"This book was published in the third year since I first met Mr. Koyama. He had long held a keen wish: 'I hope middle and high school students will read this book too.' So we kept asking how to design a plan that they could accept easily. As we polished the book plan from various angles, we noticed a tendency he had found in his counseling practice: 'taking care of oneself' is quite hard for many people. In the end, we settled on starting from the direction of 'taking care of others.' And so this book was born."
——Editor in charge

"The author is a well-known counselor with over 90,000 followers on Instagram. The book not only explains in detail the character and traits of the 'heart,' but also introduces ways to build a good relationship with it. In this age of uncertainty, perhaps the 'heart,' too, feels tired and hurt. This is a book we hope readers will pick up at such moments."
——Publicity in charge

★ There is a "Little Heart" living inside you. It is a small, moody creature: anxious, sulky, unwilling to listen. Not because you are weak, but because no one has ever truly understood it. This "owner's manual" teaches you how to live with it.
★ This book offers no pep talk and does not push you to "get stronger." It first asks you to stop attacking yourself, and shows where those voices come from: "Am I too sensitive?" "Am I not good enough?"
★ Its author, Akinori Koyama, is a mental coach: a National Sports Festival baseball champion in high school, who, after burnout and alopecia, began facing the loneliness inside him and has since read over 10,000 psychology books. One earlier work is licensed in Traditional Chinese.
★ The book turns the abstract "heart" into a character, "Little Heart," illustrated by Konomi Sakamoto. In the form of an owner's manual, it offers self-care methods you can check against and practice on the spot.
★ If you often tell yourself "I still need to try harder," or you loved Counselling for Toads and The Courage to Be Disliked, this small book will help you loosen that tightly stretched string, just a little.

Do you value your own feelings?

A low sense of self-esteem is often not because "you are not good enough," but because you have never truly faced that "it" inside your heart.

There is a "Little Heart" living inside you. It feels suddenly anxious late at night, keeps struggling over a single remark, and holds you back just when you want to push forward. And so you begin to blame it: here I go again, am I really so useless?

But look at it another way: Little Heart is not an enemy. It is just a small creature that has never been understood. Its temper, its retreat, its "unreasonable" reactions all have their origins. This book personifies the "heart" as a character and, in the form of an owner's manual, leads you to know it again: what kind of personality it has, what it is thinking, and how it wants you to treat it. The book also includes exercises you can practice on the spot, helping you learn, step by step, to get along with it.

The book does not talk about "how to become strong"; it first asks you to stop attacking yourself. Those voices, "I still need to try harder" or "people like me...," are often not the truth, but simply the way you have long treated yourself. Once you see this, that string held tight may slowly loosen.

The author, Akinori Koyama, is a mental coach. After workplace burnout and health problems forced him to turn and face the loneliness he had long avoided, he went on to read over 10,000 books on psychology and self-development, and worked out a way to "get along well with your own heart." The illustrator Konomi Sakamoto adds gentle illustrations, making abstract emotions intimate, vivid, and far easier to approach.

It does not teach you to become someone else. It only stays with you until you first learn to take care of yourself.

Akinori Koyama (Author)
A mental coach in Japan. After graduating from graduate school, he worked at a tax accountant firm specializing in inheritance tax, and later went independent.
After developing burnout syndrome and alopecia areata, he took it as a chance to meet his own inner self; since then he has read over 10,000 books on psychology, self-improvement, and the mind.
He combined the mental-strengthening methods he developed when his high school baseball team won the National Sports Festival (Kokutai) championship, and distilled a unique mental training method that keeps a person in the state of "this moment is the happiest in my life."
His mission is to spread the message: "No matter your circumstances or condition right now, you are valuable."
He runs "Koyama Juku," offering individual counseling by phone, in person, through journaling, online salons, and social media; he has about 100,000 followers on Instagram.
Books: For You Who Have Someone You Dislike, and How to Get Along Well with "Loneliness-chan"; another of his works has a Traditional Chinese edition, Today, Too, Ended Without Talking to Anyone.

Konomi Sakamoto (Illustration)
Illustrator. She drew the illustrations for this book, matching the character "Little Heart" with gentle imagery.

Preface
Part 1 Thinking
(1) Little Heart is a very hardworking child.
(2) Little Heart wants its efforts to be acknowledged.
(3) Little Heart hates being bullied above all.
…
Part 2 Catchphrases
(10) Little Heart feeds on "words."
(11) Little Heart is not good at starting from zero.
(12) Little Heart sometimes expects too much.
…
Part 3 Tools & Belongings
(20) Little Heart wants to be honest with itself.
(21) Little Heart wants more respect than others.
(22) Little Heart wants to keep renewing itself.
…
Part 4 Habits
(27) Little Heart loves cleanliness.
(28) Little Heart wants to keep smiling.
(29) Little Heart loves nature very much.
…
Part 5 Practice
(37) Little Heart believes everyday thinking is valuable.
(38) Little Heart wants to go far away.
(39) Little Heart believes "I am I, and others are others."
…
Afterword
Little Heart's Bookshelf