The Courage to Be Known

With more than a nod to Alfred Adler, Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga

Feb 25, 2026

When I was fourteen, I got a new phone. Sat on the toilet, flipped it open, absent-mindedly took a video of my willy – kind of surprised me how it looked – and then forgot all about it.

The next day, my mates wanted to see the new phone. They went straight to the photos. There it was.

Nobody had any issues with it as an object. If I’d said it was mine, I might even have garnered some respect for it. Instead, I made up this mad cock and ball story about it being a second-hand phone.

Like, what?!

Why? What was I protecting myself from?

How was that bizarre attempt at deflection possibly going to serve me?

The Persona Problem

A PT at my current gym and potential guest on the pod was sat in the café reading The Courage to Be Disliked by Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga and he said, within pages, it felt like it could change lives.

I told my best mate that, and, sweetly, she bought me a copy but sent it to the wrong address, which, serendipitously, resulted in a lovely conversation with neighbours who have since invited me to a social WhatsApp group, which has then turned into a coffee event, pub invite and run club meet-up – you know when people say everything happens for a reason…

Anyway, within a chapter, I was hooked by the book, a take on Adlerian psychology told didactically, like Socrates to Plato, wherein the core argument is simple: most unhappiness comes from living for other people’s approval.

You can’t control whether people like you, so seeking their approval is futile and exhausting.

The courage to be disliked, in Adlerian terms, is the freedom to be yourself even if some people don’t like it. It’s about separating tasks: your job is to be yourself. Their job is to decide how they feel about that.

But here’s what the book doesn’t quite get into, and what I’ve been thinking about: it’s not just scary to be disliked for who you are. It’s also scary to be liked for who you are.

When someone dislikes your persona – the character you perform, the version of yourself you present – you can tell yourself they didn’t really know you. The rejection doesn’t land as hard because it wasn’t aimed at the real you. It was aimed at the performance.

But if someone dislikes the real you, there’s nowhere to hide. Equally, when someone likes the real you. Oh boy. Buckle in. They could be here for the long haul.

The Willy Pattern

How much of that instinct as a teenager – to lie when nothing was actually at stake – is still running in my adult life? How much of what I do is still performance? And who am I performing for?

As I’ve discussed with Marina and Peds, I think a correlate of my diminishing enjoyment of social media was how I followed business coaching advice to present a put-together and on-the-beat trainer – because that persona makes money – rather than simply talk to camera as a bit chaotic but so obviously and endlessly interested me.

The persona, in theory, might attract more people. It might get you approval, opportunities, dates, respect. But if they don’t like the real you – if they like what you’re pretending to be – what’s the point? You’re just exhausting yourself maintaining a version of yourself that isn’t real.

Every time you slip into the character, every time you smooth over the rough edges, every time you tell the second-hand phone story instead of just owning it – you know you’re choosing protection over connection.

And what if, actually, you missed out on opportunities for presenting as insincere, as too polished, as not demonstrating any particular you-ness?

The Kid Question

Jon Xue Zhang has quickly become someone I’d count as a friend, someone I know I can count on to not pull any punches when it comes to questions of identity, bravery, and thriving.

We were chatting about whether we’d have kids, and I put on my Adlerian hat and said: “I wonder if I’ve postured that I don’t want kids in part because I really struggled with feeling loved and a sense of self-worth growing up, and I’d hate myself if I didn’t love them unconditionally. But also – what if the kid disliked or, worse, resented me?

This was a dive into fear beneath the fear. I felt myself tearing up as I said it.

Not rejection from strangers. Not disapproval from colleagues or acquaintances or people who only know the performance. But rejection from someone who doesn’t just know you but is made from you – your isms and schisms and warts and all.

If someone likes your persona and leaves, it stings. But you can tell yourself they didn’t really know you. If your own kid decides they don’t actually like who you are as a parent, as you – where do you go from there? In the other direction, what if this hypothetical person loved you unconditionally? What if they loved you through the attempts to be safe or interesting or cool? Through the anxieties, the successes and the fall-outs?

Jack in his twenties was scared shitless by these people. Like, why are you still here? Why are you checking in on me? I don’t deserve this.

Jack in his thirties is more open to this love and care, but still has his disbeliefs – like why would someone send me a book just because I mentioned it in passing? Why?

Jack, me, right now, has thought and felt for the first time ever today that he could be a dad rather than just a friend or coach.

Furrkkkk.

The Trade-Off

Here’s what I’ve learned, slowly and painfully over the past few years: fewer people might show up if you’re yourself. But the people who stick around, who want to see you succeed, who say they love you, often really get you.

My ride or die pool is small by what I imagine other people’s pools to be – and this might be projection – if I said there were probably five-10 people outside of family I could trust to drop everything to save me, is that more or less than what you expected? Is that more or less than you have? I feel lucky to have just one, never mind all of them! Who makes it onto your list? Would you do the same for them? Feel free to chat my head off about this!

We’re brutally honest with each other. We can laugh and cry and just sit in silence, and all of it is amazing. And we got there by being ourselves – messy, unsure, occasionally defensive, sometimes too much, sometimes not enough – and trusting that the people who stayed were staying for the right reasons.

Those bonds didn’t happen because I was necessarily likeable – like the Youth in The Courage To Be Disliked, I have often resented myself! – they happened because I was known.

And maybe that’s the Adlerian work. Not just having the courage to be disliked. But having the courage to be known. To drop the persona. To stop protecting yourself from rejection by pre-emptively rejecting yourself.

The Final Proof

If I’ve done that work – if I’ve built bonds and friendships where I can be fully myself and loved anyway – then maybe the final proof of having come to peace with who I am is trusting myself to have a kid.

I know I’m not perfect. I know I’ve not got everything figured out. But I’m beginning to trust that being myself is enough.

I don’t know yet that I could love a child unconditionally even if they grow up and decide they don’t like me very much. That I wouldn’t hate myself for that. That I could hold the tension of being disliked and still being worthy of love.

I’m not there yet. The fact that the kid question still scares me is okay. The notion that my response might not default to a hard “no” is interesting.

Look, the work is clear: stop performing. Notice when you’re doing it. Ask who it’s for. Ask what you’re protecting yourself from. And ask if that protection is worth what it’s costing you.

Because the willy photo story is funny and tragic. A fourteen-year-old boy, not not proud of his body, lying to his mates about something nobody cared about because being seen without anywhere to hide felt scarier than a bizarre lie.

I don’t want to still be doing that at thirty-four or fifty-four.

The Work

So what does this look like practically?

1. Notice when you’re performing.

For me, the tells are: smoothing over rough edges in conversation, telling stories that make me look better than I felt at the time, code-switching depending on who’s in the room, saying “I’m fine” when I’m not.

What are yours?

2. Ask: who is this for?

Are you performing to make someone else comfortable? To avoid conflict? To be liked? To protect yourself from being known?

Sometimes the answer is: “This situation requires a degree of professionalism and I’m allowed to perform at work.” Fair enough. But if you’re performing in your friendships, your relationships, your family – that’s where the cost/s show/s up.

3. Ask: what am I protecting myself from?

Usually, it’s rejection. But dig deeper. What kind of rejection? From whom? And why does that feel so dangerous?

For me, it’s the kid question. The fear that someone who really knows me actually dislikes me.

4. Ask: is this protection worth what it’s costing me?

The persona protects you from being known. But it also prevents real connection. It keeps you safe. But it engenders loneliness.

I’d rather be liked by fewer people for who I am than liked by more people for who I’m not. I’d rather have five friends who’ve seen me cry and still show up than fifty acquaintances who think I’ve got it all together.

And maybe, one day, I’d rather have a kid who grows up and decides they don’t like me very much but knows I loved them anyway, than never have a kid because I was too scared they’d see the real me.