Review & Rating: 10/10

This is a book exploring the world of Adlerian psychology. Alfred Adler is the less known of the 19th-20th century psychologists like Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung but one whose teachings I’ve found to make the most sense.

Compared to Freud or Jung, it was the closest depiction of individual psychology that put the responsibility of life on the individual. It was similar to my interpretation of Jungian psychology but more focused on self-acceptance and our ability to change and take ownership of our lives versus the searching and analyzing of the unconscious under Jung.

The core message I took away was to have the courage to change. Everything we become is a choice. How we respond to everything that happens to us and is out of our control is a choice.

We always have a choice. Whether it’s in what we do, how we respond, etc. it takes courage to accept the present situation and change. Not changing is comfortable, most people fail to see that this is a decision they are making when they choose to not do anything, complain, and blame the world. No one is owed anything because of some historical injustice, by that logic, we should be condemning people for what the Romans, Assyrians, Carthigians did.

No one deserves anything, they have to earn it with the decision they make and that takes courage. Taking action and making changes is the way to earn freedom and that will inevitably result in others disliking you. It’s not that you are seeking it but you can’t control others. It’s natural for those who have not made the difficult choices to seek freedom to dislike those who did. But that’s a small price for the greater good of the community.

Why did I give it 10/10? I rarely give 9s at that. It’s not that this book was so much better than a 9/10 book or whatnot. Rather, it’s because I want more people to read this book. I think it has value and I think society will do better as a whole if people read this book. I hope the notes I wrote will be of value to at least one person who will read it and consider reading the book in its entirety. 

Some rules for myself:

• You always have a choice. Everything you become is on you. 

• It’s not what you have but what you do with it. What you are given is not in your control, so don’t complain. 

• Don’t complain. 

• Don’t judge another. 

• Don’t praise.

• Don’t seek recognition

• Don’t play the victim. 

• Don’t brag about your fortune or misfortune.

• Encourage others. Say thank you, be the wind behind their backs. 

• Loud signals of wealth (i.e. bling, luxury goods) have a proportionally inverse relationship to inferiority and insecurity about one’s self-worth. The more you deck out in luxury, the less you actually value yourself as an individual. If you did, you wouldn’t need such symbols to tell you your worth. 

• Accept you don’t deserve anything. Society and the world don’t owe you anything. 

• Avoid cause-and-effect relationships. 

• You decide how much of your past is responsible for the person you are today. 

• Look for ways to give to others. 

• Assume out of 10 people one will criticize you no matter what you do, two will accept everything you do, and seven who won’t care about you at all. 

Book Notes:

“None of us live in an objective world, but instead in a subjective world that we ourselves have given meaning to.”

The world we live in is only ours. We can’t share it. Others can try to understand. But everything we experience, feel and see will be unique entirely only to ourselves.

You will always look at the world with your own subjectivity. Don’t fool yourself in thinking there is an objective truth. There is a subjective truth because it’s about what you think to be so.

If something doesn’t make sense, change yourself. The world makes sense, it’s your interpretation and POV that doesn’t.

Adlerian psychology is a study of individual psychology. Consider it as a form of thought, quite like philosophy.

Don’t look at the past to explain the present. It makes you fall pretty to determinism, the flawed view of making cause and effect relationships of everything. The world is too complex for such simple explanations.

The past doesn’t determine our future. It is witching our control to change based on what we decide to do in the present.

Teleology: the study of the purpose of a given phenomenon, rather than its cause

Etiology: the study of causation = avoid like the plague. Most people default to this.

We don’t suffer trauma. The experience happens and our interpretation of them determines what we experience. That is, we define the experience to whatever way that suits our purpose. So if we decide to let the event be traumatic, that’s the decision we are making and putting onto ourselves, whether we are conscious of it or not. That is, to say you suffered from trauma puts the blame on another and makes yourself the victim. That is no way to deal with the world. You can’t move forward that way. What happened is what happened. What matters is what we do now with those experiences. We are determined by the meaning we give to the experiences, not the experiences themselves.

You must decide how to live. You are in control of your action, reaction, and responses to experiences.

Every emotion we let out reflects an internal goal we have, whether we realize it or not. If you get angry or frustrated, it’s on you, not the target of your emotion. Consider that you might’ve decided to get angry so that you could assert dominance or just to shout.

Anger is a tool.

Consider Adlerian psychology to be a philosophy opposed to nihilism. The former believes you have the ability to control your life, because you in fact do.

While Freud believed people couldn’t change and they had a pre-disposition, Adler believes they could.

Consider how we set goals and strive to achieve them. That is a conscious decision to take control of life to achieve specific desires set by the individual.

Adler, like Socrates, taught through dialogue. See, most people won’t change by just taking what someone says as fact. The most powerful changes occur through action and dialogue is a form of action.

Learn to accept yourself. The alternative is wanting to be someone else and you’ll never be able to love that person you become.

Learning to accept yourself means accepting the hand you are dealt and persevering to make the best with that. Focus on doing what is within your control.

When you are unhappy, realize it’s a choice. You’ve chosen to be unhappy, to have a response to an event or situation to foster such emotion.

Lifestyle denotes your actions, that which arises from thought. It encompasses the person’s outlook on life, not just a personality. It shows beliefs. That means lifestyle too is a choice.

Lifestyles can change. Some are chosen unconsciously from nature and early nurture. But what we end up with is our responsibility.

Adlerian psychology believes we choose our lifestyle around 10 years old. That reminds me of Socrates (maybe it was Aristotle) who said the boy at 7 years old shows the man he will become. But alas, the capacity to change is within. Is that too something of nature? I’m not sure.

In most cases, those who believe they are unable to change are a result of a persistent decision not to change their lifestyle. It’s a decision to stay in the comfort of the current lifestyle instead of breaking free to rebuild for something better. The choice to not iterate and keep the status quo is also a choice. The fear of the unknowable is too great for those who do not wish to change.

Changing lifestyles takes courage. To change means anxiety for the change and the unknown. To not change means living with the disappointment and the results of what-ifs. Either way, there will be sacrifices and demons to face in all forms no matter the decisions. Accepting this truth might help some with living with the decisions they have made.

“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.”

Avoid saying “if only…” that’s an excuse you tell yourself so that you stop yourself from changing.

What happened in the past and it’s up to you to make it hold you back or make it a push to change. The past doesn’t exist anymore. Move on because what we do tomorrow depends on what we choose to do today. 

Most times, we think “if I have this, if I went here, if I got this job” everything will be solved. But it won’t. Most of these material wishes are ignoring the work we have to do within. 

Being alone doesn’t mean you are lonely. Feeling lonely requires you to be excluded from a social group. It requires others for you to be lonely. Learn to sit with yourself. Learn to be alone. 

Look at all problems as interpersonal relationship problems.

When you feel inferior know it’s not because of what others did or because the world is “unfair”. You feel inferior because that’s how you judge your self-worth as. To not feel inferior, you need to learn to value yourself. 

My height is a mere fact. My interpretation of it determines the value I give to the fact. Psychologists might cite this data or this research about heights on how tall people succeed but it’s up to me to give their opinions any legitimacy. Remember, if I didn’t have people to compare against, such facts as height wouldn’t matter. Think about that with anything that is outside my control. It doesn’t matter what people think of things like skin colour, height, etc. they’re opinions and it has no value to me. All such feelings of inferiority are subjective feelings. There are objective facts and subjective interpretations that can be altered, that’s our choice. 

Everyone has feelings of inferiority. There’s nothing wrong with that. Feelings of inferiority can actually be what pushes us to improve our current position. If that is a driver to act and choose to be better, how could it be bad? 

We live in a society that is in the pursuit for superiority and that’s fine, only people fail to think of the world as a spectrum and try to point everything to good versus bad. If you aren’t superior that doesn’t make you inferior. 

People use their work experiences, the companies they worked for, the brands of clothing they wear, etc. as links to authority to give themselves a feeling of superiority. But that shows an inferiority of themselves as they seek to outsource this to socially accepted ideals. 

The more bling people wear, the more inferior they truly feel within. It’s a superiority complex. They’re finding ways to exaggerate their complex with loud signals. 

“…those who make themselves look bigger on borrowed power are essentially living according to other people’s value systems—they are living other people’s lives.” 

If you weren’t insecure and feeling inferior, you wouldn’t need to boast and brag. 

Some people will go the other way to brag about their misfortune to feel special…a roundabout way of facing up to their inferiority and desire for superiority. Is this like the humble braggart too? 

The weak dominate our culture. Look at a baby. This may also be why the vocal minority has so much sway in Western society. 

Life isn’t a competition. The sooner you realize this the faster you stop comparing yourself to others and learn to play your own game. Comparing yourself to your own ideal self is how you can develop a healthy feeling of inferiority to drive you for constant improvement. 

“Human beings are all equal, but not the same.” 

You are the only one who cares about how you look. Learn to celebrate the achievements of others and not to see it as your failing. Look at everyone who sees young Olympians and get jealous and start comparing ages. They’re them and you are you, humans on completely different journeys with none better than the other. Just different. 

Problematic behaviours erupt in children when parents look at their relationship as a competition. There is no winning, that’s when rebellion begins. It’s not a game for power. 

“The moment one is convinced that ‘I am right’ in an interpersonal relationship, one has already stepped into a power struggle.” 

Work on never letting yourself think you are right. There is no right. Realize admitting a mistake isn’t defeat. It’ll make it easier to not think of arguments, which are conversations, as having a right and wrong. 

Any relationship with restrictions will eventually fall apart. Feeling truly free in a relationship is required for love to exist. 

The overarching objective of Adlerian psychology is to help people live as self-reliant individuals that can cooperate within the society they are part of. That means not running away from relationships. Stay to work at relationships, especially the parent-child ones which can’t be broken like romantic ones can. 

When every little thing your partner does annoys you—when it never did before—you’ve told yourself you want the relationship to end. That’s fine because it means your goals for the relationship has changed. Remember that we are the ones who choose our lifestyles and they should be subject to change. It takes courage to accept such change. 

Do not seek recognition from others. It gives them power over you. Your life isn’t about satisfying other people’s expectations. It’s for you to live for yourself. You are the only one who will be living your life, might as well be you and not the expectations of others who do not care. 

Don’t expect others to live to satisfy your expectations either! That means not making your children fit what you think is best and what you think is important! They need to live their own lives, not lives that you would be satisfied with if they lived as such! 

No matter what others say, you are the only one who can change yourself.

That means it’s not your task to worry about what others, even loved ones, choose to do. It is not your task to tell them what to do and make them do things. In the same way, your parent’s task might be to not approve of what you do but its’ not a problem for you to worry about. That’s isn’t your task. All you can do is choose the best path for your life. It’s not your job to worry about what others, even parents, might think. Those who love you will decide on their own whether to accept your changes and choices or not. It’s out of your control but you can’t go on suppressing what you need to do because then you will resent them by blaming them for things they haven’t done yet but the hypothetical disapproval. 

“What other people think when they see your face—that is the task of other people and is not something you have any control over.” 

You don’t have an awful boss. You say that because you don’t want to work, don’t want to acknowledge your own incompetence, etc. Don’t blame others for your decisions. 

You need to experience challenges in your life. The earlier the better. That’s the only way you will learn to handle the challenges that come as you live. It takes practice. 

Meddling in the choices of others is egocentric thinking. This applies to parents who try to meddle in the lives of their children with things like careers and marriage. 

“An adult, who has chosen an unfree way to live, on seeing a young person living freely here and now in this moment, criticizes the youth as being hedonistic. Of course, this is a life-lie that comes out so that the adult can accept his own unfree life.”

Remember that when you fault another or criticize another, it’s a sign of something you regret for choices you made (or didn’t make) in your life. Only those without sin may cast the first stone and, oh boy, we are all fucking sinners. 

“Freedom is being disliked by other people…..it’s proof that you are exercising your freedom and living in freedom, and a sign that you are living in accordance with your own principles.” 

The cost of exercising freedom is to be disliked by others who have not chosen to make such choices with their own life. It doesn’t mean you ignore being disliked. Not wanting to be disliked is normal and it is your task, but you can’t control others from disliking you and the faster you accept that as inevitable whenever you choose to take the courageous path of living your life for yourself, the easier it will be to continue to make the tough choices. 

When you think of an experience in the past—let’s say your father hit you—and use that as a reason for why you don’t have a good relationship with your father, you are using the cause-effect approach (etiology) to make an excuse for yourself so that you don’t have to work on building a good relationship with your father. The fact is, it’s more convenient for you to not do the hard work of building a strong relationship with your father so you hide behind events of the past and use that to blame someone else instead of taking ownership of the choices you are making at this very moment. Using the past to make a deterministic explanation of behaviour and situations today is lazy and at the core of it, we make use of it to explain the situation we are in and that’s truly lazy, not to mention wrong. It’s a pathetic blame culture, shedding accountability, not taking responsibility, and being the motherfucking snowflake who is always a victim. 

Now, that’s not to say your father may stay the same person you remember, you can’t change that. But you can change yourself, your attitude, response, and actions. 

Focusing on doing what you can do and what is within your locus of control doesn’t mean you should be self-centered. Self-centered people think they are the main character and centre of the world. They are not. We are just but one person in the greater community and so it is up to us to make choices to serve others in the community as best we can, just like they do for us. 

Approach life with a sense of what I can give this person, not what that person can give me. No community will build around those who expect things to be given to them. It might be prudent to expect nothing to be your god-given right. Remember, you don’t deserve anything. You have to earn all of it. 

You earn a sense of belonging, it’s not something you deserve since birth. Wake the fuck up. 

Adlerian psychology says no praising and no rebuking. Praising another is the act of passing judgment from a stance of superiority. A mother who praises the child puts herself above the child as someone who is qualified to judge what the other has done. 

Look at people who try to tell you “good for you” or “good job”, they are putting themselves above you whether they know it or not. It puts them in an authoritative position where their praise of you is the recognition you start craving and basing that as a good feeling puts you under their control. 

Praise is not out of gratitude or respect, it’s an act of manipulation. Praising creates vertical relationships. Adler advocates for horizontal relationships where people treat each other as equal, but not the same. 

Consider how you compliment because, deep down, you want to be liked. 

Vertical relationships praise. Horizontal relationships encourage. Learn to support those on their journey by pushing them forward instead of judging what they’ve done as good or bad. If someone does something for you, tell them thank you or how big of a help they are, not whether their work was of great quality—who are you to judge? 

Remember that your choice to have vertical or horizontal relationships is a lifestyle as well. 

“..it is only when on is able to feel that one is of use to someone that one can have a true awareness of one’s worth.” 

Focus on self-acceptance before affirmation. 

Accept your incapable self and move forward to improve that self in whatever way you can. I’m not going to be an Olympic Champion lifter but that doesn’t mean I’m going to stop training to get stronger every day. 

Self acceptance is striving to get as close to 100%. It means focusing on what you can change. Accept what is irreplaceable, you. 

Remember Vonnegut:

“God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference.” 

It’s not that we lack the ability to change. It’s that we lack courage. 

Building deep relationships requires unconditional confidence. Relationships built on trust rely on conditions and security. Let that go. Have unconditional confidence. It’s not up to you whether the person you have confidence in takes advantage of you, that’s their decision. If you want to be guarded and not give them your full confidence that’s your decision. But what’s the point of such shallow relationships? Severe those. That too, is your task. 

Believe or doubt others. The choice is yours. That will set how you choose to live. 

One starts with learning to accept the self. Then, one is ready to place unconditional confidence in others and see them as partners and comrades on this fun journey of life. 

The sooner you see others as comrades instead of competition, the easier it is to accept that “it’s okay to be here.” 

“We are truly aware of our own worth only when we feel that our existence and behaviour are beneficial to the community, that is to say, when one feels 'I am of use to someone.’"

The core lessons are broken up into 

• Self acceptance

• Confidence in others

• Contribution to others

They are all linked. You need to accept the self to have confidence in others, and you need confidence in others to able to contribute to the community and when you do that, you gain a greater understanding of your existential worth and accept yourself. 

Self-acceptance comes from being self-reliant and having a conscious understanding that one has the ability. 

“Understanding a human being is no easy matter. Of all the forms of psychology, individual psychology is probably the most difficult to learn and put into practice.” - Alfred Adler

They say to understand Adlerian psychology, it’ll take half the number of years one has lived at the point of starting the practice. So, a 30-year-old will need 15 years. Even a 20-year-old will need 10 years. That’s to say, it’s okay to lose focus or lose your way. Focus on moving forward little by little. 

Avoid using words like everyone, always, and everything. It’s neurotic. 

Assume out of 10 people one will criticize you no matter what you do, two will accept everything you do, and seven who won’t care about you at all. 

The greatest unhappiness for humans is not being able to like oneself. It is through feelings of being beneficial to a community or someone do we gain a true awareness that we matter. Hence, happiness is the feeling of contribution. That’s why people seek recognition. They want to like themselves. But a feeling of contribution gained from desiring recognition won’t give us freedom. It won’t give the deep sense of self worth that can only be obtained from accepting the self from the outset and doing tasks truly in-tune with the self. A true feeling of contribution does not require recognition from others because it already comes from an awareness that you are of use to someone. 

Forget being special or normal. Just strive to be yourself. Special or normal require comparison. Don’t play that game. 

Life is a series of moments, dots, and not a linear existence. Adults who don’t understand this try to impose linear paths to children. That’s wrong. Not even the conventional tracks are linear, despite appearances. There is no such thing as: good school+stable job+timely marriage+house = happy life

A well-planned life is impossible. 

The journey of life is everything you do en route to a destination. The fastest and most efficient way is hardly a journey. 

Let go of the past. The past has nothing to do with what you do right now, right here. The future too will unfold in due time. Don’t let the past act as anchors and rationalization points to limit yourself and take away the courage needed to change. The life had is a blank page so make of it what you will, the past has no say there.

There is never the right time to do something. Don’t postpone life. Seize the fucking day, as cliche as it sounds. 

Seek to live earnestly, it’s really that simple. No need to take life so seriously. We are all here to fart around and die after all. 

A life that ends at 20 or 90 is both complete lives. Don’t take anything away from those who lived. The only incomplete lives are those not lived here and now. 

Life inherently has no meaning, it is up to the person living it to assign it. Hence, every life has a unique meaning assigned by the one person who controls it and lives it. 

Let go of the need for a destination as well. Life is a series of unknowable moments. Merely focusing on accepting the self, having confidence in others and contributing to others. Use contributing to others as your North Star and as long as what you do is striving towards this, keep at it. 

The world will change as I change. Since I’m the only one who can choose to change myself, I have the ability to change the world around me. How exciting is that!?

“Someone hasty 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.” - Alfred Adler

Some rules for myself:

• You always have a choice. Everything you become is on you. 

• It’s not what you have but what you do with it. What you are given is not in your control, so don’t complain. 

• Don’t complain. 

• Don’t judge another. 

• Don’t praise.

• Don’t seek recognition

• Don’t play the victim. 

• Don’t brag about your fortune or misfortune.

• Encourage others. Say thank you, be the wind behind their backs. 

• Loud signals of wealth (i.e. bling, luxury goods) have a proportionally inverse relationship to inferiority and insecurity about one’s self-worth. The more you deck out in luxury, the less you actually value yourself as an individual. If you did, you wouldn’t need such symbols to tell you your worth. 

• Accept you don’t deserve anything. Society and the world don’t owe you anything. 

• Avoid cause-and-effect relationships. 

• You decide how much of your past is responsible for the person you are today. 

• Look for ways to give to others. 

• Assume out of 10 people one will criticize you no matter what you do, two will accept everything you do, and seven who won’t care about you at all.