Welcome back 🤝

I took a break from working this weekend, which is where I typically find ~2 hours to finish this newsletter.

I normally draft the edition on Thursday or Friday and finish my edits over the weekend, but since it was me and the wife’s 1-year, I decided to put the pen down to focus on us.

Yesterday, the day after the nor’easter, I was on a walk with my dog wondering what in the world I was going to write about this week.

When I got back from the walk, I decided to pick up the book: The Courage to be Disliked.

I read this a few years ago and every now and then I like to pick up books I finished years ago and go back to notes I’ve made.

As I was rummaging through the first 100 pages I found some gems, but I was really looking for the golden nuggets you find in non-fiction books.

If you’ve ever read a non-fiction book, there’s hundreds of little gems that help you out in the moment, but then there’s the 1 or 2 golden nuggets that stick with you forever.

This week’s edition focuses on the golden nugget from this book as I believe it’s a critical lesson whether personally or professionally in your career.

I’m charged up for this one. Let’s jump into it:

“What Real Freedom Is”

The book's premise is cool.

It follows a dialogue between a philosopher and a young man and I’m quoting the inside flap of the book cover:

“Using the theories of Alfred Adler, one of the three giants of nineteenth-century psychology alongside Freud and Jung, this book follows illuminating dialogue between a philosopher and a young man. Over the course of five conversations, the philosopher helps his student to understand how each of us is able to determine the direction of our own life, free from the shackles of past traumas and the expectation of others.”

Yes, semi-deep stuff, but with the world we live in, now more than ever is this semi-deep piece of wisdom needed, especially if you have big aspirations for yourself one day.

I’m going to focus on the chapter labeled What Real Freedom Is. It’s only 5 pages, but it packs a punch where I had to share the exact excerpts with you.

The Philosopher, a page and a half into the chapter says to his student or as the book labels, The Youth: “In light of what we have discussed until now, the conclusion we reach regarding “What is freedom?” should be clear.

The Youth says: “What is it?”

The Philosopher says: "In short, that freedom is being disliked by other people.”

The Youth says: “Huh? What was that?”

Philosopher: “It’s that you are disliked by someone. It is proof that you are exercising your freedom and living in freedom, and a sign that you are living in accordance with your own principles.”

The Philosopher continues…

“There may be a person who does not think well of you, but that is not your task. Again, thinking things like, "He should like me, or I've done all this, so it's strange that he doesn't like me," is the reward-oriented way of thinking of having intervened in another person's tasks. One moves forward without fearing the possibility of being disliked.”

The Philosopher continues again...

“Suppose that I have two choices in front of me — a life in which all people like me, and a life in which there are people who dislike me — and I was told to choose one. I would choose the latter without a second thought. Before being concerned with what others think of me, I want to follow through with my own being. That is to say, I want to live in freedom.”

The Youth says: "Are you free now?"

The Philosopher says: "Yes. I am free."

The Youth says: "You do not want to be disliked, but you don't mind if you are?"

The Philosopher says: "Yes, that's right. Not wanting to be disliked is probably my task, but whether or not so-and-so dislikes me is the other person's task. Even if there is a person who doesn't think well of me, I cannot intervene. To borrow from the proverb I mentioned earlier, naturally one would make the effort to lead someone to water, but whether he drinks or not is that person's task."

The Youth says: "That's some conclusion."

The Philosopher ends the chapter with: "The courage to be happy also includes the courage to be disliked. When you have gained that courage, your interpersonal relationships will all at once change into things of lightness."

This chapter, let alone the entire book, was an unlock.

I’m going to share how it’s helped me in hopes that it can inspire you in whatever your pursuits are.

When I first started writing publicly ~3.5 years ago, it was insanely intimidating and I kept second guessing my stuff.

I was 6 years into my corporate career and it felt like my identity was chained to what I got paid to do, which was underwriting. Like, why would a 29 year old guy have the need to put out content and a newsletter when he gets paid for something else? My answer was two-fold: one, I had an interest in owning something for myself, and 2, it was the cheapest way to help as many people as possible in areas I wish I had help in when I first started my career. When I thought about the impact I wanted to make with content it was perfect timing because it was right around when I first read this book.

At times, I can be a people pleaser, and my thought was, if I built something from nothing and started talking about it alongside my corporate career, some people weren’t going to like what I was trying to do. Colleagues may judge me or senior management may be like, okay, what is this guy doing? And honestly, looking back, I had no idea how to handle that, until I read this book that gave me the lethal perspective I needed.

Since building this newsletter from a blank page to now over 170 editions, I’ve had the fortunate ability to learn how to market, scale, and make $ online. This has happened because I’ve gotten comfortable not letting someone else’s thoughts (that I can’t control) of not liking me or what I’m doing dictate my actions — because as the book references — their thoughts, whether they like me or not, are not my task. And I couldn’t agree more.

Accepting that you can’t control how people perceive you with what you’re building will change the game forever. Like, I can guarantee with what I’m trying to achieve publicly with content, this newsletter and with Ink Equity, there is someone out there rooting for the failure or doesn’t like how I go about it or what I say about certain things, etc.

But my task is not to focus on them, but what I’m building, what I’m going after and the life I want.

Am I really going to let the opinions of people who may not like what I’m doing stop me from going after what I want?

F*ck-to-the-no.

Keep going after what you want.

On your way out…I have a question:

Last week’s poll: How often do you use AI? (3,749 subscribers)

Thanks for reading. See you next Tuesday!

To building together,

Dan

Find me on LinkedIn