The School of Life

It is estimated that some 70,000 separate thoughts hurry through consciousness from the moment we wake up to the time we slip into sleep. To help us understand those thoughts we've produced five questions to direct our minds to areas which we tend to neglect, and from where trouble can most intensely arise when we do so. Enjoying our YouTube videos? Get full access to all our audio content, videos...

Emotional Intelligence, Daily. Start now: https://www.theschooloflife.com/subscription/ Ever wonder why your ex is so happy? This film explores the bittersweet truth that we often serve as the unwitting teachers for our ex-partners, helping them mature into ideal future companions. Discover how our most painful relationship struggles can become the groundwork for someone else's happiness, and—with...

The secret of good seduction is not to idealise the person we are trying to get together with. They are – ultimately – still just another human being, whom we would in time get very irritated with if the seduction worked as well as we want. That is a thought to lend us confidence. Enjoying our Youtube videos? Get full access to all our audio content, videos, and thousands of thought-provoking arti...

When looking at the odder aspects of other people’s and our own behaviour, there is one simple-sounding question we should always keep close to the front of our minds: what did you need to do in your family of origin in order to be loved? and might you still, by extension, unconsciously be operating under these conditions. Enjoying our YouTube videos? Get full access to all our audio content, vide...

What happens to a child who is not loved properly? The answer one might expect is that they start to hate the person who doesn’t give them the love they need. Far from it. The reality is that the child becomes filled with shame. But what is shame? And how does it impact your adult life? Enjoying our YouTube videos? Get full access to all our audio content, videos, and thousands of thought-provokin...

Could modern architects not learn to work with traditional materials while retaining the forms and the spirit of our own times? This is the question so beautifully answered by one of the greatest of all modernists, the American architect Louis Kahn. 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 seem as if we are living in deeply, uncommonly troubled and crazy times. We should take a measure of consolation from the example of history, that teaches us that humans have always been cruel and mad – but that civilisation has progressed nevertheless. Enjoying our Youtube videos? Get full access to all our audio content, videos, and thousands of thought-provoking articles, conversation ca...

Many people who do brilliantly at school turn out not to do so well at life. Why? 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/rfG0A Be more mindful, present and inspired. Get the best of The School of Life delivered straight to your inbox: h...

Getting close to another human isn’t the trouble free process we might imagine. It’s worth understanding just how frightening closeness can be. 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/uuFK8 Be more mindful, present and inspired. Get the...

We’re used to thinking that charity just means giving poorer people money. In fact, it’s about extending sympathy to another human being – who may be 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/16JXB Be more mindful, present and inspired...

One of the most maddening sides of modern life is that the media always under-reports the crucial stories, while hyping nonsense. We could get enraged and pious; but we’re better off understanding how human nature works. Getting stern isn’t going to help. Enjoying our Youtube videos? Get full access to all our audio content, videos, and thousands of thought-provoking articles, conversation cards a...

We are so busy and so obsessed with our phones, we rarely take a break to do that vital and rather philosophical thing: stare out of the window. 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/RmJch Be more mindful, present and inspired. Get the...

A key principle governing the natural world is that animals adapt to thrive in particular habitats; what we call an animal’s character is essentially a set of traits that gives it maximal opportunity to flourish in specific circumstances. We humans are - in the end, beneath a layer of civilisation - not so different. Enjoying our YouTube videos? Get full access to all our audio content, videos, an...

One of our greatest fears is to suffer a mental breakdown. Yet, in the long run, a breakdown might just be the most beneficial thing that will ever happen to 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/8BQHG Be more mindful, present and...

Apologising doesn’t generally come easily – but it always tends to pay off beautifully. 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/64iMU Be more mindful, present and inspired. Get the best of The School of Life delivered straight to your in...

The leading theorist of modern right-wing political movements was an Austrian economist called Friedrich Hayek. FURTHER READING "Friedrich August von Hayek (1899-1992) was a political economist who had a tremendous influence upon how people in capitalist societies understand the concept of liberty. Controversially, for Hayek ‘liberty’ did not mean democracy or a commitment to a set of ‘liberal’ id...

People often speak of going through an ‘existential crisis’; but what do they really mean by the term? And when can it be useful to have it to hand? 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/bsiXH Be more mindful, present and inspired. Get...

Remaining calm around people who annoy us is one of the great life skills. It’s also a teachable and learnable skill. 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/ZDl-j Be more mindful, present and inspired. Get the best of The School of Life...

The difference between despair and hope often boils down to different ways of telling stories from the same set of facts. Some of the art of living means learning how to tell the story of our lives back to 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 Subscri...

The French 17th century philosopher Blaise Pascal is one of the world’s great pessimists- with an unusual power to cheer us up. 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/56Oel Be more mindful, present and inspired. Get the best of The Scho...

From the outside, it seems impossible to predict whether a couple will break up or stay together...unless we fathom the fundamental reason why all breakups occur. 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/DIJHC Be more mindful, present and...

So much in our culture emphasises long-term love; it may be time to hear a word or two in praise of the short-term approach. 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/j38S5 Be more mindful, present and inspired. Get the best of The School...

Rene Descartes is perhaps the world’s best known-philosopher, in large part because of his pithy statement, ‘I think therefore I am.’ He stands out as an example of what intellectual self-confidence can bring us. 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....

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The secret to being an interesting person has less to do with our job or achievements than it does with how attuned we are to our abnormalities. 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/Crh_P Be more mindful, present and inspired. Get the...