Alfred Adler was an Austrian psychologist, famous for discovering the “inferiority/superiority complex” and the effect of birth order on personality. But most importantly, Adler differed from his contemporaries, Freud, and Jung, by focusing on the present rather than on the past. Adler’s idea was that the past did not determine an individual’s destiny, there was no use analyzing the things that have already happened, but rather, to critically examine your present circumstances and to see what was missing.
According to Adler, the person suffering from apathy, or a lack of motivation, was not haunted by the ghosts of his past, was not a victim of forces beyond his control, but was accomplishing the precise goals that were determined by the psyche. The downtrodden may give many excuses for their failures, including bad luck, and life problems, but the truth is that they are afraid of change, because it is scary and difficult. They are afraid of trying new things, so they cling to old patterns of behavior because they find comfort in them.
I will not focus on the rest of Adlerian theory, but only on this important point – the fear of change or the fear of being left out.
It is not about being rebellious but being brave enough to sacrifice old patterns of behavior, and even old friendships if they are pulling you down. This courage to be disliked, is not something that comes naturally to many people. We are evolutionarily wired to crave social validation. When we find that it is missing, we feel insufficient and unworthy.
The willingness to discard what is pulling you down, is a pragmatic approach to real world problems. Your well-being may come at the expense of sentimentality and therein lies the conflict. How can you reconcile this elementary conflict of interest, between what is good for you versus what is good for the group?
Before we make any attempts at such a reconciliation, let us think of the logical holes in Adler’s recommendation. While fear of change is often an impediment to growth, and old relationships are an impediment to better relationships, it cannot be true that the alternative is always better.
Of course, if you are in a bad situation, then change may be required. But consider that change can throw you into a worse situation. Likewise, if you are friends with toxic people, it is not necessarily true that finding new friends will help you (they may be even more toxic and subvert your ability to change).
There is nothing holy about change. Fear of the unknown is not some primitive impulse that we should learn to overcome, but rather, one we should learn from. Instead of placing our bets on change, whether it is a change of occupation or friends, we would do better to understand what it is exactly we must change. And we can only do so by understanding our fears, and accepting that even if we do overcome our fears, our situation may not improve.
There is so such thing as ‘fear of the unknown’. If it is unknown, then there is nothing to fear. There is a combination of ideas in your head that symbolize what you would consider to be a nightmare scenario. To change, to be willing to be disliked, is throwing yourself into the unknown, and allowing for the realization of these finite fears.
But what are these fears exactly? Are they fear of disease and death (your own and others), professional, interpersonal, or physical failures?
The general feeling of fear masks what is truly behind our unwillingness to change. That is why Adler’s final recommendation was to never ignore one’s life tasks – because these constitute the most common fears to any social being.
What are these life tasks?
Adler defined three: work, friendship, and love. Some people decide to avoid life’s tasks, they become recluse, do not work or contribute to society, they don’t try to maintain friendships, and do not seek love. But these life tasks are essential for psychological well-being. All of these relate to people, in one way or another.
If you do not know what your fears are exactly, then this is a good template to start from. The most revealing thing about psychology is not that it accurately depicts the state of a single individual, but that it highlights what is common among most individuals.
If you do have fears, they are not unique. If you overcome them, you are not immune. But if you make no attempt, then you are condemned to misery.
In Greene’s book The 50th Law, which covers the story of Curtis Jackson, there are 10 chapters. Each chapter is about overcoming a type of fear. The first title is “See Things for What They Are.” And the point here is to ignore your illusions about reality, and to accept the bitter truth of how things really work.
But the problem here is that no matter how you choose to see reality, it will always be an illusion. There is no way to see the world as it is because you will always be limited by your ability and level of knowledge. Instead of seeing things for what they are, which is impossible to do, a better recommendation would be to try to see beyond what you already see. The goal is not to achieve a perfect understanding of how things work, but simply to update your own knowledge structures.
In the same way, the goal should never be to overcome fear, which is a futile and silly goal to aspire to, but to understand exactly what it is that you fear, and how to begin the process of lessening its negative effects on your life.
Do not try to seek the truth, try to identify falsehoods.
Do not try to get rid of fear but seek to get rid of its ambiguity.
If you are interested in reading books about unmasking human nature, consider reading The Dichotomy of the Self, a book that explores the great psychoanalytic and philosophical ideas of our time, and what they can reveal to us about the nature of the self.