The courage to be hated

I think many people are terrified of being "hated". It is this fear that makes the other well-known motto of life - "be yourself" - a castle in the air. So everyone is, and I am; everyone is not, and I am not.

　　Recently, I read a book called "The Courage to be Hated". Ichiro Kishimi, one of the authors, is a devotee of Austrian psychologist Alfred Adler, and there is a short quote on the cover: "The so-called freedom is (not) afraid to be hated by others." "The fact that someone hates you is the very mark of your exercising freedom and living your life according to your own guidelines."

　　The Adlerian school believes that all of life's troubles come from relationships, and that cutting off the approval of others is an important lesson for a person to gain freedom.

　　Why do people need the approval of others, or why are they afraid of being "hated"? Ichiro Kishimi's explanation is very ruthless: because most people are incapable of separating the needs of "themselves" from those of "others". From a certain point of view, it is "fun" to be on the side of the trend or to meet the expectations of parents or society. But this is a trap, when you are careful to protect the porcelain doll-like fragile "life image", you are actually losing yourself, you are living someone else's life.

　　In this life, you are just a puppet who lives to meet the expectations of others.

　　In an age when social networks are firmly surrounded by the masses, Adler's ideas deserve to be revisited.

　　Adler was born in 1870 and died in 1937. He was the founder of "individual psychology" and one of the three major psychologists, along with Freud and Jung. For example, a person who constantly emphasized traumatic experiences because he knew that by repeating the trauma, he could gain the sympathy of friends and family around him, and thus receive some "special treatment" in order to escape responsibility. So the trauma is not the point, but the goal is to get "special treatment". As a psychiatrist, Adler, when dealing with a patient, often identified the purpose of the "escape" first, so that the person would not be glued to the narrative of the past.

　　If he had been born 100 years later, he might have made a more brilliant statement about our relationships, which are now highly surrounded not only by family and friends but also by social networks. He might even have designed a web page where you can not only "like" but also "hate" ...... and tell everyone that when you get more "likes", the more dangerous you are. The more "likes" you get, the more dangerous you are; if you get more "hates", don't be sad, it may just mean that you live more freely than others.

　　We all know that really big successes such as Steve Jobs, or in the history of Churchill, Hu Shi, etc., are famous for "not following the crowd", "do not care about being hated", "stick to yourself They were famous for "not following the crowd", "not caring about being disliked" and "sticking to themselves". But even though they know this, when they face the possibility of being "hated", many people still choose to sacrifice their own original beliefs and values, to "follow the crowd" to escape their own problems.

　　Happiness depends on our mindset, not on "approval, self-esteem, or social acceptance," and even the more of the latter, the more we sometimes lose ourselves. If you have not been "successful" in this life, it may mean that you have lived a good life for yourself; if you have been "successful", carefully examine whether your success is only in exchange for the fear of being hated by others. If so, then your success only means that "you have lived your life for others".