The Courage to Be Disliked: The Japanese Phenomenon That Shows You How to Change Your Life and Achieve Real Happiness

What happens when two Japanese men encounter ancient Greek philosophy and distill pieces of Stoic and Socratic brilliance with all the practical force of Adlerian psychology? You get The Courage to Be Disliked, a book that one reviewer describes as, “Marie Kondo, but for your brain.” Alfred Adler (1870-1937) was an Austrian psychiatrist in the early 20th century, and the most obscure of the three giants of psychology, along with Freud and Jung. Although many people have lost track of Adler and his school of thought, his ideas have overflowed the confines of formal psychological study and spilled into numerous disciplines and mainstream vernacular. Among other accomplishments, Adler is credited with coining the term “inferiority complex.” His thoughts show up in works like Steven Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People and Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People. Freud and Jung are the most famous founding figures of psychoanalysis, but Kishimi and Koga argue in The Courage to Be Disliked that Adler’s ideas about how people change and how to become truly happy have life-changing (and life-simplifying) potential.