The Courage to Be Disliked — The Permission Slip You’ve Been Avoiding

In this episode, Eimear explores what it truly means to choose yourself, even when that choice disappoints people. Drawing on the ideas from "The Courage to Be Disliked," she breaks down approval addiction, boundaries, life lies, and the deeper self-concept work required to finally live a life aligned with your truth.

What would become possible in your life if you stopped organising everything around being liked?

In this solo episode, Eimear dives into the fear that quietly shapes so many women's lives: the fear of being disliked. She unpacks the psychology of approval-seeking, how it leads to self-abandonment, and why boundaries are not only about the words you say but the self-concept you stand in. Inspired by Adler’s philosophy in "The Courage to Be Disliked," this episode offers both insight and practical steps for stepping into your authentic, aligned life.

Topics explored in this episode include:

• Why approval feels safe and how it quietly dictates your choices
• The difference between performing and living
• Adler’s core boundary question: Whose task is this?
• The relationship between The Elegant No (your words) and The Confidence Key (your self-concept)
• The concept of “life lies” and how they keep you stuck
• A personal story from Eimear about delaying sobriety and the fear beneath it
• Why self-acceptance, not approval, is the foundation for confidence
• Five practical ways to practice the courage to be disliked this week

This episode is an invitation to reclaim your voice, your needs, and your truth without apology. Midlife is not too late to rewrite your story. It is the ideal time to begin.

The Elegant No: https://stan.store/eimearzone/p/the-elegant-no-set-boundaries-without-guilt
The Confidence Key: https://eimearzone.com/confidence-coaching/

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Transcript

[00:00:00] Hey, and welcome back to the podcast. I'm your host Eimear Zone. Today we're diving into something that will change the way that you move through your life if you let it. Here's what I believe. There is a version of you who is free. She says the thing, she takes the leap. She stops auditioning for approval.

She knows who she is, like really knows who she is. And the only thing standing between you and that woman is a fear of being disliked. Of being judged. And I know that sounds dramatic, but when you start paying attention to the places where you're still performing. And I do this a lot and notice where I'm still trying to be seen as agreeable.

Um, nice. Even still hoping that nobody gets [00:01:00] upset that people like me. You begin to see it everywhere and especially I think at this stage of life in midlife, it's a perfect time for this sense of reckoning. Like I've spent years, I've spent decades being perhaps what other people needed, wanted or expected of me.

But what about what I want? What about what I need? And if you want to choose yourself. Truly choose yourself. I think you have to become someone who can tolerate other people's reaction to you being yourself, your full, whole, authentic self, unapologetically. You have to be able to tolerate other people's reactions to you showing up like that.

This episode is inspired by a very famous bestselling book, which is called The Courage to Be Disliked, which I've read a [00:02:00] couple of times and highly recommend. But this isn't a book summary. This is about you, your boundaries, your self-concept, your second chapter, and the courage to choose yourself even when nobody else is clapping for you.

So let's get into it. When we think about, first of all, where approval might be in the driving seat of our lives, where it may have been running our lives, it's interesting really to look at the patterns that are really common and just to see, wow, I've been living inside a pattern of approval seeking without even realizing it.

There's the, you know, being a good girl when you're really young. Um, being responsible, being agreeable, not rocking the boat, being easygoing. And here's the thing about approval, it's, it feels good, right? It's great when it happens. It's really nice to be liked and approved of, but [00:03:00] if we organize our lives around earning that approval, we start performing for it.

Authenticity means putting your truth first and letting approval be optional, but never required. Because when approval becomes our priority, we kind of contort ourselves. We edit ourselves. We show the parts that are acceptable to the audience. We silence the parts of ourselves that aren't, and we live as a version of ourselves that we craft for other people's comfort.

But when authenticity becomes the priority, it just feels like an exhale. We really start living, we start breathing. We start reclaiming a life that is truly ours, and that's where courage begins. That's where courage is [00:04:00] absolutely required. One of the ideas in this book, The Courage to be Disliked, is called this idea of task separation, which is essentially, , whose work is this?

Is this, my task? Is this somebody else's? Whose responsibility is this? Our task is our own truth, like our needs, our decisions, our authenticity, and someone else's task is their reaction, their disappointment, their emotional weather system that they're living within. So my no is my responsibility, but somebody else's reaction to that

no? That is not my responsibility. I think it's really important when we're talking about this and you talk about boundaries. There's an awful lot of talk in the area of boundaries about I have this boundary and then there's this consequence if you cross my boundary. [00:05:00] Often we don't realize that we cross other people's boundaries.

If you're a people pleaser you may do this a lot, you'll over help. You'll get into somebody else's business with the best of intentions. Because it's important to manage how other people see you, and so you over help. You over involve. You take on the grudge that somebody has against somebody else as though it were your own, because you want to be viewed a certain way by that person, which is really interesting territory to reflect upon for yourself and say, on this topic of task separation, is this my task?

Or is it somebody else's? Am I overstepping? So when we're talking about boundaries, it isn't just mindset, obviously. It's a skillset and it's a deep understanding of what's my task? What's not my task? Who does this belong to? And this is the real work. The [00:06:00] deep work. And yes, the words obviously matter and many of us aren't skilled in being able to articulate

our no, and that's why I created The Elegant No. Having a clean grounded script makes the boundary possible, but the real deeper shift, the part that really holds that boundary in place, that's self-concept work. That's the, who am I? And that's what happens inside another program that I do, which is The Confidence Key.

It's the courage really to say the boundary and then stay deeply rooted while somebody else has whatever reaction or response to it. Because you're so grounded in knowing yourself that you are okay with letting other people respond and react to who and how you are when you're showing up in that really aligned way, to what's true and important for you.

So when we talk about boundaries, we're really talking about both the language and the [00:07:00] identity beneath it, and that is at the core of choosing yourself. Another core idea in this book, The Courage To Be Disliked, is this, that your past explains you, but it does not define you. And this is where Adler introduces this concept of the life lie, which is the story we tell ourselves to justify not changing.

And a Life Lie feels really true because it's very practiced. We're quite loyal to it. We've practiced it for years, but it's not truth. It's really fear dressed up as logic. And just to give you a personal example, for years I knew that alcohol was not serving me. I knew that there was concern there, and I didn't like how it made me feel.

[00:08:00] I didn't like waking up after a few glasses and thinking, why did I do that? I didn't like wanting it. I didn't like thinking about it so much. And a deeper part of me was ready to let it go. But I told myself one of these, one of these lies, a life lie, that felt completely reasonable at the time, and it was that if I stop drinking, I won't be able to socialize.

I'll be miserable. It'll be awkward. I'll be the odd one out. I'll be boring. I was really attached to that lie. It felt protective. It felt like the truth, but what it really was, was a fear of being seen differently. A fear of what people might think, a fear of being judged. It was a fear of being disliked also.

So it was easier to keep telling myself the lie than to face the discomfort of change. And here's the beautiful totally anti-climatic truth, which is when I [00:09:00] finally stopped drinking, socializing was not miserable. You know, it wasn't awkward. It was different. It was new, but it wasn't any of the catastrophes

I'd imagined. That I wouldn't be able to hang out with certain friends. I wouldn't be able to go to bars, none of that. If anything it was, life was clearer, calmer. I felt more connected, more me, and that's kind of how life lies work. They convince you that the old way is safer, even when it doesn't serve you.

Even when it even hurts you, the life lies convince you that stuck is your only option. And they convince you that this is just who I am. You know, my past is what's true. My past defines me. When actually it's just who you've been afraid to stop being. And the moment you name the life lie, it really loses a lot of its power.

You realize that you were never trapped. You were just scared, and scared is workable. Scared is okay. It's so [00:10:00] important to name and, oh, this is fear, like shit. This is fear. Don't like it, but I know what it is. And, and it's human. Fear is human. Fear is a doorway as well. Because once you stop telling the lie, you create space for a future you that you actually want.

You can disentangle yourself and unchain yourself from some crazy loyalty to a past version of you who you're not happy with or satisfied with. So another big claim from the book is that happiness is the courage to accept yourself, even if others don't. It's about self-acceptance. I think that's where true freedom comes from, that self-acceptance, not from the approval of others.

Approval is always conditional, right? And self-acceptance is unconditional. Approval says, I'll feel good about myself as long as you feel good about me, or [00:11:00] as long as these conditions are met. And self-acceptance says, I like and accept who I am, even when you don't understand me. And here's also what happens when you stop performing for approval.

You stop over-explaining yourself. You stop apologizing for things that aren't your fault, that don't belong to you. You show up more fully, you speak more honestly, and you move through the world with more presence and power. And I'm sure I've said this a million times when, when we're talking about confidence, it isn't about that loudness.

It doesn't need the spotlight. Look at me, look at me! Like me, like me! It's not bravado. It's a quiet recognition of your own magnificence. It's what happens when you stop waiting for permission. When you stop hitching your wellbeing, your sense of self, your okayness to somebody else's fucking opinion of you.

So how do we actually practice this? How do we [00:12:00] bring it into our real life? Because it's a scary idea, having the courage to be disliked. Most people don't have it because they feel that they'll, they'll lose everybody or too many people. They'll be left out. And it's this core need that we have, this tribal feeling to be part of the group.

And our prehistoric ancestors would literally die if they were excluded from the group. So we are confronting something that's very profound and deep. And the way that I come to this often is realizing that. Yes, I will lose people. I will lose people that I'm in relationship with, where it is predominantly performance based, where there are subjects that you cannot speak of where there are truths that you can't mention where [00:13:00] silence is required.

Yeah, some of those may well fall by the wayside, and that will make space for relationships that are aligned. Where you actually get to be who you are, not just the parts of you that are deemed acceptable and worthy, but you get to be your whole self. I mean, isn't life too short to have relationships where you can't be who you are, or at least not to spend very much time in them?

So how do we bring this into our real life? The first one, notice. Notice these places where we're performing instead of really living. And ask yourself, if no one had an opinion about this, what would I do? Next step, think about setting one small boundary this week where you feel you need to. A clean no. No

[00:14:00] over-explaining, no apology. Where in your life right now does this need to be done? Three. Thinking about that task separation. Identify one emotional load you're carrying that isn't yours. Where have you taken on something that doesn't belong to you and consciously choose to lay it down, or if appropriate to return it.

Four, think about your self concept. Does it need an upgrade? Try this mantra. I am someone who honors my truth. So important what comes after the words "I AM". Five. A courage challenge. Say this out loud. I release the need to be universally liked. I choose to live aligned. I release the need to be universally liked.

I choose to live aligned. And notice how your body responds when you say that, or any shift. [00:15:00] Your body is a real intelligence system that's always sending you signals about when you're aligned and when you're not. When you're in conversation, in relationship with somebody and you're in a performance mode or you're being authentic when you're being brave or where you are shrinking yourself to be palatable and acceptable to somebody else.

Your body is always sending you signals and it's really powerful to begin to tune into those. So this is really the heart of this work. Choosing yourself will absolutely cost you approval. Absolutely. But chasing approval costs you yourself. When we live for other people's reactions, we abandon our own lives. And when we live from our truth, we build a life that feels like it absolutely truly belongs to us.

Midlife is a perfect time for this [00:16:00] shift, not because things are falling apart, but because things are coming together. We have nothing to prove. Jesus Christ, we have nothing to prove! And everything to reclaim. You deserve a life that feels honest. You deserve relationships that can handle your truth. You deserve to take up space without apology.

The courage to be disliked isn't about pushing people away. It's not that you're trying to be disliked. It's not that you're insulting people or doing things that are rude or unkind. It is about finally letting yourself in, about finally being fully true to yourself. That's all. That's your task, and let's not meddle in what other people's tasks are.

So all right my friend. Go choose yourself today, and I will see you next time. Take care. Bye.