The School of Life

We often say we ‘didn’t get on too well’ with our father or that our mother was ‘slightly neglectful’ thinking we have a solid grip on events. However it is these compressed, ready-made, affectless accounts that stand in the way of properly connecting with our past and thereby truly knowing ourselves in the present. FURTHER READING You can read more on this and other subjects here: https://bit.ly/...

We humans are extraordinarily and painfully vulnerable creatures. Especially in our early years, we are at huge danger of being psychologically damaged by those around us. Damage is in one way or another always caused by a shortfall of tenderness and care. As we might put it, it’s caused by a shortfall of love. Examples of shortfalls of love are very varied: perhaps at an early point someone went...

To have sound levels of self-esteem is one of the gateways to happiness. But achieving this has very little to do with the progress of our careers. Enjoying our Youtube videos? Get full access to all our audio content, videos, and thousands of thought-provoking articles, conversation cards and more with The School of Life Subscription: https://t.ly/ERC12 Be more mindful, present and inspired. Get...

We often feel as if we might have run out of time to change career. That’s because we usually have a wrong understanding of time. Enjoying our Youtube videos? Get full access to all our audio content, videos, and thousands of thought-provoking articles, conversation cards and more with The School of Life Subscription: https://t.ly/Qum_1 Be more mindful, present and inspired. Get the best of The Sc...

On October 20th, we're gathering in Lisbon, Portugal for a big conference centered around all the themes on this channel, including love, wisdom and fulfillment. It'll be a chance to meet fellow followers of the channel, to learn great new things and to make friends. Enjoying our Youtube videos? Get full access to all our audio content, videos, and thousands of thought-provoking articles, conversa...

The 19th century thinker Auguste Comte invented a religion without a God in it. It was a fascinating move that deserves to be studied today. Enjoying our Youtube videos? Get full access to all our audio content, videos, and thousands of thought-provoking articles, conversation cards and more with The School of Life Subscription: https://t.ly/fKUDD Be more mindful, present and inspired. Get the bes...

Our childhoods have a deep and often seriously troubling impact on our adulthoods; what happened at 5 will still be colouring how things are for us at 55. It's something we need to learn to adjust to. Enjoying our Youtube videos? Get full access to all our audio content, videos, and thousands of thought-provoking articles, conversation cards and more with The School of Life Subscription: https://t...

When we think of an ‘addict’, certain stock images come to mind: a homeless person sniffing glue, a gaunt figure with a heroin needle in their arm. But this masks what is in reality a far more universal phenomenon. We are all addicts. Enjoying our Youtube videos? Get full access to all our audio content, videos, and thousands of thought-provoking articles, conversation cards and more with The Scho...

Voltaire was one of the wisest, funniest and cleverest people of the 18th century. He continues to have lots to teach us about toleration, modesty and kindness. Enjoying our Youtube videos? Get full access to all our audio content, videos, and thousands of thought-provoking articles, conversation cards and more with The School of Life Subscription: https://t.ly/2pSja Be more mindful, present and i...

We are used to thinking of what we call the news as a tool that can help us to vanquish ignorance. But what it continuously - albeit slyly - does is encourage us to forget entirely what we actually feel in relation to certain events and crucially why that is so important. Enjoying our Youtube videos? Get full access to all our audio content, videos, and thousands of thought-provoking articles, con...

We work as we do because – of course – we need to; because nothing is cheap, because the bills are incessant; because of all the good and wise and sensible reasons that we’ve been highly aware of since mid adolescence at least. But that is too neat and we know it deep down; we know that there is also – alongside this – something more complicated that we use the idea of necessity to avoid. Enjoying...

The founding principle of modern psychotherapy - that it is all to do with one’s childhood - can sound especially irritating. Why should we be forever tied to things that happened infinitely long ago? Enjoying our Youtube videos? Get full access to all our audio content, videos, and thousands of thought-provoking articles, conversation cards and more with The School of Life Subscription: https://t...

There is still so much we are never quite able to tell those close to us about who we are and what we want. We should dare to have the important conversations. Enjoying our Youtube videos? Get full access to all our audio content, videos, and thousands of thought-provoking articles, conversation cards and more with The School of Life Subscription: https://t.ly/RoP2f Be more mindful, present and in...

It’s an embarrassing confession, but many of us spend a great deal of our lives asking, week after week, always with the same blend of frustration, despair and puzzlement: Why am I so lonely? The real answer is likely to be far less punitive and in its way far more logical… Enjoying our Youtube videos? Get full access to all our audio content, videos, and thousands of thought-provoking articles, c...

Emotional Intelligence, Daily. Start now: https://www.theschooloflife.com/subscription/ Get weekly insights for better relationships, deeper self-knowledge, and inner calm straight to your inbox: https://www.theschooloflife.com/signup/ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Eastern philosophy is a great deal more popular than its Western counterpart. That’s not because Western philosophy has nothing valuable to teach us - but because of the dispiriting, abstract way it has to date been presented to us by Western educational elites. Enjoying our Youtube videos? Get full access to all our audio content, videos, and thousands of thought-provoking articles, conversation...

The word ‘trauma’ captures an acute paradox in our relationship to our own histories: some of what is most significant in our lives is inaccessible to day to day memory; the more important something is, the less we may be able to recall it. Enjoying our Youtube videos? Get full access to all our audio content, videos, and thousands of thought-provoking articles, conversation cards and more with Th...

Part of the pain of growing older is that we can start to see how much, at certain points, we misunderstood ourselves, what the costs of missing self-knowledge were and how beautiful it could be if we could just build ourselves a time machine and go back and correct all our mistakes. Enjoying our Youtube videos? Get full access to all our audio content, videos, and thousands of thought-provoking a...

Ralph Waldo Emerson taught us about the presence of nature and something a little divine inside all of us. Enjoying our Youtube videos? Get full access to all our audio content, videos, and thousands of thought-provoking articles, conversation cards and more with The School of Life Subscription: https://t.ly/EbsVE Be more mindful, present and inspired. Get the best of The School of Life delivered...

Emil Cioran is Romania’s most famous thinker: his darkly pessimistic philosophy is a perfect antidote to the sentimental cheeriness of our times. Enjoying our Youtube videos? Get full access to all our audio content, videos, and thousands of thought-provoking articles, conversation cards and more with The School of Life Subscription: https://t.ly/rjTHz Be more mindful, present and inspired. Get th...

Friedrich Nietzsche believed that human life is fundamentally divided into the 'Apollonian' and the 'Dionysian'. Enjoying our Youtube videos? Get full access to all our audio content, videos, and thousands of thought-provoking articles, conversation cards and more with The School of Life Subscription: https://t.ly/niYq8 Be more mindful, present and inspired. Get the best of The School of Life deli...

All of us have deeply unhelpful inner voices inside us, dragging us down with criticisms and unfair accusations. Wisdom involves learning how to replace them with more benevolent guides. Enjoying our Youtube videos? Get full access to all our audio content, videos, and thousands of thought-provoking articles, conversation cards and more with The School of Life Subscription: https://t.ly/T9WT2 Be m...

#petergabriel #music #interview The great musician Peter Gabriel came to do an event around the corner from the School of Life's London HQ: a discussion on music, philosophy, science, therapy and... apes. Enjoying our Youtube videos? Get full access to all our audio content, videos, and thousands of thought-provoking articles, conversation cards and more with The School of Life Subscription: https...

Emotional Intelligence, Daily. Start now: https://www.theschooloflife.com/subscription/ Think great friendship is just luck? This film proves otherwise, presenting Eight Essential Rules for deep, fulfilling connection. Learn to ask the right questions, create space for vulnerability, manage your own anxiety, and cultivate the sincerity and kindness needed to be a truly better, more understanding f...

There’s a difficult mood we’re in danger of falling into that’s made up of four elements in particular: low spirits, guilt, paranoia and irritability. It’s in such a mood that we might step back and ask ourselves a distinctive question: "Might I - at heart - be very angry with someone right now?" Enjoying our Youtube videos? Get full access to all our audio content, videos, and thousands of though...