1. Deny Trauma
Principle: If we focus only on the past causes and try to explain things solely through cause and effect, we end up with determinism
Paradigm: Your past does not determine your future, it is you in the here and now that determines your future.
Principle: No experience is in and itself a cause of our success or failure. We do not suffer from the shock of our experiences – the so called trauma- but instead we make out of them whatever suits our purposes. We are not determined by our experiences, but the meaning we gave them is self determining.
Paradigm: The influences of your past traumas are strong, but ultimately nothing is determined by those influences. We determine our own lives according to the meaning we give to those past experiences. Your life is not something that someone gives you, but something you chose yourself and you are the only one who decides how you live.
Principle: The important thing is not what one is born with, but what use one makes of that equipment
Paradigm: If you are not happy with who you are, change! Take action step by step by step.
Principle: Every criminal has an internal justification for getting involved in crime
Paradigm: The Greek word for good does not have moral meaning. It simply means beneficial, evil simply means not beneficial. There is no one person who desires evil in the purest sense of the word
Principle: Unhappiness is not caused by unhappy circumstances or ended up in an unhappy situation. You simply judged being unhappy as good for you.
Paradigm: In Adlerian psychology you have the power to choose your state of mind and even your personality. True some of those choices were made unconsciously, but eventually that option to choose better became yours.
Paradigm: The reason you choose otherwise is because the lifestyle you have now is the most practical one, and that it’s easier to leave things as they are. In other words, you are giving yourselves excuses not to change
2. All Problems Are Interpersonal Relationship Problems
Principle: When you enter into interpersonal relationships, it is inevitable that to a greater or lesser extent you will get hurt.
Paradigm: To get rid of one’s problems, all one can do is to live in the universe alone.
Principle: There is no such thing as worry that is completely defined by the individual; so called internal worry does not exist. Whatever the worry that may arise, the shadows of other people are always present.
Principle: We attach value judgments for ourselves to determine our worth in our society. Value is based on social context
Principle: People enter this world as helpless being. And people have a universal desire to escape from that helpless state. This desire was called the pursuit of superiority. In the same way feeling inferior is not wrong, it is a normal feeling that can be a trigger for growth. What is wrong is when you are using your superiority or inferiority as an excuse not to grow or harm others
Paradigm: The healthiest way to compensate for feeling inferior is to strive for improvement and growth
Paradigm: A healthy feeling of inferiority is not something that comes from comparing oneself to others, but from one’s comparison with the ideal self.
Paradigm: When you are trying to be yourself, you will see competition as unnecessary. Aim to see the people around you as comrades, not competitors.
Paradigm: refuse to be challenged to a power struggle- when a person tries to get into a fight with you- to prove his power by winning against you, never be taken in. Even if you win the power struggle, they will seek a chance to get revenge. So don’t react, stay cool.
Paradigm: Anger is a form of communication that does more harm than good. Learn and believe in the power of language and logic
Paradigm: In every circumstances, no matter how much you think you are right, try not to criticize the other party on that basis
Paradigm: Admitting mistakes, conveying words of apology and stepping down from power struggles- none of these things is defeat. The pursuit of superiority should not be carried out at the expense of others.
Principle: 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
Paradigm: the one who boasts does so only out of a feeling of inferiority
Principle: Realize that our life task as a human being is to eventually take responsibility for our own life and engage with other people harmoniously.
Paradigm: In order to support these behaviours, we need to have the consciousness that ‘I have the ability’ and seeing other people as comrades
Paradigm: No matter how distressful your relationship is, don’t run away. You must not avoid or put off dealing with it.
Principle: Relationships in which people restrict each other eventually fell apart.
Paradigm: If two people wanted to live together on good terms, they must treat each other as equal personalitites.
Principle: People are extremely selfish creatures who are capable of finding any number of flaws and shortcomings in others whenever the mood strikes them
Paradigm: It isn’t that you like or dislike someone because you can’t forgive his flaws. You had the goal to like or dislike to the other person beforehand, and started to look for the flaws to satisfy that goal.
3. Discard Other People’s Tasks
Principle: There is no need to be recognized by others. Actually, one must not seek recognition.
Principle: Not wanting to be disliked by other people is a human natural desire. Conducting oneself in such a way as not to be disliked by anyone is an extremely unfree way of living and it’s impossible. There’s cost incured when one wants to exercise one’s freedom. And the cost of freedom is being disliked by other people.
Paradigm: You are not living to satisfy other people’s expectations. If you are not living your life for yourself, then who is going to live it for you?
Paradigm: When one seeks recognition from others, and concern oneself with how one is judged by others, in the end one is living other people’s lives
Paradigm: Choose the best path that you believe in. On the other hand, what kind of judgement do other people pass on that choice? That is the task of other people and it is not a matter you can do anything about.
Practice: Whose task is this?
A. Whose task is it?
Think who ultimately is going to receive the end result brought about by the choice that is made. If it’s not you, clarify your roles in the task, and get the other person to see it is his or her task. The breakdown is as follows:
B. Determine ultimately whose task is this?
Separate the roles: calmly delineate up to what point one’s own task go and from what point they became another person’s task or allow other person to intervene in one own’s task
C. Cultivate the courage to be disliked
Being disliked is the cost of freedom to be yourself. To be who you truly are you need to reject and deny other people’s expectations. Freedom is the capacity, courage, and willingness to take a step where it might lead you to be disliked by other people.
D. Focus on what you can control
When you had a bad relationship with an important person in your life, you can seek to improve it by changing yourself as that is the only thing that is within your control. Other person’s response is something that is outside your control.
4. Where The Centre of The World Is
Principle: The goal of interpersonal relationships is community feeling- a sense that we belong in our own place of refuge and the desire to share with our comrades.
Paradigm: To foster community feeling we need to make the switch from attachment to self to concern for others. Ask not ‘What will this person give me?’ but ‘What can I give this person?’
Principle: when we run into difficulties in our interpersonal relations, or when we can no longer see a way out, what we should consider first and foremost is the principle that says listen to the voice of the larger community
Paradigm: There will always be more you and i and more everyone and larger communities that exist. Do not cling to the small communities in front of you. There will always be more of you and I and more of everyone, and larger communities that exist.
Principle: Build horizontal relationships- treating everyone as ‘equal but not the same.’ Instead of commanding or intruding a person from above, you try to gain confidence and help them face their tasks on their own.
Paradigm: Praise and rebuke are demonstrations of vertical relationships. You are trying to influence a person’s actions through force or manipulation. Avoid them if possible.
Paradigm: Think of a horizontal relationship as helping a partner who was your equal. There’s no judgement, but only encouragement. Horizontal relationship respect other people’s task and ask oneself to consider how one might best help the other person.
Paradigm: When one is not following through with one’s task, it is not because one does not have the ability, one simply lost the courage to face the task. It is only when a person is able to feel that he has worth that he can possess courage. When one is able to feel I am beneficial to the community that one can have a true sense of one’s worth- that you are of use to someone.
Paradigm: With regards to community feeling, someone has to start. Other people might not be cooperative, but that is not connected with you. Just start contributing
5. To Live In Earnest In The Here And Now
Paradigm: To cultivate, one needs to interact with your innocent self. In order to do this you need self acceptance, confidence in others and contribution to others.
Self acceptance means accepting one’s incapable self as if and moving forward so one can do whatever one can.
Confidence in others means believing in others unconditionally initially to cultivate a good horizontal relationship. However, some relationships don’t grow into horizontal relationships. In that case, the best course of action is to sever them.
By practicing self acceptance and confidence in others, you will see others as comrades, and this way of seeing will help put the foundation to foster community feeling
Contribution to others means is an attempt to give to your community, not necessarily making sacrifices. Adler said that making sacrifices for others are signs that people have conformed to society too much. One does not give to get rid of the ‘I’ but rather to be truly aware of the worth of the ‘I.’ Happiness is the feeling of contribution. It doesn’t matter if the contribution truly makes any difference. What matters is the subjective sense of being of use to someone.
Paradigm: workaholics avoid responsibilities in other areas of his life with being at work
Principle: there is no way you can know for certain if your ‘contribution’ does indeed makes a difference.
paradigm: Happiness is simply a feeling of contribution, whether you have actually contributed or not, it doesn’t make a difference.
Paradigm: Life is not one straight line from beginning to end. Life is a series of dots, where the dots are moments by moments in your life, or the here and now, which when a solid line is drawn, you will see a path. We can only live in the here and now, thus, life can be likened to a series of dots, not the act of climbing mountains.
Life thus can’t be planned, for life is a series of dots
Paradigm: We should live more earnestly in the here and now. Life is a series of moments and neither the past or the future existed. What happened in the past has nothing whatsoever to do with your here and now, and what the future may hold is not a matter to think about here and now. If you are earnestly living in the here and now, you will not be concerned with such things
Paradigm: Don’t concern yourself with the consequences of your actions for they are something beyond your control. Focus on your actions.
Principle: One tries to be special by being extremely good or extremely bad, but they were not a good thing because these desires relies on the approval of others. One should aim to cultivate the courage to be normal
Principle: Life in general has no meaning, but we can assign meaning to that life. And you are the only one who can assign meaning to your life.
The benchmark of whether we are assigning good meaning or bad meaning depended on our contribution to others.
principle: Being a force of good is not easy, people may not respond in kind, but someone has to start.