Ichiro Kishimi Quotes

“A community that you can break relations with by simply submitting a withdrawal notice is one that you can have only so much connection to, in any case.”

“A healthy feeling of inferiority is not something that comes from comparing oneself to others; it comes from one’s comparison with one’s ideal self.”

“A lot of people think that the more friends you have the better, but I’m not so sure about that. There’s no value at all in the number of friends or acquaintances you have.”

“A person who is obsessed with the desire for recognition does not have any community feeling yet, and has not managed to engage in self-acceptance, confidence in others, or contribution to others.”

“A way of living in which one is constantly troubled by how one is seen by others is a self-centered lifestyle in which one’s sole concern is with the I'.”

“Adlerian psychology is a psychology for changing oneself, not a psychology for changing others. Instead of waiting for others to change or waiting for the situation to change, you take the first step forward yourself.”

“Admitting mistakes, conveying words of apology, and stepping down from power struggles—none of these things is defeat.”

“All you can do in regard to your own life is choose the best path that you believe in.”

“Answers from others are nothing more than stopgap measures; they’re of no value.”

“Anyone can behave like a king when they’re alone. So, this is an issue that should be considered in the context of interpersonal relations. Because it isn’t that you don’t have an innocent self – it is only that you can’t do such things in front of others.”

“Being normal is not being incapable. One does not need to flaunt one’s superiority.”

“But is being normal, being ordinary, really such a bad thing? Is it something inferior? Or, in truth, isn't everybody normal?”

“Children who have not been taught to confront challenges will try to avoid all challenges.”

“Do not live to satisfy the expectations of others.”

“Does one accept oneself on the level of acts, or on the level of being? This is truly a question that relates to the courage to be happy.”

“Does one choose recognition from others, or does one choose a path of freedom without recognition?”

“First, there are two objectives for behavior: to be self-reliant and to live in harmony with society. Then, the two objectives for the psychology that supports these behaviors are the consciousness that I have the ability and the consciousness that people are my comrades.”

“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.”

“I have a young friend who dreams of becoming a novelist, but he never seems to be able to complete his work. According to him, his job keeps him too busy, and he can never find enough time to write novels, and that's why he can't complete work and enter it for writing awards. But is that the real reason? No! It's actually that he wants to leave the possibility of "I can do it if I try" open, by not committing to anything. He doesn't want to expose his work to criticism, and he certainly doesn't want to face the reality that he might produce an inferior piece of writing and face rejection. He wants to live inside that realm of possibilities, where he can say that he could do it if he only had the time, or that he could write if he just had the proper environment, and that he really does have the talent for it. In another five or ten years, he will probably start using another excuses like "I'm not young anymore" or "I've got a family to think about now.”

“If it is a shallow relationship, when it falls apart the pain will be slight. And the joy that relationship brings each day will also be slight. It is precisely because one can gain the courage to enter into deeper relationships by having confidence in others that the joy of one’s interpersonal relations can grow, and one’s joy in life can grow, too.”

“If one really has a feeling of contribution, one will no longer have any need for recognition from others. Because one will already have the real awareness that “I am of use to someone,” without needing to go out of one’s way to be acknowledged by others.”

“If one really has confidence in oneself, one doesn’t feel the need to boast. It’s because one’s feeling of inferiority is strong that one boasts. One feels the need to flaunt one’s superiority all the more. There’s the fear that if one doesn’t do that, not a single person will accept one “the way I am.” This is a full-blown superiority complex.”

“If the goal of climbing a mountain were to get to the top, that would be a kinetic act. To take it to the extreme, it wouldn’t matter if you went to the mountaintop in a helicopter, stayed there for five minutes or so, and then headed back in the helicopter again. Of course, if you didn’t make it to the mountaintop, that would mean the mountain-climbing expedition was a failure.

However, if the goal is mountain climbing itself, and not just getting to the top, one could say it is energeial. In this case, in the end it doesn’t matter whether one makes it to the mountaintop or not.”

“If 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.”

“If you are leading a life of worry and suffering – which stems from interpersonal relationships — learn the boundary of 'From here on, that is not my task.' and discard other people’s tasks. That is the first step toward lightening the load and making life simpler.”

“If you are not living your life for yourself, then who is going to live it for you?”

“In a word, happiness is the feeling of contribution. That is the definition of happiness.”

“In life, there are encounters in which a book one happens to pick up one day ends up completely altering one’s landscape the following morning.”

“In the sense that you are concerned solely with the 'I', you are self-centered. You want to be thought well of by others, and that is why you worry about the way they look at you. That is not concern for others. It is nothing but attachment to self.”

“It is only when a person is able to feel that he has worth that he can possess courage.”

“Let’s dance in earnest the moments of the here and now, and live in earnest. Do not look at the past, and do not look at the future. One lives each complete moment like a dance. There is no need to compete with anyone, and one has no use for destinations. As long as you are dancing, you will get somewhere.”

“Living in fear of one’s relationships falling apart is an unfree way to live, in which one is living for other people.”

“Loneliness is having other people and society and community around you, and having a deep sense of being excluded from them.”

“No experience is in 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 give them is self-determining.”

“No matter how much you want to be Y, you cannot be reborn as him. You are not Y. It’s okay for you to be you. However, I am not saying it’s fine to be ‘just as you are’.

If you are unable to really feel happy, then it’s clear that things aren’t right just as they are. You’ve got to put one foot in front of the other, and not stop.”

“No matter what has occurred in your life up to this point, it should have no bearing at all on how you live from now on. That you, living in the here and now, are the one who determines your own life.”

“None of us live in an objective world, but instead in a subjective world that we ourselves have given meaning to. The world you see is different from the one I see, and it’s impossible to share your world with anyone else.”

“On the map of the world used in France, the Americas are located on the left side, and Asia on the right. Europe and France are depicted at the centre of the map, of course. The map of the world used in China, on the other hand, shows the Americas on the right side, and Europe on the left. French people who see the Chinese map of the world will most likely experience a difficult-to-describe sense of incongruity, as if they have been driven unjustly to the fringes, or cut out of the world arbitrarily.
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“Once one is released from the schema of competition, the need to triumph over someone disappears.”

“One cannot change what one is born with. But one can, under one’s own power, go about changing what use one makes of that equipment. So in that case, one simply has to focus on what one can change, rather than on what one cannot. This is what I call self-acceptance.”

“One needs to think not 'What will this person give me?' but, rather, 'What can I give to this person?' That is commitment to the community.”

“One should be ready to lend a hand when needed but not encroach on the person’s territory. It is important to maintain this kind of moderate distance, thinking things like "He should like me or I’ve done all this, so it’s strange that he doesn’t like me", is the reward-oriented way of thinking of having intervened in another person’s tasks.”

“People can change at any time, regardless of the environments they are in. You are only unable to change because you are making the decision not to.”

“People with neurotic lifestyles tend to sprinkle their speech with such words as 'everyone' and 'always' and 'everything'.

“Everyone hates me.” they will say, or “It’s always me who takes a loss.” or “Everything is wrong.”

If you think you might be in the habit of using such generalizing statements, you should be careful.”

“Relationships in which people restrict each other eventually fall apart.”

“Someone has to start. Other people might not be cooperative, but that is not connected to you. My advice is this: you should start. With no regard to whether others are cooperative or not.”

“Suppose you have placed “doubt” at the foundation of your interpersonal relations. That you live your life doubting other people—doubting your friends and even your family and those you love. What sort of relationship could possibly arise from that? The other person will detect the doubt in your eyes in an instant. He or she will have an instinctive understanding that “this person does not have confidence in me.” Do you think one would be able to build some kind of positive relationship from that point? It is precisely because we lay a foundation of unconditional confidence that it is possible for us to build a deep relationship.”

“That’s what it means to live in your subjective world. There is no escape from your own subjectivity. At present, the world seems complicated and mysterious to you, but if you change, the world will appear more simple. The issue is not about how the world is, but about how you are.”

“The courage to be happy also includes the courage to be disliked. When you have gained that courage, your interpersonal relationships will all at once change into things of lightness.”

“The first step to change is knowing.”

“The more one is praised by another person, the more one forms the belief that one has no ability. Please do your best to remember this.”

“The reason so many people don’t really feel happy while they’re building up their success in the eyes of society is that they are living in competition.”

“There is a simple way to tell whose task it is. Think, Who ultimately is going to receive the end result brought about by the choice that is made?”

“Those who go so far as to boast about things out loud actually have no confidence in themselves.”

“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.”

“Three things are needed: self-acceptance, confidence in others, and contribution to others.”

“To get rid of one’s problems, all one can do is live in the universe all alone.”

“Unable to communicate out of fear of hurting other people even when one has something to assert, one may end up abandoning what one really wants to do.”

“Unless one is unconcerned by other people’s judgments, has no fear of being disliked by other people, and pays the cost that one might never be recognized, one will never be able to follow through in one’s own way of living. That is to say, one will not be able to be free.”

“Value is something that’s based on a social context.”

“Wanting to live sincerely is an important thing, but it is not enough on its own. Adler tells us that all problems are interpersonal relationship problems. But if one does not know how to build good interpersonal relationships, one may end up trying to satisfy other people’s expectations.”

“We can live only in the here and now.”

“We cannot alter objective facts. But subjective interpretations can be altered as much as one likes. And we are inhabitants of a subjective world.”

“We choose our lifestyles ourselves. It’s clear where the responsibility lies.”

“We do not lack ability. We just lack courage. It all comes down to courage.”

“What kind of goal is the act of going on a journey? Suppose you are going on a journey to Egypt. Would you try to arrive at the Great Pyramid of Giza as efficiently and quickly as possible, and then head straight back home by the shortest route?
One would not call that a 'journey'. You should be on a journey the moment you step outside your home, and all the moments on the way to your destination should be a journey. Of course, there might be circumstances that prevent you from making it to the pyramid, but that does not mean you didn’t go on a journey. This is 'energeial life'.”

“What other people think when they see your face — that is the task of other people, and is not something you have any control over.”

“When one hears words of gratitude, one knows that one has made a contribution to another person.”

“Whether we praise or rebuke others, the only difference is one of the carrot or the stick, and the background goal is manipulation.”

“Why is it that people seek recognition from others? In many cases, it is due to the influence of reward-and-punishment education.”

“With workaholics, the focus is solely on one specific aspect of life. They probably try to justify that by saying, ‘It’s busy at work, so I don’t have enough time to think about my family.’ But this is a life-lie. They are simply trying to avoid their other responsibilities by using work as an excuse.”

“You are the only one who can change yourself.”

“You read a new book and gain new knowledge. Basically, you keep accumulating knowledge. The more you read, the more your knowledge increases. You find new concepts of value, and it seems to you that they change you.”

“Your life is not something that someone gives you, but something you choose yourself, and you are the one who decides how you live.”

“Your unhappiness cannot be blamed on your past or your environment. And it isn’t that you lack competence. You just lack courage. One might say you are lacking in the courage to be happy.”