Transcript
0:00 · I want to share a book that’s completely changed my life. And I know, I know, I know it’s very cliche to say that something has changed your life in the self-development world, but this book, wow, it’s helping to fix my insecurities, improve my relationships, let go of past trauma, become more confident, and find happiness. I know that’s a lot of stuff. The book is called The Courage to be Disliked, and it’s based on the teachings of Alfred Adler, one of the three 20th century giants of psychology along with Freud and Young. Unlike the other two psychologistsx, Adler had a radically different view on how humans work. He believed we’re not driven by past trauma or events, but by the goals we set for ourselves in the present. That we act based on what kind of life we want, not the kind of life we’ve had. That simple idea turns a lot of conventional psychology on its head. And so, I want to share seven problems I faced before reading this book and the solutions that are helping me solve them. This video is sponsored by Squarespace.
0:56 · Problem one, we constantly compare ourselves to others. So, I’ve struggled a lot with comparison. It’s hard not to compare yourself to other people when you’re a YouTuber. I mean, it’s right there in your face. From views to subscribers and video ideas. It all becomes one big game of comparison. It’s so easy to catch yourself looking at what other creators are doing or how fast they’re growing and take it personally. We think, “This person is ahead of me. Oh, wow. Look, I’m beating this person or I’ll never catch up to that person. Whether you’re a creator or an accountant, it’s basic instinct to compare ourselves to other people. And this point is said a lot, but I think it bears repeating. We now have more opportunities than ever to compare ourselves with other people. Every day, we’re scrolling past hundreds of other amazing people doing amazing things.
1:46 · There’s no shortage of people to rank ourselves against, and it often leaves us feeling insecure and uninspired. Why even try when everyone else is already doing the thing you want to do just way better than you ever could? The solution is to recognize that competition doesn’t actually exist. I know this might sound like some spiritual new age [ __ ] but hear me out. Adler’s philosophy proposes that competition is a madeup structure that we impose on the world.
2:13 · In his view, as humans, we shouldn’t rank and compare each other. When we do, we’re creating vertical relationships.
2:19 · Someone has to be above and someone has to be below. This, he says, is the root cause of a lot of our anxiety, isolation, and feelings of unworthiness.
2:29 · That’s why instead of vertical relationships, he says that everybody should see their relationships as horizontal. That’s true of your boss, your friends, your parents, your barista, your co-orker that doesn’t know how to hit reply all. Sure, you might feel temporarily good when you compare yourself to someone that is quote unquote beneath you, but there are two problems with that. First, you’re creating an unhealthy dynamic of winners and losers. You’re placing yourself above someone as if you’re better than them. And second, it’s only a matter of time before you come across somebody that is above you or better than you.
3:01 · Suddenly, your entire world shrinks and you’re overwhelmed with feelings of inferiority. All this creates the sense that you’re behind in a race that you didn’t even agree to sign up to. At Lyan, Psychology helped me see that the race doesn’t exist. It was all made up in my mind. Once I stopped trying to outdo everyone else and focused more on becoming fully myself, everything changed. The pressure started to ease.
3:26 · The process became more enjoyable. And for the first time, I was able to genuinely celebrate other people’s success without feeling like it was taking away something from me. Problem two, we are way too hard on ourselves. A lot of times, I think we grow up believing that only people with natural talent, intelligence, or charisma are destined to succeed. If you don’t have the right traits, it can feel like the deck is stacked against you. This creates a lot of self-doubt, especially when we see others doing things we wish we could do. We start to have this internal monologue that I’m just not born for this, or I’m not smart enough, or I’m too short, too dumb, or too weak to fill in the blank. I think personally one of the biggest insecurities that I’ve had, especially since turning the camera around, becoming a YouTuber, and starting to make videos like this is that I feel like I’m not really that articulate. I’ve interviewed people who speak in more put together sentences than I could write in. One part of me is just insanely impressed with these people, and then the other part of me uses this as ammunition to prove that I’m a complete idiot. I look at YouTubers that I love, like Peter or Casey or Ali, and they make it look so easy. It seems like they can just hit record and drop a 20-minute video with little effort at all. And even if that’s the case, even if it didn’t take them a whole lot of time behind the scenes to make one of their videos, that has nothing to do with me. One of my favorite quotes from the book presents the solution to the problem of self-doubt. The important thing is not what one is born with, but what use one makes of that equipment. That idea completely shifted my perspective. You know, we’re all born into the world with different traits. Some people are short, some are tall, some have high IQ’s, some have low. Some speak in perfectly polished sentences, some have to work really [ __ ] hard to do it. One of my favorite books, one of my favorite, one of my favorite quotes, one of my fav, one of my very favorite quotes from the book help one of my one of my most of us fall somewhere in the middle. We have some unique strengths and some weaknesses. But at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter what you were born with. It only matters what you do with that equipment. Since we’re no longer comparing ourselves to others, we can look internally and ask, “How can I grow? How can I become a better person?
5:45 · I may not be the most articulate person in the world, but how can I improve? How can I work with what I have? For me, it’s not about convincing myself that I’m actually brilliant because I just know that’s not true, or reciting empty affirmations that I don’t believe in. It means thoroughly planning out my videos ahead of time. It means leaning into a film making style that helps lift up my strengths. And it means ruthlessly cutting out all of the dumb [ __ ] that I say in my videos. That is really the story of my channel. If I was naturally amazing on camera, I wouldn’t have developed the style of film making I have today. And so, there’s a real benefit to leaning on your strengths.
6:23 · You may have noticed that things are moving very quickly in the creator space right now. It’s incredibly exciting.
6:29 · It’s also just a little bit overwhelming. One of the companies that’s really at the forefront of creating some of these new innovative technologies is my sponsor for this video, Squarespace. They’ve really been helping creators like me in three big ways. First, it’s just easy. Squarespace has always been one of the easiest website builders out there, and it’s gotten even easier since they’ve released their new blueprint AI website builder. Just follow the prompts and build a website in minutes. Pretty awesome. One of the advantages Squarespace has because they’ve been around for so long is that their platform is incredibly reliable. One of the big reasons I use Squarespace is because I can count on them. When the stakes are high and I’m launching a course and getting thousands of people coming through the door, I need to make sure that my site’s performance is reliable. And when it comes to Squarespace, I have literally never had to worry about that over the past 10 years of using their platform. And third is that they are powerful. While the platform is easy to use, Squarespace also supports creators and small businesses in a really comprehensive way. You can use their built-in tools to manage your domains, schedule blog posts, review your analytics, and even set up your own online store. If you want to see why I trust Squarespace with all my websites, then go to squarespace.com to start a free trial.
7:39 · And then when you’re ready to launch, go to squarespace.com/mattella to get 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. And just as a reminder, when you click that link, whether it’s a day from now or a month from now, that really helps to support my channel. So, thanks for considering. Problem three, we obsess about the future. I think one of my favorite things about Adler’s ideas is that they are part psychology, part self-development, and part spirituality.
8:03 · I’d say that the spiritual part of Adler’s practice encourages us to be more present in the now. Most of us think of life as a series of milestones.
8:12 · You graduate from high school, get a degree, find a partner, land a job, buy the house, start a family, move up the ladder, retire on a resort in Naples, Florida. And even if you’re not following a traditional path, there’s still this underlying pressure to move forward, to make progress, to build something bigger. There’s always the next step, the next goal, the next thing you need to accomplish, the future version of yourself you’re trying to become. And because of that, it can feel like the present moment isn’t all that important. But here’s the problem. If you’re always living for what’s next, when do you actually live? The solution is to live fully in the here and now.
8:49 · One of Adler’s ideas that I really love is how he reframes life from being a line into a series of small dots.
8:58 · There’s no grand trajectory, no finish line where suddenly everything makes sense. Life is just a collection of present moments. And if you don’t learn to be present for them, you’re going to miss life altogether. That might sound simple or trivial or even a bit woowoo, but I think it’s really important. This doesn’t mean that you should stop setting goals and it definitely doesn’t mean that you don’t want to grow as a person. It just means that you’re putting things into perspective and you’re not constantly looking towards the future or looking for some finish line. There’s an old interview I’ve recently stumbled across with Matt Damon where he’s talking about winning his Oscar for Goodwill Hunting and it’s very similar to this idea we’re talking about here. And I I suddenly had this kind of thing wash over me where I thought, imagine chasing that and getting it finally in your 80s or your 90s with all of life behind you and realizing what an unbelievable waste. My heart broke for a second. I I it’s like I imagined another one of me, you know, an old man kind of going like, “Oh my god, where did my life go? What what have I done?” The goal isn’t to race to the end. It’s to be here for this dot and this dot and this dot. Problem four. We let self-doubt stop us from growing. It’s completely normal to feel like you’re not good at something. Maybe you look at your skills, your job, or your relationship and think, I could really improve in these areas. I could really improve my photography skills. I haven’t been as present a listener as I could be. These feelings are totally normal, but it’s what we do with it that makes all the difference. According to Adler, there are two limiting ways people respond when they feel inferior. One is the inferiority complex, when we convince ourselves that we’re hopeless.
10:51 · This is when we say, “I’m just not good at this. I’ll never be the type of person who can do that.” So, we give up and stop trying. The other negative way we respond is having a superiority complex. This is when we pretend that we have it all figured out. We posture, we overcompensate, we act like we’re better at others to avoid facing the truth. But deep down, it’s often the same insecurities just with a different mask.
11:14 · The solution is to use these feelings of inferiority as fuel for growth. Feeling inferior isn’t a bad thing, as long as it’s not because you’re comparing yourself to other people. When you notice areas in your life where you feel inferior, where you feel like you can improve, this is what helps you grow as a person. This is the feeling that’s always driven human progress, to adapt, to grow, to survive, to improve our technology. It’s all been fueled by our desire to overcome our shortcomings. The key is learning to live with the tension, to say, “I’m not great at this yet, but I can get better.” That’s very different from saying, “I’m bad at this, so why bother?” You stop seeing your limitations as permanent and start seeing them as invitations to grow. I could be better at listening. I could be a more present partner. I don’t have to be perfect, but I can continue to grow.
12:05 · Problem five, we try to control other people. You may not realize that you’re doing this, but if you’re anything like me, you probably are. So, for the longest time, I’ve tried to make everyone around me happy. I’ve been a classic people pleaser. And that shows up in a lot of my videos. I go on the defensive. I try to consider every counterargument. I do my best to make sure that nobody misinterprets the ideas I share. I basically just try to avoid all criticism. There’s an Aristotle quote that comes to mind here. To avoid criticism, say nothing, do nothing, be nothing. Those are words that I rarely have listened to over the years. So, I’ll reword scripts over and over again.
12:45 · I’ll soften my ideas enough so they don’t offend anyone. And even after hitting publish, I’d still obsess over the comments. Did I go too far? Should I have said that? Is this going to make someone upset? It wasn’t just about making a good video. It was about trying to control how other people would respond to it. And you certainly don’t have to be a YouTuber to fall into this trap. So many of us bend over backwards to try to please everyone around us and to get them to accept us, even if that means not fully being ourselves. The solution I found in this book is something called the distribution of tasks. This was definitely one of the most powerful ideas that I found in the book. Adler says, “Many of our emotional struggles come from doing things that actually aren’t our responsibility.” And one of the most important distinctions we can learn is what is my task and what is not my task. So, let’s be clear. It is not your task to make someone like you. It’s not your task to prevent someone from feeling upset. It’s not your task to change someone’s mind. Your task is to live in alignment with your own values, to speak honestly, to act with integrity. Everything else, how others react to you, how they feel, what they do with what you’ve said is their task. Once I internalized this idea, it gave me so much more confidence to be vulnerable and to be more honest and sometimes to make more controversial videos like a video that I recently uploaded about our decision to leave America and move to Australia. In that video, I shared some of my political leanings and surprise surprise, there were some people that got upset. Some people even said that they were going to unsubscribe to my channel because of my personal views. I got all sorts of comments on that video. Lots of them positive, lots of them negative, and none of them affected me in the slightest because I wasn’t trying to change anyone’s mind from the outset.
14:32 · For the first time, I didn’t feel the need to rush into the comments to defend myself. I just told myself that’s not my task. And that’s a phrase that I’ve used again and again. N changing Frankie’s nappy. That’s not my task. It’s definitely my task. It’s not about being cold or disconnected or rude. It’s about not carrying the weight that doesn’t belong to you. Problem six, we let the past define us. If I’m being honest, life has been pretty cruisy for me. I mean, growing up, I had a trampoline and an above ground pool. Then I turned 35.
15:01 · We had our first kid and I ran head first into a wall. Am I going to include that clip in every video I possibly can? Yes. Yes, I am. So, I’ve talked about the struggles Nat and I had with our son’s sleep a lot over the past couple years, and that’s because I’ve had a really hard time letting go of that experience. Our son is the best thing that’s ever happened to us. He is our best friend. We love him so much. I can say that and also say that those first 10 months were the most traumatic 10 months of my entire life.
15:35 · Because of the extent of our sleep deprivation, I got depressed and Nat got PTSD. Even until recently, I’ve carried around this trauma with me. It was a defining part of my life, and I continued to play the victim even long after our sleep troubles were gone. I just couldn’t let it go. Then I read a quote from Adler that completely changed my outlook. He said, I think I did like a highlight and an underlined, “As long as one continues to use one’s misfortune to feel special, one will always need that misfortune.” Oh [ __ ] Adler. Adler dropping bombs. One of Adler’s most controversial views and the title of one of the chapters in The Courage to be Disliked is that trauma does not exist.
16:21 · I imagine this statement will upset some people, especially those who’ve had traumatic experiences, but it makes sense if you understand the logic behind it. So Adler isn’t denying that painful or harmful events don’t happen. What he’s challenging is the idea that trauma or past experiences control or define your present. In traditional psychology like Freud’s, there’s a cause and effect model. Something happened to you in the past and that’s why you are the way you are today. Adler rejected this idea. He proposed a different view that we’re driven not by the past but by the goals we set in the present. I think when Adler says trauma does not exist, he means it’s not the event itself, but the meaning we’ve chosen to assign to that event that shapes our behavior. Trauma is not what happened. It’s how we choose to interpret what happened. This isn’t about denying pain. It’s about not building your identity around it. Two people can go through a very similar hardship and one person can become consumed by it and the other person could use it as a catalyst for growth.
17:26 · Adler would say that the difference isn’t the trauma, it’s how the person chose to interpret it. Honestly, I’m not sure why I was holding on to that trauma for so long. Maybe it’s because it made me feel special. Maybe it was because I wanted sympathy or I wanted to be heard.
17:42 · But I kept thinking of that Adler quote, “As long as one continues to use one’s misfortune to feel special, one will always need that misfortune.” I decided to let go of the trauma, which isn’t something I thought you could do, but it worked. I now look back on that experience as one that taught me so much about myself. It It’s one that gave me greater empathy for new parents who struggle, and it has helped to deepen my own belief in myself and my own resilience. It also led me to take a break from this channel, which directly helped me find the joy in making videos again. And so in a lot of ways, I can be thankful for that terrible, awful, brutal experience because it made me who I am today. By the way, if you like personal development stuff, then I really think you’ll like my newsletter.
18:29 · So, every week I send out a one minute email with ideas and resources that will help you grow and become a better person. And if you sign up for my newsletter today, I’ll share my never-released film called Unstuck, which details the five steps I took to build a meaningful life when I felt lost after graduating college. Just go to mattvalla.com/newsletter to sign up and get the film. I’m going to repeat that because when you repeat things in videos, it means it’s more likely that people are going to follow through. So go to mattella.com/newsletter to sign up and get the film. Finally, problem seven. We want to be liked by everyone. By now you might have noticed that all these problems uh comparison, people pleasing, seeking praise have something in common, and that’s that they’re all rooted in our relationships with other people. And that’s no coincidence. Adler believed that all problems are at their core interpersonal relationship problems. If you take away all your relationships and you’re floating out in the universe all alone, you have no problems at all. I mean, maybe you have the problem that you’re not getting enough oxygen to survive more than 30 seconds, but I mean, you get the point. This final problem, the deep universal desire to be liked is maybe the most important one to face because overcoming it, Adler believed, was the foundation to finding happiness. Almost everyone deep down wants to be liked. But that need is exactly what keeps us from living freely and being who we are meant to be. I mean, we want to be accepted. It’s a natural human desire. For most of our history, being excluded from our group meant danger or even death. So, we learn very early on how to fit in, to say the right things, to avoid conflict. But when we continue to follow through with this desire, when we stop expressing ourselves honestly, when we hold back our ideas and our opinions, we hold back a part of ourselves. Over time, we become what we think people want us to be instead of who we actually are. The solution is the courage to be disliked.
20:22 · I swear like I’m not I don’t I don’t get anything from selling this book. I just think it’s a really good book and it just it all comes together. That’s the name of the book, The Courage to Be Disliked. It’s not about being rude or insensitive or intentionally trying to be disliked. It’s about no longer letting your fear of disapproval run your life. Adler argued that being disliked by someone isn’t a failure.
20:43 · It’s actually a natural outcome of being fully you. And it all starts with really small decisions, like telling your friends that you don’t want to drink tonight, even if they give you a hard time, or turning down a promotion because it doesn’t align with the kind of life that you want to build, or saying no to an obligation because you recognize that it’s not your job to make everyone happy. These aren’t these big dramatic acts. They’re small moments where you choose truth over approval.
21:06 · And ironically, that kind of honesty tends to attract the right people.
21:10 · People who connect with you as you are, not who you’re pretending to be. Adler’s challenge is simple but not easy. If you want to live a meaningful life, that means accepting the fact that there’s going to be a lot of people out there that just don’t like you. If any of these takeaways hit you like they hit me, then I highly recommend you check out the book. It does a far better job of explaining these principles than I ever could. Both the physical book and the audiobook are really good and you should definitely check them out. So, I’ve left some links down in the description below this video if you want to get them. It’s one of the most helpful books I’ve ever read and I think it might help you as well. See you soon.