Chapmanesque—Ain’t Nobody Gotta Like You
There’s a book out there that I would encourage you to read (If you’re not a reader, I’d encourage you to AudioBook this one).
The name of that book is The Courage to Be Disliked (The Japanese Phenomenon that shows you how to change your life and achieve real happiness) by Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga.
I’ve created a new title for that book to better fit us southerners. I call it, Ain’t Nobody Gotta Like You. It may be a different, more succinctly southern title, but the concept is the same.
It’s a concept that doesn’t sit well with the majority of us who live in western societies.
We’ve been raised to protect our reputations, to build our resumes, to make sure we understand that we never know who is watching and that our actions are important.
Heck, these are notions I teach my own children! Who wouldn’t, right?
We want our people to be positive influences, but are we creating a generation more focused on making sure they’re influencing people or are we building a generation of quality people that value truth and joy, a generation others happen to notice and just can’t help to emulate?
Is It All a Facade?
We have a tendency to pay a little too much attention to the trappings of the external and ignore the substance of what makes up the inside.
Recall the old saying, Lipstick on a pig. We can dress up the outside all we want, but when the lipstick wears off, you’re stuck with a pig, a mud-loving, snout-sniffing, big stinky pig.
Just because something (or someone) looks the part doesn’t always mean they are the part.
It’s like in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Once Indy made it to the room that housed all the possible grails, he was tasked with picking out which one was the right one. Was it the gold challise covered in jewels or the silver goblet with ornate decorations? No, it was the simple cup of a carpenter.
Still from “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade”
When Samuel was sent to find the next king of Israel to replace Saul, everyone thought Jesse’s oldest son Eliab would be the chosen one. He was the oldest and he looked the part. But that was how Israel got into the debacle they were currently in. They chose Saul who also looked the part, but he was not the right man for the job.
When we pay more attention to how we’re perceived instead of working on actually developing the essence of our character, the intentions affect the final product.
When we’re more interested in being perceived as successful instead of actually putting in the work to actually be successful, the essence of our character shifts from the genuine and is cheapened, becoming superficial.
If we’re honest, we put too much stock into what people think about us, and that’s what this book addresses.
The courage to be happy also includes the courage to be disliked.
-Alfred Adler
We don’t have the courage to be disliked because we probably care too much about making sure everyone thinks positively about us, that they like us. If they don’t like us, then what do we have? Who are we? What’s our value?
“So the way to combat this,” you might ask, “is to just not care about what people think about us? Should our efforts be to make sure people know how little we care?”
I’m glad you asked.
Toss a coin and pick sides
There’s a chance that you may put too much energy in declaring how much you don’t care about someone else’s opinion, leaving those within earshot to fully understand that your intense tone is probably going to betray you.
You just have to let them know how much you care about letting others—no, wrong word—about making others know how much you care about how little they care about you.
Same coin. Different sides.
Then there are those people who just don’t care about anything. They’re apathetic. They lack what the old people used to call gumption (It’s a real word with a real definition and everything).
Gumption’s dictionary definition: shrewd or spirited initiative and resourcefulness. It’s quite the active word, showing a healthy bit of drive and ambition. People who have gumption are going to build “whatever it is” from the ground up. They can face the naysayers and work past the criticism to achieve their goal. They’re not apathetic.
But those who lack gumption lack those adjectives found in the definition. They’re not shrewd. They’re not spirited. They’re lethargic, or, as the kids say, mid. They have to be pried and prodded to get going. They’re not self-starters. Their horse power is found in the insistence of others and not under their own hood.
Both the spirited and the lethargic can fall victim to how they’re perceived. The one with gumption thrives on competition and seems to help move communities and industries and ideas forward.
But what happens when they take a day off? What happens if they’re not “go-getters” for a day? Do they lose that designation? Are they suddenly thought less of? Is their reputation hindered?
The lethargic one sometimes feels that others just need to get off their back. Why can’t the world just understand that they work at their own pace, and they’ll get to it when they get to it? Why doesn’t everyone else just mind their own business and stop trying to tell me how to live my life?
What happens, though, if they were to try and then fail? What happens if they were to try and actually succeed? Does that change who they are? Is it still Them vs. Everybody? Is that too much of a fundamental change? Will that redefine them?
Again, same coin. Different sides.
Is perception really reality?
One of the maxims that drives the marketing world, the political world, the actual world is that perception is reality. I work in communications, so I very much understand the essence of that statement.
If the masses believe Y is X, then no matter how much Y tries to be Y it will certainly be X.
But when it comes to our deep-down happiness—our joy—we can’t live on the perceptions of others. This is where we turn ourselves into people-pleasers, into peace-keepers (not peace-makers, don’t get those confused with one another), into yes-men and yes-women.
We’ll even compromise some of our standards so others won’t think less of us, because if someone thinks less of us, what does that turn us into? If we place our value of ourselves on what others think of us, we’re prone to teeter over the precipice and careen into the pit of public perception (bonus points for the alliteration).
If we truly want to be happy we have to understand that not everyone will like us, and in order to truly be happy, we have to be okay with that.
We have to face the world with the courage to be disliked. That’s the book in a nutshell.
To use the title I’ve reissued to this book, we have to be okay with the fact that ain’t nobody gotta like you.
For Freedom’s Sake
Kishimi’s and Koga’s book focuses on the Austrian doctor Alfred Adler. There’s plenty of research you can do on Adler, but the focus of the book centers around the freedom to pursue true joy by freeing yourself from the shackles of public opinion.
You must develop the ability to be disliked in order to free yourself from the prison of other people’s opinions.
This is easier said than done, I know. But how many times have we found ourselves trapped inside our little boxes of external expectation instead of breaking out to truly seek what makes us whole?
I’ve already mentioned those people who will ring the bell of victimhood, hoping that those who won’t let them be their true selves will one day dramatically recant their disdain and sing the praises of those wronged in the past.
I’m not promoting victimhood, far from it.
Those who make themselves look bigger on borrowed power are essentially living on other people’s value systems. They are living other people’s lives.
You can easily wear a “mask” and lie to others. You can even demand that everyone else treat you as if the lie were true.
But at the end of the day, you can’t lie to yourself. You can’t believe the truth and a lie at the same time. So many people say they want others to let them “live their own lives” but they don’t have a bedrock of values they cling to.
I find my values in Jesus Christ, but I’m still subject to the external expectations of the human world, of what America values, of what my parents taught me, of what those close to me expect of me.
If I were to deviate from any expected actions that are really me trying to meet the expectation of others and instead seek true happiness and joy, the bedrock of my Christian values would not change, and the opinions of those around me would still be present.
It’s the devaluing of (often well meant) opinions where my inner voice would give pause, asking if giving up the life based on others’ expectations is worth it because of how much I’d let others down.
Another perspective—It’s eliminating a parasite to allow the host to no longer be suffocated. It’s freeing the trapped by killing off the invasive.
This involves a true change of mindset, and it requires an examination of who you are down to who you are at your core.
Confidence and Courage
It’s hard to change that mindset. As Americans in the heart of the “western world” and literally the home of Americana, we’re almost spoon-fed the glories of competition.
It’s battling it out with others around you who are seeking the same success that makes you better.
It’s economic competition that drives prices lower (well, it’s supposed to).
It’s the consequence of knowing that others may think poorly of us if we veer off track that keeps us honest and accountable.
I can’t argue with any of those assertions. Those are all true. But it’s the intention that matters.
What if we don’t measure up? What if we fall short? What if we fail? Those are perfectly logical questions.
It goes back to that bedrock of values. The faith you place in that bedrock gives you the confidence to be who you truly are. It’s not a facsimile of a stereotype of someone seeking attention or a fanatic trying to bring others down, feeding off the emotions of the masses.
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.
To paraphrase (and edit) the lyrics from “Damn It Feels Good to Be A Gangster” by The Ghetto Boys: Real Ones don’t have to boast about how good they are because Real Ones know at their core that they’re good enough (man, what a white-washed rendition!)
If we’re more concerned with how we’ll be perceived, then we’re subject to the whims and fickleness of mankind. We play the slave to the master of public perception.
So, if I truly want that deep joy in my life, I have to have the courage to be okay with the reality that some people just won’t like me.
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