The Courage to be Disliked

We often think that people can't change or somehow their present life was determined by their past. The fact is people can change. No matter how bad their past experiences are. There is a word called determinism, it means that we try to explain everything with cause and effect through our past experiences. This means that our future has been determined by our past. The thing that we can do is [[Focus on present goals instead of past experiences]].

The most interesting thing in this chapter for me is that The Adlerian psychology denies trauma. [[There is no such thing as trauma]]

"Your life is not something that someone gives you, but something you choose yourself, and you are the one who decides how you live."

The other thing that this part covers beside trauma is emotion.

Emotions exist but people are capable of controlling them.

We think that we can not control emotion but the truth is we can control them. For example: [[Anger is an emotion that we can control]].

On Accepting Yourself

We are unhappy because we haven't loved our self. [[It is okay just to be yourself but it doesn't mean that it is okay to be just as you are]], if we're unhappy then something is clearly wrong. It goes back to the point that people can change and maybe we should change. It is not what we're born with but, what we do using those equipment that we're born with. Focus on the things that we already have, not what we don't have.

On Unhappiness

[[We choose to be unhappy]]. We're not born unhappy but at some stages in our life we choose to be unhappy because of our circumstances.

The question that we should ask is that why we choose to be unhappy?

We choose not to change

Everyone choose their own lifestyle. It is not something that people put in you. At first it might be unconscious and there are external influences that affected our lifestyle but at some point we choose this kind of lifestyle. Then if it's something that we choose, we can do it all over again or in other word we can change it. What we can do now is realise it and the choice to change is up to us.

People don't want to change because choose not to. It is easier not to change and we just want to keep things just they are. Some things are not okay just as they are and we have to make a decision to change.

All we need now is a courage. A courage to change.

What stops us from changing is that we live in a realm of possibility. We compare ourself to others. "If I could live like X then I will be happy." This is an excuse not to change.

Living in the realm of possibility doesn't take us anywhere. We won't change by not doing anything. We have to do something in order to change.