance. By doing so, one is sure to have a sense of ‘this is what I did today’; this is what today, this single day, was for. Clearly, today is not for an entrance examination in the distant future. And the same thing would hold true for your father, too—he was likely dancing earnestly the dance of his everyday work. He lived earnestly here and now, without having a grand objective or the need to achieve that objective. And, if that was the case, it would seem that your father’s life was a happy one.
The greatest life-lie of all is to not live here and now. It is to look at the past and the future, cast a dim light on one’s entire life, and believe that one has been able to see something.
And Adler, having stated that ‘life in general has no meaning’, then continues, ‘Whatever meaning life has must be assigned to it by the individual.’