Book Specs 📖

• Authors: Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga
• Genre: Self-help/psychology/philosophy
• Pages: 228 (Paperback)

One sentence Synopsis🔖

A young man and philosopher engage in an intellectual conversation about the question of happiness and how we can obtain it using Alderian psychology.

Notes/Thoughts📝

• This is my second reading of this book for work book club. This time I noticed the effectiveness of the circular pacing of the book. I read this book intiially in 2023 and since then I’ve learned to appreciate the slower/more repetitive pacing of books – especially when applied itnentionally – in this case, it is often through the process of asking questions, over and over, that we rephrase and reframe our thoughts until we truly understand an insight. The use of Socratic method focuses on the dialogue of learning vs. the Western method of providing shortcut answers (think of ChatGPT)
  • What do we lose today by engaging less in circular dialogue to understand something? Patience? Deeper relationships? deeper understanding?
• How we live and the people we become is determined by our goals (teleology). According to this logic, we are living in accordance with the goals we set For example, anger is a means to achieve an end goal like making someone pay attention to us. Changing the goal, changes your lifestyle, changes everything.
• Feelings of inferiority and superiority are both sides of the same coin. They can both be healthy if we use them to motivate ourselves towards goals and unhealthy if we use them to manipulate/take advantage of others. A health form of inferiority is to compare yourself to your ideal self
• If we want less interpersonal problems in life, we need to ensure that there is a SEPARATION OF TASKS. We should only be focusing on changing ourselves, not changing ourself to change others (manipulation) or taking on the tasks of others/changing them. Someone’s judgement of you is their task, not yours. “
• When we serve others (community feeling), see other people as our equals (horizontal relationships), and believe we are of use to someone(self-worth) then we will have the courage to be happy. As a footnote, we don’t get to decide if our contributions are of use to others (separation of tasks) – as long as you feel you have contributed, that is enough for you to be happy
  • “Does one accept oneself on the level of acts, or the level of being?” This is a big question especially as a Chinese Canadian where acts of service is a big way of showing love i.e. cutting fruit, asking have we eaten. To unconditionally accept ourselves and others we must realize that our existence is enough to belong here on earth

“Quotes”🗣

To feel lonely, we need other people. that is to say, it is only in social contexts that a person becomes an individual

weakness can be quite strong and powerful

All problems are interpersonal problems

With dance, it is the dancing itself that is the goal, and no one is concerned with arriving somewhere by doing it.

If I change, the world will change.

You should start with no regard to whether others are cooperative or not

The important this is not what one is born with, but what use one makes of that equipment

[life] is a series of moments called ‘now’. We can only live in the here and now”

It’s that you are disliked by someone. It is proof that you are exercising your freedom and living in freedom, and a sign that you are living in accordance with your own principles