Practise Being Disliked.

Not everyone craves to be liked. Some people want power. Others want money. Some want to be feared or admired. But almost no one wants to be disliked. 

For most of human history, being disliked by your tribe was a death sentence - you risked being exiled. And exile meant no protection, no fire, and no food. So our nervous systems learned to treat disapproval as danger. Even now, when the cost of rejection is only embarrassment or mild criticism, our bodies respond as if our very survival is at stake. 

Modern exile looks different. 

You won’t starve to death if your peers disapprove. 

Nor will you freeze to death if a circle of friends decide you don’t fit in anymore.

Belonging at all costs is its own kind of death - the death of self. You can join any circle by mimicking its behaviour, its language and its values. But if those values are weak or destructive, you don’t just gain friends. You inherit their fate. The wrong belonging becomes a slow suicide of identity. 

That’s why so many people soften themselves into safe, agreeable versions of who they are. The pursuit of being liked is less about admiration and more about insurance: if no one dislikes me, I can’t be cast out.

As I see it, and I speak of someone disliked by many people, (shocking, I know), being disliked isn’t just something to tolerate, it’s something to embrace. It's evidence that you are living with definition, rather than compromise. The stronger your standards, the clearer your identity, the more you’ll encounter resistance. 

Resistance is proof of authenticity. And we love authenticity around here. 

From childhood, we’re trained in the currency of approval. Parents reward quiet obedience. Teachers reward the polite, compliant student. Workplaces promote the agreeable team player. Social media amplifies those who play it safe, adhere to the algorhythm, and master the art of saying nothing that could trigger rejection. The message is clear: likability equals survival and success. 

You speak in generalities that offend no one but inspire no one. 

Your opinions are safe, shared by many, questioned by few. 

You trade those sharp edges for soft blandness, and in the process, you lose definition.

Worse still, chasing likability becomes addictive. The dopamine of approval hooks you into a cycle where every word, every post, every choice is measured not by its truth but by its potential to keep you in the good books of others. And when it comes to social media, people who care more about your content than your character.. 

You end up shaping your life around the opinions of people who may not know you, or even respect you.

It’s better to be disliked for who you are, than to be invisible in the pursuit of pleasing. When everyone nods politely at your presence but no one feels strongly about you, you’ve succeeded in the shallowest sense.

Congratulations, you’ve become wallpaper. 

Forgettable.

Look at history. Every figure who shifted culture was divisive. Artists like Picasso and Basquiat. Thinkers like Nietzsche and Freud. Leaders like Mandela or Churchill. They were admired and attacked in equal measure. And it wasn’t despite the dislike, it was because of it. Their edges, their refusal to bend, made them unforgettable.

Being disliked is a marker of identity. It tells you that your choices are defined enough to clash with the wrong people, which makes you visible to the right ones. Every time someone recoils at your standard, someone else feels magnetised to it. 

The alternative is far more dangerous. If no one dislikes you, it means you’ve blurred yourself into neutrality. You stand for nothing. And when you stand for nothing, you give no one a reason to join you, follow you, or believe in you. But the moment you’re willing to draw a line, and face the inevitable pushback - something else happens. The people who do share your standards, who see the world the way you see it, suddenly know where to find you. 

The right people rally around you, and that support is what makes visions possible, businesses real, and dreams sustainable. Every person who dislikes you is one less distraction between you and the people who will carry you forward.

The quickest way to lose friends is to start improving yourself.

With the rise of self help guides, online gurus, and fitness influencers, everyone says they want to grow - to get healthier, sharper, more disciplined, more successful. What they don’t realise is that growth will cost you approval.

The minute you step out of the lane people placed you in, you create discomfort. Friends who knew you as the drinker don’t want to meet the runner. Colleagues who liked you as “one of the girls” don’t enjoy watching you take yourself seriously. Family who relied on you being predictable don’t appreciate you drawing new boundaries.

And so they dislike you. Not always openly - sometimes it’s sarcasm, sometimes it’s withdrawal, sometimes it’s that sharp little “oh, you’ve changed.” But the message is the same: get back in your lane. Stop being a mirror that reminds me what I’m not doing.

This is the unspoken price of growth. Not everyone comes with you. Some will try to hold you back, not because they hate you, but because they hate the reflection of themselves that your change creates.

If you’re desperate to grow, you need to be prepared for that, I’m afraid. Growth is not just the building of muscle or skill or identity - it is the tolerance of being disliked by those who preferred the older, smaller version of you.

Being disliked is a strange feeling to get used to. But like everything worth having, it takes practice.

Practicing dislike doesn’t mean becoming antagonistic, hunting for enemies, or playing the contrarian for sport. It’s about standing firm in your standards, even when they trigger rejection, or disdain.

It starts with refusing to apologise for your boundaries. Too many people soften their stance, add disclaimers, or bend their truth just to avoid discomfort. How many times have you, in a social situation, bent under pressure and said, “Oh, I suppose I can have the one…”.

Every time you do that, you chip away at your integrity.

Instead, measure your life by clarity, not consensus. Ask yourself: “Who would dislike this version of me?” If the answer is “the people whose values I don’t respect,” then their rejection is not failure at all. It’s confirmation.

In this way, dislike becomes a compass. It shows you who you’re not, and it clears the ground so the people who do resonate with you, can find you faster. Like shining your own personal Bat Signal up into the sky. 

If you’re never disliked, you’re never truly seen.

protocol;

Say “no” once this week.
Decline something small - an invite, a request, a drink - without apology or excuse. Notice how uncomfortable it feels, sit with that feeling and then push past it. 

Post something honest online.
Share a thought, experience, or opinion without polishing it for approval. Not to be edgy, but to test the discomfort of breaking from safe consensus.

Audit your circle.
Write down the 5 people you spend the most time with. Beside each name, mark whether they encourage your growth or resist it. That tells you who you may need to disappoint in order to keep growing.

Set a boundary out loud.
Next time someone pushes against your time, energy, or standards, practice saying: “That doesn’t work for me.” Don’t over-explain. Don’t soften it. Just hold the line.

Sit with the dislike.
When someone pushes back - a sarcastic comment, an eye-roll, an unfollow - resist the urge to fix it. Treat it as exposure therapy.

Dislike isn’t the enemy. Vague indifference is.

The greatest danger is living a life so muted, so agreeable, that nobody feels anything about you at all. Indifference means invisibility. To be disliked is to be seen clearly. And once you’re seen, you have the chance to be chosen - by the right people, for the right reasons.

The paradox is this: the more comfortable you become with being disliked, the more magnetic you become to those who share your vision. 

Your standards filter out the noise. 

Your clarity attracts resonance.

Better to be hated by some and loved by others than to be tolerated by all and remembered by none

Take care.

- James