## Highlights None of us live in an objective world, but instead in a subjective world that we ourselves have given meaning to. The world you see is different from the one I see, and it’s impossible to share your world with anyone else. — location: 133 ^ref-51339 --- So, in Adlerian psychology, we do not think about past ‘causes’, but rather about present ‘goals’. — location: 244 ^ref-3944 --- Your friend is insecure, so he can’t go out. Think about it the other way around. He doesn’t want to go out, so he’s creating a state of anxiety. — location: 245 ^ref-57807 --- Think about it this way. 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’. — location: 247 ^ref-40754 --- This is the difference between ‘aetiology’ (the study of causation) and teleology (the study of the purpose of a given phenomenon, rather than its cause). Everything you have been telling me is based in aetiology. As long as we stay in aetiology, we will not take a single step forward. — location: 254 ^ref-37189 --- In Adlerian psychology, trauma is definitively denied. This was a very new and revolutionary point. Certainly, the Freudian view of trauma is fascinating. Freud’s idea is that a person’s psychic wounds (traumas) cause his or her present unhappiness. — location: 270 ^ref-2476 --- We are not determined by our experiences, but the meaning we give them is self-determining.’ YOUTH: So, we make of them whatever suits our purposes? — location: 274 ^ref-3833 --- 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. — location: 319 ^ref-17520 --- In a word, anger is a tool that can be taken out as needed. It can be put away the moment the phone rings, and pulled out again after one hangs up. — location: 337 ^ref-14492 --- The question isn’t ‘what happened?’, but ‘how was it resolved?’ — location: 357 ^ref-6243 --- ‘People are not driven by past causes, but move toward goals that they themselves set’— — location: 371 ^ref-15177 --- ‘The important thing is not what one is born with, but what use one makes of that equipment.’ You want to be Y or someone else because you are utterly focused on what you were born with. Instead, you’ve got to focus on what you can make of your equipment. — location: 425 ^ref-17363 --- Think of lifestyle as a concept bringing together these ways of finding meaning. In a narrow sense, lifestyle could be defined as someone’s personality; taken more broadly, it is a word that encompasses the worldview of that person and their outlook on life. — location: 468 ^ref-27882 --- You probably think of disposition or personality as something with which you are endowed, without any connection to your will. In Adlerian psychology, however, lifestyle is thought of as something that you choose for yourself. — location: 476 ^ref-37680 --- Adlerian psychology is a psychology of courage. Your unhappiness cannot be blamed on your past or your environment. And it isn’t that you lack competence. You just lack courage. One might say you are lacking in the courage to be happy. — location: 518 ^ref-294 --- I have a young friend who dreams of becoming a novelist, but who never seems to be able to complete his work. According to him, his job keeps him too busy, and he can never find enough time to write novels, and that’s why he can’t complete work and enter it for writing awards. But is that the real reason? No! It’s actually that he wants to leave the possibility of ‘I can do it if I try’ open, by not committing to anything. He doesn’t want to expose his work to criticism, and he certainly doesn’t want to face the reality that he might produce an inferior piece of writing and face rejection. — location: 537 ^ref-3186 --- Why do you dislike yourself? Why do you focus only on your shortcomings, and why have you decided to not start liking yourself? It’s because you are overly afraid of being disliked by other people and getting hurt in your interpersonal relationships. — location: 645 ^ref-26904 --- it’s basically impossible to not get hurt in your relations with other people. When you enter into interpersonal relationships, it is inevitable that to a greater or lesser extent you will get hurt, and you will hurt someone, too. Adler says, ‘To get rid of one’s problems, all one can do is live in the universe all alone.’ But one can’t do such a thing. — location: 660 ^ref-9111 --- all problems are interpersonal relationship problems. This is a concept that runs to the very root of Adlerian psychology. If all interpersonal relationships were gone from this world, which is to say if one were alone in the universe and all other people were gone, all manner of problems would disappear. — location: 677 ^ref-44438 --- ‘What would you do if you got taller? You know, you’ve got a gift for getting people to relax.’ With a man who’s big and strong, it’s true, it does seem he can end up intimidating people just because of his size. With someone small like me, on the other hand, people let go of their wariness. So, it made me realise that having a small build was a desirable thing both to me and to those around me. In other words, there was a transformation of values. I’m not worried about my height anymore. — location: 724 ^ref-45288 --- You could even say it’s an arbitrary assumption. However, there is one good thing about subjectivity: it allows you to make your own choice. Precisely because I am leaving it to subjectivity, the choice to view my height as either an advantage or disadvantage is left open to me. — location: 740 ^ref-25632 --- Adler recognises that feelings of inferiority are something everyone has. There’s nothing bad about feelings of inferiority themselves. — location: 763 ^ref-3573 --- Adler is saying that 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. — location: 776 ^ref-29047 --- The way the word ‘complex’ is used today in our country, it seems to have the same meaning as ‘feeling of inferiority’. You hear people saying, ‘I’ve got a complex about my eyelids’, or ‘He’s got a complex about his education’; that sort of thing. This is an utter misuse of the term. At base, ‘complex’ refers to an abnormal mental state made up of a complicated group of emotions and ideas, and has nothing to do with the feeling of inferiority. For instance, there’s Freud’s Oedipus complex, — location: 788 ^ref-24108 --- It’s simply that it’s scary to take even one step forward; also, that you don’t want to make realistic efforts. You don’t want to change so much that you’d be willing to sacrifice the pleasures you enjoy now—for instance, the time you spend playing and engaged in hobbies. In other words, you’re not equipped with the courage to change your lifestyle. It’s easier with things just as they are now, even if you have some complaints or limitations. — location: 816 ^ref-49691 --- If one really has confidence in oneself, one doesn’t feel the need to boast. It’s because one’s feeling of inferiority is strong that one boasts. One feels the need to flaunt one’s superiority all the more. There’s the fear that if one doesn’t do that, not a single person will accept one ‘the way I am’. This is a full-blown superiority complex. — location: 867 ^ref-38823 --- Yes. They use their misfortune to their advantage, and try to control the other party with it. By declaring how unfortunate they are and how much they have suffered, they are trying to worry the people around them (their family and friends, for example), and to restrict their speech and behaviour, and control them. The people I was talking about at the very beginning, who shut themselves up in their rooms, frequently indulge in feelings of superiority that use misfortune to their advantage. So much so that Adler himself pointed out, ‘In our culture weakness can be quite strong and powerful.’ — location: 886 ^ref-27544 --- if we were to ask ourselves who is the strongest person in our culture, the logical answer would be the baby. The baby rules and cannot be dominated.’ The baby rules over the adults with his weakness. And it is because of this weakness that no one can control him. — location: 892 ^ref-47237 --- YOUTH: So, life is not a competition? PHILOSOPHER: That’s right. It’s enough to just keep moving in a forward direction, without competing with anyone. And, of course, there is no need to compare oneself with others. — location: 914 ^ref-62023 --- A healthy feeling of inferiority is not something that comes from comparing oneself to others, but from one’s comparison with one’s ideal self. — location: 918 ^ref-19359 --- Everyone is different. Don’t mix up that difference with good and bad, and superior and inferior. Whatever differences we may have, we are all equal. — location: 922 ^ref-57796 --- YOUTH: Then, are you saying that a child should be treated like a full-grown adult? PHILOSOPHER: No, instead of treating the child like an adult, or like a child, one must treat them like a human being. One interacts with the child with sincerity, as another human being just like oneself. — location: 930 ^ref-21853 --- When one is conscious of competition and victory and defeat, it is inevitable that feelings of inferiority will arise. Because one is constantly comparing oneself to others and thinking, I beat that person or I lost to that person. The inferiority complex and the superiority complex are extensions of that. — location: 960 ^ref-26970 --- This is what is so terrifying about competition. Even if you’re not a loser, even if you’re someone who keeps on winning, if you are someone who has placed himself in competition, you will never have a moment’s peace. You don’t want to be a loser. And you always have to keep on winning if you don’t want to be a loser. — location: 968 ^ref-19606 --- There is a difference between personal anger (personal grudge) and indignation with regard to society’s contradictions and injustices (righteous indignation). Personal anger soon cools. Righteous indignation, on the other hand, lasts for a long time. Anger as an expression of a personal grudge is nothing but a tool for making others submit to you. — location: 1025 ^ref-43203 --- YOUTH: But is it really that easy to not respond to provocation? In the first place, how would you say I should control my anger? PHILOSOPHER: 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. — location: 1073 ^ref-18910 --- The moment one is convinced that ‘I am right’ in an interpersonal relationship, one has already stepped into a power struggle. YOUTH: Just because you think you’re right? No way, that’s just blowing things all out of proportion. PHILOSOPHER: I am right. That is to say, the other party is wrong. At that point, the focus of the discussion shifts from ‘the rightness of the assertions’ to ‘the state of the interpersonal relationship’. In other words, the conviction that ‘I am right’ leads to the assumption that ‘this person is wrong’, and finally it becomes a contest and you are thinking, I have to win. It’s a power struggle through and through. — location: 1090 ^ref-48260 --- First, there are two objectives for behaviour: to be self-reliant and to live in harmony with society. Then, the objectives for the psychology that supports these behaviours are the consciousness that I have the ability and the consciousness that people are my comrades. — location: 1119 ^ref-55688 --- Adler made three categories of the interpersonal relationships that arise out of these processes. He referred to them as ‘tasks of work’, ‘tasks of friendship’ and ‘tasks of love’, and all together as ‘life tasks’. — location: 1132 ^ref-34997 --- The interpersonal relationships that a single individual has no choice but to confront when attempting to live as a social being—these are the life tasks. They are indeed tasks in the sense that one has no choice but to confront them. — location: 1138 ^ref-55503 --- Interpersonal relationships of work have the easy-to-understand common objective of obtaining good results, so people can cooperate even if they don’t always get along, and to some extent they have no choice but to cooperate. — location: 1147 ^ref-35189 --- There’s no value at all in the number of friends or acquaintances you have. — location: 1178 ^ref-27164 --- Adler does not accept restricting one’s partner. If the person seems to be happy, one can frankly celebrate that condition. That is love. Relationships in which people restrict each other eventually fall apart. — location: 1194 ^ref-8821 --- When one can think, Whenever I am with this person, I can behave very freely, one can really feel love. One can be in a calm and quite natural state, without having feelings of inferiority or being beset with the need to flaunt one’s superiority. That is what real love is like. Restriction, on the other hand, is a manifestation of the mindset of attempting to control one’s partner, and also an idea founded on a sense of distrust. Being in the same space with someone who distrusts you isn’t a natural situation that one can put up with, is it? As Adler says, ‘If two people want to live together on good terms, they must treat each other as equal personalities.’ — location: 1199 ^ref-56860 --- it isn’t that you dislike Mr A because you can’t forgive his flaws. You had the goal of taking a dislike to Mr A beforehand, and then started looking for the flaws to satisfy that goal. YOUTH: That’s ridiculous! Why would I do that? PHILOSOPHER: So that you could avoid an interpersonal relationship with Mr A. — location: 1222 ^ref-30953 --- Even if you are avoiding your life tasks and clinging to your life-lies, it isn’t because you are steeped in evil. It is not an issue to be condemned from a moralistic standpoint. It is only an issue of courage. — location: 1254 ^ref-20241 --- Freudian aetiology is a psychology of possession, and eventually arrives at determinism. Adlerian psychology, on the other hand, is a psychology of use, and it is you who decides it. — location: 1262 ^ref-12306 --- If one takes appropriate action, one receives praise. If one takes inappropriate action, one receives punishment. Adler was very critical of education by reward and punishment. It leads to mistaken lifestyles in which people think, If no one is going to praise me, I won’t take appropriate action and If no one is going to punish me, I’ll engage in inappropriate actions, too. You already have the goal of wanting to be praised when you start picking up litter. And if you aren’t praised by anyone, you’ll either be indignant, or decide that you’ll never do such a thing again. Clearly, there’s something wrong with this situation. — location: 1359 ^ref-45718 --- In the teachings of Judaism, one finds a view that goes something like this: if you are not living your life for yourself, then who is going to live it for you? You are living only your own life. When it comes to who you are living it for, of course it’s you. And then, if you are not living your life for yourself, who could there be to live it instead of you? Ultimately, we live thinking about ‘I’. There is no reason that we must not think that way. — location: 1369 ^ref-7692 --- Wishing so hard to be recognised will lead to a life of following expectations held by other people who want you to be ‘this kind of person’. In other words, you throw away who you really are and live other people’s lives. And please remember this: if you are not living to satisfy other people’s expectations, it follows that other people are not living to satisfy your expectations. — location: 1377 ^ref-6978 --- When one is confronted with the task of studying, for instance, in Adlerian psychology we consider it from the perspective of ‘whose task is this?’ YOUTH: Whose task? PHILOSOPHER: Whether the child studies or not. Whether he goes out and plays with his friends, or not. Essentially this is the child’s task, not the parent’s task. — location: 1418 ^ref-8392 --- 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. — location: 1424 ^ref-2022 --- There is a simple way to tell whose task it is. Think, Who ultimately is going to receive the end result brought about by the choice that is made? When the child has made the choice of not studying, ultimately, the end result of that decision—not being able to keep up in class or to get into the preferred school, for instance—does not have to be received by the parents. Clearly, it is the child who has to receive it. In other words, studying is the child’s task. — location: 1434 ^ref-54818 --- It’s true that one often hears parents today using the phrase, ‘It’s for your own good.’ But they are clearly doing so in order to fulfil their own goals, which could be their appearance in the eyes of society, their need to put on airs, or their desire for control, for example. In other words, it is not ‘for your own good’, but for the parents’. And it is because the child senses this deception that he rebels. — location: 1440 ^ref-26863 --- 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. — location: 1445 ^ref-9294 --- A parent suffering over the relationship with his or her child will tend to think, My child is my life. In other words, the parent is taking on the child’s task as his or her own, and is no longer able to think about anything but the child. When at last the parent notices it, the ‘I’ is already gone from his or her life. However, no matter how much of the burden of the child’s task one carries, the child is still an independent individual. — location: 1473 ^ref-61843 --- Look, the act of believing is also the separation of tasks. You believe in your partner; that is your task. But how that person acts with regard to your expectations and trust is other people’s tasks. — location: 1484 ^ref-333 --- 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. — location: 1497 ^ref-39133 --- 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. — location: 1504 ^ref-35032 --- This is a discussion that is concerned with the fundamentals of Adlerian psychology. If you are angry, nothing will sink in. You think, I’ve got that boss, so I can’t work. This is complete aetiology. But it’s really, I don’t want to work, so I’ll create an awful boss, or I don’t want to acknowledge my incapable self, so I’ll create an awful boss. That would be the teleological way of looking at it. — location: 1526 ^ref-26728 --- when reading a book, if one brings one’s face too close to it, one cannot see anything. In the same way, forming good interpersonal relationships requires a certain degree of distance. When the distance gets too small and people become stuck together, it becomes impossible to even speak to each other. But the distance must not be too great, either. — location: 1572 ^ref-18492 --- If one is living in a such a way as to satisfy other people’s expectations, and one is entrusting one’s own life to others, that is a way of living in which one is lying to oneself, and continuing that lying to include the people around one. — location: 1637 ^ref-10681 --- ‘freedom is being disliked by other people’. — location: 1677 ^ref-23940 --- 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. — location: 1678 ^ref-26672 --- The courage to be happy also includes the courage to be disliked. When you have gained that courage, your interpersonal relationships will all at once change into things of lightness. — location: 1707 ^ref-60360 --- One can think from the viewpoint that it is an interpersonal relationship card. As long as I use aetiology to think, It is because he hit me that I have a bad relationship with my father, it would be a matter that was impossible for me to do anything about. But if I can think, I brought out the memory of being hit because I don’t want my relationship with my father to get better, then I will be holding the card to repair relations. Because if I can just change the goal that fixes everything. — location: 1733 ^ref-60345 --- This view of the human being as ‘I as a whole’, as an indivisible being that cannot be broken down into parts, is referred to as ‘holism’. — location: 1807 ^ref-27871 --- he is espousing that community is not merely one of the pre-existing frameworks that the word might bring to mind, but is also inclusive of literally everything; the entire universe, from the past to the future. — location: 1845 ^ref-14939 --- all people who are attached to the ‘I’ are self-centred. And that is precisely why it is necessary to make the switch from ‘attachment to self’ to ‘concern for others’. — location: 1891 ^ref-2295 --- They make a leap from being ‘life’s protagonist’ to becoming ‘the world’s protagonist’. For this reason, whenever they come into contact with another person, all they can think is, What will this person give me? However—and this is something that does not hold true for princes and princesses—this expectation is not going to be satisfied on every occasion. Because other people are not living to satisfy your expectations. — location: 1909 ^ref-48216 --- One needs to think not What will this person give me? but, rather, What can I give to this person? That is commitment to the community. YOUTH: It is because one gives something that one can find one’s refuge? PHILOSOPHER: That’s right. A sense of belonging is something that one acquires through one’s own efforts—it is not something one is endowed with at birth. — location: 1938 ^ref-56444 --- Living in fear of one’s relationships falling apart is an unfree way to live, in which one is living for other people. — location: 2012 ^ref-9910 --- One must not praise, and one must not rebuke. That is the standpoint of Adlerian psychology. — location: 2041 ^ref-27118 --- In the act of praise, there is the aspect of it being ‘the passing of judgement by a person of ability on a person of no ability’. — location: 2047 ^ref-21934 --- Adlerian psychology refutes all manner of vertical relationships, and proposes that all interpersonal relationships be horizontal relationships. In a sense, this point may be regarded as the fundamental — location: 2064 ^ref-54928 --- When one is not following through with one’s tasks, it is not because one is without ability. Adlerian psychology tells us that the issue here is not one of ability, but simply that ‘one has lost the courage to face one’s tasks’. And, if that is the case, the thing to do before anything else is to recover that lost courage. — location: 2110 ^ref-23698 --- PHILOSOPHER: The reason is clear. Being praised is what leads people to form the belief that they have no ability. YOUTH: What did you say? PHILOSOPHER: Shall I repeat myself? The more one is praised by another person, the more one forms the belief that one has no ability. Please do your best to remember this. — location: 2116 ^ref-42992 --- The most important thing is to not judge other people. Judgement is a word that comes out of vertical relationships. If one is building horizontal relationships, there will be words of more straightforward gratitude and respect and joy. — location: 2136 ^ref-63018 --- Being praised essentially means that one is receiving judgement from another person as ‘good’. And the measure of what is good or bad about that act is that person’s yardstick. — location: 2141 ^ref-40651 --- what does a person have to do to get courage? In Adler’s view, ‘It is only when a person is able to feel that he has worth that he can possess courage.’ — location: 2148 ^ref-21267 --- 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. — location: 2155 ^ref-20437 --- instead of thinking of oneself on the level of acts, first of all one accepts oneself on the level of being. — location: 2202 ^ref-57319 --- With regard to this issue of community feeling, there was a person who asked Adler a similar question. Adler’s reply was the following: ‘Someone has to start. Other people might not be cooperative, but that is not connected to you. My advice is this: you should start. With no regard to whether others are cooperative or not.’ — location: 2221 ^ref-65422 --- 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. — location: 2248 ^ref-27351 --- It’s about community feeling, after all. Concretely speaking, it’s making the switch from attachment to self (self-interest) to concern for others (social interest), and gaining a sense of community feeling. Three things are needed at this point: ‘self-acceptance’, ‘confidence in others’ and ‘contribution to others’. — location: 2352 ^ref-65028 --- 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. — location: 2363 ^ref-5367 --- Kurt Vonnegut quoted in one of his books: ‘God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom always to tell the difference.’ It’s in the novel Slaughterhouse-Five. — location: 2381 ^ref-25222 --- Resignation has the connotation of seeing clearly with fortitude and acceptance. Having a firm grasp on the truth of things—that is resignation. There is nothing pessimistic about it. — location: 2390 ^ref-282 --- PHILOSOPHER: By contrast, from the standpoint of Adlerian psychology, the basis of interpersonal relations is not founded on trust but on confidence. YOUTH: And ‘confidence’ in this case is … ? PHILOSOPHER: 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. — location: 2402 ^ref-19947 --- The way to understand Adlerian psychology is simple. Right now, you are thinking, If I were to have confidence in someone unconditionally, I would just get taken advantage of. However, you are not the one who decides whether or not to take advantage. That is the other person’s task. All you need to do is think, What should I do? If you are telling yourself, I’ll give it to him if he isn’t going take advantage of me, it is just a relationship of trust that is based on security or conditions. — location: 2426 ^ref-26449 --- 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. — location: 2487 ^ref-9299 --- They work so they are able to contribute to others, and also to confirm their sense of belonging, their feeling that ‘it’s okay to be here’. Wealthy people who, on having amassed a great fortune, focus their energies on charitable activities, are doing so in order to attain a sense of their own worth and confirm for themselves that ‘it’s okay to be here’. — location: 2505 ^ref-26310 --- Contribution that is carried out while one is seeing other people as enemies may indeed lead to hypocrisy. But if other people are one’s comrades that should never happen, — location: 2530 ^ref-25586 --- People with neurotic lifestyles tend to sprinkle their speech with such words as ‘everyone’ and ‘always’ and ‘everything’. ‘Everyone hates me,’ they will say, or ‘It’s always me who takes a loss,’ or ‘Everything is wrong.’ If you think you might be in the habit of using such generalising statements, you should be careful. — location: 2568 ^ref-31546 --- With workaholics, the focus is solely on one specific aspect of life. They probably try to justify that by saying, ‘It’s busy at work, so I don’t have enough time to think about my family.’ But this is a life-lie. They are simply trying to avoid their other responsibilities by using work as an excuse. — location: 2602 ^ref-26068 --- Does one accept oneself on the level of acts, or on the level of being? This is truly a question that relates to the courage to be happy. — location: 2623 ^ref-20030 --- For a human being, the greatest unhappiness is not being able to like oneself. Adler came up with an extremely simple answer to address this reality. Namely, that the feeling of ‘I am beneficial to the community’ or ‘I am of use to someone’ is the only thing that can give one a true awareness that one has worth. — location: 2644 ^ref-25061 --- In a word, happiness is the feeling of contribution. That is the definition of happiness. — location: 2655 ^ref-52650 --- YOUTH: There’s no way I can accept such a simplistic definition. Look, I’m not forgetting what you told me before. You said, ‘Though on the level of acts, one might not be of use to anyone, on the level of being, every person is of use.’ But if that’s the case, according to your logic, all human beings would be happy! PHILOSOPHER: All human beings can be happy. But it must be understood—this does not mean all human beings are happy. Whether it is on the level of acts or on the level of being, one needs to feel that one is of use to someone. — location: 2657 ^ref-26333 --- Adlerian psychology emphasises at this juncture are the words ‘the courage to be normal’. — location: 2742 ^ref-25001 --- Why is it necessary to be special? Probably because one cannot accept one’s normal self. And it is precisely for this reason that when being especially good becomes a lost cause, one makes the huge leap to being specially bad—the opposite extreme. But is being normal, being ordinary, really such a bad thing? Is it something inferior? Or, in truth, isn’t everybody normal? — location: 2744 ^ref-60685 --- People who think of life as being like climbing a mountain are treating their own existences as lines. As if there is a line that started the instant one came into this world, and that continues in all manner of curves of varying sizes until it arrives at the summit, and then at long last reaches its terminus, which is death. — location: 2780 ^ref-2081 --- Do not treat it as a line. Think of life as a series of dots. If you look through a magnifying glass at a solid line drawn with chalk, you will discover that what you thought was a line is actually a series of small dots. Seemingly linear existence is actually a series of dots; in other words, life is a series of moments. — location: 2784 ^ref-44643 --- It is a series of moments called ‘now’. We can live only in the here and now. Our lives exist only in moments. — location: 2787 ^ref-44452 --- 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. — location: 2835 ^ref-59207 --- We should live more earnestly only here and now. The fact that you think you can see the past, or predict the future, is proof that rather than living earnestly here and now, you are living in a dim twilight. Life is a series of moments, and neither the past nor the future exist. You are trying to give yourself a way out by focusing on the past and the future. — location: 2855 ^ref-34356 --- Be earnest, but not too serious. — location: 2893 ^ref-38838 --- What is the meaning of life? What are people living for? When someone posed these questions to Adler, this was his answer: ‘Life in general has no meaning.’ — location: 2917 ^ref-59102 --- Adler, having stated that ‘life in general has no meaning’, then continues, ‘Whatever meaning life has must be assigned to it by the individual.’ — location: 2927 ^ref-30538 --- 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. Whether you’re disliked or not, you pay it no mind and live free. — location: 2947 ^ref-55753 --- 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. — location: 2963 ^ref-3385 ---