The Courage to Be Disliked is an introduction to Adlerian psychology, written as a conversation between a philosopher and a young man. One of my favorite ideas from this book and something I still think about all the time is the idea of the well. Two people can experience incredibly similar circumstances and walk away from them completely differently. It isn’t necessarily the experience itself that determines the direction of our lives, but the meaning we give to it.

Another idea that really stayed with me was learning to view life horizontally instead of vertically. It’s so easy to picture everyone on one giant ladder someone is ahead of you, someone is behind you, and you’re constantly measuring where you stand. This book challenged me to stop looking at life that way. We aren’t all climbing the same ladder. Instead of measuring my life against someone else’s, I can focus on simply moving forward in my own.