The School of Life

There’s a strange law of psychology that reveals that small children who are treated badly by their parents will always — rather strangely — blame themselves, and not their parents, for their injuries. 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://...

There is such pressure on us to be cheerful. And yet in order properly to be content, we need to learn, sometimes, the art of being constructively in touch with our sadder, more melancholy feelings. 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.l...

Plato’s theory of the forms is at the centre of his philosophy and teaches us the virtues of thinking about the ideal version of things. 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/n60ts Be more mindful, present and inspired. Get the best of...

We’re still only at the dawn of learning how to use drugs properly – knowing what drugs we need and when we should take them. We look forward to a brighter future for drug use. 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/ElW4j Be more mindfu...

Emotional Intelligence, Daily. Start now: https://www.theschooloflife.com/subscription/ Stuck in a loop of longing? This film suggests a radical cure for heartbreak. Instead of trying to forget your ex, try to imagine—in vivid, realistic detail—exactly what it would be like to have them back. Not the highlight reel, but the Tuesday afternoon arguments, the familiar disappointments, and the long si...

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Quiet lives feel nowadays like lives of failure and resignation, but they may be no such thing: true ambition can lie in learning how to minimise stress and divert energy to properly important projects. 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:/...

Please subscribe here: http://tinyurl.com/o28mut7 If you like our films take a look at our shop (we ship worldwide): http://www.theschooloflife.com/shop/all/ Brought to you by http://www.theschooloflife.com Do you speak a different language to English? Did you know you can submit Subtitles on all of our videos on YouTube? For instructions how to do this click here: https://support.google.com/youtu...

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://www.theschooloflife.com/the-school-of-life-youtube/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=description&utm_campaign=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oDjlHY5Z2xI&t=7s Learn, heal and grow. Get the best of The Scho...

‘Kintsugi’ is the remarkable Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with elegance and grace - a tradition with a lot to teach us more generally about how to handle the broken bits of ourselves. 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/d...

The most unexpectedly uplifting and consoling artist of the 20th century was the abstract painter Mark Rothko, the high priest of grief and loss who spent the latter part of his career turning out a succession of sublime and sombre canvases that spoke, as he put it, of the ‘tragedy of being human’. Enjoying our Youtube videos? Get full access to all our audio content, videos, and thousands of thou...

Emotional Intelligence, Daily. Start now: https://www.theschooloflife.com/subscription/ What is the most romantic thing you can ever say to a partner? It isn't "I will never leave you" or "You are my everything." Instead, the most vital phrase for the survival of love is a firm boundary: "If you ever stop being nice to me, I will leave you in short order." This film explores the "paradox of limits...

Andrea Palladio was one of the world's greatest architects - who launched the Classical style which influenced how we build to this day. 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/zivdC Be more mindful, present and inspired. Get the best of...

Emotional Intelligence, Daily. Start now: https://www.theschooloflife.com/subscription/ Are "high-minded" values ruining your love life? This film explores why sexual compatibility is far more than a "base" urge—it is a fundamental pillar of psychological intimacy. Learn why ignoring kinks, fantasies, and physical alignment leads to relationship breakdown, and why true intelligence means acknowled...

We’re used to thinking of envy in very negative terms. But it’s an emotion we should learn to accept and – in a calculated way – learn from. 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/Ykeb4 Be more mindful, present and inspired. Get the bes...

#parents #bullying #childhood One of the strangest and saddest phenomena of psychological life is that there are parents, too many parents, who end up - while sometimes only half realising it - bullying their own children. The bullying may take many forms. Why do parents bully their children? Enjoying our Youtube videos? Get full access to all our audio content, videos, and thousands of thought-pr...

The news is often determined to tell us that we live in uniquely critical times, beset by political disasters and afflicted by terrible crises and that the demise of human civilisation is surely imminent. We are encouraged to view the world - and our own lives - in bleak, apocalyptic terms. Oddly, as the great 18th century historian Edward Gibbon shows us, history can be powerfully consoling, not...

Emotional Intelligence, Daily. Start now: https://www.theschooloflife.com/subscription/ Why did our ancestors marry in days while we take years to "test the waters"? This film explores the fundamental shift from the premodern focus on commitment to our modern obsession with compatibility. Discover why the search for a perfect soulmate often leads to endless dating and why true compatibility isn't...

If we had to make one generalisation about why relationships fail, it would be this: because of defensiveness. Defensiveness is behind a predominant share of the failure of all relationships. The difficulty is that there appears to be no way of escaping the sort of situations that can trigger defensiveness… Enjoying our Youtube videos? Get full access to all our audio content, videos, and thousand...

Looked at over time, we’re gradually picking up slightly better manners – but what are we doing now that might, in future eras, be considered bad manners? 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/kb07u Be more mindful, present and inspire...

We tend to imagine that we can only become addicted to a few sorts of things. But real addiction is about using something, anything, to keep our real emotions, fears and hopes at bay. There are many more addicts among us than we think. 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 Sch...

We spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about, and in various ways ‘styling’ our hair. It’s not entirely silly; we’re trying to tell the world – through the language of keratin strands – about who we are. 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...

Leo Tolstoy was a remarkable novelist in part because he believed in the novel as a tool for social reform, something that would enable us to become kinder, more thoughtful and more generous towards others. 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: htt...

It’s an odd quirk of relationships that, after a time, we tend to develop the sincere conviction that it is all always our partner’s fault. 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/ptv0A Be more mindful, present and inspired. Get the best...

Adults may grumble about kids: but what about the other side of the coin? A thoughtful member of the younger generation (9 and a half) shares with us some of the horrors of parents. 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/RsRvK Be more m...