The Courage to Be Disliked

Guest Opinion

By Isiah Smith, Jr. | May 16, 2026

The Tao Te Ching says, “When the student is ready, the teacher will appear. When the student is truly ready, the teacher will disappear.”

That proverb means guidance arrives when you are truly prepared to learn, grow, or change your perspective and preconceived notions. Knowledge emerges when an individual is mentally and emotionally ready to learn. It suggests that proactive openness helps one find guidance in people, events, opportunities, or books.

Years ago, I purchased The Courage to be Disliked during a visit to Washington D.C. As usual, my wife and I headed straight to Politics and Prose, the best independent bookstore in the States (besides Horizon Books in Traverse City, my current hometown). This was in 2018, shortly after the book was published. I was intrigued by the title. Does it really take courage to be disliked? I wondered. I have easily accomplished that feat without any courage and without breaking a sweat.

So, I grabbed the book, along with a long list of books I would read if I lived to the ripe old age of 150, and put down what’s left of my retirement funds before heading to The Residence Inn Hotel in North Arlington, VA. I knew the likelihood of reading them all was slim to none. After all, collecting books is separate from finding the time to read them. (Book lovers will understand this statement.)

Finally, in 2026, I was ready for the teachings in The Courage to be Disliked, which had stubbornly languished on my overcrowded bookcase, its pages largely untouched, awaiting the unlikely moment when I would finally get around to reading it, given the Leaning Tower of Pisa of books on my sagging nightstand.

In The Courage to Be Disliked, Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga argue that every problem you face in life has a single cause: you care too much about what other people think of you. In turn, this leads you to live for what other people want rather than for what you care about; resent other people’s success because it diminishes your luster; and believe you’re incompetent when you don’t receive someone else’s approval, even if that approval is impossible to obtain.

The book made waves in Asia before becoming a bestseller in the West. Kishimi is a licensed counselor and an expert in Adlerian psychology (so named for Alfred Adler, an early 20th-century doctor). Koga, a professional business writer, calls himself the Plato to Kishimi’s Socrates, transcribing and transforming Kishimi’s insights into a more accessible form for the general public.

The central message of The Courage to Be Disliked is that much of our personal suffering stems from the narratives we create about ourselves and others. Drawing on Adlerian psychology (which, per Psychology Today, “focuses on the development of individual personality while understanding and accepting the interconnectedness of all humans”), the book encourages you to recognize that you can choose how to respond to life’s challenges. It emphasizes that you don’t need to seek validation from others and that true freedom comes from being willing to be disliked in the pursuit of authenticity. In short, it’s about embracing your own life path rather than being controlled by others’ opinions.

Adler taught that although nobody wants to be disliked, the fact that some people dislike you proves you are free. Being disliked by some people shows that your thoughts, actions, and words reflect your genuine self rather than manipulative efforts to appeal to everyone. In other words, one is truly free when one has the courage to be one’s authentic self. As the old bromide goes, “be yourself; everyone else is taken.”

There are spaces inside our heads that no one else can see. Often, we can’t see them either. The single greatest attribute one can gain is metacognition. Metacognition is thinking about your own thinking. It’s being aware of how you’re learning, what you know or don’t know, and how you monitor your thought processes.

For example, if you’re studying and you catch yourself thinking, “I’m not really understanding this part; I need to slow down,” that’s metacognition in action. It helps you regulate and adapt your approach to learning or problem-solving.

Armed with metacognition, one might find oneself asking, as the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman asked in his best-selling book, “What do you care what other people think, Mr. Feynman?”

Not being concerned with what others think doesn’t mean being cold or indifferent. That is why Adler taught that, while developing internal psychological strength, one should also cultivate empathy and compassion for others, their feelings, and their needs. The bottom line, however, is that one cannot develop respect for others without first respecting oneself.

Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga’s follow-up to The Courage to be Disliked is The Courage to be Happy. If you read one of these books, you may not need to read the other, but you should read at least one.

Isiah Smith, Jr. is a retired government attorney.