I finished reading,
The courage to be disliked, by Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga. Here are some
takeaways from the book.
No matter what has occurred in your life up to this point, it has no bearing at all on how you live from now on.
Loneliness is having other people around you, and having a deep sense of being excluded from them. To feel lonely, we need other people.
Relationships in which people restrict each other eventually fall apart. The kind of relationship that feels somehow oppressive and strained when the two people are together cannot be called love, even if there is passion. When one can think, “Whenever I am with this person, I can behave very freely”, one can really feel love.
Think with the perspective of “Whose task is this?” and continually separate your own tasks from other people’s tasks. Discard other people’s tasks. What another person thinks of you is that person’s task, not yours. Just face your own tasks in your own life without lying.
Forming good interpersonal relationships requires a certain degree of distance. Like you can't read a book if you push it up against your face, nor hold it too far away.
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. Conducting yourself in such a way as to not be disliked by anyone is an extremely unfree way of living.
The basis of interpersonal relations is founded not on trust but on confidence. Confidence is doing without any set conditions whatsoever when believing in others - without concerning oneself with such things as security. There are people who will continue to have confidence in you no matter how they are treated.
No matter what moments you are living, or if there are people who dislike you, as long as you do not lose sight of the guiding star of “I contribute to others,” you will not lose your way, and you can do whatever you like.
If “I” change, the world will change. This means that the world can be changed only by me and no one else will change it for me.
A very interesting book indeed. I’m sure I missed out some other concepts. But these listed above resonated well with me. Sometimes you are left with that “I didn’t know that” moments, while other times it’s quite reassuring with analogies.
This book helped me to accept rejections, to be humble and be in my zone. This was a call to put down my head do my own work. My task was to be honest, speak my truth and do whatever I felt was right, accepting all consequences that arose from it. People who didn’t resonate with me were just doing their task. I am making peace with everything that is going on in my life and will continue to execute my freedom.
