Search results for ""Author The School of Life""

An essential guide to navigating the complexities of professional relationships. Our colleagues can be the sources of our greatest joys and triumphs: they compensate for our weaknesses, enlarge our strengths and aggregate our energies. However, working successfully around others is neither intuitive nor simple: it requires us to communicate effectively, to understand our own minds and blind spots, to master our emotions and to see the world through others’ perspectives. This book compresses our learning into a series of lessons on workplace psychology. The result is nothing less than an essential guide to more profitable, harmonious and happier organisations.

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Our societies are remarkably confident on the matter: affairs are terrible things and only fools, monsters and knaves would ever be involved in them. Those who are their victims deserve unending sympathy and access to a good lawyer. This stance may be clear, but it is not especially helpful or productive - given that, in reality, 1 in 4 of us are going to end up involved in an affair during our lifetime. This is a book written to increase our understanding of what is really at stake in affairs: it looks at why affairs happen and ventures beyond black and white caricatures. It delves into the question of what unfaithful sex means and why, despite the risks, it happens so often. Most importantly, the book seeks to help us through affairs, offering couples a better understanding of each other’s motivations and moods - and, where desirable, a way to save a relationship. We have for too long either openly condemned or secretly lusted after affairs: this, finally, is a chance to understand them.

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The dark truth is that it has become very hard to find anyone (and certainly anything) more interesting than one’s smartphone. This perplexing and troubling realisation has for most of us had huge consequences for our love stories, family lives, work, leisure time and health. This is why we have created Phone Detox, a palm-sized book filled with insights, ideas and meditations about the complex relationship we have with our phones. Phone Detox knows we love our phones and would never want us to give them up, but it is also gently aware that these delightful gadgets bear a hidden cost. This flip book is a tool that aims to bring a little sanity to our closest, most intense and possibly most danger-laden technological relationship. What people are saying about Phone Detox: “Must read. Very enlightening.” Robert “I got it as a birthday present for my husband; and it is currently doing rounds among our friends, as we all found its little snippets of psychologically philosophic wisdom inspiring and very useful.” Mila

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It can be hard to decide what we really want to achieve in our lives; our ambitions are often scattered, diverse and difficult to pin down. This is a tool for helping us focus on what we need to be fulfilled so that we can direct our energies and thoughts most effectively. It contains 160 cards detailing our most common ambitions and longings, along with instructions on how to reflect on our goals, arrange them in a logical order of priorities and, where necessary, weigh up trade-offs. Using the cards will help us to reveal our true purpose. The cards can be displayed, photographed or kept close to hand as a reminder of the path ahead. This is a simple-seeming but ingenious psychological tool for converting hunches and dreams into a realisable future.

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We are used to thinking of good conversation as the glue that holds friendships together, but we shouldn’t forget the immense value of playing games, with some of the same spirit of fun and adventure that we once deployed when we were children. Here is a pack of forty activities to draw us away from static conversation. Among other things, we will build a fort together, dance in surprising ways, deliver funeral orations, practise our acting skills, and play some entertaining (but kindly) pranks. The games are an invitation to cast aside reserve and get in touch with neglected imaginative aspects of ourselves. They are a reminder that friendship doesn’t only require talking; it thrives just as much on the lighthearted but significant business of playing together. Examples Inanimate Impressions Imitation, as Aristotle knew, is an activity humans find pleasurable and meaningful. This perhaps explains our delight in impressions. Ordinarily, we impersonate living creatures – friends, celebrities or animals. But this game takes a slightly different approach. Each guest should attempt to impersonate an inanimate object – a grandfather clock, or a dot-matrix printer, or a blender – using sounds and gestures. At the end, the group as a whole should elect a winner who has most uncannily captured the likeness of the object.

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Talking properly is the glue that keeps every relationship alive. By regularly checking in with one another, covering how we feel, what we’ve learnt, and how we see the world, we have a chance to build the satisfying, intimate and lively relationships we all deserve. However, in the busy conditions of modern life, it’s easy to fall behind on conversation. This box contains a set of the best talking points that any couple can use to broaden channels of communication and emotion. Accompanied by short explanatory essays that help to lend context and atmosphere, these talking points nudge us towards a mood of fruitful intimacy, understanding and affection. Designed to be used over dinner, for an evening or during a weekend away, this is the perfect tool with which to practise the art of closeness.

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The Compatibility Game is designed to help two people in a relationship (romantic or otherwise) assess their level of compatibility. It helps to a) identify areas of alignment and divergence in their values, ambitions, goals or beliefs and b) discuss the significance of these. Crucially, the game does not suggest that incompatibilities cannot be overcome: the basis of successful relationships is not compatibility but compromise. The box contains two sets of 80 cards (2 x 75 ‘statement’ cards plus 5 ‘blank’ cards) - each person has their own set Each card contains a statement of opinion or belief: ‘I’m a spiritual person’; ‘Extreme left wing views annoy me’; ‘I’m a morning person’, and so on. The cards are arranged into five themes — Values, Psychology, Habits, Leisure and Politics The ‘game’ involves two players choosing the cards that most closely accord with their own POV and comparing their choices with the other player to assess their levels of compatibility

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A collection of enlightening quotes, delivering some of the most important lessons The School of Life has to offer. This is a selection of the very best and most psychologically acute quotations from The School of Life, covering such large and diverse topics as relationships, regret, anxiety, work, friends, family, travel and, not least, the meaning of life. Some of these quotations elicit an immediate nod of recognition, others leave us thoughtful and a few are just plain funny. The book is organised by The School of Life’s key themes – Relationships, Self-Knowledge, Sociability, Work, Calm and Leisure – that together amount to a tour around the most profound sorrows and joys of the human mind and heart. Offering comfort and consolation in a compact format, The School of Life Book of Quotations is ideally suited to our impatient, anxious and searching times. Quotations: ‘The best cure for unrequited love: get to know them better.’ ‘Anyone who isn’t embarrassed of who they were last year probably isn’t learning enough.’ ‘The only people we can think of as normal are those we don’t yet know very well.’ ‘Insomnia is the mind’s revenge for all the thoughts we forgot to have in the day.’

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A guide to rediscovering niceness as one of the highest of all human achievements. Many books seek to make us richer or thinner. This book wants to help us to be nicer: less irritable, more patient, readier to listen, warmer and less prickly. Niceness may not have the immediate allure of money or fame, but it is a hugely important quality nevertheless, and one that we neglect at our peril. On Being Nice gently leads us around the key themes of the often-forgotten quality of being nice. It discusses how to be charitable, how to forgive, how to be natural and how to reassure, as well as the importance of navigating interpersonal relationships with compassion and kindness. Ultimately, the book encourages us to understand that niceness is compatible with strength and is not an indicator of naivety.

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An honest and accessible guide to finding light in the darkest of times. In a world that isn’t short of darkness, there could be few more urgent priorities than to spend time rehearsing for ourselves why life – despite all its challenges – still has so much to offer us; why there are still so many reasons to be hopeful. The book is an eclectic collection of anecdotes and arguments, vibrantly illustrated with artworks and photography, that remind us why we should remain hopeful when all else fails. Across a series of short essays, we learn why we still have the right to feel purposeful and buoyant despite everything that is challenging: because there is still so much more to discover, because we can delight in summer days and the light of dawn, and because we don’t require perfection for things to feel good enough. In a tone that avoids the pitfalls of sentimentality and cynicism, the book urges us to reconnect with our more resilient selves, bidding us to recover faith in what is still possible. At points funny and always encouraging and kind, here is an ideal friend to guide us back to courage and delight.

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A reassuring guide on how to overcome failure, teaching us that we can learn to fail well This is a hopeful, consoling, gentle book about failure. Our societies talk a lot about success, but the reality is that no one gets through life without failing – in small and usually also in large ways. Sometimes our failures are very obvious, at other times, we feel we have to conceal them out of shame. This book encourages us to accept the role that failure plays for all of us and to feel compassion for ourselves for the messes we can’t help but make as we go through our lives. Our societies talk a lot about how to succeed: we’d end up so much wiser and calmer if we learnt how to cope better with the more likely scenario of failure. This is a book packed with dignified, sensible, kindly suggestions about how to approach failure: how to deal with friends, how to cope with enemies, how to endure regret, how to pick oneself up, how to accept oneself despite one’s flaws, and how to endure and thrive in new, less than ideal circumstances. It’s a perfect volume for anyone who has ever had a relationship breakdown, suffered a career reversal, made enemies, bungled a project or wasted their time – in other words, for all of us. When we fail, it can sometimes seem as if we are alone in this however, in truth, there is nothing more human than to fail – and nothing wiser and more necessary than to learn to fail well.

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It’s impossible for a child to spend too long around adults without one of them coming up and asking, as if it were the most normal thing in the world, ‘What do you want to do when you grow up?’ They mean for this to be a relatively simple question; the idea is that you’ll quite easily be able to say something like, ‘A teacher’ or ‘A doctor’ and then the adult will move on – and bother someone else. But the truth can be a lot more complicated, and if you’ve ever felt confused or annoyed by the question, you have every right: knowing what you might want to do with your working life is one of the biggest, oddest and hardest questions of all. It might take many decades to find a good answer to it – and it’s one that most adults are still grappling with... This is a unique book about careers and the world of work written expressly for children. It takes us on a journey around some of the most essential questions within the topic: how can one discover one’s passions, what should a ‘good’ job involve, what is a good amount of money to try to make, how does the economy function – and acknowledges that the job you might do one day probably doesn’t even exist now. The result is a book that should spark some exceptionally fruitful conversations and help children look to their future work life with positivity and anticipation.

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In Ancient Greece, when the philosopher Socrates was asked to sum up what all philosophical commandments could be reduced to, he replied: ‘Know yourself’. Self-knowledge matters so much because it is only on the basis of an accurate sense of who we are that we can make reliable decisions – particularly around love and work. This book takes us on a journey into our deepest, most elusive selves and arms us with a set of tools to understand our characters properly. We come away with a newly clarified sense of who we are, what we need to watch out for when making decisions, and what our priorities and potential might be. Contents: Self-Ignorance Philosophical Meditation Emotional Identity Honesty and Denial Self-Judgement Emotional Scepticism

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

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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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THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER Give the gift of inspiration: an essential guide to living wisely and well, no matter what challenges the world throws at you - from Alain de Botton, the bestselling author of The Consolations of Philosophy, The Art of Travel and The Course of LoveThis is a book about everything you were never taught at school. It's about how to understand your emotions, find and sustain love, succeed in your career, fail well and overcome shame and guilt. It's also about letting go of the myth of a perfect life in order to achieve genuine emotional maturity. Written in a hugely accessible, warm and humane style, The School of Life is the ultimate guide to the emotionally fulfilled lives we all long for - and deserve. This book brings together ten years of essential and transformative research on emotional intelligence, with practical topics including: - how to understand yourself- how to master the dilemmas of relationships- how to become more effective at work - how to endure failure- how to grow more serene and resilient Praise for Alain de Botton:'What he has managed to do is remarkable: to help us think better so that we may live better lives' Irish Times'A serious and optimistic set of practical ideas that could improve and alter the way we live' Jeanette Winterson, The Times'Alain de Botton likes to take big, complex subjects and write about them with thoughtful and deceptive innocence' Observer

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