The School of Life

Our 3am awakenings are signs that we have not been doing the sort of self-reflection we need to do in order to be at – or sleep in – peace. 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/MLPI_ Be more mindful, present and inspired. Get the best...

If you like our films here on Youtube, consider coming to study with us at our campuses around the world: in Paris, London, Amsterdam, Antwerp, Istanbul, Tel Aviv, Sydney, Melbourne, Seoul and Sao Paulo: http://www.theschooloflife.com/london/shop/classroom/core-curriculum Enjoying our Youtube videos? Get full access to all our audio content, videos, and thousands of thought-provoking articles, con...

The Renaissance is a historical period with some important lessons to teach us about how to improve the world today. We need to study it not for its own sake, but for the sake of our collective futures. 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:/...

We don't have to be Hindus to admire the imaginative way in which the religion seeks to align its teachings with the particular demands we face across 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/ltnWQ Be more mindful, present and inspi...

Masochism is the belief that one is secretly deserving of punishment. Whilst sexual masochism can be fun, emotional masochism - which is much more common - often stems from unexamined trauma. 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/YPdGB...

Pessimism is generally equated with a grumpy and immature kind of mood. But it is in fact at the origin of wisdom – and can even leave us feeling surprisingly cheerful. 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/TeRZB Be more mindful, prese...

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

Why are male friendships so hard? This film explores the psychology of masculinity and the barriers to intimacy between men. Can we redefine what it means to be a friend? #MaleFriendship #Masculinity #Psychology #Intimacy #Loneliness #Connection Enjoying our Youtube videos? Get full access to all our audio content, videos, and thousands of thought-provoking articles, conversation cards and more wi...

We may associate pessimism with bad things, but at a political level, the world’s best societies are all experts at pessimism. 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/4YZ68 Be more mindful, present and inspired. Get the best of The Schoo...

Alain de Botton sits down with Jaime Laing on the @GreatCompanyPodcast. Together they dive into such subjects as: What is love? How do we navigate heartbreak? Why is our childhood so critical in shaping the rest of our life? And what does it all mean, anyway? Along the way, Alain walks Jamie through some of the reasons why we experience the ‘ick’, the typical emotional burdens parents project onto...

Why do we sabotage good relationships? This film dissects the psychology of avoidance and the impact of childhood trauma on adult love. Learn to break free from fear and embrace intimacy. #Relationships #Trauma #Psychology #Love #Intimacy #avoidance Enjoying our YouTube videos? Get full access to all our audio content, videos, and thousands of thought-provoking articles, conversation cards and mor...

It can be hard to know what we really need from a relationship. But the task becomes much simpler if we keep in mind that every relationship requires just three crucial ingredients to work. 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/ecH4C B...

If you were setting out to make a country rich, what kind of mindsets and ideas would be most likely to achieve your goals? We invent a country, Richland, and try to imagine the psychology of its inhabitants. 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: h...

Though each individual is unique, deep down, everyone is searching for the same thing: reassurance - a gift that is within all of our power to give. 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/lnDWT Be more mindful, present and inspired. Get...

Jane Austen’s novels are so readable in part because she wasn’t an ordinary kind of novelist: she wanted her work to help us to be better and wiser people. Her novels had a philosophy of personal development at their heart. 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...

Despite what we might think, there are no such things as ‘winners’ and ‘losers’ in life. Those who win in some areas will lose in others - and vice versa. The task lies in working out where our true successes and failures lie. 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 Li...

All too often nowadays, people who love to exercise their brains forget to exercise their bodies. This wasn’t the way of the Ancient Greeks, who believed that true philosophers always work on their physical and mental selves. 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 Lif...

Even if we've never spelled them out, each of us carries within us a private list of 'reasons to live'. Mental illness can threaten these reasons: to heal, we may need to seek out new ones. 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/T7szM B...

An unexpected and troublesome feature of being human is that we feel so much more than we spontaneously realise we feel. There are emotions coursing through us - of anger or joy, resentment or fear - that lie just outside the sphere of ordinary consciousness and that elude us as we rush through the challenges of our lives. Enjoying our Youtube videos? Get full access to all our audio content, vide...

It can be surprisingly difficult for us to accept that a major cause of much of our mental distress may be nothing so dramatic as a lack of sleep. Getting better requires us to take our need for sleep seriously. 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...

Contrary to some expectations, it isn’t only money we want from work. We also need our work to feel ‘meaningful’. But what exactly is meaningful work, and where can we find more of 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 The School of Life Subscription: https://t.ly/PYIHz Be mor...

We talk a lot about love without fully understanding exactly what it means. True love is less an appreciation of strength than a tolerance of (and kindness towards) what is weak and misshapen in another person. 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:...

It’s easy to criticise modern societies for being ‘celebrity obsessed’. But the problem isn’t an interest in celebrity, it’s the sort of celebrities paraded before us. We don’t need no-celebrities, we need better-celebrities. 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 Lif...

James Baldwin was a great African-American writer who understood the meaning of freedom. His work and life give us a guide to how to escape our narrow societies. 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/ifrUe Be more mindful, present and...

Emotional neglect - the withholding of parental love during childhood - can have a psychological impact no less profound than other forms of abuse. Before we can start to recover, we first need to acknowledge the scale of its effects. 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...