In The Courage to Be Disliked, Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga present a radical and empowering new way of thinking that may transform your life. This self-help bestseller is based on the theories of the influential 20th century psychologist Alfred Adler, who believed that every individual has the power to break free from past traumas and find happiness. By shattering the illusion that you must live up to the expectations of others to be happy, the authors reveal how to tap into the freedom and joy inherent in human existence.
Kishimi and Koga begin their argument with the assertion that all of life’s problems can be easily solved, and that life is only complex because we believe it to be so. With this in mind, they insist that the only thing you need to be happy is the “courage to be disliked.” The rest of this guide will explain why this is the case.
(Shortform note: Kishimi and Koga’s title for the book was possibly inspired by the well-known phrase in Adlerian psychology “the courage to be imperfect,” coined by Sophie Lazarsfield, a student of Adler’s. The authors’ adjustment to “the courage to be disliked” reflects the emphasis Kishimi and Koga put on positive interpersonal relationships in comparison to Adler’s focus on inferiority and superiority.)
Adler’s Psychology of Empowerment
As Kishimi and Koga explain, The Courage to Be Disliked is nothing more than a repackaging of the ideas of Alfred Adler. Luckily for Kishimi and Koga, Adler’s ideas are perfectly suited for the self-help format—in fact, while he was alive, he started his own self-help movement.
Because Adler, like the authors, believed so strongly in the individual’s ability to shape their own psyche and find happiness, he made a strong effort to get his ideas in the hands of people who could use them to improve their lives. He was one of the first psychologists to focus on the mental health of children in school, training waves of counselors and conducting his own family therapy sessions. These methods helped form the foundation of social work as we know it today.
We’ll begin by establishing Alfred Adler’s perspective on the self, explaining why your worldview and happiness are entirely dependent on the goal you choose to pursue. Next, we’ll take a look at how unhappy people invent their own miserable world by choosing to pursue the goal of external approval. Finally, we’ll explain how happy people find joy in every moment by pursuing the goal of helping others unconditionally.
The foundation of Kishimi and Koga’s worldview is the notion that any individual can find happiness, no matter what happened to them in the past. Consequently, the only thing differentiating someone unhappy from the happy people around them is the fact they’ve decided not to change.
(Shortform note: Many readers argue that finding happiness isn’t as simple as Kishimi and Koga’s extreme statement leads you to believe. In fact, believing this idea at face value can backfire—“deciding to be happy” by expressing insincere positivity can be even more damaging than expressing authentic unhappiness. However, in the book’s full context, Kishimi and Koga push a more balanced view of this sentiment. While anyone can “decide to change,” the authors acknowledge that it isn’t easy, and it may take several years to fully rewire your mental habits.)
Kishimi and Koga explain that Adler is a proponent of “individual psychology.” By “individual,” Adler means that the self is impossible to divide. You are a single entity—your body and mind, emotion and reason, and unconscious and conscious mind all work in harmony toward the same goal. Thus, everything you think, do, or feel is an attempt to get closer to the goal you’ve chosen, consciously or unconsciously.
One Common Goal: A Consistent Identity
Kishimi and Koga’s assertion that we create thoughts and feelings to serve a predetermined goal is backed up by substantial research. In Influence, psychologist Robert Cialdini identifies one such goal that almost everyone sets: the goal to behave consistently with your past actions. Humans unconsciously make it a goal to avoid changing, then manufacture specific opinions and emotions to help them reach that goal—just as Kishimi and Koda describe.
For example, in one study, psychologists asked homeowners whether they would allow an innocuous three-inch sign promoting safe driving to be placed in their front yard. Two weeks later, they asked the same neighborhood for permission to install a massive, intentionally ugly billboard promoting safe driving in their front yards. 76% of the subjects who had already accepted the tiny sign agreed to the extreme request—in comparison, only 17% of those who were never approached about the tiny sign agreed to the billboard.
Because they made it a goal to behave consistently, the subjects who had already demonstrated a willingness to make sacrifices for public safety apparently felt much more enthusiastic about safe driving than those who had not. This may indicate that our emotions are far less dependent on external circumstances than we think. Just as Adler’s theory of individual psychology would predict, by choosing our actions, we may be choosing our emotions as well.
In Adler’s view, goals don’t just determine our happiness: Adler holds a “teleological” view of the self, which means he believes that the goals you set for yourself determine who you are. Kishimi and Koga explain that instead of analyzing an individual’s unchangeable “personality,” Adler studies people in terms of “lifestyle.” In his eyes, your habits, emotions, and patterns of thought are all part of a lifestyle that you chose at some point in your life and continue choosing every day because you judge it to be the most effective way to achieve a specific goal.
For example, Kishimi and Koga would argue that there’s no such thing as an “antisocial person.” There are only people who choose antisocial lifestyles. The same goes for people who are impatient, egotistical, or insecure—anything we’d typically associate with personality.
How to Leverage Your Identity
In Atomic Habits, James Clear agrees with Kishimi and Koga that your goals determine your identity—when you set a goal and do what it takes to reach it, you’re reinforcing a set of beliefs that you hold about the kind of person you are. However, unlike Kishimi and Koga, Clear perceives this relationship between your identity and goals as a self-reinforcing loop: Not only do your goals shape your identity, your identity determines what goals you set and achieve.
Clear uses this idea as the basis for his advice on how to achieve your goals: If you begin the process of self-improvement by determining what kind of person you want to be (thereby intentionally choosing your own identity), you’ll feel emotionally motivated to do what it takes to become that person. The more habits you build in alignment with that identity, the more that identity will feel like a part of you.
Unlike Kishimi and Koga, Clear doesn’t go so far as to say that personality doesn’t exist. Rather, he argues that you should become aware of your personality and genetic dispositions and try to work with them rather than against them. By all means, you should work hard toward whatever goal makes you happiest, but by taking the time to discover what habits are easiest for you, you may find an easier path to success.
Kishimi and Koga take this logic one step further, arguing that the goals you set determine how you feel. You first decide what you want, then generate the emotions that will get you there.
For example, imagine an actor desperately wants to audition for a play, but they’re so anxious that they can’t read the lines. The actor believes that if the fear would go away, they would get what they want. However, Kishimi and Koga would argue that the actor made it their goal to avoid auditioning, then consequently generated the emotion of fear as a means of reaching this goal. The actor doesn’t really want to audition—they would prefer to avoid the risk of humiliation.
Kishimi and Koga believe that this logic applies to all unhappiness—in their eyes, all unhappy people are currently choosing to be unhappy.
(Shortform note: Kishimi and Koga’s perspective on emotion is a variation of what psychologists call cognitive appraisal theory, the idea that our thoughts about external stimuli are what determine our emotional state. Kishimi and Koga add to this theory the assumption that our thoughts discern if something is good or bad based on whether it pushes us toward or away from our goals. On the other hand, those who believe that instinctive bodily reactions control our emotions would argue that Kishimi and Koga are overestimating the influence our thoughts have on our emotions. In this view, the idea that unhappy people choose to be unhappy is an overstatement.)
Kishimi and Koga anticipate the counterargument that some people have suffered traumatic pasts that prevent them from feeling happy. However, they point out that not everyone who suffers trauma is scarred for life. Many people are able to successfully move forward from trauma or abuse and live life to the fullest, proving that the past does not necessarily determine your future.
The authors claim that, although poor childhood experiences may have influenced you to set a certain goal, you chose what goal to pursue and the lifestyle best suited to get you there. For example, if your parents divorced when you were young, you may believe that all close relationships result in pain and consequently set the goal of avoiding intimacy with others to prevent them from hurting you. This goal may manifest itself in feelings of disgust for other people that influence you to become a misanthropic loner. However, you could just have easily set a different goal based on your childhood experiences—for instance, the goal of prioritizing your relationships above all else to prevent them from falling apart—and thus developed an entirely different lifestyle.
Do Kishimi and Koga Unfairly Deny Trauma?
A common criticism of The Courage to Be Disliked is that Kishimi and Koga downplay the impact of trauma and blame victims for choosing the goals that lead to their own suffering.
Many experts maintain that trauma objectively causes damage, perhaps more so than Kishimi and Koga imply. In The Body Keeps the Score, Bessel van der Kolk explores the various ways in which traumatic events deeply scar the body and mind. Trauma victims not only suffer emotional symptoms such as shame and numbness, but also physiological symptoms, including a hypersensitive stress response and disconnection from physical sensations in the body.
However, it’s possible that by diminishing the power trauma has over its victims, Kishimi and Koga are attempting to counteract learned helplessness—the state in which trauma patients believe they are unable to help themselves, and thus are unable to heal.
Van der Kolk explains that learned helplessness is a common symptom of trauma, and he agrees with Kishimi and Koga that learned helplessness is a dangerous dead end that must be overcome. For this reason, he warns against overreliance on psychoactive medication, as it may discourage patients from actively engaging in healing practices—for example, building relationships with trusted people and communities, or undergoing psychomotor therapy to reconnect the body and mind. By making the case that no one is helpless, Kishimi and Koga are encouraging trauma victims to take this kind of active role in their own recovery.
If your happiness is ultimately entirely under your control, why does anyone choose to be unhappy? Kishimi and Koga explain that unhappiness is a strategy that unhappy people use to achieve their goals.
As we’ve established, the authors believe that our everyday goals determine our day-to-day emotional states. Temporary unhappiness is common—everyone gets disappointed and frustrated on days when life doesn’t go their way. However, people who are chronically unhappy are plagued by a single ongoing frustrating goal: one that always has something to do with how they relate to others.
This is an important point—more broadly, Kishimi and Koga assert that your overall life happiness depends on the goal you set for yourself in your interpersonal relationships. In other words: What are you trying to accomplish in your relationships with others? The answer to this question determines how happy you are, as we’ll see in the next section.
Adlerian Psychotherapy
The idea that people use unhappiness to achieve their goals is the foundation of Adlerian psychotherapy, a version of talk therapy based on Adler’s theories. Adlerian psychotherapy intends to boost a patient’s quality of life by improving their self-image and relationships with others.
Because it’s based on Adler’s theory that people are only unhappy because they’re trying to reach a certain goal, the treatment process revolves around convincing the patient to abandon their existing goal for interpersonal relationships and replace it with something more fulfilling. Therapists call this existing goal a “fictive goal” because it’s a fiction—the patient imagines that achieving the goal will make them happy, but in reality the goal itself is causing them to be unhappy.
By prompting the patient to answer questions about their goals and beliefs, the therapist uses the patient’s own logic to illuminate the fact that their fictive goal is irrational and should be changed. This may explain why Kishimi and Koga wrote this book as a Socratic dialogue of questions and answers—they may have intentionally modeled it after the process of Adlerian psychotherapy.
So far, we’ve established that your emotions and identity are determined by the goals you set for yourself. Additionally, the goal that has the greatest impact on your life happiness is the end goal of your interpersonal relationships.
According to Kishimi and Koga, there are two goals to choose from when it comes to our relationships with others: We can interact with others in hopes of either earning their approval or contributing positively to their lives. Unhappy people choose the former, while happy people choose the latter.
(Shortform note: The concept that we should ideally interact with others without expecting their approval or anything else in return is a common idea—the 18th-century philosopher Immanuel Kant used it as the basis of his definition of universal morality. Among those who express this idea, Kishimi and Koga take an extreme stance, declaring it the basis of all lasting happiness.)
In this section, we’re going to examine the unhappy lifestyle that inevitably results from the goal of external approval. Afterward, we’ll take a look at the fulfilling lifestyle of someone who makes it their goal to help others unconditionally—the happy life available to you at any time.
Kishimi and Koga argue that unhappy people make it their ultimate goal to earn the approval of others. In other words, unhappy people believe that the key to happiness is to be recognized as “good” by someone else. Kishimi and Koga make it clear that no matter who this external source of approval is—a teacher, a parent, society—the result is the same: unhappiness. Essentially, unhappy people all cling to the unhealthy belief that if others like you, it means you’re a “good person.”
Kishimi and Koga note that most unhappy people assume this need to be liked is an inescapable part of the human condition. Everyone craves approval, they think; it’s just how we’re built. These people have it backwards: Humans don’t crave approval because it makes us happy, approval makes us happy because we crave it.
Kishimi and Koga also note that even if unhappy people successfully earn the approval of others, they do so at great cost. By chasing approval, unhappy people ultimately end up living other people’s lives. Instead of pursuing their own goals, unhappy people follow the expectations of others, sacrificing their own desires (and happiness) in the process. For example, a young adult may decide to go to medical school to please their parents despite hating the idea of being a doctor.
A Biological Need for Approval
There is some evidence to dispute Kishimi and Koga’s claim that approval only makes us happy because we’ve chosen to want it. In Digital Minimalism, Cal Newport explains how humans are biologically predisposed to base their happiness on social approval. Unhappy people may not have chosen this goal at all—it’s a drive they’re born with.
Neuroscientists have identified a set of regions in the brain that activates whenever you’re not concentrating on any specific task, which they named the “default network.” They discovered that the default network is the same network that activates when humans navigate social situations, indicating that unless we intentionally do otherwise, we’re constantly monitoring the status of our relationships with others. The default network lights up even in the brains of newborn babies, showing that social cognition is deeply rooted in our biology.
Does this mean that Kishimi and Koga are wrong? Are we biologically driven to abandon what we really want and live the lives other people want us to? Not necessarily—unlike Newport, Kishimi and Koga make a distinction between the need for social approval and the need for positive social connection. As we’ll discuss in the final part of this guide, Kishimi and Koga would argue that it’s possible to satisfy our social needs through unconditional contribution to others instead of conditional approval from others.
We’ve established that external approval is ultimately unfulfilling. However, this isn’t the worst consequence of making approval from others your end goal.
Kishimi and Koga imply that the main problem with making approval from others your ultimate goal is that much of the time, this goal is impossible to achieve. In the majority of cases, approval is conditional—others will like you only if you do what they want you to do. This means that whether or not others approve of you is out of your control. Sometimes, there will be nothing you can do to get someone to like you.
After failing to achieve this impossible goal, unhappy people cope with their failure in two interconnected ways, which we’ll explore below.
Kishimi and Koga explain that when faced with the often impossible task of earning the approval of others, unhappy people often cope by setting a new goal: to avoid trying and failing to earn the approval of others. Instead of pursuing the impossible goal, they choose not to try at all. As a result, they unconsciously manufacture negative emotions such as fear and self-loathing to avoid trying to win others’ approval.
Intentionally Failing the Impossible Goal
People who avoid trying and failing to earn the approval of others, as Kishimi and Koga describe, are still building their lives around the outcome of this impossible goal, rather than disconnecting from it entirely. In doing so, they only intensify their emotional attachment to the goal, deepening their unhappiness when they continue to fail to achieve it.
In contrast, a healthier approach would be to emotionally separate from the impossible goal entirely by intentionally failing to achieve it while putting greater focus on a new, higher goal. To accomplish this, many recovering approval-seekers pursue a new goal to intentionally embarrass themselves, desensitizing themselves to social humiliation and reducing their emotional attachment to the goal of approval from others.
For example, in The Four-Hour Workweek, Tim Ferriss outlines a number of “Comfort Challenges” designed to increase your tolerance for social discomfort and learn to cope with disapproval or rejection from others. These challenges include maintaining eye contact with friends and strangers for uncomfortable lengths of time and asking attractive strangers for their phone numbers. Ferriss asserts that practicing these challenges will make it easier for you to suffer discomfort when striving to achieve higher goals—for example, while negotiating more favorable business deals.
According to Kishimi and Koga, to achieve this goal of inaction, unhappy people adopt beliefs that give them excuses to deny responsibility for their own life. They assume that there’s some unchangeable part of them that prevents them from being liked by others.
Kishimi and Koga explain that unhappy people use these limiting beliefs to convince themselves that they are unable to choose their own lifestyle or make positive changes in their life. In doing so, unhappy people successfully achieve the goal of avoiding failure but trap themselves in a hopeless, miserable lifestyle by convincing themselves they don’t have the power to change it.
You’re Responsible for Everything in Your Life
In The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, Mark Manson explains that one reason so many of us adopt limiting beliefs and avoid taking responsibility for our own lives is the fact that we falsely assume that we should only take responsibility for things that are our fault. We believe that if someone else causes our problem, they should be responsible for fixing it for us—it’s only fair. Likewise, we’re reluctant to put in the work on a problem we didn’t create. This in itself is a limiting belief—when we label a situation “unfair” and refuse to take action, we only harm ourselves.
The way to avoid all limiting beliefs is to abandon this notion completely: Problems are the responsibility of the person they affect, not the person who causes them. This is because the way to live the happiest life possible is to accept responsibility for every single problem in our lives, especially those that aren’t our fault. Even though many people are randomly born with disadvantages, Manson argues that they can overcome them and find happiness by taking radical responsibility for their lives.
Unhappy people’s need for external approval doesn’t just make them feel bad about themselves—it also actively prevents them from forming healthy relationships with others. Kishimi and Koga make it clear that as long as you’re trying to earn someone else’s approval, it’s impossible to forge a mutually satisfying relationship with them.
(Shortform note: In Attached, Amir Levine and Rachel Heller offer a counterargument: Not only is it possible to forge fulfilling romantic relationships without abandoning a dependence on external approval, healthy relationships require a constant stream of mutual approval and support. Levine and Heller argue that we’re only able to reach our full potential as independent individuals if we have a “secure base” of a loved one’s reliable approval.)
The authors argue that seeking approval from others disrupts your relationships for two reasons. Let’s explore each in detail.
Kishimi and Koga argue that unhappy people choose to see life as a competition and other people as adversaries—if others win, it means you lose. Why is this the case?
Recall that approval is often conditional—it depends on what you do. Some people will like you for making them laugh, others will like you for being generous and kind, and another may like you for achieving career success. These are difficult things to do, and no one would be able to do it all perfectly. This means that inevitably, someone else will be better at earning approval than you.
When others succeed, they’re raising the bar, making it more difficult for you to earn the same amount of approval. Kishimi and Koga explain that external approval is a zero-sum game—the better someone else does, the worse you look in comparison. In other words, the pursuit of external approval is, by nature, a competition, with winners and losers. For this reason, Kishimi and Koga assert that unhappy people fear the success of others. They celebrate the failures of those around them instead of offering support, preventing them from forming healthy relationships.
The Infinite Game of Life
In The Infinite Game, Simon Sinek draws a distinction between “finite” games, which you play to win, and “infinite” games, which you play indefinitely for their own sake. Sinek applies this idea to the world of business, but it’s equally applicable to the pursuit of happiness. Approval-seekers who see life as a competition treat it as a finite game instead of an infinite one. Consequently, they’re unable to form supportive relationships with their “competitors.”
Sinek explains that people who approach infinite games with a finite mindset set the goal of beating the competition. Since they’re playing to win, they spend all their energy and resources attempting to best their opponents in a specific finite context—for instance, sales goals (in business), or GPA (in school). If they lose, their efforts feel wasted, and they have no willpower left to continue.
On the other hand, instead of comparing themselves to others, infinite-minded people make it their goal to advance a “just cause,” a noble mission directing all their actions. Because they’re fulfilled by continuing to play, they have an infinitely renewable source of energy, making them difficult to outlast. For this reason, people who refuse to see life as a competition often find the most success. Someone who approaches life with an infinite mindset can form healthy relationships because they don’t have to beat others to accomplish their just cause.
Another way an unhappy person’s obsession with approval harms their interpersonal relationships is by causing them to feel entitled. Kishimi and Koga argue that because unhappy people spend their lives striving to meet the expectations of others, they become resentful when others—especially loved ones—fail to meet their expectations.
The authors explain that if an unhappy person does something kind for a loved one without receiving gratitude and appreciation in return, they feel cheated. The attitude becomes: “Because I did that for you, you have to do this for me.” This kind of conditional relationship limits the freedom and happiness of both parties.
For example, imagine someone throws a lavish surprise birthday party for a friend of theirs, then gets offended when that same friend doesn’t do the same for them. In this scenario, the person who organized the party is only using their friend as a means to get something in return. If the friend feels obligated to return the favor but doesn’t want to, they’ll come to resent the original gesture. This isn’t a mutually fulfilling friendship.
This Belief Destroys Marriages
The idea that you deserve to have others meet your expectations is often more destructive the more committed a relationship is. The less likely it seems that the relationship will collapse, the more likely it is that one party will take the other for granted. This is because when you view relationships as mutual sacrifice, at some level you’ll want to “win the trade” by contributing as little as possible. The more your partner has committed to you, the more you’ll be able to get away with.
In this way, greater commitment comes with the risk of damaging a relationship. The longer a relationship lasts, the more important it becomes for both parties to avoid the assumption that relationships require sacrifice. We’ll explore the alternative belief in the next section of this guide.
Now that we’ve explained how the need for external approval has the potential to damage your life and relationships, we’ll conclude by taking a look at the alternative: This is Kishimi and Koga’s advice for how to live a happy life.
Kishimi and Koga argue that instead of seeking approval, happy people make it their ultimate goal to help others. They feel genuine pleasure when they can contribute to the well-being of those around them. In this way, all it takes to be happy is to honestly believe that you’re useful to someone.
It’s important to note that feeling useful—not appreciated—is the key to their happiness: Kishimi and Koga assert that as long as happy people honestly believe that they’re helping others, they feel no emotional attachment to what others think of them. This is the “courage to be disliked” from the book’s title.
Kishimi and Koga argue that it’s inevitable that some people will dislike you. No matter what you do, there will be someone in the world who would rather you do it differently. The only way to attain sustainable happiness is to work up the courage to embrace this fact and free yourself to live what you believe to be a good life, no matter what other people think.
(Shortform note: A helpful way of coping with the fact that some people will inevitably dislike you is to look at rejection as the universe’s way to keep you away from someone who isn’t good for you. After all, the more someone dislikes you, the less likely it is that they have the values and disposition that would make you enjoy spending time with them.)
Usefulness Is Happiness
Many sources back up Kishimi and Koga’s claim that usefulness is the most reliable source of happiness. Some take this argument to the extreme, claiming that usefulness is an even more vital contributor to happiness than basic safety and security. To illustrate: Many people who enlist in the military become energized with a sense of purpose, even in the thick of a dangerous war where they risk injury and death. When these veterans return home, they often become depressed. Even though they’re much safer and more comfortable, they’ve lost the cause that gave their lives meaning and made them feel useful.
Kishimi and Koga make the case that you need to decide for yourself what “useful” means. In Man’s Search for Meaning, Victor Frankl places even more importance on this task. He explains that to live a fulfilling life, each individual must discover what purpose they’re living for—and ultimately, what’s worth dying for. Once you determine the most useful thing you could do with your life, doing anything else would make you feel like you’re wasting your brief time on earth. This is why it’s so important to overcome the need for approval and cultivate “the courage to be disliked”—if you fulfill the expectations of others but don’t feel useful, you won’t be happy.
For happy people, helping others isn’t a personal sacrifice—it’s something they do primarily for themselves. The authors admit that this may sound selfish or dishonest, but Kishimi and Koga insist that it’s perfectly fine if your life purpose is to make yourself happy.
Because happy people are fulfilled by doing good for others, they’re able to serve others unconditionally. According to Kishimi and Koga, helping others because it makes you happy is a far more potent motivator than if you were helping others just because it’s the “right thing to do.” Chasing ascetic sacrifice to be a “good person” is nothing more than the need for approval in disguise.
Rewards Flow to Those Who Serve Unconditionally
In The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari, Robin Sharma cites a Chinese proverb about helping others: When you give away a flower, some of its sweet scent sticks to your hand. Here, Sharma’s Buddhism-inspired ideas align with Kishimi and Koga’s Adlerian psychology—by helping others, you’re simultaneously helping yourself.
Unlike Kishimi and Koga, Sharma emphasizes that the people you care for will give you some of life’s sweetest gifts in return—for example, he argues that if you show continuous love to good friends, they’ll be there to support you in times of need. Whereas Kishimi and Koga deny the need to receive anything in return from those you serve, Sharma sees relationships as a more traditional give-and-take.
However, it’s possible to embrace both perspectives: When you do good without expecting to receive anything in return, every gift is an added bonus on top of the intrinsic fulfillment that Kishimi and Koga promise.
Since all you need to to be happy is to feel like you’re helping others, Kishimi and Koga assert that anyone can be happy by recognizing the fact that their mere existence makes others happy.
Humans care about each other. Other people don’t need to do anything special to improve our lives—their mere presence is gratifying. To illustrate: The day your child is born, they don’t need to do anything impressive to make you happy; they just need to exist.
Using this logic, happy people believe that all humans are valuable, even if they haven’t done anything “good” with their lives. Kishimi and Koga insist that, because they hold this belief, happy people are able to accept themselves unconditionally. Even if they’ve made countless mistakes in the past, or are far less well-adjusted than their peers, happy people realize that their existence is still a gift to others and feel good about themselves despite their flaws.
Kishimi and Koga admit that some people do more good than others. However, whereas unhappy people would see the goodness of others as a threat to their image, happy people celebrate others’ success. Since they believe everyone has the power to make others happy by simply existing, and therefore everyone has value, happy people have no need to see life as a competition. The success of others can never take away any of your innate human value.
How to Accept Yourself
It’s easy to rationally understand that we all have value, but it’s more difficult to genuinely feel this way about yourself. In Radical Acceptance, Tara Brach describes a meditative practice designed to help you embrace your inherent value and alleviate your internal suffering.
This practice, “radical acceptance,” is a two-part process—first, you recognize the emotions and sensations you’re feeling, and second, you offer yourself compassion, wishing yourself well instead of resenting yourself for not being good enough. Brach implies that you should practice doing this as much as possible.
For example, imagine you see a sweater you can’t afford and feel the impulse to shoplift it, immediately feeling guilty for considering theft. To practice radical acceptance, you would first notice that you feel guilty, then ask yourself gentle questions until you realize why. Then, you’d offer compassion, reassuring yourself that selfish desires don’t make you a bad person.
Instead of judging people based on their inherent baseline value to others, as Kishimi and Koga do, Brach argues that we all have value due to a shared nature of goodness. Drawing from Buddhism, Brach states that each of us, at our core, is a being of pure awareness and love. We can feel worthy because we are a part of a universal force of good, not merely because we exist.
However, like Kishimi and Koga, Brach acknowledges that accepting yourself as worthy and valuable makes it easier for you to genuinely want the best for others and celebrate their successes. Buddhists label this supportive type of love “metta,” or “lovingkindness.” Brach insists that if you force yourself to show others the same radical acceptance you show yourself, over time, you’ll feel genuine concern for their wellbeing, even if those feelings weren’t there to begin with.
Kishimi and Koga argue that the foundation of all healthy, fulfilling relationships is strict boundaries separating your life from the lives of those around you. To this end, the authors offer a simple rule that dictates ideal personal boundaries: No one should take responsibility for a decision that doesn’t directly impact their own life. For example, if a student’s best friend goes out and parties all night instead of writing an important term paper, it would be ultimately damaging to the relationship for that student to write their friend’s paper for them.
Additionally, Kishimi and Koga argue that you shouldn’t let other people hold you responsible for their tasks. Don’t feel obligated to do anything for anyone—as we’ve established, relationships built on conditions and restrictions are unfulfilling for both parties. All your acts of service should be given unconditionally because you’re happy to give them.
For example, it would be wrong for your brother to guilt you into babysitting his kids. Ideally, it would make you happy to help him out in this way, and you would gladly volunteer. However, if the experience is deeply unpleasant for you, you shouldn’t feel obligated to do it. Moral impositions like this would eventually cause you to resent him, ruining the relationship.
Setting boundaries like this can be difficult, especially with family members and close friends, but Kishimi and Koga insist that this is a prerequisite for any healthy relationship.
The Origins of Codependency
In Codependent No More, Melody Beattie explains that failure to set proper boundaries is a central symptom of codependency—a relationship dynamic characterized by self-neglect and overinvestment in another person.
Beattie’s advice on avoiding codependency closely overlaps with Kishimi and Koga’s—she defines self-care as the process of taking responsibility for your own life and emphasizes how important it is to avoid fixing other people’s problems. However, she dives more deeply into the topic, explaining why it is that codependents behave the way they do.
Beattie argues that codependency is a set of habitual coping mechanisms developed as a reaction to prolonged stress. The source of the prolonged stress that causes codependency may be obvious—for example, a substance abuse problem—or it could be subtle: For example, Kishimi and Koga would argue that the persistent failure to earn a loved one’s approval would cause enough stress to foster codependency. Desperate to alleviate this stress, codependents believe they need to control their loved ones to make themselves happy, often resorting to emotional manipulation to do so.
Finally, happy people ignore the past and future and live fully for the joy of the present. Kishimi and Koga assert that we all have the power to choose to be happy at any given moment.
As we discussed earlier, happy people understand that past traumas have no power to prevent them from being happy, here and now. The flip side of this idea is that likewise, the future should have no bearing on your current happiness. Kishimi and Koga assert that many people think they need to accomplish something great to be happy, but this is a lie. As we’ve established, anyone can be happy by simply recognizing the value they contribute to those around them.
Kishimi and Koga clarify that this doesn’t mean you should avoid working toward any future goals. Rather, you should find meaning and joy in every step of the path toward that goal. This way, if you were to die at any moment, your life wouldn’t feel like a waste.
In short, Kishimi and Koga emphasize that you have the power to find satisfaction and meaning in every individual moment of your life.
We’re Wired to Live for the Future
Earlier, we discussed how we’re biologically predisposed to seek approval. Likewise, another reason our biology stands in the way of our happiness is the fact that we’re biologically predisposed to obsess over the future. The same “default network” in the brain that monitors our social standing is also constantly reconstructing our past and imagining our future. By default, we don’t live in the present.
What, then, can we do to find satisfaction and ground ourselves in the moment? Aside from finding fulfillment in every good deed we do for others, as Kishimi and Koga suggest, experts offer these tips:
Investigate your sensory experience. By paying attention to the sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and feelings that are constantly around you, you can override whatever concerns about the future are on your mind and ground yourself in the present.
Practice gratitude. Constantly focusing on the future can be discouraging, as you’re always thinking about things you want but don’t have. Writing out lists of things you’re thankful to have in your life will reorient your attention toward all the parts of your present life that spark joy.
Take a break from technology. While social media and other inventions make us feel connected to a world far bigger than the one around us, they’re a poor substitute for the real thing. Giving your brain some time away from screens will help you appreciate concrete pleasures instead of their digital representations.
Shifting your mindset to one that no longer desires the approval of others isn’t easy. Kishimi and Koga argue that it takes years—sometimes decades—for someone to fully accept these truths and put them into practice. Still, the fact remains that happiness is available to everyone at any time. You simply need to choose to see the world in an empowering way.
(Shortform note: In Mindset, Carol Dweck warns that while you’re transitioning from one mindset to a better one, you’ll temporarily feel like you’re losing your sense of self. We cling to our current beliefs for a reason—at some point, they helped. Adopting new standards often means becoming a failure by your old standards, which can feel devastating. Only after pushing through and experiencing the benefits of your new mindset—in this case, feeling happy without external approval—will you fully realize it’s worth the pain.)
Kishimi and Koga assert that all negative emotions stem from the goal to avoid trying and failing to earn external approval. Investigate a persistent source of negative feelings in your life to see if they may be caused by this need for approval.
Describe a persistent negative emotion that you wish you didn’t have. What goal might these negative feelings be helping you achieve? (Recall our example from earlier: An actor too anxious to learn their lines may be trying to avoid the risk of embarrassment on stage.)
Could this goal be related to the broader goal of earning approval of others? If so, whose approval are you looking for? Why do you think you care so much about their approval? (For example, our actor may avoid embarrassment because they feel the need to appear “cool” in front of their friends. This may be because the actor values their friends highly and is afraid of losing them.)
Imagine what it would be like to completely disregard what this person (or people) thought of you. How does it feel? Frightening? Freeing? Why?
What is the smallest step you could take toward freeing yourself from their expectations? (For example, you may speak your mind around them in a situation where you would normally restrain yourself.)
Kishimi and Koga argue that all interpersonal relationship problems are the result of improper boundaries—either you’re taking responsibility for a problem that isn’t yours, or someone else is taking responsibility for one of your problems. Practice setting healthy boundaries by deconstructing one of your personal issues through this lens.
Describe an ongoing interpersonal conflict in your life: any frustrating or distressing disagreement between you and one other person. Identify the problem or problems keeping each person from what they want. (For example, imagine your significant other thinks you’re spending too much time out with friends and feels neglected. Your significant other’s problem is that they want to spend more time with you, while your problem is that you want to spend time with your friends, but you don’t want to upset your partner.)
Are you taking responsibility for a problem that isn’t yours, or is someone interfering in a problem that belongs to you? What is motivating you, or them, to do so? (Remember, to determine who a problem belongs to, ask: “Whose life will it affect?” In our example above, the conflict stems from the fact that you’re taking responsibility for your significant other’s feelings of neglect, which are their problem. Even if these improper boundaries are motivated by love and concern for your partner, they’re still harmful to the relationship.)
List the negative consequences caused by these unhealthy boundaries. (In our example, taking responsibility for your significant other’s perception that they’re being neglected may cause you to make sacrifices, like staying home every night, even though you don’t want to, fostering feelings of resentment and entitlement. Additionally, it will impede your significant other’s personal growth by removing the need for them to develop trust and emotional autonomy.)
What step could you take to disentangle your problems from those of the other person? (Remember, as a rule of thumb, you shouldn’t feel obligated to do anything you don’t want to do. In our example, you might continue to go out with your friends as much as you like and allow your partner to become more independent, find a compromise that makes you both happy, or even end the relationship.)