MBA2431 Must Read: The Courage to Be Disliked by Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga

0:09Heyo, welcome to the$100 MBA show, giving you what you need to build the business you want with our practical business lessons. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher, Omar Zenhom, and today's episode is a must-read episode. On our must-read episodes, I share with you a book that has influenced me as an entrepreneur. I share with you its takeaways, its insights, and why you should read it too. Today's must-read is an incredible book. It's called The Courage to Be Disliked by Ichiro Kashimi and Fumataki Koga. This wonderful book out of Japan has sold over 3 million copies, which is an astounding number for any nonfiction book.

0:48The Courage to be Disliked is a book that explores Aldirian psychology through Socratic dialogue, challenging conventional beliefs about happiness, interpersonal relationships, and the pursuit of one's path to fulfillment. I know that's a mouthful, but the reason why I wanted to talk about this book on the show is because this book really helps you have inner peace. helps you understand what's really bothering you, what's really hurting you, what's really causing you to be uncomfortable, unhappy, or unfulfilled. Why is this so important? Because if you have something going on inside, if you have problems being at peace within yourself, those problems will show up in your business.

1:33Trust me, I know. I've been running businesses for 20 years. And anytime I've had a problem in my business, I can probably connect it to a problem I had inside of me. So the more at peace you are, the more you're able to be content and to be aligned with yourself, the better you will be at your business and make clear decisions, make major progress, and enjoy the process along the way. In today's episode, I'm going to break down why this book is so, so good and why you should read it. I'm going to share with you my favorite takeaways, my favorite things that really change the way I think about things, mind-shifting ideas, but also explain how you can take these ideas and apply them to your life and your business.

2:18Let's get into it. Let's get down to business. This book explores the concept of separating tasks. What does this mean? It means it's emphasizing that each of us as individuals are responsible for our own happiness, that happiness is a choice and that we should not burden others with that responsibility. That's a really interesting point, a really interesting idea that you need to choose and you need to understand that happiness is in your power. It's in your abilities and it's not anybody else's responsibility. It goes into ideas and concepts like societal expectations, our desire to be recognized and be significant, and how that can hinder our personal growth and authenticity.

3:03Does this sound familiar? In the business world, we're always trying to stand out. Hello, social media, right? We want likes. We want people to love us. We want people to follow us. We want to be popular. We want to be famous. You ask children these days what they want to be when they grow up, the number one answer is a YouTuber. But this book argues that that yearning to be liked is actually stopping us from growing and achieving our goal. This is a concept that I've read in a lot of books where the more you want something, the more you desire something, the harder it is to achieve. It's harder to attain.

3:36It eludes you. This book throughout the different chapters encourages you to be disliked. Embrace this idea. It liberates you from living a lie and not living your true self. You can set yourself free from the constraints of external judgment. Now, one of my favorite things about this book is the way it's written. It's a conversation between a philosopher, an elder, somebody who is wise, and a young man who's coming to him frustrated with his own state of mind, with his own problems, and is looking to get some help. And it goes back and forth. It's like a dialogue. It reads like a script, really.

4:12And throughout the dialogue, they address common misconceptions about happiness, exploring how to shift one's mindset and the commitment to personal responsibility to one's happiness and to one's achievement and personal growth. These conversations are so valuable, okay? It gives you all these practical insights if you're seeking a deeper understanding of your own desires, your own fears, and the courage that's required to chart your own unique path, which is not easy. I know this is heavy, but it's required. We've got to do this hard work to work on ourselves to get better so that we can produce better.

4:49Listen, to create a great product, a great business, a great service, a great whatever, it's not going to come out of thin air. It's going to come from you. And if you want something great, you got to be great. If you want something authentic, you have to be authentic. If you want something original, you have to be original, right? It's not going to come out of nowhere. It's going to come from you. So working on you is going to help you tremendously with your business. So I want to share with you some of my key takeaways from this book tend to be exact. Okay. And let's kick off with number one, courageous individuality through the book.

5:22You learn that you should really embrace the courage to be disliked and live authentically true to your own values and your own aspirations, your own goals, your own pursuit in life. What's great about this is that when you don't worry about what people think and being disliked, you actually make people love you more. Polarizing people, as you could see in the world, actually are a lot more successful. When you're vanilla, when you try to please everybody, you don't resonate with anybody, right? You just get ignored, really. And if you're not somebody's cup of tea, that's okay. That means you're going to be somebody else's cup of tea.

6:02I'm really going to love you. So you got to have the courage to be an individual, to be yourself. Number two, personal responsibility. Recognize and accept responsibility for your own happiness. Understand that you got to choose happiness and that happiness has to come within. What I mean by that is that you shouldn't seek happiness from external people, from external validation. When you do that, you're on a hamster wheel. That includes the digital world. When you post something and you don't get likes or get the comments you're looking for, the number of likes you're looking for, that shouldn't control your happiness.

6:37You should just be happy with the work you put out there. Put it out there. Don't worry about it. Keep going. Number three, overcoming social judgments. Overcome the fear of social judgment and liberate yourself from the need for approval from others. People will judge you. This is something that people won't say to you. Everybody judges everybody, okay? They will judge you. They will make a judgment by looking at you, by hearing you, by seeing your reels, by seeing a product on your website, by seeing you in person. The key is not to worry about their judgment. The key is overcome that fear that you have, understanding that their judgment has no bearing on your success, has no bearing on your life or your happiness or your contentment or the work you're putting out there.

7:24Accept the fact that people will judge you. That helps you not worry about it. Understand that this is going to happen. Automatic. Number four, interpersonal relationships. The book really encourages you to foster healthy relationships by respecting others. Live and let live. Allow them the freedom to pursue their own happiness. Allow them to explore their own way of life. I've always been a believer that if I want to have the freedom and be accepted for who I am, I have to do the same for others. even if I might disagree with their way of life, maybe if I disagree with their choices. Live and let live is a really good philosophy because it allows you to feel the freedom to live the way you want.

8:12Number five, a big one, freedom from past traumas. Breaking free from the shackles of past traumas is not easy. But you have to understand that your past does not equal your present or your future. What happened yesterday doesn't stop you from having the autonomy to change today and tomorrow. You don't have control of the past. What happened, happened. Forgive yourself. Forgive whoever you need to forgive because you have to move on. Because those past traumas are holding you back. They're convincing you you can't change. When in fact, it's just a moment in time that happened. It was horrible.

8:53It was bad. It was traumatic. Recognize that, but understand it can't control you. It can't control what you do today. It can't control what you do in the future. Number six, reframing perspectives. Challenge conventional beliefs about happiness. Challenge the conventional beliefs about success and fulfillment and adapt a mindset that aligns with your individual desires. Forget about what everybody says. Forget about what you're supposed to do. What do you want in life? Maybe you don't want a big house. Maybe you'd be happy with a cozy little tiny home and a little scooter instead of a fancy car, right?

9:28Figure out what you want. What will make you happy? What is enough for you? That's what they mean by individual desires. A lot of people have a hard time answering the question, what do you want? What do you want out of life? You got to take the time to sit down and write down your perfect day, your perfect lifestyle, your perfect year. What does that look like? Own up to it, but also question it. Why are you writing these things down? Is it because that's what you think you should be doing or that's what you have seen modeled as success, what does success mean for you? What does success mean for your business?

9:58What does success mean for your family, for your personal life? What's going to make you content, feel good about things, and have you smiling from ear to ear? I got four more takeaways I want to share with you. Let me give it to you. Rapid fire. Number seven, positive communication. Practice effective communication by expressing your needs and desires while respecting the autonomy of others. It's so important to tell other people, especially people that are close to you, your significant other, your family members, what you want, what matters to you. For example, maybe your family members might be saying, hey, we wanna do X, Y, Z for a holiday this year.

10:37And it might be the same thing you did last year and you're not really feeling like doing that. Maybe you wanna do something different. Maybe you wanna explore a different part of the world. Maybe you wanna have a different experience. Express that. Say, hey, actually, this is what I want. This is what I want to do. This is what will make me happy. Now, I want to allow you to be happy too. So maybe we can do that another time or maybe we could do the next time or maybe because we did it last time, we can try it my way. Allow people to do what they want as much as possible so that you can do what you want, but you have to communicate it.

11:07People are not going to know what's in your head. You have to tell people, this is what you desire. This is what you want. Number eight, self-acceptance. cultivate self-acceptance by understanding that your worth is not determined by the external validation or societal expectations. Who you are and what you're worth has nothing to do with other people say or do or think. If somebody calls you a loser, a failure, it doesn't mean you're a loser or failure. It's just words. It's what people are saying. You have to accept who you are. You have to say, I'm okay as I am. I want to improve, but my self-worth, I'm not worthless as I am.

11:47Okay? This is so important because a lot of us have a little seed of that. And then when we hear something negative or people don't accept this, we start really believing their words. Number nine, continuous growth. Embrace a mindset of continuous personal growth. This is the idea of having a growth mindset. Recognize that your journey in life and your journey towards self-discovery and fulfillment is an ongoing process. When I look back at my life, I don't even recognize who I was 20 years ago. That's a different person. Like if I met that person, they would be a stranger. Yes, they would seem familiar, but that's a good sign.

12:21You need to keep on growing, evolving. And I'm sure I'll say the same thing about myself if I get the chance to live another 20 years. But the point here is, is that this is a good thing. Growing is challenging, but it's fun. It's interesting. It makes us who we are. Change allows us to be dynamic. One of the things I love that I learned from Mark Manson, the author of The Subtle Art of Not Giving an F, is be careful what you think you're certain about or you think you're right about today. Because if you look back 10 years ago, you're probably wrong about a lot of things, right? You probably look back like, man, I was wrong about that.

12:53I was wrong about that. Man, I was ignorant. So you might feel very firmly about things right now or think things are a certain way. You're probably wrong about some of those things. That's really humbling. So keep growing. And finally, number 10, empowerment. Recognize the empowering impact of courageously pursuing your own path, untethered by social constraints. Be you. Don't worry about anything else. Focus on being you. Be unapologetically you. As long as you're not hurting anybody and you're kind, be yourself because everybody else is taken. The Courage to be Disliked is a book that serves as a thought-provoking exploration on how not to worry about what other people think, how to unshackle yourselves from the things that we tell ourselves, and how to be a true, authentic individual.

13:42I absolutely love this book. One of the best reads I've read in a while. It's an easy read. It's a page-turner. You'll absolutely love it. That wraps up today's must-read episode. I highly encourage you to pick up The Courage to be Disliked by Ichiro Kashimi and Fumataki Koga. If you loved today's episode, let us know in a rating or review on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. Just give us a star rating. It would mean the world to us. I read every single review. It lets me know what you love about the show so I can keep on doing that. While you're at it, make sure you follow the show so you get our next episode automatically.

14:16Before I go, I want to leave you with this. This book is one of those books that just break you down. Question a lot of things that are inside you. Question your beliefs. Question the habits that you have on autopilot in your head. the scripts you tell yourself. These are great books to have. These are great books to read because they shake you up and start getting you to think differently so you can start acting differently so you can get different results. You got this. I'll check you in Wednesday's episode. I'll see you then. Take care.

14:59Thank you.