The Courage to be Disliked! How to free yourself, change your life and achieve real happiness (Courage To series)

Books that claim in their title to give you the answer to real happiness or say it is that one book that will change your life are the last ones I pick up. It sounds inflated and like a marketing gag trying to entice a very desperate audience.

I heard the Courage to series at an Alfred Adler seminar. In recent years, I have developed an interest in different schools of psychology and human behavior in general. There is so much talk on trauma, mental health and I want to understand this better. It has been an enriching experience to learn more about Freud, Adler, and of course Viktor Frankl. I am a big fan of Frankl and I can say that his book is a must read and life changing. I also wanted to understand Adler’s take better and I decided to read this book.

The book is interesting, a novel approach, at least to me. A discussion on Adler’s view on human behavior, emotions, their past, their duties, and the reason that gets them going or pauses them - between a student and teacher.

It can get confusing at times to keep up, but it does make you pause and think. I cannot say I agree with everything said in the book, or that I understood it completely. But one thing I have always stood by and been convinced about was that we cannot blame all our current actions and situations on the experiences of our past. This is confirmed in this book, and several examples are quoted to reinstate this belief.

The book emphasizes, that I am not responsible for the happiness of another person, and it is not my duty to make everyone happy. It is a relief to let go and to realize that you cannot control other people’s emotions and actions, only your own. It makes no sense to exhaust your time and energy on it.

I have yet to read the second book – Courage to be happy and then I can comment if it is really a life changing experience.

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