Switch from attachment to self (self-interest) to concern for others (community interest). Three things are needed to switch from self-interest to community interest: self-acceptance, confidence in others, and contribution to others.

The important thing is what use one makes of what they have. One changes one's way of looking at the I. Self-affirmation includes suggestions like "I am strong" and "I can do it" even when the person cannot really do it. Self-affirmation can have aspects of the superiority complex and lying. Self-acceptance is to accept one's incapable self as is and moving forward however they can. To accept oneself as one is, and think about how to get better, is self-acceptance. There is no need to be pessimistic. Nobody is perfect. All people are in the condition are wanting to improve (the pursuit of superiority) and there is no such thing as a perfect person.

Self-acceptance is an example of the separation of tasks: one cannot change what they have, but they can change what they use with what they have. Self-acceptance involves accepting what is irreplaceable and having the courage to change what you can change. The serenity prayer is a statement of self-acceptance, the separation of tasks, and accepting one's task of having the courage to make efforts to change the things one can.

Resignation is to have a firm grasp on the truth of things. Arriving at affirmative resignation as self-acceptance is not the same as reaching community feeling. Confidence in others becomes absolutely essential. Trust refers to something that comes with a set of conditions, like credit. The attitude of lending money on the condition that it will be paid back is based on trust. From the Adlerian psychology standpoint, the basis in interpersonal relationships is based on confidence, which is doing without any set conditions whatsoever when believing in others. One believes unconditionally. If one believes in others without setting any conditions whatsoever, one will be taken advantage of. There are times when one may suffer damages. Confidence would be to continue believing anyway. There are also times when people can deceive you.

Doubt is the antonym of confidence. To place doubt at the interpersonal relationships: the other person will detect your doubt and see that you do not have confidence in them. The position of unconditional confidence is necessary to build a deep relationship. Carrying out the separation of tasks makes life a simple form. The principle is easy to grasp but it is difficult to put into practice. Unconditional confidence is a means to make your interpersonal relationships more horizontal. If you do not want to make your relationship with a person better, then sever it. Carrying out the severing is your task. The goal of confidence is to build deep relationships. A shallow relationship will only bring slight joy each day and slight pain if it ends. The joy of interpersonal relationships, and life, comes from the courage to enter deeper relationships by having confidence in others.

Self-acceptance gives the courage to overcome the fear of being taken advantage of. Ascertain what one can do and cannot do, understand that taking advantage is the other person's task, and getting to the core of confidence in others is less difficult. We can believe, and we can doubt, but we aspire to see others as comrades. The choice should be clear.

Accept yourself as you are, and then have confidence in others. Other people to you now are comrades. Having confidence in others is very closely coupled to seeing them as comrades. This also means to find refuge in the community: it's okay to be here. One has to see others as comrades to feel it's okay to be here, which requires self-acceptance and confidence in others.

One who sees others as enemies do not have self-confidence and do not have confidence in others.

Community feeling is not attained solely through self-acceptance and confidence in others: this is where contribution to others comes into play. Attempt to contribute to others. Contribution to others is not self-sacrifice: do not sacrifice your life to others: that would be to conform to society too much. Contribution to others is something one does to be worth of the I. There is no need to sacrifice the self. Work is probably the most common kind. Labor is not a means of earning money, it is a way of helping others and feeling of use to others. It helps a person to accept their essential worth. Making money is a major factor too. But there are people with too much money to even use it all, but they continue to work. They work so that they can contribute to others and confirm their sense of belonging. This is also what wealthy people are doing when they focus on charitable activities.

Accepting one's irreplaceable this me just as it is: self-acceptance.
To place unconditional confidence at the base of one's interpersonal relationships: confidence in others.

Contribution to others that are seen as enemies may indeed lead to hypocrisy. If others are seen as comrades, that should never happen, regardless of the contributions one makes.

The three ideas are more of a circular structure than an ordered structure. It is because one has self-acceptance that they can have confidence in others without being taken advantage of. It is because one can have confidence in others that one can also contribute to others. By making efforts to help the community, the circle closes because contributing to others helps one to have self-acceptance.

Overlap the two goals of psychology and behavior with this discussion. Self-reliance and the consciousness of having ability connects to the circular structure at self-acceptance. Living in harmony with society and the consciousness of having comrades connects to the circular structure at confidence in others and contribution to others.

It has been said that one needs half the number of years they have lived so far to truly understand Adlerian psychology. To start learning at an earlier age may mean you can change more quickly. Younger people walk ahead of the adults of the world in the sense that they can change more quickly. It is okay to lose your way. Do not be dependent on vertical relationships and do not be afraid of being disliked. Make your way forward freely. People can change regardless of their ages.

It is the person who attacks who has the problem.

If there are 10 people, one does not like you no matter what you do, two will accept you, and the remaining seven will be neither. A person lacking in harmony of life will see only the one person they dislike and make a judgement of the world from that.

Workaholics are focused on one aspect of life, and they justify it in some ways, but it is a life lie and they are lacking in harmony of life. They are trying to avoid their other responsibilities by using work as an excuse. One ought to concern themselves with everything. Adler does not recognize ways of living that have certain aspects that are unusually dominant. Work does not mean having a job at a company too. It can be a hobby or any manner of thing. A company is one small part of that.

Those who can accept themselves only on the basis of acts (with lives that lack harmony such as focusing on work like a father who considers themselves to have more worth than their family because they support it financially) will be damaged once they come to an age where they can no longer maintain the same acts such as when they cannot work any longer. One must accept themselves on the level of being, not acts.

 All problems = interpersonal relationship problems. And happiness is to be found in the interpersonal relationships too.

How can one be happy? For a human being, the greatest unhappiness is not being able to like oneself. The feeling of being of use to others is the only thing that can give a true awareness that one has worth. This is an important point. Contribution to others: it does not matter if the contribution is visible or invisible. It is the task of others to decide whether your contributions are of use. You cannot even really know that you have made a contribution. All we need is the subjective sense that I have contributed. Happiness is the feeling of contribution; this is the definition here. All human beings can be happy. This does not mean that they all are. Whether on the level of acts or being, one needs to have a feeling of contribution. To feel unhappy, means that you lack a feeling of contribution.

The reason people seek recognition: they want to like themselves and want to feel that they have worth. They seek recognition from others as an easy means to gain the feeling of contribution. There is no freedom in a feeling of contribution that is gained through a desire for recognition. One can have happiness only if one has freedom. Freedom in interpersonal relationships is a universal thing. A person obsessed with the desire for recognition does not have community feeling because they do not have self-acceptance, confidence in others, or contribution to others.

Community feeling should make the desire for recognition to disappear.

Summary

People can be truly aware of their worth only when they can feel that they are of use to someone. However, it does not matter if the contribution is of a visible form. It is enough to have the subjective sense of being of use to someone: the feeling of contribution. Happiness is the feeling of contribution.

Human beings have a universal desire called the pursuit of superiority. It is perusing an ideal state. Many children early on try to be particularly good, they study hard, excel at sports and extracurricular activities, and then when these do not go well, they do an about face and try to be especially bad. Either way, the goal is to attract the attention of other people and be seen as special. That is the only goal. One needs to make a constant effort is one is to produce significant results. These healthy efforts can be avoided by purposeful problematic behavior, who try to be especially bad. They are endeavoring to attract the attention of other people even as they avoid any such healthy effort.

This is referred to as the pursuit of easy superiority. It is an unhealthy attitude. If the goal is to be a special being, being rebuked is a form of attention, and the act of rebuking will then cause the behavior to continue. It is also related to revenge. One makes trouble for another person while trying to be special.

Is being ordinary a bad thing? Self-acceptance is the vital first step. To have the courage to be normal, the way of looking at the world will change. Do not equate being normal with being incapable. One does not need to flaunt one's superiority.

Does one need to or should they make the choice to be normal? Does one need lofty goals in life?

Do not treat life as a kind of story where the goal is to reach some goal such as the top of the mountain, treating the greater part of life that is tentative and simply to get the top of the mountain.

Think of the life less as a line and more of a series of small dots. Really, life is a series of moments. It is a series of moments called now. We can only live in the now. Our lives exist in these moments.

Life is a series of moments that one lives as if they were dancing. Each passing instant. When one happens to survey their surroundings, they think, I guess I have made it this far. People who become lawyers or authors are dancing the dance of different things. None of these lives came to an end on route. It is enough to find fulfillment in the here and now and be dancing. Dance in the now. The dancing itself is the goal. There is no concern at arriving somewhere. One does not stay in the same place dancing. The kind of life that tries to reach a place may be termed a kinetic or dynamic life. The kind of dancing life may be called an energile life.

Ordinary motion as kinesis has a starting point and end point. The movement is optimal if carried out as efficiently as possible. With a destination, it is best to get there as fast as possible. The life is halfway because the goal has not been reached.

Energile means what is now forming, is what has been formed. It is movement that the process itself is treated as the outcome. If the goal is mountain climbing itself and not just getting to the top, it is energile. One could simply take a helicopter to the top of the mountain, that would be kinetic.

Life is a series of moments and neither the past nor the future exists. Do not focus on the past or the future. What happened in the past has nothing to do with now. What the future may hold is not a matter to think about now. Live in the here and now and do not be concerned with those things. Do not think in the etiological, Freudian way where the life is an entertaining story. Life is a series of moments: grasp this, and you will not need a story any longer. Lifestyle is about here and now and something one can change by their own volition. There is no story in the completely blank page, with no tracks for you to follow, which is the future. Do what you can do now.

Living earnestly here and now is itself a dance. Do not confuse being earnest with being too serious. Do not get too serious in life. There is no need to get too serious in life. Life is always complete when one has adopted an energile viewpoint.

The greatest life lie of all is to not live here and now. The greatest life lie is to look at the past and future and believe one has been able to see something. If you find yourself experiencing the life lie, try to shine a bright spotlight on the here and now. Have the courage to live in the moment earnestly and do not fall for the life lie. It is the here and now that decides.

When life is taken as a series of moments, what meaning can it have?

Life in general has no meaning. It is meaningless. The world we live in is beset by all manner of horrendous events, war, natural disasters. Children die in horrible ways. There is no general meaning of life. The incomprehensible tragedy without taking any action is tantamount to confirming them. We must stand up to Kant's inclination.

Suppose you experience a natural disaster. If you look to the past to see what happens, you should instead look forward and figure out what you can do from now on. Whatever meaning life has must be assigned to it by the individual. Adler is pointing you to choose a lifestyle where the world is seen as a good place and others are seen as comrades. You are the only one who can assign meaning to their life.

How to assign meaning to a meaningless life? You want to choose happiness and freedom. This is a natural place to lose one's way. The guiding star to a life of freedom is contribution to others. No matter what moments you are living or if others do not like you, simply do not lose sight of the guiding star in order to not lose your way, and you can do whatever you like. Do not look at the past or the future. Live each complete moment like a dance. There is no need to compete with others and there is no destination that you need to get to as fast as possible.

When you have danced here and now and in earnest, the meaning should become clear to you. The power of one person is great. My power is immeasurably great. If one changes, the world will change. This means that the world can be changed only by me. If I change, the world will change. No one else will change the world for me. It is like putting on glasses for the first time. It is not only a part of the visual field that becomes clear, but also the entire visible world.

Someone has to start. Other people might not be cooperative but that is not your task. Simply start with no regard to whether others are cooperative or not.

The world is simple and life is too.