Here’s an uncomfortable truth: you care way too much what other people think of you. You adjust your opinions to fit the room. You stay quiet when you disagree. You curate your life for an audience. You’re performing yourself instead of being yourself.
And it’s making you miserable.
The psychologist Alfred Adler said that all problems are interpersonal problems. Our neuroses come from our relationships with others, specifically from our need for their approval. We desperately want to be liked, accepted, validated. This need controls us.
Adler’s solution? The courage to be disliked. Accept that not everyone will like you. Accept that if you live authentically, some people will judge you. Accept that you can’t please everyone, and trying to is a cage you’ve built for yourself.
This sounds simple. It’s not. Our need for social approval is deeply wired. We’re tribal creatures. For most of human history, being rejected from the tribe meant death. Of course we care what others think.
But modern life has perverted this instinct. Now we’re seeking approval from strangers on the internet. We’re editing our lives to impress people we don’t even like. We’re saying yes when we mean no because we’re afraid of disappointing someone.
The existentialists called this “bad faith.” Jean-Paul Sartre said that living in bad faith means denying your own freedom and responsibility. You pretend you have no choice: “I have to go to this event,” “I can’t say that,” “People will think I’m weird.” But you do have a choice. You’re just afraid of the consequences.
What if you chose authenticity instead? What if you said what you actually think? What if you pursued what you actually want instead of what looks good? What if you let people dislike you?
Here’s what would happen: some people would judge you. Some people would distance themselves. Some relationships would end. And that would be devastating at first. Because we’re not used to it. We’re used to managing everyone’s perception of us, maintaining these carefully constructed images.
But here’s what else would happen: you’d find out who your real friends are. You’d attract people who actually like you, not your performance. You’d stop wasting energy on impression management. You’d feel lighter, freer, more yourself.
The Stoic philosopher Epictetus said that you’re responsible for your opinions and actions, not others’ opinions of you. Their judgments belong to them. Trying to control them is futile and makes you their slave.
This doesn’t mean being an asshole. You can be authentic and kind. You can disagree without being disagreeable. You can live by your values while respecting others’. But you can’t do any of that while being desperate for approval.
The Japanese psychologist Ichiro Kishimi, who popularized Adler’s ideas, talks about “separation of tasks.” You’re responsible for your behavior. Others are responsible for how they react to it. That’s their task, not yours. When you try to control their reactions, you’re interfering in their task. Let them think what they want.
Easier said than done, obviously. We all want to be liked. The question is what you’re willing to sacrifice for it. Your opinions? Your time? Your authentic self?
Most people sacrifice everything for approval and wonder why they feel empty. They’ve spent so much time being who they think they should be that they’ve lost touch with who they actually are.
The way out is small acts of courage. Say no to something you don’t want to do. Share an unpopular opinion. Dress how you want, not how you think you should. Stop apologizing for taking up space. Each time you choose authenticity over approval, you get a little freer.
Will people judge you? Absolutely. Will it feel terrible? At first, yes. But then you’ll realize something revolutionary: their judgment doesn’t actually hurt you. It’s your fear of their judgment that hurts. And you can survive that fear.
The courage to be disliked isn’t about being contrarian or difficult. It’s about being yourself, even when yourself doesn’t match what others expect. It’s about prioritizing your own self-respect over others’ approval.
And here’s the paradox: when you stop desperately seeking approval, you often get more of it. People respect authenticity. They trust people who aren’t performing all the time. You become more attractive precisely because you’ve stopped trying so hard to be liked.
But even if you don’t get more approval, you get something better: freedom. The freedom to be yourself. The freedom to say what you think. The freedom to live by your values instead of others’ expectations.
That freedom is worth more than all the likes, all the approval, all the validation in the world.