Search results for ""the school of life press""

We probably went to school for what felt like a very long time. We probably took care with our homework. Along the way we surely learnt intriguing things about equations, the erosion of glaciers, the history of the Middle Ages, and the tenses of foreign languages. But why, despite all the lessons we sat through, were we never taught the really important things that dominate and trouble our lives: who to start a relationship with, how to trust people, how to understand one’s psyche, how to move on from sorrow or betrayal, and how to cope with anxiety and shame? The School of Life is an organisation dedicated to teaching a range of emotional lessons that we need in order to lead fulfilled and happy lives – and that schools routinely forget to teach us. This book is a collection of our most essential lessons, delivered with directness and humanity, covering topics from love to career, childhood trauma to loneliness. To read the book is to be invited to lead kinder, richer and more authentic lives – and to complete an education we began but still badly need to finish. This is homework to help us make the most of the rest of our lives.

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A guide to our anxious minds; offering a route to calm, self-compassion and mental well-being. Far more than we tend to realise, we’re all – in private – deeply anxious. There is so much that worries us across our days and nights: whether our hopes will come true, whether others will like us, whether the people we care about will be OK, whether we can escape humiliation and grief... Anxiety is deeply normal and, like so much else that troubles our minds, it can be understood and brought under our control. We all deserve to wake up every day without a sense of foreboding. This is a guide to anxiety: why we feel it, how we experience it when it strikes and what we can do when we come under its influence. Across a series of essays that look at the subject from a number of angles, the tone is helpful, compassionate and in the best sense practical. We have suffered for too long under the rule of anxiety. Here – at last – is a pathway to a calmer, more compassionate and more light-hearted future.

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Modern life is full of minor but acute dilemmas: we get stuck at a gathering with someone unusually boring and wonder how to move on without causing offence; in the course of introducing one friend to another, we realise that we have forgotten one of the party’s names; we run into an ex while on an early date with a new partner; we spill red wine across a host’s sofa... Such dilemmas might – at one level – seem desperately insignificant. But they actually belong to some of the largest and most serious themes in social existence: how can you pursue our own agenda for happiness while at the same time honouring the sensitivities and wishes of others; how can you convey goodwill with sincerity; how can you be kind without being supine or sentimental? These dilemmas were once covered by books on etiquette or manners. The modern age often doesn’t seem to value manners, equating them with an old fashioned stuffiness, instead we are advised to communicate our feelings and tell it the way it really is. But the result, in practice, is that we are often confused as to how to act around others and discharge our obligations to them. This book puts good manners back at the centre our lives. It features twenty case-studies on common social dilemmas and our possible responses to them, contributing to a new and original philosophy of graceful conduct. Manners are far from negligible fancies; they stand at the day-to-day end of a hugely grand and dignified mission which The School of Life is committed to: the creation of a kinder and more considerate world.

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Stress and mental ill health currently costs the UK economy upwards of £30 billion a year. Modern businesses continue to place huge emphasis on technical training, yet a lot of what determines the success or failure of organisations has nothing to do with the sort of hard skills taught at business school; instead, it comes down to the degree of emotional intelligence circulating in the workplace. This is a book that introduces us to twenty core emotional skills that can help businesses to flourish. They range from giving honest feedback, to accepting that it’s OK to fail, to addressing jealousies and insecurities within teams. We learn about how our childhoods continue to have an often unhelpful impact on how we deal with colleagues, and the best ways we might speak so that others will listen. The book is informed by the practical work that the Learning and Development division of The School of Life carries out, endeavouring to change the culture within organisations around the world through teaching teams the art of emotional intelligence. From the Learning and Development mission statement: ‘We believe that emotional maturity is the key to better employee performance and engagement.’ Testimony from L&D client the Guardian: ‘TSOL has brought a creative energy and an open, practical space to our wellbeing curriculum.’

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60 cards to help us to better understand ourselves and how we are really feeling.

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Whether we should stay in or leave a relationship is one of the most consequential and painful decisions we are ever likely to confront: few other issues will have such power to trouble us. What makes the issue so hard is that there are no fixed rules for judgement. How can we tell whether a relationship is ‘good enough’ or plain wrong? How do we draw the line between justified longing and naivety? Is sex vital or could it be foregone? Does someone ‘better’ actually exist? How much should the feelings of children be counted (and what might they be in the long term)? Could one’s partner change, perhaps with therapy, or should one assume that who they are now is who they will always be? All these questions typically haunt our minds as we weigh up whether to stay or go. With no axe to grind or ideology to promote, this book walks the reader gently through their options and opens their mind to perspectives they might not have considered. The goal is to help clarify what the reader wants deep down so the answer that emerges will be properly attuned to their unique circumstances and (often very private) aspirations. Here is a tool that carries the promise of the clearer and less compromised future we deserve. This book aims to take the reader towards a time, presently hard to imagine, when the choice will no longer feel so agonising. Using its lessons, we can understand ourselves deeply, consider our options, minimise our regrets and find the way ahead.

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Dating might seem a trivial and relatively inconsequential part of love, but it is in fact key to getting into the kind of relationship that can last and help us flourish. The process we call dating sits on top of some of the largest themes of love: how to know whether or not someone is right for us; how soon to settle and how long to search; how to be at once honest and seductive; how to politely extricate oneself without causing offence. This little book is an indispensable guide to the dating process. It teaches us about the history of dating (and why the way we are dating now is so novel and so perplexing), the reason why our dating days can be so anxious, how we should discuss our past on a date, what questions we might ask a new partner, how to optimise our attempts at dating - and how to digest and overcome so-called ‘bad’ dates. The book is at once heartfelt and perceptive and never minimises the agony, joys and confusions of our dating days and nights. It provides us with the ideal wise roadmap to the varied, sometimes delightful, sometime daunting realities of dating.

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Not being able to sleep is deeply frightening. We panic about our ability to cope with the demands of the next day; we panic that we are panicking; the possibility of sleep recedes ever further as the clock counts down to another exhausted, irritable dawn. Our societies have learnt to treat insomnia with the best applied discipline we know: medicine – in particular, with pills powerful enough to wrestle consciousness into submission. But there are other things to do besides, or alongside, medicalising insomnia. We can reflect on our sleeplessness, define it to ourselves and others, try to understand where it springs from in human nature and speculate on what it might - in its own confused way - be trying to tell us. This book is an eloquent guide to, and companion through, the long sleepless hours of the night. We come away from its soothing pages informed, consoled and armed with insights that will make us feel a lot less alone – as we wait for sleep, eventually, to come.

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The first book in a new series offering advice on the emotional skills required to maintain successful relationships.

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The first in a new series of guided journals, leading the customer on a journey of self-reflection.

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A journal that seeks to honour the act of therapeutic writing containing journaling prompts to find inspiration and encouragement.

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A lot of what makes life worth living isn’t to do with great, heroic or costly things, but with modest pleasures that are all around us, largely unnoticed, available for almost nothing. It might be a beautiful sky, the smell of freshly cut grass, or a friend who understands how we feel. With beautiful photography and a few well-chosen words, this pack of cards draws us back to an appreciation of the overlooked ordinary, gently prompting us to remember that life is more precious and richer than we generally allow. Examples of the small pleasures below, each accompanied with a beautiful image: Children’s drawings Old stone walls. In the heat, lying in a field, looking up. Crying cathartically over the death of a fictional character. Fresh French bread; butter. The song you want to listen to again and again.

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As grown-ups, one of our deepest urges is for life to be more adventurous: a little more excitement, novelty, interest and passion. Unfortunately, many adventures, especially the ‘big’ kinds, are too expensive, threaten to upturn everything and can upset those who rely on us. What we therefore badly need is access to smaller, more pocket-sized adventures. We call these ‘Everyday Adventures’ – from something tiny like eating an unfamiliar fruit from the market to rereading your favourite book to asking a parent what they were like as a teenager. This is a suggestion box to spark the imagination, revive the spirit and motivate us towards the slightly more adventurous lives we long for. Adventures include: Write down five questions you wish someone else would ask you; ask them of someone else. Set your alarm before sunrise and go for a walk

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On Divorce is the debut title in a new portrait photography series by The School of Life. The photographs and accompanying texts were captured and recorded over two years by British photographer Harry Borden (himself divorced). The images are a mirror that can help to correct some of what we think we know of divorce and pull us in a different direction: towards compassion, identification, curiosity, self-reflection and empathy. The book features an introduction by The School of Life, which gives context to Borden’s photographic study. Harry Borden is an acclaimed British portrait photographer. His work is regularly published in major news outlets and is part of the collection of The National Portrait Gallery in London. Previous publications include Single Dad (2021) and Survivor: A Portrait of the Survivors of the Holocaust (2017).

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One of the most unexpectedly useful things we can do when we’re feeling glum or out of sorts is to look at pictures. The best works of art can lift our spirits, remind us of what we love and return perspective to our situation. A few moments in front of the right picture can rescue us. This is a collection of 100 of the world’s most consoling and uplifting images, accompanied by small essays that talk about the works in a way that offers us comfort and inspiration. The images in the book range wildly across time and space: from ancient to modern art, east to west, north to south, taking in photography, painting, abstract and figurative art. All the images have been carefully chosen to help us with a particular problem we might face: a broken heart, a difficulty at work, the meanness of others, the challenges of family and friends We’re invited to look at art with unusual depth and then find our way towards new hope and courage. This is a portable museum dedicated to beauty and consolation, a unique book about art which is also about psychology and healing: a true piece of art therapy.

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20 unique prints encapsulating the most important lessons The School of Life has to teach. Art is never merely decoration. From cave paintings to modern sculpture, our species has always used pictures and images to express our most important ideas: encapsulating the messages we deem necessary to remember in order to live better lives. Far from simply being objects of beauty, art is a reminder of what truly matters. Bold Truths is a collection of wise statements immortalised as art: 20 philosophical prints encapsulating the most important lessons The School of Life has to teach. Brought to life by leading artists and designers, they’re ready-made prints that can be lifted out and displayed in your home or place of work as a permanent reminder of how to live well. They’re a perfect marriage of beauty and utility: exquisite illustrations of essential ideas.

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Whether we’re big or small, it can be hard to get away from our screens. Most children spend between five and seven hours a day looking at some form of screen – and most grown-ups spend twice as much time. Screens promise endless entertainment, but the more time we spend with them, the more we lose sight of all that is strange, fascinating and delightful in the world around us. Even when we’re stuck indoors, there are infinite possibilities for banishing boredom and having fun so long as we use our imagination. All we need are a few helpful suggestions.... No-tech Fun contains 80 of the weirdest and most wonderful activities children can do at home , all without using a screen. Rather than scrolling or tapping, you’ll be invited to draw, make, write, invent, dress up, hide, seek and discover. You can paint like Picasso or meditate like Buddha; become an indoor entomologist or a home Olympian; make up a new language or a mythical creature; and even find the fun in some household chores. Inventive and irreverent, this book is the perfect companion for humdrum days and wet weekends. It is a compendium of the world’s strangest, silliest and most stimulating activities.

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Being a parent can be one of the sources of our greatest joys. It is also - intermittently - the cause of some of our deepest sorrows. It is likely that we will spend at least some of the time in despair and confusion, wondering whether it really had to be so hard. Philosophy has, over the last 2,000 years, been a discipline committed to calm, kindness, perspective and a reduction of paranoia. It is one of the most useful sources of solace and humanity. This invaluable book is made up of 26 small essays that aim provide understanding of and consolation for the trials and pleasures of parenting. They will provoke insight, recognition and a far more forgiving, generous assessment of one's challenges. The Joys and Sorrows of Parenting promises us a gentle way of staying calm around one of the most arduous yet deeply fulfilling jobs in the world. What people are saying about The Joys and Sorrows of Parenting: “Very helpful and wise insights that bring a little peace of mind.” “Great book and it's a must give gift for new parents.” Jeff “This is a very moving and reassuring. Beautiful quality book too.” Sam “Thanks School of Life, it's been an eye opening and reassuring read.” Beth “The presentation as a board book for children is great fun. It made advice seem light handed and possible.” Josephine

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We too often assume that we must accept the levels of confidence we currently possess. But confidence is not a given: it is a quality we can learn about and develop in ourselves. These Confidence Prompt Cards keep a variety of consoling and invigorating arguments at the front of our minds, ready for the greater and smaller challenges of our lives. They remind us, for the sake of confidence, not to think too well of others; to speak to ourselves in kinder tones; and to remember that the greatest thing we should fear isn’t messing up, but dying without having given it a go. Example Cards: ‘Everyone is afraid - even those who frighten us.’ ‘Confidence is what translates theory into practice. It should never be thought of as the enemy of good things; it is their crucial and legitimate catalyst. We need to develop confidence in confidence.’ ‘We have not seen enough of the rough drafts of those we admire Confidence means forgiving ourselves for the horrors of our first attempts.’

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We sometimes playfully wonder what the meaning of life might be - but it can be hard to kick start a conversation with ourselves (let alone with anyone else) around such a daunting subject. Here are 52 cards that directly and elegantly lead us to some of the largest questions about life and its meaning – cards that help us and our companions to think with exceptional depth about what truly matters, where we see ourselves heading and what gives life its purpose. This is a tool for direction, clarity – and some of the deepest yet most fun and entertaining conversations we’ll ever have.

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Although the pleasures of sex are well known, what is less emphasised are the pleasures of talking about sex: what feels nice, what we like to daydream about, what we long for, where our fantasies have come from. There is scarcely anything more interesting. Yet too often, we find ourselves not having as many good conversations about sex as we might. Maybe we don’t know where to start, or we think we should know it all by now. Perhaps some aspects of sex feel tricky, or there is simply not enough time to get around to talking about it. This pack of cards is designed to spark the best kind of pillow talk: the sort where we explore sex with intimacy, playfulness and intellectual curiosity. Here are sixty questions to provoke some of the best conversations possible, guaranteed to leave us with a new sense of liberation and closeness

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No matter how much we celebrate individualism and praise the unique, we are, at heart, deeply collective creatures committed to the idea of ‘being normal’. And yet almost all of us feel, in private, that we’re really quite odd, by which we mean : not like anyone else we know. But our picture of what is normal is in fact - very often - way out of line with what is actually true and widespread. Many thoughts, fears and desires that we might assume to be uniquely and disconcertingly strange - and that make us feel painfully ashamed - are in fact completely average. These cards are a tool of self-assessment and reassurance. They ask us to compare ourselves with a range of statements, many of them dark, in order to find out just how weird (or not) we and our loved ones really are. They encourage us not to be ashamed of our uncomfortable thoughts and recognise the sheer normality of our madness, waywardness and alarm. Emergencies Include: ‘I can’t sleep’ ‘I’m in the wrong job’ ‘I might be turning into an addict’ ‘I’m so envious’

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A thought-provoking and practical workbook with exercises to help you discover a career that is truly fulfilling. There are few questions harder or lonelier than, ‘What should I do with the rest of my working life?’ We are often simply meant to know the answer. But in private, some of us are acutely aware that we aren’t happy where we are and would love to find a way towards a job that is truly fulfilling. Tantalisingly, many of the answers we need to better direct our futures are inside us, but we need help getting them out, making sense of them and assembling them into a plan. This workbook contains a series of prompts, questions and essays designed to help us systematically understand more about our working identities and to guide us (with something like the skill of a great career therapist) towards an approach to work that will honour our talents and allow us to thrive.

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A practical guide to finding fulfilling work by understanding yourself. The idea that work might be fulfilling rather than just necessary is a recent invention. These days, in prosperous areas of the world, we don’t only expect to get paid, we also expect to find meaning and satisfaction. A Job to Love is designed to help us better understand ourselves in order to find a job that is right for us. It explores the myths, traps and confusions that get in our way and shows us how to develop new, effective attitudes and habits.

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An engaging, alternative history of the world for children, which helps to make sense of today. The present can loom very large in a child’s mind: all the crises and challenges of the modern world can feel overwhelming and at times dispiriting. This book is a big history of the world, from the beginnings of the universe to now, which places the reader at its centre. It encourages them to think about how and why they experience the world as they do and offers a helpful perspective by placing their thoughts and feelings in the context of our history and evolution. Big Ideas From History is an immense story of what has happened through time that speaks personally and constructively to a growing mind. What might the dinosaurs or the ancient Egyptians, the Aztec warriors or the Enlightenment thinkers of the 18th century tell us that could be interesting and useful to hear now? The insights we need are scattered in time and place, waiting to be discovered. The book also looks to the future and asks the reader to imagine a world they would like to live in. What might they learn from self-knowledge? How can they grow, develop and create their own place in history? It is a thoughtful and inspiring introduction to the world around us, which encourages the child to engage with themselves and others through history.

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Children love to explore, born with a boundless desire to understand the world around them. While most of the outside world has already been mapped, there’s a whole other world that has yet to be discovered, one that’s accessible only to them: their own minds. The Book of Me is a guided journal of self-discovery. It takes readers on a journey inside themselves, helping them explore their mind, their moods, their imagination, their conscience, and how they determine the course of their lives. Alongside wise and engaging explanations of ideas, each chapter contains a wealth of interactive exercises that together help to create a rich and unique self-portrait. Through writing, drawing, cutting out and colouring in, children can begin to untangle the mysteries of existence and work out who they really are (and who they might become…). Combining psychology, philosophy and sheer fun, The Book of Me is an introduction to the vital art of self-knowledge, showing how it can help us grow into calmer, wiser and more rounded human beings.

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One of the difficulties about how our minds work is that we often cannot quite clearly see or know what is inside us. Art therapists have a longstanding tradition of prescribing image-making to prompt expression of feelings, often by asking people to draw, paint, or sculpt “how you feel.” It is one of the fundamental approaches in the field that distinguishes art therapy from verbal techniques that ask people to simply talk about their emotions. Author Erica Jong once wrote that imagery is a form of emotional shorthand. This could be interpreted to mean that while we may use paragraphs of prose to describe an emotional experience, images allow us to communicate simply and directly. At its core, art therapy embraces the paradigm that creating images cuts to the chase when it comes to expressing feelings. The point is not to draw well. But to draw with authenticity. This is specifically a book for people who can’t draw.

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One of the trickiest tasks we ever face is that of working out who we really are. If we’re asked directly to describe ourselves, our minds tend to go blank. We can’t just sum ourselves up. We need prompts and suggestions and more detailed enquiries that help tease out and organise our picture of ourselves. This book is designed to help us create a psychological portrait of ourselves with the use of some far more unusual, oblique, entertaining and playful prompts. The questions are designed to help us cumulatively appreciate how rich our identities are and how complicated, beautiful and sometimes painful our experiences have been. If self-knowledge is central to a wise and fulfilled life, it is because it teaches us which of our many—often contradictory—feelings and plans we might trust, in order that we can be a little more sceptical around our first impulses and less puzzled by the ebb and flow of our moods. We can understand where some of our feelings have come from and what might be driving our convictions and our longings.

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It’s one of the things we are most afraid might happen to us. We go to great lengths to avoid it. And yet we do it all the same. We marry the wrong person. Anyone we might marry could, of course, be a little bit wrong for us. We know that perfection is not on the cards. The fault isn’t entirely our own. In the Classical age one might have considered criteria such as how much land a prospective marriage partner has. In the Romantic age, which still dominates our culture, we place great confidence in intuition – a sense that there is such a thing as ‘the one’, that you understand one another perfectly and that you both never want to sleep with anyone else again. The time has come to bury the Romantic intuition-based view of marriage and learn to practice and rehearse marriage as one would ice-skating or violin playing, activities no more deserving of systematic periods of instruction. A Collection of Three Essays: Why You Will Marry the Wrong Person When is One Ready to Get Married? How Love Stories Ruin Our Love Lives

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When trying to deal with our current troubles and anxieties, it can be deeply irritating to be asked to consider our childhoods. They happened so long ago; we can probably barely remember, let alone relate to, the little person we once were. But one of the most powerful explanations for why we may, as adults, be struggling, is that we were denied the opportunity to fully be ourselves in our earliest years. Perhaps we were over-disciplined and cowed, not allowed to be wilful or difficult – and so learnt to tell white lies and people-please. Or perhaps our caregivers were preoccupied or fragile and so we had to assume the role of parent, burying our true needs and desires deep underground. When we thoroughly examine our upbringings, the larger implications for our adult selves are clear to see. Once we understand the roots from which our flaws stem, we can set about correcting the harmful behaviours we mistakenly believe to be innate. This book is a guide to better understanding our younger selves in order to shape who we wish to be in the future. It explores to what extent we can pin our actions in the present to our experiences in the past, and how we might then break free from the learnt patterns of our childhoods.

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An original and comprehensive look at what it is we seek when we set off on an adventure abroad - and at how we can travel better, so that our experiences overseas become truly transformative and memorable. Going travelling is one of the few things we undertake in a direct attempt to make ourselves happy - and frequently, in fascinating ways, we fail. We get bored, cross, anxious or lonely. It isn't surprising: our societies act as if going travelling were simple, just a case of handing over the right sum of money. But a satisfying journey isn't something we can simply buy: it's the result of an art that has to be learnt. This is the guide: not to any one destination but to travel in general. It talks to us, among other things, about how we should choose a place to go, what we might do when we get there, how we should make good moments stick in our minds and why hotel rooms can be such liberating places... In a succession of genial essays, we become students of an unexpected but vital topic: how to understand and more fully enjoy (what should be) some of the finest experiences of our lives. What people are saying about How to Travel: "How to Travel helped me narrow down where I want to travel to, why I want to travel there, and who I want to travel with. The blank pages included gave me room to respond to the questions posed in the essays, which made the reading experience that much more enjoyable. I highly recommend this book to anyone who dreams of experiencing a culture or world outside of their own but can't decide on a place." Larysa "A lovely collection of thought provoking short essays with note pages for jotting down things like 'useful foreign phrases' or to 'give drawing a go'. This book is very well presented with interesting quotes, images and photographs on different coloured pages on quality paper. It therefore has a nice feel and is really easy to read, no complex theories here. However, each piece on different aspects of travel is written well and makes you think which has real value...So enjoyable, and a perfect gift for someone preparing to travel." Sue "In classic School of Life form, the content is compellingly presented in an uncommon way, playful while authoritative." Rick "Has little pockets and fill in spaces that are so useful." Joana

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A soothing gallery of artworks and photography to guide us on a journeytowards calm.

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A blank notebook with a soft back with rounded corners, bellyband & elastic closure.

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We’re hugely dependent on language to express how we really feel, and yet words often feel curiously vague or frustratingly inaccurate. There are lots of moods, needs and feelings that our own language has not yet properly pinned down. The perfect word - even if it comes from abroad - helps us explain ourselves to other people, and its existence quietly reassures us (and everyone else) that a state of mind is not really rare, just rarely spoken of. This set of cards define some of our favourite words from the world’s languages and married them up with complementary images to create cards that bring some of our most important feelings into focus. We’ve created them to prompt greater reflection about the nature of language and the emotions. Example Cards: DUENDE (Spanish): A heightened sense of emotion created by a moving piece of art. FORELSKET (Norwegian): The euphoric feeling at the beginning of love. We can’t believe someone so perfect has wandered into our lives. They enhance and complete us. We might report: ‘I was overpowered by forelsket as our fingers interlaced…’

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Typically, we stumble on fascinating conversation topics a little bit by chance. Shyness can hold us back. Too often, we revert to polite, but not especially inspired, staples. Arranged to accompany each course, these twenty beautifully designed Conversation Menus lead us artfully to some of the most fascinating and revealing conversation topics. They invite us to open up about themes such as love, money, travel ambition, self-knowledge and the meaning of life. They contain questions and invitations to discussion that will raise smiles, build friendships and foster the best kind of intimacy, ensuring that our meals together can be everything we hoped. Questions Include: What do you blame your parents for? What do you wish your partner could forgive you for? Have you ever sabotaged your own success? Who did you have a rush on during your school years? Describe your first memorable encounter with another culture. What should children learn about the adult world? In what ways is your family especially odd? Who have you had to eject from your social life – and why? How would you like to be remembered? What shaped your attitudes to money?

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An inspiring curated selection of 40 photographs and artworks with accompanying essays examining the skill of confidence. The difference between success and failure often comes down to an ingredient that we are seldom directly taught about and may forget to focus on: confidence. Here is a supreme guide to a fatefully neglected quality – made up of a series of short essays that encourage us into a new and more fruitful state of mind. We hear why we should dare to try, why the past doesn’t have to dictate the future, why we can alter the way we speak to ourselves and why there are so many reasons to keep faith with our most ambitious aspirations. The images that accompany each essay are there to ensure that we aren’t merely intellectually stirred to change our lives but are also given the best kind of visual assistance. Within its modest size, this book succeeds at a mighty feat: unlocking our latent powers and edging us on with kindness and creativity to become the best version of ourselves.

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Our societies frequently proclaim their enormous esteem for culture. Music, film, literature and the visual arts enjoy high prestige and are viewed by many as getting close to the meaning of life. But what is culture really for? This book proposes that works of culture were all made, in one way or another, with the idea of improving the way we live. The book connects a range of cultural masterpieces with our own pains and dilemmas around love, work and society, and invites us to see culture as a resource with which to address the complex agonies of being human. It provides us with enduring keys to unlocking culture as a way of transforming our lives.

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Many of us find ourselves in the odd situation of not believing in religion – but nevertheless being interested in it, moved by it and sympathetic to some of its aims. We may enjoy religious art and architecture, music and community, and even some of the rituals – while being unable to believe in angels, divine commandments or stories about the afterlife. This book is about those feelings and what we might do about them. The School of Life is a secular organisation fascinated by the gaps left in modern society by the gradual disappearance of religion. We’re interested in how hard it is to find a sense of community, how rituals are dying out and how much we sometimes crave the solemn quiet you find in religious buildings. This book lays out how we might absorb the best lessons of religion, update them for our times and incorporate them into our daily lives and societies – without taking on the supernatural or doctrinaire elements. This book tries to rescue some of what remains wise and useful from all that no longer seems (to many of us) to be quite true.

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An average couple will have between thirty and fifty significant arguments a year - and yet we’re seldom taught very much about why they happen and how they could grow a little less intense. This is a guide to arguments in love: it teaches us why they might occur, what their symptoms are, how we could learn some wiser ways of communicating and how we would ideally patch up after a fight. The book looks at twenty of the most common arguments - including ones about sex, money, in-laws, who is ‘cold’ and who is ‘over-emotional’ and the state of the bathroom and the finances. We recognise our own antics but also pick up consoling and wise ideas on how to skirt certain conflicts going forward. The tragedy of every sorry argument is that it is constructed around a horrific mismatch between the message we so badly want to send (‘I need you to love me, know me, agree with me’) and the manner in which we are able to deliver it (with impatient accusations, sulks, put-downs, sarcasm, exaggerated gesticulations and forceful ‘f *** yous’). A bad argument is a failed endeavour to communicate; this is a definitive guide to how we might argue better. ‘The priority is not so much to avoid points of contention as to learn to handle them in less counterproductively vindictive and more gently strategic ways. We need a lot help in order in order to acquire the complex art of converting our poisonous arguments into effective and compassionate dialogues.’

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We have so many vague feelings of hurt, envy, anxiety, and regret, but for the most part we never stop to make sense of them. It’s too un-comfortable and especially difficult because we are so often busy and frazzled, hyper-connected yet a bit lonely. To really understand what we feel and think, we must turn away from distractions, common sense, and other people’s opinions. We need to develop intimacy with ourselves. Our un-thought thoughts contain clues as to our needs and our longer-term direction. Writing them out is key. Through writing, we recognise patterns to observe and, perhaps, outgrow. We can strategise – a remarkably neglected task. We can ask ourselves why we make the choices we do. We can question faulty narratives and create new ones. We can consider ideas before we commit to them, and reinforce good ideas we already know. Writing is ultimately the task of discovering and developing what we think. There could hardly be a more important personal goal.

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We have so many vague feelings of hurt, envy, anxiety, and regret, but for the most part we never stop to make sense of them. It’s too un-comfortable and especially difficult because we are so often busy and frazzled, hyper-connected yet a bit lonely. To really understand what we feel and think, we must turn away from distractions, common sense, and other people’s opinions. We need to develop intimacy with ourselves. Our un-thought thoughts contain clues as to our needs and our longer-term direction. Writing them out is key. Through writing, we recognise patterns to observe and, perhaps, outgrow. We can strategise – a remarkably neglected task. We can ask ourselves why we make the choices we do. We can question faulty narratives and create new ones. We can consider ideas before we commit to them, and reinforce good ideas we already know. Writing is ultimately the task of discovering and developing what we think. There could hardly be a more important personal goal.

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We have so many vague feelings of hurt, envy, anxiety, and regret, but for the most part we never stop to make sense of them. It’s too un-comfortable and especially difficult because we are so often busy and frazzled, hyper-connected yet a bit lonely. To really understand what we feel and think, we must turn away from distractions, common sense, and other people’s opinions. We need to develop intimacy with ourselves. Our un-thought thoughts contain clues as to our needs and our longer-term direction. Writing them out is key. Through writing, we recognise patterns to observe and, perhaps, outgrow. We can strategise – a remarkably neglected task. We can ask ourselves why we make the choices we do. We can question faulty narratives and create new ones. We can consider ideas before we commit to them, and reinforce good ideas we already know. Writing is ultimately the task of discovering and developing what we think. There could hardly be a more important personal goal.

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Going travelling can be one of life’s greatest activities – but often, we fail to deepen the experience as much as we should and return home with some of the promise of our trip unrealised. Here is a pack of cards designed to help us get the very best out of travel – and to embed its greatest lessons in our minds. The cards contain questions that we can reflect on ourselves (in a journal or on a train ride) or ask others in a group – and that lead us to think deeply about how we might derive maximal satisfaction from a trip. This is an ingenious, low-tech, high-impact solution to one of the great conundrums of travel: how to ensure that the reality of going away will match our hopes.

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From adolescence onwards, one of the great struggles we face is how to reconcile our own desires with those we find socially acceptable. The best encounters with friends are those where we can talk honestly about what’s going on in our lives, sharing triumphs, joys, fears and longings - without the usual shyness or reserve. This game guarantees that the warmest, most fascinating conversations won’t have to be left to chance. With the help of a dice and some cards, the game asks participants to answer a series of questions around career, sex, money, relationships, family, gently inviting everyone to share important bits of themselves in an intimate and playful atmosphere. By thinking of confessions as a game – as a sociable and exploratory activity, as opposed to a risky affair – the cards prompt us to open ourselves up to interesting and exhilarating conversations, allow us to be a little more honest around the most intimate aspects of ourselves. Example Questions: What did you call your partner in your most heated argument? In your most depressed moods, what do you tell yourself about your career? What are you ashamed of people knowing about you and money? Describe in some detail the first time you had sex. What do you hate most about your children?

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An exploration of children's literature - from J. M. Barrie's Peter Pan to Young Dark Emu by Bruce Pascoe - and the lessons these stories teach about the world around them.

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It isn’t easy to get into a good conversation. Many of our best ones seem to have happened by chance. Far from it - we believe a great conversation always starts with someone asking a great question. In this set of beautiful cards, you’ll find laid out 100 of the very best questions around, carefully designed to get a group of people into exceptionally entertaining and meaningful conversations. Example Questions: What’s the best evening you ever had? Are you where you wanted to be at this stage in your life? What do you and your partner argue about most? What are the best things you owe your parents? Would you be happy to tell your friends how much you earn? Have you ever had a religious experience?

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A book to inspire closeness and connection, helping people not only to find love but to make it last. Few things promise us greater happiness than our relationships – yet few things more reliably deliver misery and frustration. Our error is to suppose that we are born knowing how to love and that managing a relationship might therefore be intuitive and easy. This book starts from a different premise: that love is a skill to be learnt, rather than just an emotion to be felt. It calmly and charmingly takes us around the key issues of relationships, from arguments to sex, forgiveness to communication, making sure that success in love need never again be just a matter of luck. Part of a new essential paperback series from The School of Life, covering a range of emotional lessons needed in order to lead fulfilled and happy lives.

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