You don’t want to change so much that you’d be willing to sacrifice the pleasures you enjoy now—for instance, the time you spend playing and engaged in hobbies.

Of course. I do not think about gaining status or honour, and I live my life as an outsider philosopher without any connection whatsoever to worldly competition.

Self-affirmation is making suggestions to oneself, such as ‘I can do it’ or ‘I am strong’, even when something is simply beyond one’s ability. It is a notion that can bring about a superiority complex, and may even be termed a way of living in which one lies to oneself. With self-acceptance, on the other hand, if one cannot do something, one is

You probably think of disposition or personality as something with which you are endowed, without any connection to your will. In Adlerian psychology, however, lifestyle is thought of as something that you choose for yourself.

And with someone who purports to know everything, or someone who has stopped in their path of knowing and thinking, regardless of their belief in the existence or nonexistence of god, or even the presence or absence of their faith, they are venturing into religion. That is my view on the matter.

‘If there are ten people, one will be someone who criticises you no matter what you do. This person will come to dislike you, and you will not learn to like him either. Then, there will be two others who accept everything about you and whom you accept too, and you will become close friends with them.

Focus on the point Adler is making here when he refers to the self being determined not by our experiences themselves, but by the meaning we give them.

Lifestyle is the tendencies of thought and action in life.

When one is not following through with one’s tasks, it is not because one is without ability. Adlerian psychology tells us that the issue here is not one of ability, but simply that ‘one has lost the courage to face one’s tasks’. And, if that is the case, the thing to do before anything else is to recover that lost courage.