book / recommends
The Courage to Be Disliked
“I'll start by saying the type of book by volume that I read and get the most joy from are autobiographies and memoirs. It is just the ultimate cheat code to spend time with people that you respect, are interested by, or want to learn from. Could you imagine what it would take in real life to sit down with Albert Einstein for 50 hours and just have him talk to you about his life? Impossible. But you can read and pretty much get the same thing. So anyways, strong requirement or a strong suggestion, go read autobiographies and memoirs of people that you respect, mostly for their mental model and way to approach thinking, less about specific things. But the one book that I read without fail every year has a very misleading title. It's called The Courage to Be Disliked. I think it's been mentioned previously on the podcast, but it covers... It's a very Socratic method style, so it's about a philosopher and a young person, and it tries to teach you the ways of Adlerian psychology, which is sort of counter to Jungian theory. The reason I really like it is because it makes me uncomfortable. So the whole premise, in my opinion, behind the book and other in psychology is focus on what you control. That's the one line. Don't worry about everything else. Don't worry about what other people think. Don't worry about what other people do. You cannot control those. You focus on yourself and you focus on the actions you can take. And be the person that you think will attract other people, that you want to be around. There's some really pointed notes in there that I'm like, "Ha-ha-ha-ha. I don't fully agree with that one," but it always pushes me to question something about what I believe. And so in every physical copy of a book I have, I write the date that I started reading it again. The front inside cover of this book, I think it's been seven or eight years at this point that I've read it every single year.”