The Japanese Philosophy That Changed My Life

one day I stumbled across a Japanese book called the courage to be disliked and my first thought was what the courage to be disliked are you mad as if to be disliked was a virtue but then it got me thinking in fact I couldn't get it out of my head and over the course of several days the meaning of the title slowly revealed itself to me through every interaction I felt this force of nature influencing every thought decision and Behavior I had and so I went back to the store and I bought the book and

with every chapter it felt like another layer of life was being peeled back things I had felt intuitively but couldn't really put my finger on or put words to were now suddenly tangible and concrete there are many insights from the book of profundity but even though I've read it twice now if I Tred to juggle them all in my mind I think my head would explode so today I'd just like to talk about one I recently moved to Japan of all places uh to snowboard and travel and yada yada yada find myself and you'd think

the scariest thing would be yeah moving to a foreign land that's as different from home as possible or doing the extreme sport of snowboarding but no it's the moving into the house with 40 strangers which in introvert terms if you don't know is essentially the seventh circle of hell so far it's been great it's been cool with a couple of not so great unintended Adventures along the way but that's for another time and so when I read this book it really made me understand just how much this fear of being disliked motivates our behavior and

controls our life and how to untangle the mess that is into personal relationships and so first foremost and well only the separation of task the separation of task merely states that that you are responsible only for your own tasks in life and that the infringement on other people's tasks by you or the infringement of your task by others is the cause of almost all interpersonal relationship problems at first my mind rebelled against the idea that you can't infringe on anyone else's tasks but that's because I was confusing entanglement with connection connection is where two people

that are taking care of their own tasks independently share that with each other entanglement ever is when two people instead of taking responsibility for their own tasks in life Instead try to impose their will on other people's tasks and that just causes friction and fights and interpersonal relationship problems you get it so on and so forth okay this is all pretty abstract for the moment so let me give you an [Music] example when I was younger I'm talking like early High School I was a little needy and I had this one friend that I liked

hanging out with and one day I text texted him asking him to hang out and he didn't respond and so I texted him again and again and again with each text getting slightly more aggressive and accusatory at one point telling him that I know you're online you better text back now we're going to hang out jacus you know what we do to prisoners who don't cooperate we ook them up to the books eventually he texted back like I was asleep bro and yeah I know this because years later I went back through the text uh

reading them with disgust and a pinch of self-loathing and I realized in that moment that I had a problem overstepping my bounds and infringing on other people's tasks because the only task that I had was to invite him to hang out his task was to either accept or deny the only thing I achieved by trying to influence his task was pushing him further away now this is kind of an extreme example where I went kind of like psycho girlfriend mode but we overstep our bounds all the time from giving that unsolicited piece of advice that

no one asks for you Dr off to stepping in at work to help someone but really just taking over and not allowing them to learn from their own mistakes this is something I've had to consciously be aware of and try to stop myself from doing because I don't know if you noticed but I love giving unsolicited advice in fact I'm planning on making a career out of it what you're subc communicating whenever you do this to someone is that you're above them that you know best and that they should listen to you so I am

trying to humble myself and stop giving unsolicited advice and reject the notion that I know any better how to run someone else's life and just resign to running mine but not only does the separation of tasks help us to stop meddling and others lives it also Shields us from other people trying to meddle in ours to live authentically and to be ourselves around others is hard and usually we just end up trying to anticipate what other people would like and we just perform whatever we think that is but with the separation of tasks it severs

this pathway and reveals the path of authenticity take me for example shocker I am currently surrounded by cool beer drinking weed smoking sex having peers it would be so easy for me to conform to whatever I think they'll like and pretend this YouTube thing doesn't exist and hide it away in the closet grab a beer instead but by using the separation of tasks I'm only focused on what my tasks are and the task I've set for myself for this season is to make videos stay in shape snowboard as much as possible and remain as open

as I can to the people around me those are the tasks I've set based on the values I have and what will make me happy what is not my task is what others think of me the conclusions they draw or how they treat me that is completely in their court and I think I'm finally at peace with that so I encourage you to reflect on what your tasks are in this world what are the things that are going to make you happy and then just simplify your life just make the conscious decision to say this

is all I'm going to focus on everything else is someone else's task to do with what as they please and it will do me no benefit it will be a waste of time and energy to put any thought or feeling into other people's tasks see yeah that's the conclusion I've come to if you found it helpful I highly recommend reading the book cuz I just butchered this philosophy to no end yeah the book is life-changing so go grab the book this is not sponsored believe it or not they did not pay a 500 subscriber channel

to sponsor their book I know I'm as surprised as you are to be honest but that's about it so [ __ ] off think I'm starting to really get the hang of this whole being dislike thing yeah just be obnoxious who knew