The School of Life

Paradoxically, one of the signs of a 'mature' relationship is a willingness to be infantile with one's partner. Sign up to our new newsletter and get 10% off your first online order of a book, product or class: https://bit.ly/3HpVdSa For books and more from The School of Life, visit our online shop: https://bit.ly/3Gp6514 Our website has therapy, articles and products to help you lead a more fulfi...

We pride ourselves on living in a sexually liberated age. But we haven't in fact begun to know how to face up to, or discuss, our true sexual natures. 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/uEFUs Be more mindful, present and inspired. G...

Emotional Intelligence, Daily. Start now: https://www.theschooloflife.com/subscription/ We often fail to see the red flags in those around us. This film explores the painful truth behind the adage, "when people tell you who they are, believe them." Discover how a childhood spent making excuses for difficult caregivers can prevent us from seeing the plain and simple clues others give us about their...

Emotional Intelligence, Daily. Start now: https://www.theschooloflife.com/subscription/ The same fight, everywhere. This film dissects the toxic cycle of feeling controlled vs. abandoned in relationships. Learn to break the pattern, communicate hurt, and build empathy. #Relationships #Communication #Conflict #Attachment #Psychology #Empathy Unlock all the content of The School of Life with a subsc...

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...